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Elie Wiesel

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Eliezer Wiesel (commonly known as Elie) (born September 30, 1928) is a world-renowned Jewish novelist, philosopher, humanitarian, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of over forty books, the most famous of which, Night, is a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust.

Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", noting that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel has delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. [1986 Nobel Peace Prize Press Release]

Wiesel lives in the United States, where he teaches at Boston University.

Contents

Early life and experiences during the Holocaust

Buchenwald, 1945. Wiesel is on the second row, seventh from the left.
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Buchenwald, 1945. Wiesel is on the second row, seventh from the left.

Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Romania, to Shlomo Wiesel and his wife Sarah, the daughter of Dodye Feig, a Hasid and farmer from a nearby village. Elie Wiesel had three sisters Hilda, Béa, and Tzipora. Shlomo was an Orthodox Jew of Hungarian descent, and a shopkeeper who ran his own grocery store. He was active and trusted within the community, and had spent a few months in jail for having helped Polish Jews who escaped to Hungary in the early years of the war. It was Shlomo who instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Modern Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study Torah and Kabbalah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason, and his mother, faith (Fine 1982:4). He was the only son, with his little sister Tzipora.

The town of Sighet became part of the German ally Hungary in 1940, and in 1944 the Nazis deported the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz–Birkenau. While at Auschwitz the number A-7713 was tattooed into his left arm. Wiesel was separated from his mother and youngest sister Tzipora, who are presumed to have been murdered at Auschwitz. Wiesel and his father were sent to the attached work camp Buna-Werke, a subcamp of Auschwitz III Monowitz. He managed to remain with his father for a year as they were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled between concentration camps in the closing days of the war. On January 28, 1945, just a few weeks after the two were marched to Buchenwald and only months before the camp was liberated by the American Third Army, Wiesel's father died of dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion, after being beaten by a guard. The last word his father spoke was "Eliezer", his son's name.

After the war

I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone–terribly alone in a world without God and without man.
—Elie Wiesel, 'Night' (1958)
Translated by Stella Rodway

After the war, Wiesel was placed in a French orphanage where he learned the French language and was reunited with his two older sisters, Hilda and Bea, who had also survived the war. In 1948, Wiesel began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. He taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. As a journalist he wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsion in Kamf (in Yiddish) and the French newspaper, L'arche. However, for eleven years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. Like many survivors, Wiesel could not find the words to describe his experiences. However, a meeting with François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who eventually became Wiesel's close friend, persuaded him to write about his Holocaust experiences.

Wiesel wrote a 900-page manuscript, Un di velt hot geshvign, in Yiddish, which was published in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote the manuscript in French, and it was published as the 127-page novel La Nuit, and later in English as Night. Even with Mauriac's support, Wiesel had trouble finding a publisher for his book, and initially it sold poorly.

Life in the United States

In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth. The next year he was struck by a taxi. The first hospital that he was sent to wouldn't accept him because he was poor and had no insurance. Then a second hospital took him in, and he was confined to a wheelchair for over a year. Classified as a stateless person, he applied for and became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1963.

In the U.S., Wiesel wrote over forty books, both fiction and non-fiction, and won many literary prizes. Wiesel's writing is considered among the most important works in Holocaust literature. Some historians credit Wiesel with giving the term 'Holocaust' its present meaning, but he does not feel that the word adequately describes the event and wishes it were used less frequently to describe less significant occurrences such as everyday tragedies (Wiesel:1999, 18).

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. He has received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 1985 and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. Wiesel has published two volumes of his memoirs. The first, All Rivers Run to the Sea was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969 while the second, titled And the Sea is Never Full and published in 1999, covered the years from 1969 to 1999.

Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. In 1993, Elie Wiesel and President Clinton lit the eternal flame in the memorial's Hall of Remembrance during the opening dedication ceremony.

Wiesel is particularly fond of teaching and holds the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. From 1972 to 1976, Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York. In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University. He also co-instructs Winter Term (January) courses at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1997 to 1999 he was Ingeborg Rennert Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University.

Wiesel has become a popular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust. As a political activist, he has advocated for many causes, including Israel, the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the victims of apartheid in South Africa, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Bosnian victims of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds. He also led a commission organized by the Romanian government to research and write a report, released in 2004, on the true history of the Holocaust in Romania and the involvement of the Romanian wartime regime in atrocities against Jews and other groups, including the Roma. The Romanian government accepted the findings in the report and committed to implementing the commission's recommendations for educating the public on the history of the Holocaust in Romania. The commission, formally called the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, came to be called the Wiesel Commission in Elie Wiesel's honor and due to his leadership.

Wiesel is the honourary chair of the Habonim Dror Camp Miriam Campership and Building Fund.

On June 11, 2006, Wiesel delivered the Commencement ceremony main address at Dartmouth College's 236th Commencement Exercises.

Recently, he traveled to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey and said that this would be his last visit there.

Books

ISBN numbers maybe of reissues or reprints. Most are paperback. Un di velt hot geshvign (Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1956)

External Link

Notes

References

Nobel Peace Prize: Laureates (1976–2000)
1976: B.Williams, Corrigan | 1977: AI | 1978: Sadat, Begin | 1979: Mother Teresa | 1980: Esquivel | 1981: UNHRC | 1982: Myrdal, García Robles | 1983: Wałęsa | 1984: Tutu | 1985: IPPNW | 1986: Wiesel | 1987: Arias | 1988: UN Peacekeeping | 1989: Dalai Lama | 1990: Gorbachev | 1991: Suu Kyi | 1992: Menchú | 1993: Mandela, de Klerk | 1994: Arafat, Peres, Rabin | 1995: Pugwash Conferences, Rotblat | 1996: Belo, Ramos Horta | 1997: ICBL, J.Williams | 1998: Hume, Trimble | 1999: MSF | 2000: Kim DJ

 

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