Elie Wiesel
(b. 1928)

A Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his writings on his war experience and his lifelong humanitarian efforts to prevent similar atrocities from occurring elsewhere around the world.

Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania in 1928. He was the only son of four children born to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel. In 1944, young Elie and his family, along with all of Sighet's 15,000 Jews, were arrested and deported by train to Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. Here, Wiesel's mother and youngest sister were sent to the gas chambers. When Allied troops neared Auschwitz in early 1945, Elie and his father were transported to Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany. It was here that his father died of starvation and dysentery shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allies.

After the war, the orphaned Wiesel studied in France and later became a journalist. Ten years after his wartime experiences, Wiesel told his story. The result was an 800-page manuscript in Yiddish. A condensed version, La Nuit, was published in 1958 followed by the English translation, Night, two years later. Night has since been translated into more than 30 languages. Since the publication of Night, Wiesel has published more than 25 semi-autobiographical novels, plays, and essays.

An American citizen since 1963, Wiesel lives in New York with his wife and son.

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