Elie Wiesel

1928-1944, Early Years:
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania on September 30, 1928. The town of Sighet is located in present-day Romania, although at times in the past it was considered to be part of Hungary too. Wiesel had two older sisters and a younger sister. Wiesel's childhood, like that of most European Jewish children at the time, revolved around family, community, religious study, and worship.

1944, Deportation:
In 1944, Elie (15 years old), his family, and all the other Jews in the town were deported to concentration camps in Poland. Wiesel and his father were taken to Auschwitz, where they became separated from Elie's mother and younger sister Tzipora. Wiesel later learned that his mother and sister were cremated in the ovens of Auschwitz.

1944-1945, Concentration Camps:
During the following year, Elie was moved from Auschwitz to the concentration camps at Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. He managed to stay with his father the entire time until his father's death from dysentery, starvation, exposure, and exhaustion at Buchenwald.

1945, Liberation:
After experiencing forced labor, forced marches, starvation, disease, beatings and torture, Elie was liberated in April 1945 from Buchenwald by the United States Third Army.

1945-1955, Post-Holocaust Life:
Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage. In 1948, Wiesel (20 years old) began to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. He became involved in journalistic work with the French newspaper L'arche. He met and befriended Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac, who eventually influenced Wiesel to break his vowed silence and write of his experiences. Wiesel was the first to give the name "Holocaust", which literally means destruction by fire, to the experience of European Jews in World War II.

1955-1958, Night:
In 1955 Wiesel wrote a 900-page book in Yiddish called And the World Remained Silent. In 1957, a compressed 127-page French version called La Nuit (Night) was published. In this memoir, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the Holocaust, which had consumed his family. While remembering the nightmare world of the death camps, he asks himself how the God he once so fervently believed in could have allowed these monstrous events to occur?
Summary and Analysis of Night

1956-1963, U.S. Citizenship:
Due to a car accident in New York, Wiesel spent a year confined to a wheelchair. During this year Wiesel decided to become a U.S. citizen. In 1963 Wiesel became an American citizen. He has been an active figure within American society, while still fulfilling his role in Jewish politics around the world.