He was able to channel his memories of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, two of the concentration camps in which he was imprisoned, into a moving book that made the Holocaust feel frighteningly real.
He's helped us to understand why the Holocaust was so horrific, and why it's crucial that we never let anything like it happen again. Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania, in He had two older sisters, Beatrice and Hilda, and a younger sister, Tzipora.
As a child, he learned how to read Hebrew and studied the Torah extensively, like many Jewish boys. But as he reached his teens, his life was interrupted by the advent of Hitler's Nazi regime. At the age of 15, Wiesel and his family were forced to move to a ghetto: a segregated neighborhood occupied by Jews. Most ghetto occupants would later be forced into concentration camps, and that fate befell Wiesel's family in Wiesel and his father were sent to Auschwitz and separated from his mother and sisters.
What they have done to the world OPRAH: You've witnessed and written about the depths of both human cruelty and also of what we call human grace. How do you make sense of the two extremes even now at 84?
Both evil, the power of evil, which on one level I cannot understand. Why evil? Even worse, why the seduction of evil? But then how is one to understand His silence?
At least God can say, "Who are you to understand me? I don't understand it to this day. OPRAH: It's so interesting, though, because you also write that if Auschwitz did not teach the world not to be racist, then what would? Rwanda didn't. Cambodia didn't. Bosnia didn't. Are we evolving as a species from racism and those kinds of atrocities? It will not because it hasn't. Otherwise, how is one to explain Rwanda? We are dealing with hundreds and thousands of years.
But will the individual learn? Every single human being is a unique human being. And, therefore, it's so criminal to do something to that human being, because he or she represents humanity. In June , Elie Wiesel underwent emergency open-heart surgery at the age of 82 after doctors found all of his arteries blocked.
OPRAH: You're lying there on the hospital bed and suddenly realized that it's a different kind of fear than when you were in the death camps. And I saw them, and I realized, ah, that it's more serious than I thought.
And, in truth, I was not sure that I would see them again. For almost a decade, he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps. He subsequently wrote La Nuit Night. Since its publication in , La Nuit Night has been translated into 30 languages and millions of copies have been sold. In Night , Wiesel writes about his experiences at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Among other things, he describes:. In addition, Wiesel describes the mental and physical anguish he and his fellow prisoners experienced as they were stripped of their humanity by the brutal camp conditions.
He also writes about his spiritual struggles and crisis of faith. Wiesel was a prolific writer and thinker. In addition to Night , he wrote more than 40 books for which he received a number of literary awards, including:. His writings also include a memoir written in two volumes. The first volume is entitled All Rivers Run to the Sea The second is entitled And the Sea is Never Full In , Wiesel became the founding president of the Paris-based Universal Academy of Cultures, a human rights organization.
He received more than honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning. In a press release, the Nobel Committee described Wiesel as follows:.
Wiesel is a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity. His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a hard-won belief. The message is in the form of a testimony, repeated and deepened through the works of a great author.
Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity. Wiesel reunited with his older sisters, Beatrice and Hilda, following liberation.
Several months later, they learned that Beatrice had also survived. His parents, Sarah and Shlomo, and younger sister, Tzipora, were killed. Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to defend human rights and peace around the world.
Elie Wiesel is 16 years old at the conclusion of Night. Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May He was then sent to forced labor at Auschwitz III, also called Monowitz, located several miles from the main camp.
In January , Wiesel was transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Elie Wiesel reflected on his relationship with God in writings, speeches, and interviews. He opens his memoir Night by writing about his devout faith and religious education as a young boy. As he witnesses the inhumanity of Auschwitz in Night , Wiesel explains that he began to question God.
More than 50 years after liberation, he reflected on this: " What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?
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