Elie Wiesel passed away 10 years ago on July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.
“Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness.”
These are among the most famous words of Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and author of more than 60 books, including his 1960 memoir, Night.
Eliezer Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania, now part of Romania. In May 1944, at the age of 15, Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz. By January 1945, he and his father were transferred to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated.
U.S. troops arrived in April 1945, and Wiesel was liberated. He later settled in Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist. In 1949, he visited Jerusalem for the first time.
By 1958, his first published work about the Holocaust, Un di velt hot geshvign (“And the World Has Remained Silent”), was released in Yiddish. It later became the basis for Night, one of the most influential Holocaust memoirs ever written.
In 1986, Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for being a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement, and dignity.”
Throughout his life, he received numerous honors for his literary achievements and human rights advocacy, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the Medal of Liberty Award and the rank of Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor.
May his memory be a blessing.
