Elie Wiesel was born on September 10, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania (which is nowadays part of Romania), where he spent his entire childhood. His father was a storekeeper named Shlomo, respected by all the comunitee where they lived, and his mother was Sarah Wiesel. Elie was the third of four children, the only boy out of them. His biggest sister was Hilda, then came Bea, and his youngest sister was Tzipora (who was 7 years old when they had to leave Sighet). When Elie was fifteen years old, in 1944, he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Aushwitz, from where Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald. Buchewald was finally liberated in April 1945. Elie, Hilda, and Bea survived. Tzipora, his mother, and his father died in the camps.
After the war, Elie studied in Paris and later became a journalist. During an interview with the distinguished French writer Francois Mauriac he was persuaded to write about his experiences in the death camps. The result was his internationally acclaimed memoir, La Nuit or Night, which has since been translated into more than thirty languages.In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel as Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980, he became the Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is also the Founding President of the Paris-based Universal Academy of Cultures and the Chairman of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization he and his wife created to fight indifference, intolerance and injustice. Elie Wiesel has received more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.
Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books of fiction and non-fiction, including A Beggar in Jerusalem (Prix Médicis winner), The Testament (Prix Livre Inter winner), The Fifth Son (winner of the Grand Prize in Literature from the City of Paris), and two volumes of his memoirs.
Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where he also holds the title of University Professor. He is a member of the Faculty in the Department of Religion as well as the Department of Philosophy. He became an american citizen in the year 1963, and he now lives with his wife Marion, and his son, Elisha. He is 81 years old.
Please visit these pages, which where the ones that gave me most of the information I used to write this. I hope they are useful to you:
http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/eliewiesel.aspx --> The Elie Wiesel Foundation
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