Elie Wiesel

Eliezer Wiesel (born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor who has written several books about his experiences. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He lives in the United States.

Early life and Holocaust

Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Romania, to Shlomo and Sarah, Orthodox Jews of Hungarian descent who owned a grocery store. He had three sisters. Sighet became part of Hungary in 1940, and in 1944 the Nazis deported the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His mother and a sister were murdered there; he and his father were sent to the attached work camp Auschwitz III Monowitz. In January 1945, the two were marched to Buchenwald, where his father died.

After the war, he was placed in a french orphanage. In 1948 Wiesel began studying in the Sorbon. He got involved with the French Newspaper, L'arche as a journalist. He became associated with the Nobel laureate François Mauriac, who eventually persuaded him to write about his Holocaust experiences in Night, which probably became his most famous work.

United States

He later settled in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1963. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986 spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and is now a professor of humanities at Boston University.

He has now authored over 40 works of fiction and non-fiction. He received the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement in 1985 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He published his memoirs in 1995.

In 1997, he received the Guardian of Zion Award.

Criticism

Wiesel is an ardent Zionist and an open and strong supporter of the right of the State of Israel to exist.

Based on the idea that a "Holocaust industry" around the Holocaust has created to service Jewish needs, Noam Chomsky, a Jewish linguist and left wing critic, named him "a terrible fraud." To Chomsky, although Wiesel militated against the silence about the Holocaust and he decries Arab terrorism, he remains silent on Palestinian issues. Not to mention he also worked for the alleged terrorist organization Irgun between 1947 and 1949, including the King David Hotel bombing of 1946.

Bibliography

Some of Elie Wiesel's more famous works include:

• Night
• The Oath
• Souls on Fire
• One Generation After
• A Beggar in Jerusalem
• Trial of God