Elie Wiesel Biography Quotes 30 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Elie Wiesel, born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928, grew up in Sighet, a Carpathian town then in Romania (later part of Hungary, and today Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania). He was the only son of Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel and had three sisters: Hilda, Beatrice (Bea), and the youngest, Tzipora. His childhood was rooted in a deeply Jewish milieu that combined rigorous religious study with a curiosity about literature and ideas. Shlomo, a shopkeeper and community figure, encouraged engagement with the wider world, while Sarah nurtured his devotion to learning. The family spoke Yiddish at home in a multilingual town where Romanian and Hungarian were common. Synagogue life, Hasidic melodies, and sacred texts framed his early years and expectations for a life of study and spirituality.

Holocaust and Survival
The German occupation of Hungary in 1944 brought rapid catastrophe to Sighet's Jews. That spring, the Wiesel family was confined to a ghetto and then deported in cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, Elie was separated from his mother and Tzipora; both were murdered. He remained with his father, Shlomo, amid the brutalities of forced labor and starvation. They were later transferred within the camp system and, in the winter of 1945, forced on a death march to Buchenwald. There, in the final weeks before liberation, Shlomo died, leaving his son to confront survival and silence in a world that seemed to have emptied of meaning. Elie Wiesel was liberated at Buchenwald in April 1945, an adolescent marked by loss that would forever inform his understanding of memory and responsibility.

Postwar Years in France
After the war, Wiesel was taken to an orphanage in France. He learned that his older sisters Hilda and Beatrice had survived; they would be reunited. Settling in Paris, he studied at the Sorbonne and began a career in journalism, writing for the French Jewish magazine L'Arche and serving as a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. For a decade he kept largely silent about the camps. A meeting with the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, who spoke to him with empathy about the suffering of Jewish children, proved decisive. Mauriac urged him to write. Wiesel produced a sprawling Yiddish manuscript, later distilled into the French memoir La Nuit (1958) and then the English Night (1960). Night's spare voice and moral urgency made it a cornerstone of Holocaust literature.

Writer and Witness
Wiesel went on to publish more than fifty books encompassing memoir, fiction, commentary, and drama. He extended the story of Night in the novels Dawn and Day, probing how trauma shapes questions of faith, vengeance, and the possibility of renewal. In The Town Beyond the Wall and A Beggar in Jerusalem, he examined memory's burden and the complexities of history; the latter won major literary recognition in France. The Jews of Silence reported on the oppression of Soviet Jewry after his travels in the 1960s. Legends of Our Time and Souls on Fire blended portraits, legends, and reflections on Hasidic masters, while The Trial of God staged metaphysical arguments forged in catastrophe. Throughout, he wrote as a witness who refused to desacralize suffering even as he wrestled honestly with doubt. Years later, his wife, Marion Wiesel, would translate several of his works, including a new English translation of Night, helping a new generation encounter his voice.

Life in the United States and Teaching
Wiesel first came to New York in the mid-1950s as a correspondent and soon made the United States his home, becoming a citizen in 1963. He taught at institutions including the City University of New York and Yale, and then, beginning in the 1970s, at Boston University, where he was a University Professor and a leading figure in the humanities. He created intimate seminars on literature, philosophy, ethics, and the Bible, bringing to the classroom the same moral clarity that shaped his books. In 1969 he married Marion Erster Rose, a translator and editor; they had one son, Elisha. Their home life intertwined with public work, as Marion often collaborated on translations and projects that amplified his message.

Public Advocacy and Moral Voice
Beyond literature, Wiesel became an influential public conscience. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter asked him to chair the President's Commission on the Holocaust, which recommended creating a national museum. Wiesel subsequently served as the founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, helping to guide the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. His moral interventions crossed political and national borders: he spoke out for Soviet refuseniks such as Natan Sharansky, decried ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and warned of genocides in places like Rwanda and Darfur. In 1985 he addressed President Ronald Reagan in the White House amid controversy over a planned visit to a German military cemetery, urging sensitivity to the memory of victims. In 1999 he delivered his Millennium Lecture, often known as "The Perils of Indifference", at the White House with President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton present. In 2009 he accompanied President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Buchenwald, linking living memory with civic responsibility.

Nobel Peace Prize and Philanthropy
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Wiesel was cited as a messenger to humankind. He and Marion Wiesel used the prize to establish the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which organized conferences on world crises and ethical leadership and supported educational initiatives, including prizes for student essays on ethics. The foundation later suffered heavy losses in the Madoff fraud, yet it continued to pursue dialogue and education, reflecting the couple's belief that moral imagination can be taught and renewed.

Honors and Later Years
Wiesel received the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as France's Legion of Honor and dozens of honorary degrees from universities around the world. He published two major volumes of memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea and And the Sea Is Never Full, tracing his journey from Sighet to global forums and reflecting on friendships, losses, and the demands of testimony. In later years he continued to write and lecture, including Open Heart, a meditation prompted by heart surgery. He remained based in New York City, a mentor to students and a presence at commemorations and public debates. Elie Wiesel died there on July 2, 2016, at the age of 87, survived by Marion and their son, Elisha.

Legacy
Wiesel's legacy rests on the fusion of literary artistry, moral seriousness, and personal witness. Night became a foundational text in classrooms and communities, shaping how the world remembers the Holocaust and thinks about evil, memory, and human dignity. Through his work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and his counsel to leaders from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, he brought the concerns of survivors into national and international policy conversations. He refused to compare suffering in ways that erased distinct histories, yet insisted that attention to any victim can awaken responsibility to all. For readers and students across generations, he modeled an ethic of remembrance grounded in humility, compassion, and an unquiet conscience determined that indifference should never again be the world's default.

Our collection contains 30 quotes who is written by Elie, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Truth - Justice - Friendship.

Other people realated to Elie: Abraham Joshua Heschel (Educator)

• 1995 All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (Memoir)
• 1968 A Beggar in Jerusalem (Novel)
• 1966 The Jews of Silence (Non-fiction)
• 1962 Day (Novel)
• 1961 Dawn (Novella)
• 1958 Night (Memoir)