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Elie Wiessel was born September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania. He pursued Jewish religious studies as a young boy.

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In 1940, the Wiessels were forced out of their home and required to go with other Jewish families to live in the ghetto.

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In 1944, when Elie Wiessel was 15, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. When they arrived at the camp, he and his father
were warned to lie about their ages. Elie said he
was 18 and his father said he was 40 instead of
50.
They were sent to be slave laborers.

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Elie and his father
survived first Auschwitz
and then the Buna Werke
labor camp for eight
months. They endured deplorable,
inhumane conditions,
beatings, excessive work,
starvation, and other torture.

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In the winter of 1945,
Wiesel’s right foot became
badly swollen and a Jewish
doctor, who was also an
inmate, performed surgery
on it. He had no anesthesia.

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Three days after his
surgery, the inmates
were forced to go on a
death march in the
snow. For ten days they were
forced to run, then
crammed into freight
cars, and sent to the
Buchenwald
concentration camp.

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Of the 20,000
prisoners who left
Buna, only 6,000
survived. When they arrived to
Buchenwald, Elie’s
father, Shlomo, died of
dysentary, starvation,
and exhaustion after
being beaten by a
German soldier just 3
months before the
camp was liberated.

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After the death of his father, Elie was sent to join the
children’s block of Buchenwald.

At the end of the war, April 6, 1945, the prisoners were told
they would no longer be fed.

They began evacuating the camp killing 10,000 prisoners a day.

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After he was freed from the camp on April
11, Wiesel became sick with intestinal
problems.

After several days in the hospital, Wiesel
wrote an outline for a book describing the
Holocaust.

He wasn’t ready to publicize his experience, but
promised he would in ten years.

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After he was freed from the camp on April
11, Wiesel became sick with intestinal
problems.

After several days in the hospital, Wiesel
wrote an outline for a book describing the
Holocaust.

He wasn’t ready to publicize his experience, but
promised he would in ten years.

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By 1947, he was
reunited with both of
his surviving sisters,
Bea and Hilda.

Hilda found his picture in
a newspaper.

He found Bea in
Antwerp.

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In 1948, Elie enrolled in the
Sorbonne where he studied
literature, philosophy, and
psychology.

He was extremely poor and
very depressed.

He considered suicide often.

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Elie spent a year working on the 862 page
manuscript he called And the World Was Silent.

He gave it to his publisher who returned it as a
258 page book.

The book is a memoir and told of his
experiences during the Holocaust.

It also is his personal account of his loss of his religious faith.

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The memoir eventually became an acclaimed bestseller, translated into many languages,
and is considered a seminal work on the
terrors of the Holocaust.

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Crossing the street
one night in July 1965,
Elie was hit by a taxi
and had to undergo a
ten hour surgery.

After recovery, he
focused on his writing
and published numerous
books from then on out.

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In 1969, Elie married
Marion Rose, an Austrian
Holocaust survivor. They
married in Jerusalem.

She translated all of Wiesel’s
subsequent books.

In 1972, they had a son who
they named Shlomo Elisha
Wiesel, after Wiesel’s father.

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From 1972 to 1978, Wiesel was a Distinguished
Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University
of New York.

1978, he became a Professor of Humanities at
Boston University.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter asked him to
head the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which
he did for six years.

In 1985, Wiesel was awarded the Congressional
Gold Medal of Achievement.

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Wiesel died on July 2, 2016
at the age of 87.
He is remembered as an
author, teacher, and an
activist who spent his life
speaking out against
persecution and injustice
across the globe.