Elie Wiesel

This succinct summary of Elie Wiesel's views on life serves as the driving force of his work. The author of 36 works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism and genocide, Elie Wiesel is a devoted supporter of Israel. He has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskitio Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Camobdian refugees, the Kurds, victims of famine and genocide in Africa, of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war in the former Yugoslavia.

Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, which is now part of Romania. he was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later taransported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945.

After the war, Elie Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist. During an interview with the distinguished French writer and Nobel laureate, Francois Mauriac, he was persuaded to write about his experineces 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.