Elie Wiesel

1. Elie Wiesel By: Courtney Elmore

2. Born on September 3, 1928 in a small town in Sighet, Transylvania

3. Growing Up Elie grew up in a Jewish community in Sighet. Growing up he was studying classical Hebrew. His early life mostly consisted around his religious studies. He loved mystical tradition and folk tales of Hassidic sect of Judaism (his mothers family belonged to). His father encouraged him to study modern Hebrew language and to concentrate on his studies. During this time he was around the age of fifteen and the family was not in any trouble of being touched by Germany and the conditions suffered by Jews in Germany and Poland.

4. The Hard Years • Nazis invaded Sighet in 1944 ending Elie’s childhood early at age 15. He was separated from his mother and sister when they arrived at Auschwitz. He never saw them after that. He remained with his father for the following year. They went through the hard times together that they faced in all the camps they were taken to. In the last months of the war Elie’s father passed due to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion, and exposure.

5. Death Camps • Unlike his father Elie lived through all of the beating, starvation, death walks without proper clothing, and the open cattle cars. The camps he lived through was Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz. Auschwitz Buchenwald

6. After the War • After the war Elie found his peace in France. There he learned that his two older sisters Hilda and Batya had survived the War. His first few years he was in an orphanage. In 1948 he began studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. He later became involved in journalism. He started off working for a French newspaper L’arche. Francois Mauric influenced Elie to write about his experiences. This began his lifetime of work.

7. The Start of Elie’s Career • He started writing books about his experiences during the war inside the camps. His first was And the world kept silent. Later on he wrote the books such as Night, Dawn, The Accident, The Gates of the Forest, The Oath, and The Fifth Son. He wrote plays such as Zalmen of the Madness of God and The Trial of God. Short stories such as Legends of Our Time, On Generation After, and A Jew Today.

8. Speeches Elie made speeches in his life and still is today going to different sights where the holocaust happened, museums, and memorials todescribed what he and others have seen and how bad the outcomes where. He also states that we shall never forget what has happened and to not ignore it. It is part of our history that should always be remembered.

9. Later in life and Speeches • The President had Elie be the chairman of the President’s Commission of the Holocaust. He helped organize a Holocaust museum and a memorial for those who died in the Holocaust. He has and still is making speeches about his life and others involved in this tragedy. Part of one of his speech is the following: • “Let use remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered alone, they lived alone, but the did not die alone, for something in all of us died with them.”

10. His Reasons • Elie Wiesel isn’t just an author of his past and about his life growing up in a Jewish family. He didn’t write books about something that is easily forgotten about. The books that he has written over the years was not just about him but others as well who have lived through the Holocaust. He wrote these books so that people can learn about what really happened behind the barbed wire fences that kept them trapped. He wrote because he knew it was time to break through the silence to let people really know what happened so that no one will ever forget was shouldn’t be forgotten.