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Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed withthe same food, hurt with the same weapons, subjectto the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summeras a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? - Shylock Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice Act III Scene I
Night The Bible begins with God’s creation of the earth. When God first begins His creation, the Earth is “without form, and void; and darkness [is] upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). God’s first act is to create light and dispel the darkness.
For Elie Wiesel, darkness and night symbolize a world without God. Night is always when the suffering is worst, and the presence of darkness reflects Eliezer’s belief that his has become a world without the presence of God.
Elie Wiesel is the author of Night, his famous memoir of his terrifying and tragic experiences during the Holocaust. He was 15 years old when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp and symbol of genocide and terror. His mother and younger sister died there, while his two older sisters survived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945.
The internationally acclaimed Night has been published in more than 30 languages. Wiesel has received more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He has also been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award. President Jimmy Carter appointed him as chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. He also became the founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize, he and his wife, Marion, established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization dedicated to combating indifference, intolerance, and injustice though international dialogues and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding, and equality.
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps, where his parents and little sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist.
In 1958, he published his first book, La Nuit, a memoir of his experiences in the concentration camps. He has since authored nearly thirty books some of which use these events as their basic material. In his many lectures, Wiesel has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered persecution and death because of their religion, race or national origin. He has been outspoken on the plight of Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry and on behalf of the State of Israel today.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing the Jerusalem Day rally in Tehran on Friday, October 5, 2007, reiterated his denial of the Holocaust and called for a referendum to remove the State of Israel from the Middle East.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana: Life of Reason, 1905
