The Life of Elie Wiesel
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Transcript of The Life of Elie Wiesel
The Life of
Elie Wiesel
Author of “Night”
Early Life
• Born in Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928.
• Lived with his family– Father
• Schlomo
– Mother• Feig
– 3 sisters• Hilda• Bea• Tzipora
Sighet
Early Life
• Began religious Hebrew studies at an early age
• Also encouraged to concentrate on secular studies by his father
• Grew up speaking Yiddish at home, Hungarian, Romanian, and
German in the community
After the War
• Lived in an orphanage until 1948
• Faced with a pivotal choice
• Studied at preparatory schools for a few years in France
• Studied literature, philosophy, and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
After the War
• Author of more than forty books– Night– A Beggar in Jerusalem
• Winner of the Prix Médicis
– Dawn– The Accident– All Rivers Run to the Sea
After the War
• 1976– Appointed Chairman of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council
• 1985– Congressional Medal of Freedom
• 1986– Nobel Peace Prize
• Professor of Huanities at Boston University since 1976
1944-1945
• Family removed from Sighet in 1944
– Deported by Nazis
– Elie was 15
• Shoved like “cattle’ into a train
Auschwitz-Birkenau
• First camp the Wiezel’s were moved to• Feig and Tzipora gassed on the first night• At least 1,200,000-4,000,000 executed from 1940-
1945• Up to 20,000 gassed and cremated each day
Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Survivors in 1945
• One of the mass graves at Auschwitz
Buchenwald
• Elie and his father moved there in 1945
• Father died days before liberation
• Liberated April 11, 1945
• 904 children rescued including Elie
• 56,545 dead
Buchenwald
Holocaust
• Concentration, Labor, and Extermination camps set up by the Nazis
• Deaths of Jews, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, along with slave laborers, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and political opponents
• 9,000,000 – 11,000,000 dead
Holocaust