Biography of Elie Wiesel

Wiesel is the author of 36 works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and the moral responsibility of all people to fight hatred, racism and genocide. He was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, and he was only fifteen years old when the Nazis deported him and his family to Auschwitz. After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist. Then, he was inspired to write about his experiences in the death camps in the internationally acclaimed memoir, La Nuit (Night) Wiesel has since dedicated his life to ensuring that none of us forget what happened to the Jews.

 In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Wiesel as Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. Then, in 1980, he became the Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is also the Founding President of the Paris based Universal Academy of Cultures. Over his lifetime, Wiesel has received over one hundred honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning. A devoted supporter of Israel, Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito, Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, victims of famine in Africa, victims of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war in the former Yugoslavia.

Over his career, Wiesel has taught as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, as a professor in the Department of Religion and the Department of Philosophy at Boston, as a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York and as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University.

Wiesel is also the author of more than forty books of fiction and non-fiction, including the award-winning books: A Beggar in Jerusalem, The Testament, The Fifth Son, and two volumes of his memoirs. For his literary and human rights activities, he has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement and the Medal of Liberty Award, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor. Then, in 1986, Wiesel was honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace. A few months later, Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.