Wiesel, Elie, 1928-2016

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Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania. He was 15 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 transported 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. He wrote his memoir La Nuit or Night. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel as Chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust; 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.

Elie Wiesel 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.

In 1976, he became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. Wiesel passed away in New York City July 2nd, 2016.

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Birth 1928-09-30

Death 2016-07-02

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