Elie Wiesel is a writer who has pulled millions of people into the depressing depths of the Holocaust. After writing his noble prize winning novel “Night”, people have wanted to know more about him and the Holocaust. He is one of the most infamous survivors of the Holocaust and will always be remembered by his excruciating and terrifying life told about in his book.

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928. He lived with his father, Shlomo, and mother, Sarah, along with three sisters in this very close-knit community of about 20,000 people. This community consisted of nearly 98% Orthodox Jews. His book, Night, begins on March 18, 1944 which is when Germany invaded Hungary. The book starts off with the caretaker of Wiesel’s synagogue warning all of his neighbors to save themselves even though many thought they were not in danger. On May 16 of the same year, all the Sighet Jews are forced from their homes and told to line up in the street at 8 in the morning. Elie and his family are deported to Auschwitz. Once arriving, his mother and youngest sister were directly sent to the gas chambers. His two sisters are separated from Elie and his father. Later on, Elie and father march to Buna. Here, Elie is tattooed on his left arm with A-7713. After awhile in the camps, Elie and his father run with the evacuees to Gleiwitz. At Gleiwitz, they and others board open cattle cars.

These cars are on a ten-day ride to Buchenwald. When arriving to Buchenwald, the Germans order them to head for a hot bath. They were both desperate for the hot water, but his father falls and sinks into the snow, no longer able to move.

“I could have wept with rage. Having lived through so much, suffered so much, could I leave my father to die now? Now, when we could have a good hot bath and lie down? … He had become like a child, weak, timid, vulnerable … I showed him the corpses all around him; they too had wanted to rest here … I yelled against the wind … I felt I was not arguing with him, but with death itself, with the death he had already chosen.” (Wiesel 100)

Now, Elie leaves his father behind and follows the crowd of people to the barracks. He awakens the next morning and remembers about his father and wants to go look for him because he was too exhausted yesterday from the long ride. He wanted to find him but at the same mind, he thinks to himself, “Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself.
Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever.” (Wiesel 101) He finds out that his father is in another block and he is sick with dreadful dysentery. Elie’s father dies but only 11 days after Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. He had only missed his freedom by just a few weeks because the Americans were coming to Buchenwald. On April 11, there are still 20,000 inmates left in the camp and they all attack the remaining officers and takes control. At six o’clock that evening, the American army arrives and Elie is free. “I wanted to see myself in the mirror … I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” (Wiesel 109) His life has been torture, and me just talking about the major parts of Elie’s experiences in the camps, you can tell that there is so much that he had to endure during this time.

When the war ended, he was sent to a French Orphanage. In this French orphanage, they taught him how to speak French so that he would be able to communicate with the others. While there in the orphanage, he reunited with his two sisters, Hilda and Bea, who had survived the war just like Elie. A couple of years later, in 1948, he wanted to do something with his life. He began to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne is the very infamous University of Paris. The school was a major factor in Elie’s life. For over 10 years, he could not talk about his experiences during the Holocaust. Just like the other survivors of the war, he could not find the right words to describe his devastating experiences. But when he met Francois Mauriac, the recipient of the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature, he knew that he had to write about his Holocaust experiences. At first, Wiesel wrote a 900-page tome called Un Di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), which was in Yiddish and later published in an abridged form. After that, he rewrote this tome into an extremely shortened version; this version was written in French and published as a 127-page novel called La Nuit. Later on, this was translated into English and called Night. Unfortunately, he had much trouble finding a publisher for the book, so at first, he did not sell very many copies of the book. Today, millions of copies have sold worldwide. This book is one of the most famous World War II books that anyone has ever written.

Trying to remember these things that happened to him must be so terrible to last. Many people who come back from wars never want to talk about it and just start balling their eyes out when they just hear the name of the war they were in. For Elie, this was something that he had to let the world know about. He is the only one during that time to write about the camps and how life was so terrifying. Many people today don’t know that this story is actually like an autobiography if you think about it. His story has touched so many people world wide that he has been on many shows, being a part of interviews and even winning the Nobel Prize. This is a major accomplishment for any writer. Even today, he is doing so many things to tell people how it truly was during the Holocaust.

In his visit to Aushwitz-Birkenau during the 1990 March of the Living, Elie made a speech and spoke to a young audience about the troubles of the Holocaust. He couldn’t even finish his speech because he became so overwhelmed with emotion. It was just so difficult in communicating the enormity of the Holocaust. He said in his speech:

“Children of the Jewish people – Will you ever see what I see here? I see so many children and so many parents, so many teachers, and so many students. I see them – forever will I seem them. I see them walking in their nocturnal processions…wandering, crying praying… From where do we take the strength to cry over them? Who has the strength to cry over them? Years and years ago, I saw…I cannot tell you what I saw. I am afraid. I am afraid if I told you we would all break out in tears and we would not stop. I see a young girl….” (Wiesel p. 1)

He didn’t even get into the story until he had to step down and just stop. He could no longer take the pain of reminiscing on the past.

Today, he has done many things that has brought him honor and done some things that help the world. In early 2006, Wiesel went to Auschwitz with Oprah. This became part of the broadcast on May 24, 2006. He said to her, “This will probably be my last trip there.” In September of that year, he went to the UN Security Council with George Clooney to call attention to them about the humanitarian crisis that is occurring in Darfur. On November 30, 2006, he becomes an honorary knight in London for helping children learn more about the Holocaust in the UK. On February 1, 2007, Wiesel had a very close encounter. Twenty-two year old Eric Hunt created an anti-Semitic website and later attacks Wiesel in a San Francisco hotel. He said that he tried to drag Wiesel out of the hotel elevator so that he could “bring [him] to my hotel room where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, Night, is almost entirely fictitious.” His latest achievement came on April 25, 2007 where he was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree from the University of Vermont.
In his lifetime, he has written so many books, you can’t even count them all. The books that he wrote include: Night, Dawn, Day, The Town Beyond the Wall, The Gates of the Forest, The Jews of Silence, Legends of our Time, A Beggar in Jerusalem, One Generation After, Souls on Fire, Night Trilogy, The Oath, Ani Maamin, Zalmen, or the Madness of God, Messengers of God, A Jew Today, Four Hasidic Masters, Images from the Bible, The Trial of God, The Testament, Five Biblical Portraits, Somewhere a Master, The Golem, The Fifth Son, Against Silence, Twilight, The Six Days of Destruction, A Journey of Faith, From the Kingdom of Memory, Evil and Exile, Sages and Dreamers, The Forgotten, A Passover Haggadah, All Rivers Rune to the Sea: Memoirs, Vol. I, Memoir in Two Voices, And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs Vol. II, King Solomon and his Magic Ring, Conversations with Elie Wiesel, The Judges, Wise Men and Their Tales, The Time of the Uprooted.

Ruth Franklin writes that Night’s revival by Oprah came at a very difficult time for the memoir genre. She says that Oprah’s endorsement of Wiesel’s work was a “canny move” which was actually designed to just restore the book club’s credibility. The reason is because this book is beyond the point of being criticized. She also states that Night teaches a very valuable lesson. It shows and talks about the “complexities of memoir and memory.” Just how it was written shows just how many factors come into play when people create memoirs. You have to remember so much and how to testify and create a credible persona and to craft a beautiful work of art so to speak.

Elie Wiesel, to me, is one of the most influential and important writers in our time. He brings us back many years into the times of hardship and distress. His writings help us realize how well off we are and that we should not take life for granted, no matter what situation we may be in. He lost nearly all of his family and experienced so much death and pain in the camps. He is a writer who will never be forgotten no matter what happens to him. We will never forget his gruesome experiences in the Holocaust and how he is able to tell us today with such vivid imagery. It is as if we were actually there when he got separated from his mother and sisters. We can feel the sorrow and fear of when he left his father on the ground and walked away, hoping to find him alive the next day. Today, he is doing so much for the world being a political activist, professor, and novelist. With his many books, we can tell that he wants to express his feelings towards the hardships during World War II to the world. He deserves all the recognition that an author can get.