Elie Wiesel is a very famous author who wrote over 35 books on the holocaust and Judaism. One of the main reasons he wrote on theses particular topics was because he was in the holocaust and he is a Jew. He survived everything that happened during that period of time. Now, in his books he is telling what really happened. His first books were “Night”, written in 1958. It was originally written in Yiddish on an 862 page work called Une die Welt Hot Geshvign. It was then translated from Yiddish to French and retitled “La Nuit”, (Night).

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania. He was the only boy out of four children. Wiesel was a very well educated boy. He grew up in a close-knit Jewish community. At the age of 15, Wiesel’s life changed forever, after Nazi’s rampaged their communities and sent all the Jews to concentration camps.

The first concentration camp that the Jews were taken to were Auschwitz. Immediately upon arrival, Wiesel’s mother and younger sister were cremated. It wasn’t until years later that Wiesel found out that his two older sisters were still alive. After being separated from mom and sis, he remained with his father all while they were in the camps. All together they were in three camps. It wasn’t until the last month of the was, when Wiesel’s father gave up all hope and died.

At the end of the war in 1945, Wiesel was liberated. After liberation, Wiesel spent several years in a French orphanage. He then became a journalist. Wiesel was persuaded to tell about his experiences at concentration camps by Francois Mauriac. After that, he then wrote his first book, “Night”. He wrote 35 more books after the success of that novel. In 1985, Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement. In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He now lives in New York with his wife Elisha.