Elie Wiesel: A Holocaust Survivor

Many outsiders strive but fail to truly comprehend the haunting incident of World War II’s Holocaust. None but survivors and witnesses succeed to sense and live the timeless pain of the event which repossesses the core of human psyche. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom are two of these survivors who, through their personal accounts, allow the reader to glimpse empathy within the soul and the heart. Elie Wiesel (1928- ), a journalist and Professor of Humanities at Boston University, is an author of 21 books. The first of his collection, entitled Night, is a terrifying account of Wiesel’s boyhood experience as a WWII Jewish prisoner of Hitler’s dominant and secretive Nazi party.

Wiesel and the others resided in the ghettos until the German officers transported them to Birkenau. It was here that Elie and his father were eternally torn from his mother and sisters. Elie was determined to stay with his father by any means necessary. He and his father undergo the first of many ‘selections’ in which it was decided whether they would live or die. Passing through selections became the key to their survival. The German officers judged the captives by their physique. Those who seemed physically able to perform strenuous labor would work in the concentration camp. Those who did not would be burned alive. During the first selection, Elie, and his father were advised by

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor. He was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet to a Jewish family. His parents, Shlomo and Sarah, owned a grocery store in the village. He had two older sisters, Hilda and Bea, and a younger sister, Tsiporah. When he was three years old he attended a jewish school and learned Hebrew. In 1942, the Hungarian government ruled that all jews who didn’t have citizenship would be sent to Nazi-held Poland and murdered.

Have you ever heard about Elie Wiesel? Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor. He got taken to a concentration camp at the young age of 14 with his mother, father, and his older and younger sisters. After he got freed, the Holocaust had such an impact on him that he wrote multiple books over it. Even though he went through a lot of trauma, he was still strong the whole way through and decided to share his story with the world.

followed ELie Wiesel on his journey during the holocaust. It was a story that pulled on your heartstrings and made your heart heavy. Elie Wiesel in Night suggests that word have a lot of control over one's feelings. In the beginning of the book all the Jewish families were being moved from ghetto to ghetto. During my first quote Elie is in the second ghetto waiting to leave with his family. The officers began to yell at all the Jewish people. Elie says, “That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today.”(19) This shows that a happy boy who thought the world was a kind place had started to hate. He started to hate because the officers were yelling rude things at them. The officers hateful words had made the Jewish

Elie Wiesel, a great person, a great character, and most of all a great survivor. Elie Wiesel or Eliezer as he refers to himself in the book Night is just an amazing person. I just cannot imagine what he went through according to Night and his experiences. One of the most vivid scenes of his book night is when he and the rest of the cap was sent on a long walk to another camp. As it says in the book they were forced to march in the thigh deep snow for days without food or water. I just have so much respect for that guy. For him not to give up everything and say i’m done it is just remarkable. After the holocaust was over Wiesel moved to New York in 1955 and became a U.S. citizen in 1963. He met Marion Rose, also a Holocaust survivor, in New

The Holocaust serves as a significant reminder of the world’s history. Elie Wiesel used his experience as a Holocaust survivor to state the unnecessary horrors of World War 2. Through his writing, Wiesel acted as a testament for the Jews who died in the Holocaust and successfully conveyed the message of the increasing human indifference and lack of need for peace.

Elie Wiesel—a Holocaust survivor and award-winning human rights activist—passionately gave his speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” while in the White House on April 12, 1999. The speech was part of the Millennium Lecture series, which was hosted by President Bill Clinton and his wife. Mrs. Hilary Clinton introduced Elie as well, saying: "It was more than a year ago that I asked Elie if he would be willing to participate in these Millennium Lectures...I never could have imagined that when the time finally came for him to stand in this spot and to reflect on the past century and the future to come, that we would be seeing children in Kosovo crowded into trains, separated from families, separated from their homes, robbed of their childhoods, their memories, their humanity." Indeed, the events in Kosovo created an effective environment that Wiesel could use to tell the audience about some of his experiences during the Holocaust and to communicate why humanity must fight against the evil of indifference.

Every single human being, at some point in time, goes through various troublesome experiences, be it a natural disaster, illness, an abusive relationship, a violent incident, or the loss of a loved one. However, some experiences are more devastating than others. Each survivor has his/her way of coping with the trauma and maintaining sanity. Elie Wiesel, one the survivors of the Holocaust, gives us some insight into dealing with extremely difficult experiences. He spent a year imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, the same camps where he lost all his family members (Wiesel 15). After his liberation, he moved to France where he learned French and studied Literature, Philosophy, and Psychology. Then, he then worked

Perhaps the most influential piece of Wiesel’s speech was his inclusion of unique personal narrative. His touching story of his youth spent in a concentration camp gave weight to his points on indifference as he recalled that “Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up...in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald” (Wiesel). With no property to their name and no individual rights, they marched to Buchenwald where his father later died before they could both escape (“Wiesel, Elie”). The reality of these past horrors gave him a strong sense of credibility as he spoke on about the time when he was oppressed and victimized.

Wiesel faced starvation from the little to no rations the Jewish people had of bread and soup they ate in the death camps. “We were brought some soup, one bowl of thick soup for each of us I was terribly hungry yet I refused to eat it.” (Wiesel

Elie Wiesel, a famous author and a memorable survivor of the Holocaust will forever go down in history as an important activist. Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel is best known for surviving the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, and writing the internationally acclaimed memoir Night. Wiesel’s personal experiences motivated him to account for the horrors that occurred during one of history’s darkest times and thus opening the door to becoming a famous spokesman for defending human rights.

This story does not just tell what happens during the Holocaust with describing actual events but by teaching life lessons to value human lives. The detail of events helps the reader feel what the times were like almost as if we were there. Eliel Wiesel comes out of the tragic Holocaust being a better person: he learns the importance of human strength and being hopeful can make a tremendous

Wiesel once said, “…I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim” (Wiesel par. 9). The inspiring man known as Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania. He was declared chairman of “The President’s Commission on the Holocaust”. Wiesel earned the reputation of “world’s leading spokesman on the Holocaust” because of his extensive discussions about the Holocaust and the impact it had on Jews (“Elie Wiesel-Facts” par. 1). Wiesel’s early life was unfortunate; his parents and his sister died in the concentration camps that were held by the Germans. Fortunately, Wiesel survived the harsh conditions of the camps. He believed he survived because it was “nothing more than chance” instead of it being a miracle; regardless, he lived to tell his story about the Holocaust (Wiesel 7). Elie Wiesel’s efforts on portraying how bad the Holocaust was allowed him to change people’s perception by fighting against indifference and by showing the severity of his experiences.

Six million perished in the flames, mass shootings and gas chambers of concentration camps during the Holocaust. This started when the Nazi party established a “Final Solution” that sought out to eradicate the inferior Jewish race from Germany and the world (“Holocaust”). A person cannot look at this event and see nothing except for the dark, evil side of human nature. However, if a person looks at the Holocaust from a survivor’s point of view, they can see the good side of human nature, especially if someone looks at it from Elie Wiesel’s perspective. Elie Wiesel and his family were Romanian Jews who were, unfortunately, swept into the Holocaust’s horrors. Elie managed to escape the Holocaust using tools of survival, including love for