Eliezer Wiesel (born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor who has written several books about his experiences. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He lives in the United States.
Early life and Holocaust
Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania. Sighet became part of Hungary in 1940, and in 1944 the Nazis deported the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His mother and a sister were murdered there; he and his father were sent to the attached work camp Auschwitz III Monowitz. In January 1945, the two were marched to Buchenwald, where his father died.
Post-Holocaust
After the war, he first lived in France, where, with the encouragement of Nobel laureate François Mauriac, he wrote about his Holocaust experiences in Night, probably his most famous work.
United States
He later settled in the United States, becoming citizen in 1963. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, and is now a professor of humanities at Boston University.
Honors
He has now authored over 40 works of fiction and non-fiction.He received the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement in 1985 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He published his memoirs in 1995.
In 1997, he received the Guardian of Zion Award.
Criticism
Some criticism is based on the creation of a "Holocaust industry" (the name of a controversial book) around the Holocaust. Left wing critics, such as Noam Chomsky named him "a terrible fraud" because although he militated against the silence, about Holocaust and he decries Arab terrorism, he remains silent on Palestinian issues and for working for the terrorist organization Irgun between 1947 and 1949, including the King David Hotel bombing of 1946.
Bibliography
Some of Elie Wiesel's more famous works include: