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Elie Wiesel (1928–2016)

Author of Night

140+ Works 43,129 Members 756 Reviews 69 Favorited

About the Author

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928. In 1944, he and his family were deported along with other Jews to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. His mother and his younger sister died there. He loaded stones onto railway cars in a labor camp called Buna before being sent to show more Buchenwald, where his father died. He was liberated by the United States Third Army on April 11, 1945. After the war ended, he learned that his two older sisters had also survived. He was placed on a train of 400 orphans that was headed to France, where he was assigned to a home in Normandy under the care of a Jewish organization. He was educated at the Sorbonne and supported himself as a tutor, a Hebrew teacher and a translator. He started writing for the French newspaper L'Arche. In 1948, L'Arche sent him to Israel to report on that newly founded state. He also became the Paris correspondent for the daily Yediot Ahronot. In this capacity, he interviewed the novelist Francois Mauriac, who urged him to write about his war experiences. The result was La Nuit (Night). After the publication of Night, Wiesel became a writer, literary critic, and journalist. His other books include Dawn, The Accident, The Gates of the Forest, The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry, and Twilight. He received a numerous awards and honors for his literary work including the William and Janice Epstein Fiction Award in 1965, the Jewish Heritage Award in 1966, the Prix Medicis in 1969, and the Prix Livre-International in 1980. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work in combating human cruelty and in advocating justice. He had a leading role in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. He died on July 2, 2016 at the age of 87. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Series

Works by Elie Wiesel

Night (1956) 27,379 copies
The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, and Day (1958) — Author — 1,926 copies
Dawn (1961) 1,735 copies
Day (1961) 962 copies
Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (1976) — Author — 588 copies
A Beggar in Jerusalem (1968) 497 copies
Twilight (1987) 437 copies
The Fifth Son (1983) 396 copies
The Oath (1973) — Author — 383 copies
The Trial of God (1979) — Author — 367 copies
The Town Beyond the Wall (1962) 349 copies
The Testament (1980) — Author — 343 copies
And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969- (1998) — Author — 336 copies
The Forgotten (1989) — Author — 314 copies
Legends of Our Time (1968) — Author — 296 copies
A Mad Desire to Dance (2006) 280 copies
One Generation After (1970) 273 copies
A jew today (1978) — Author — 264 copies
The Judges (1999) 243 copies
The Sonderberg Case (2009) 227 copies
Open Heart (2011) 183 copies
Somewhere a Master (1981) — Author — 169 copies
The Time of the Uprooted (2005) 162 copies
Five Biblical Portraits (1981) 146 copies
The Golem (1983) — Author — 134 copies
Hostage (2010) — Author — 130 copies
Rashi (2009) — Author — 128 copies
King Solomon and His Magic Ring (1999) — Author — 118 copies
Zalmen, or the Madness of God (1968) — Author — 110 copies
Memoir in Two Voices (1995) — Author — 65 copies
Dimensions of the Holocaust (1977) 50 copies
Images from the Bible (1980) 48 copies
Evil and Exile (1990) 40 copies
Se taire est impossible (1995) — Autor — 38 copies
A Journey of Faith (1990) — Author — 32 copies
Souls on Fire / Somewhere a Master (1984) — Author — 26 copies
The Tale of a Niggun (2020) — Author — 26 copies
Sei riflessioni sul Talmud (1991) — Author — 21 copies
Bijbels eerbetoon : portretten en legenden (1986) — Author — 17 copies
Paroles d'étranger (1982) 8 copies
Credere o non credere (1985) 7 copies
Discours d'oslo (1987) 6 copies
Dialogues (1977) 5 copies
t ou va tu (French Edition) (2001) — Author — 5 copies
Against despair (1973) 4 copies
Être juif (1994) — Foreword — 3 copies
A Meditation on Hope (2008) 3 copies
The Power of Forgiveness — Author — 3 copies
Ethics and memory (2015) 2 copies
Entre deux soleils (1970) 2 copies
O Tempo dos Desenraizados (2004) 2 copies
Sarastus (1992) 2 copies
Marc Klionsky (2004) 2 copies
La notte 1 copy
Nakts 1 copy
Tiggaren i Jerusalem (1986) 1 copy
Den Frieden feiern. (1998) 1 copy
Zalmen 1 copy
The accident 1 copy
දහවල (2019) 1 copy
Barbara 1 copy
The accident 1 copy
Wiesel Eli 1 copy
Nous, les enfants (1990) 1 copy

Associated Works

Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (1947) — Introduction, some editions — 5,668 copies
Great Religions of the World (1971) 614 copies
The Wandering Jews (1927) — Preface, some editions — 349 copies
A Vanished World (1983) — Foreword — 332 copies
Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith (2010) — Contributor — 143 copies
The King of Children (1988) — Introduction, some editions — 137 copies
The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998) — Contributor — 130 copies
Read With Me (1965) — Contributor — 129 copies
The Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (2007) — Foreword, some editions — 90 copies
Out of the Depths (2011) — Foreword — 87 copies
Tibet, My Story (1996) — Preface, some editions — 80 copies
Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust (1995) — Contributor — 79 copies
With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary (1979) — Foreword, some editions — 71 copies
Tikvah: Children's Book Creators Reflect on Human Rights (2001) — Introduction — 61 copies
The Jewish Writer (1998) — Contributor — 52 copies
Wonders: Writings and Drawings for the Child in Us All (1980) — Contributor — 18 copies
Memory, Memorialization, and Denial (1999) — Introduction — 5 copies
Wo Engel sich verstecken (1991) — Associated Name — 2 copies
Critical Essays on Jerzy Kosinski (1998) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

20th century (251) Auschwitz (261) autobiography (1,021) biography (1,277) biography-memoir (128) classic (216) classics (271) concentration camps (387) diary (269) Elie Wiesel (328) essays (119) Europe (127) fiction (1,480) genocide (133) Germany (219) historical (117) historical fiction (213) history (1,538) Holocaust (3,784) Jewish (779) Jewish History (192) Jewish literature (202) Jews (385) Judaica (221) Judaism (738) literature (451) memoir (1,897) Nazis (133) non-fiction (2,243) novel (330) own (226) read (464) religion (339) survival (145) to-read (1,433) unread (121) war (366) Wiesel (195) writing (122) WWII (2,160)

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Wiesel, Eliezer
Other names
A-7713
WIESEL, Élie
WIESEL, Elie
WIESEL, Eliezer
Birthdate
1928-09-30
Date of death
2016-07-02
Burial location
Sharon Gardens Cemetery, Valhalla, New York, USA
Gender
male
Nationality
Romania (birth)
Country (for map)
Romania
Birthplace
Sighet, Maramureş County, Romania
Sighet, Romania
Place of death
Manhattan, New York, USA
Places of residence
Hungary
Auschwitz, Poland
Buchenwald, Germany
Paris, France
Israel
New York, New York, USA (show all 7)
Sighet, Romania (birth)
Education
University of Paris
Occupations
journalist
writer
professor
novelist
author
memoirist (show all 8)
Holocaust survivor
translator
Relationships
Wiesel, Marion (wife)
Bloch, Sam E. (colleague)
Organizations
American Academy of Arts and Letters( [1996])
Boston University
United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
Awards and honors
Nobel Peace Prize (1986)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992)
Congressional Gold Medal (1984)
Medal of Liberty (1986)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award (2007)
Norman Mailer Prize (2011) (show all 8)
National Humanities Medal (2009)
Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement (2012)
Short biography
Elie Wiesel was born to a Jewish family in the small town of Sighet in northern Transylvania, then part of Hungary, now Romania. He was still a teenager when he was taken from his home and deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald. His memoirs of that experience are unforgettably recorded in NIGHT, which became a worldwide bestseller. Elie Wiesel was Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Members

Reviews

Eliezer was 15 years old when he, his sister and his parents were taken prisoner by the Nazis and deported from their home in Sighet, Transylvania, for the crime of being Jewish. Upon arrival to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Eliezer and his father were separated from Eliezer’s mother and sister, never to see them again. To survive the most inhumane conditions imaginable and to avoid immediate death, Eliezer and his father desperately tried to keep up their strength, thereby demonstrating to the Nazis their usefulness in their ability to work. Each day brought new horrors, torture, starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and illness. Constantly, death hovered over them and the other prisoners. Their challenge: how to avoid the physical and emotional damage that hastened that almost certain death.

The author does a stunning job of presenting the difficult subject of the Holocaust. He follows a father and son as they move from a religiously-observant life in Transylvania to the agonizingly slow and painful experience of deportation and imprisonment in a series of concentration camps. To make this story more acceptable, the author makes it neither long nor frightfully graphic. It presents in clear detail the movements and emotions of one young man caught in an unreal world and how he suffers in his attempt to survive. What causes the greatest sadness and horror to the reader is the slow realization of the degree to which man can inflict physical and emotional pain on another human being with little or no remorse. It is a difficult lesson but one which needs to be taught, understood, and remembered by all people. Elie Wiesel begins this terrible education with Night.
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Flagged
SqueakyChu | 568 other reviews | Mar 11, 2024 |
This is an excellent, dark, very troubling, and - if you read the forward and especially the author's acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize - inspiring book.

It is a fast read about a Jewish teenager taken from his home in 1944 to Nazi prison camps. It echoes the dire need to avoid complacency and do something, no matter what or how little, to help those in need. To not ignore the warnings that something is not quite right.

A few days after finishing the book I read an excerpt of a letter to the U.S. Congress from Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human-rights lawyer. He said, "May the light of freedom shine upon China, let evil have no place to hide, and may the mistreated no longer be in pain." He has been lost in the Chinese prison system since writing that letter in 2007.

Seems that in some places, there has only been slight progress since 1944.
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dlinnen | 568 other reviews | Feb 3, 2024 |
I found this memoir less compelling than Night, but still a chilling picture of the buildup to transport and the difficulties facing the survivors beyond the immediate aftermath of liberation.

Audiobook, performed by the author, who reads with such emotion that I was at times moved to tears.

“Wherever my life took me, a part of me would remain in that street in front of my empty house, awaiting the order to depart. I see my little sister. I see her with her rucksack, so cumbersome, so heavy. I see her and an immense tenderness sweeps over me. Never will her innocent smile fade from my soul, never will her glance cease to sear me. I tried to help her. She protested. Never will the sound of her voice leave my heart. She was thirsty, My little sister was thirsty. Her lips were parched, pearls of sweat formed on her clear forehead. “I can wait,” she said, smiling. My little sister wanted to be brave, and I wanted to die in her place. I seldom speak of her in my writing, for I dare not. My little sister with her sunbathed golden head is my secret.”

For the Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season book challenge, Task the Sixth: The Hanukkah (Let the dreidel choose a book for you: create a list of four books, and assign a dreidel symbol to each one (Nun = miracle; Gimel = great; He = happened; Shin = there, i.e. Israel). Google "spin the dreidel," and a dreidel comes up for you to spin. Give it a spin and read the book that the dreidel chooses!)
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Doodlebug34 | 9 other reviews | Jan 1, 2024 |
To forgive somone can be simple. But this simple act can have powerul consequences - and may lead to a personal and spiritual transformation. "Recently, the study of forgiveness has come into its own.
Researchers are examining the psychological and physical effects of forgiveness under an amazingly wide variety of conditions, ranging from petty insults to sexual assault to 9/11. Clinicians now help guide people to forgive transgressions and get on with their lives. From Ground Zero to Northern Ireland to the Amish countryside, THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS explores this important concept, and reveals how forgiveness can transform your life."

To forgive somone can be simple. But this simple act can have powerul consequences - and may lead to a personal and spiritual transformation. Recently, the study of forgiveness has come into its own.
Researchers are examining the psychological and physical effects of forgiveness under an amazingly wide variety of conditions, ranging from petty insults to sexual assault to 9/11. Clinicians now help guide people to forgive transgressions and get on with their lives. From Ground Zero to Northern Ireland to the Amish countryside, THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS explores this important concept, and reveals how forgiveness can transform your life."
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Flagged
staylorlib | Dec 27, 2023 |

Lists

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Awards

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Statistics

Works
140
Also by
36
Members
43,129
Popularity
#394
Rating
4.2
Reviews
756
ISBNs
745
Languages
27
Favorited
69

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