Elie Wiesel

From USA Today:

"Author, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel dies at 87"

Elie Wiesel, who made Holocaust education his mission in life after surviving the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps, died Saturday, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Night was 87. "The Jewish people and the world lost a larger than life individual," former Israeli president Shimon Peres said on Twitter.  The only boy among four children born to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel, Elie was raised in in the northern Transylvanian village of Sighet, Romania. His parents encouraged him to study philosophy, Hebrew and literature. In 1940, Northern Transylvania was ceded to Hungary, who allowed the Germans to force the region's Jewish populations into ghettos. Four years later, the Wiesel family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Wiesel, then 15 years old, was tattooed with the number A-7713 and separated from his mother and sisters. He managed to stay with his father for most of the war as they worked at an Auschwitz sub-camp and were transferred to the Buchenwald camp in Germany in early 1945. But Shlomo was beaten by a guard and killed, just weeks short of that camp's liberation. His mother and younger sister Tzipora also did not survive. Following the war, he moved to Paris, where he was reunited with his elder sisters, Beatrice and Hilda and began pursuing a career in journalism. However, he avoided writing or discussing the central event in his life: the Holocaust. But two friends, writer François Mauriac and Rabbi Menachem Schneerson eventually changed his mind. Some 11 years after leaving Buchenwald, he wrote Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), a Yiddish memoir that would become known as Night and be translated into 30 languages. He opted not to let Hollywood touch his book. In 1955, he moved to the U.S. Within a decade, he had married Marion Erster Rose and had a son, Elisha. In 1978, Jimmy Carter selected Wiesel to lead the President's Commission on the Holocaust, followed two years later by his appointment as chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. The resulting museum in Washington opened in April 1993 and has welcomed over 38 million visitors and 96 heads of state. His work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Soon afterward, he and Marion established a foundation in his name to "combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality." “Elie Wiesel was more than a revered writer,” Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress said in a statement Saturday. “He was also a teacher for many of us. He taught us about the horrors of Auschwitz. He taught us about Judaism, about Israel, and about not being silent in the face of injustice."

^ I actually got to meet this great man in person when I worked at the Holocaust Museum. It was for about 5 minutes (maybe less.) He was very nice and signed one of his books for me. Even though Elie Wiesel was a teenager during the Holocaust and suffered greatly he didn't let that ruin his life. He worked for decades to make sure no one forgot about the Holocaust and worked to end the different genocides that have happened around the world since 1945. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2016/07/02/author-nobel-laureate-holocaust-survivor-elie-wiesel-dies-at-87/86638226/