Wiesel's Birthday

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Facebook:

“My childhood was really a childhood blessed with love and hope and faith and prayer,” reflected Elie Wiesel.

Elie was born #OnThisDay in 1928 in Sighet, Romania. He was the third of four children and the only son of Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel. Shlomo owned a grocery store in town and was well respected in the community. In addition to Yiddish, the family spoke German, Romanian, and Hungarian at home.

As a child, Elie was deeply committed to his religious studies. “I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people,” he later reminisced. “My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.”

His childhood, like that of so many other Jewish children, was cut short by the war. In 1940, Sighet came under Hungarian control. However, in 1944, Germany occupied its former ally. Shortly thereafter, Hungarian authorities working with the Germans began the deportation of Jews from Hungary.

In May 1944, 15-year-old Elie and his family were deported to Auschwitz. The night they arrived at the infamous camp was the last time Elie would ever see his mother and younger sister, Tzipora.

“In the camp there were no friends to remind me of my childhood,” remembered Elie. “In the camp I had no more childhood. I had only my father, my best friend, my only friend.”

Elie and his father were later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where Shlomo died shortly after their arrival.

“If only I could recapture my father’s wisdom, my mother’s serenity, my little sister’s innocent grace,” Elie lamented in his memoir. “If only I could hold my memory open, drive it beyond the horizon, keep it alive even after my death.”

^ I once met Elie Wiesel when I worked at the USHMM in DC. He spoke to me for about 2 minutes,  signed a book for me and shook my hand. He died on July 2, 2016. ^