Ellie Wiesel Biography

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Ellie Wiesel is a Romanian- born Jewish-American. Ellie was born September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania. Ellie is the author of 57, including the novel I picked for the assignment, Night. Ellie Wiesel was a writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. His book, Night, is about a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps during the holocaust. Ellie was a very active kid, and was a much known child in the village he lived in growing up. Wiesel said that his father represented reason and his mother promoted faith growing up. He had three sisters, older sisters Hilda and Beatrice, and younger sister Tzipora. The two older sisters Beatrice and Hilda both survived the war and reunited with Ellie in a French orphanage. Sarah, Ellie’s mother and Chlomo , Ellie’s father, died in the holocaust along with his youngest sister. Ellie and his sisters eventually moved to North America. After World War II, Wiesel taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. He learned French, which became the language he used most frequently in writing. He wrote for Israeli and many different French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf L'arche. For ten years after the war, Wiesel would not write about or even discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. Like many other survivors of the holocaust, Wiesel could not find the right words to describe his experience. However, a meeting with François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who ended up becoming one of Wiesel's closest friend, talked him into writing about his experiences. His book “Night” was a pretty big hit. The book sold just 1,046 copies over the next 18 months, but attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with Wiesel and meetings with literary figures like Saul
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