Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor and Holocaust survivor whose testimony became one of the defining literary accounts of the Nazi genocide. Deported as a teenager to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald, he lost most of his family in the camps, and the experience became the subject and moral center of his life's work.

His memoir «Night», first published in French and later in English, recounts his imprisonment with unsparing, spare prose and stands as one of the most widely read and taught works of Holocaust literature in the world. Beyond «Night», Wiesel wrote extensively — novels, essays and lectures — grappling with themes of faith, silence, memory and human responsibility in the face of atrocity, and his speeches, including reflections gathered under titles like «Hope, Despair and Memory» and «The Perils of Indifference», are frequently studied for their moral clarity.

Wiesel became a prominent human rights advocate, speaking out against genocide and persecution around the world, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work as a witness and messenger. His words urging remembrance and refusing indifference to suffering continue to be quoted in classrooms, memorials and public discourse well beyond the field of literature.