Elie Wiesel once said, "I had a blessed childhood."  Although in Wouldn't seem like that for many people, going through the Holocaust at only 15 years of age.

      Elie Wiesel was born in the small close-knit village of Sighet, Transylvania on September 30, 1928.  He was very close to his family and religious studies.  He had three sisters and his Orthodox Jew parents owned a grocery store.  Most of his thinking was deeply influenced by his synagogues caretaker, Moshe, and maternal grandfather who was a devout Hasidic Jew.

      Elie's grandfather wanted him to focus on his religious studies and classical Hebrew.  His father however had different views and wanted Elie to focus on secular studies and modern Hebrew.

Elie and his older sisters and mother.  His younger sister was not born yet.

       In 1944 everything changed.  The Nazis gave Sighet over to Hungary, but there wasn't anything too bad.  All the Jews had to do was wear yellow stars.  Except for a few years later all Jews who could not prove Hungarian citizenship were sent to extermination camps in Poland.  Moshe was sent away but escaped and came back to Sighet.  He told stories of the evilness and cruelty in the camps but no one would believe him and thought he was crazy.

      Life went on as usual.  Elie celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and everyone thought they were safe.  Until the Nazis started clearing everybody out.  They destroyed Jewish homes, synagogues, cemeteries, and businesses and set up two ghettos.

      The Wiesel family was one of the last to be sent away.  They were crammed in a cattle car with 80 other people.  Elie wrote in one of his books, "Life in the cattle cars was the death of my adolescence."  After about four days the train stopped at Auschwitz.  Even though Elie was 15 at the time he followed the instructions of a fellow prisoner and told the waiting guard that he was 18, a farmer, and in good health.  So he and his father were sent to the labor camps while his Mother and little sister were sent to the gas chambers.  Elie was stripped of his identity and became identified only by his number: A-7713.

      After about a year Elie and his father were sent to Buchenwald.  Elie's father died there shortly before the camp was liberated.

        After that Elie was sent to Buna then Gleiwitz surviving both.  When World War II was over he was put in a French orphanage with many other children survivors of of the Holocaust.  There he was given a choice between religious and secular studies.  Naturally he chose religious.  Elie said that the only time he was involved in secular things was his time in Auschwitz.                   

Elie at age 15.  Just before he was sent away.

Elie in a concentration camp.  He is in the second row, seventh from the left.

        Elie  then studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and then became a journalist for a small French newspaper.  During an interview with a French author he was convinced to write a book about the Holocaust.  The book Night was then born.  It is a book of memoirs of his time in the concentration camps.  The book has sold more than 7,000,000 copies and has been translated into more than 30 languages.

        After he wrote the book he learned that his older sisters were alive when they saw his picture in the newspaper.  He then traveled to New York City and was hit by a car.  He was in a wheelchair for more than a year and it was then that he decided to get his American citizenship. 

        In 1986, Elie won the Nobel Prize for Peace.  He then got married and had a son.  He has written over 40 books and is 80 years old.  He lives with his wife.

        In a way he sort of did have a blessed childhood.  He had a family and community that loved him even if he lost most of it. 

Elie Wiesel_Photobook

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