Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, now and a part of Romania. He was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945.

After the war, Elie Wisel studied in Paris and later became a journalist. During an interview with the distinguished French writer, Francois Mauriac, he was persuaded to write about his experiences in the death camps. The result was his internationally acclaimed memoir, La Nuit, which has since been translated into more than thirty languages.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel as Chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980 he became the Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is also the Founding President of the Paris based Universal Academy of Cultures.

Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books of fiction and non-fiction, including A Beggar in Jerusalem (Prix Médicis winner), The Testament (Prix Livre Inter winner), The Fifth Son (winner of the Grand Prize in Literature from the City of Paris), and two volumes of his memoirs.

For his literary and human rights activities, he has received numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honour. In 1986, Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

An American citizen since 1963, Elie Wiesel lives in New York with his wife and son.

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