About Us By Elie Wiesel Essay

Throughout his life, Elie Wiesel has worked as a political activist, professor, journalist, and novelist, writing almost sixty fiction and non-fiction novels. Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania (now known as Romania). At the age of fifteen, he and his family were placed in a Sighet ghetto. It wasn’t until 1944 that all the Jewish people who inhabited this ghetto were deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, Wiesel’s inmate number “A-7713” was tattooed on his left arm and he was separated from his mother and sisters. However, he remained with his father in a sub camp of Auschwitz called III-Monowitz. A week before the camps liberation, Wiesel’s father was beaten by a SS officer and other inmates for food and he was sent to the crematorium

After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel and his wife, Marion Wiesel, established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity with the intended mission to “combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice through international dialogue, and youth focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality.” ("About Us." The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Web). Naturally, you would expect that after facing the abuse and horrors of the war that Wiesel would never again want to revisit these sites. Yet, in 2006, Wiesel joined Oprah Winfrey for a T.V special on a trip back to Auschwitz and again in 2009, with President Obama and Angela Merkle Chancellor of Germany as company. Where the three of them toured Buchenwald, which gave Wiesel the opportunity to reflect on the suffering and death of his father in the camp. As one of few Holocaust survivors, Elie Wiesel has created a significant impact in society not only through the words he has written but also through his actions as an activist to advocate for a more human