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Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor And Acclaimed Author, Dead At 87 [Video]

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 10:18 PST, Jul 2, 2016

Elie Wiesel, known by many as the “most famous” survivor of the Holocaust, has died at age 87. Elie Wiesel’s résumé is extensive and impressive, laden with good works, public and private accomplishments, and personal tragedy. Wiesel was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, author, and humanitarian, and his impact on the post-WWII world cannot be overstated.

The announcement of Elie Wiesel’s death was made by Yad Vashem, a spokesman for the Holocaust memorial in Israel, on Saturday, reports CNN.

Elie Wiesel took home the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, over 30 years after he published his iconic book, Night. The book was a retelling of Elie Wiesel’s horrific experience during WWII, when Wiesel and his family were sent to concentration camps in Nazi-controlled Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBuTV8vojqc

Night was published in 1955, and it has become one of the most famous accounts of Holocaust suffering and survival in the world. It tells the story of Elie Wiesel and his father, and the horrors they endured as prisoners at Auschwitz and Buchenwald toward the end of WWII. Wiesel was just 16 years old when Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. Army in April 1945. While Elie Wiesel survived the horrific captivity, his father did not; he died as a result of a beating that young Elie witnessed before he could be liberated.

Elie Wiesel also famously devoted much of his post-Holocaust existence to helping track down wanted German war criminals after the war.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, memorialized the late Elie Wiesel upon news of his unexpected death.

“[He] gave expression through his exceptional personality, and fascinating books about the victory of the human spirit over cruelty and evil. In the darkness of the Holocaust in which our brothers and sisters — six million — were murdered, Elie Wiesel was a ray of light and greatness of humanity who believed in the good in man. I was privileged to know Elie and to learn so much from him.”

Netanyahu also touted the iconic Elie Wiesel as being a “master of words.”

Wiesel was a native of Romania, and when he was just 15 years old, he and his family were relocated to the infamous death camp Auschwitz in Poland. The year was 1944. During his captivity at the hands of Nazi forces, Elie Wiesel was transferred to Buchenwald before being liberated by American forces in 1945.

He went on to tell his tale of captivity and survival and of the suffering he and his family endured a decade later in his iconic book, Night. While only roughly 100 pages long, the memoir is stark, poignant, and life-changing. It was originally published in French and titled La Nuit.

Since its publication, Night has sold millions of copies worldwide in 30 languages.

While his entire family was captured by Nazi forces and kept in concentrations camps, only Elie Wiesel and two of his sisters survived the nightmarish ordeal.

Elie Wiesel has recounted that he remembered his experience at the hands of the Nazis with a sense of “shock and astonishment” following his liberation, and he said that before he wrote Night to share the nightmarish and inhumane treatment he and millions of others suffered through, he already knew that someday he would have to write about his experiences.

Before writing Night, Wiesel said that he had suffered from the fear that the proper words to describe his experience would “elude him.” He was ultimately (and very famously) incorrect.

“I’m not sure, by the way, that I did find them. Maybe there are no words for what happened. Maybe somehow, the Germans… the cruel killers have succeeded at least in one way, at least that it deprived us, the victims, of finding the proper language of saying what they had done to us, because there are no words for it.”

The cause of Elie Wiesel’s death has not yet been released.

[Image by Lev Radin/Shutterstock]

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