Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania to Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel. Wiesel had three sisters named Tzipora, Beatrice, and Hilda. When he was 15, Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz. There, Wiesel's mother and younger sister were immediately selected for death. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived, but as Wiesel and his father were being sent to Buchenwald on the January 1945 death march, his father passed away. After the Holocaust, Wiesel went to Paris, France, and became a journalist in the city. At the time, Wiesel was quiet about what he went through as an inmate in the camps. But one day, after an interview with French writer Francois Mauriac, Wiesel was convinced to break the silence on what he had endured during the Holocaust. Eventually, Wiesel went on to write the book, La Nuit, which sold millions of copies and has been translated into 30 languages. La Nuit, or, in English, Night describes the hardship and the emotions of being at the hands of the Nazi Army during the Holocaust and details how Wiesel's family was rounded up in Romania and the grueling trip in the cattle cars from Romania to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He also talks about the division of his family forever during the selection process and the mental and physical anguish he and his fellow prisoners experienced as they were stripped of their humanity.

Wiesel was a leader in the effort to build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Wiesel's efforts to defend human rights and peace throughout the world earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Text by Tochukwu Kelvin Achapu