If Anyone Would Have Told Us In 1945 That Certain Battles We Would Have To Fight Again, I Wouldn’t Have Believed It

I don’t think I have to tell anyone who Elie Wiesel is. But for those who don’t know him, I’ll give a brief overview who he is.

He was born in Sighet (in Transylvania, now a part of Romania, but part of Hungary between 1940 and 1945) on 30 September 1928 and grew up in a Chassidic – and thus Orthodox Jewish – family.

After the Nazis had moved occupied Hungary in 1944, the Wiesel family was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp . Elie Wiesel’s mother and younger sister were murdered in the gas chamber there. In 1945 Elie and his father were sent on to Buchenwald, where his father died of starvation and dysentery. Seventeen-year-old Elie was still alive when American soldiers opened the camp.