Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel dies aged 87
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2 hours ago
The Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel has died aged 87.
He died in the US, where he lived and had been a citizen since the 1960s.
He became famous after writing about his experiences as a teenager in Nazi concentration camps, where he lost his mother, father and younger sister.
He dedicated his life to ensuring the atrocities committed under the Nazis were never forgotten, and the president of the World Jewish Congress has called him “a beacon of light”.
Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance centre announced his death on Saturday.
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Elie Wiesel was born in Romania in 1928. In 1940 his town, Sighet, was part of a region that was annexed by Hungary. Four years later the town’s entire Jewish population, including 15-year-old Elie and his family, was deported to Auschwitz.
Image copyrightREUTERSMr Wiesel’s mother and one sister were killed in Nazi death chambers. His father died of starvation and dysentery in the Buchenwald camp. Two other sisters survived.
After the war, Mr Wiesel lived in a French orphanage and went on to become a journalist.
He wrote more than 60 books, starting with Night, a memoir based on his experiences in the death camps.
It included the lines: “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.
“To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
