ELIE WIESEL RESEARCH PROJECT Elie Wiesel was born in the town of Sighet in northern Transylvania on September 30, 1928. His real name was Eliezer Wiesel. His family spoke Yiddish at home; they read newspapers and conducted their grocery business in German. Elie had begun religious studies in classical Hebrew almost as soon as he could speak. Elie's life centered entirely on his religious studies. He loved the mystical tradition and folk tales of the Hassidic sect of Judaism, to which him and his family belonged. His father encouraged Elie to study the modern Hebrew language and to concentrate on his secular studies. The first years of World War II left Sighet untouched. Although the village changed hands from different countries, the Wiesel family believed they were safe from the persecutions suffered by the Jews in Germany and Poland.
The secure world of Wiesel's childhood ended abruptly with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944.
English: Elie Wiesel Français : Elie Wiesel
Maison natale d'Elie Wiesel à Sighetu Marmaţiei,...
Jewish slave laborers in the Buchenwald concentrat...The Jewish people in the village were deported to concentration camps in Poland. The 15-year-old boy was separated from his mother and sisters immediately when they arrived in Auschwitz. He never saw them again no matter how hard he tried. He managed to remain with his father for the next year as they were worked almost to death, starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow, without food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel's father succumbed to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure. After the war, the teenaged Wiesel found asylum in France, where he learned for the first time that his two older sisters had survived the war. Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choirmaster and...