Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel Born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928 Grew up in the small village of Sighet, Transylvania Village deported in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald April of 1945 – liberated from concentration camp

1958 –Night is published Went on to publish 36 works dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and moral issues 1986 – awarded Nobel Peace Prize Today Wiesel lives in New York and continues to be a spokesperson for the Holocaust and an advocate for peace.

Memoir A memoir is an account of events in a person’s life. A memoir is written BY the person that the events are about. It is similar to a biography in that it is written by the person that the events are about, but it usually does not cover the person’s entire life.

Why did Elie Wiesel write Night? To bear witness For the dead and for the living To give some meaning to his survival It was impossible to keep silent To keep his past from becoming another’s future ~ From the preface in Night

Major Themes in Night Inhumanity – humans treating other humans as animals, less than human Survival – What will we as people do to survive? What will we not do? - Silence - Loyalty - Betrayal Loss of Innocence – Is it possible to maintain innocence in the face of inhumanity? Identity – What makes us who we are? Can we lose that? How?

Elie Wiesel on Oprah

Works Cited Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 1958. Print.