Wiesel was 15 years old, his family and village were deported to concentration camps. In Night, he says, “My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it possible. As for my mother, she was walking, her face a mask, without a word, deep in thought. I looked at my little sister, Tzipora, her blond hair neatly combed, her red coat over her arm: a little girl of seven. On her back a bag too heavy for her. She was clenching her teeth; she already knew it was useless to complain. Here and there, the police were lashing out with their clubs. "Faster!" I had no strength left. The journey had just begun and I already felt so weak. (Wiesel 159). He remained with his father, but was separated from his mother and three sisters. Elie states in the documentary Elie Wiesel Goes Home that in January 1945, he and his father were transported to Buchenwald, where the latter was beaten both by SS guards while suffering from dysentery, starvation and exhaustion, and by other prisoners for his food and was later sent to the crematorium just weeks before the camp was liberated. After the war, Wiesel was sent to an orphanage in France, and was later reunited with his two older sisters, …show more content…
Wiesel protested the South African Apartheid in the 1970’s, gave food to Cambodians in the 1980’s, and lobbied the U.S, Government for victims of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Though he won his award for his work in relation to the Holocaust, he wants to help any people who are suffering, not only Jews. In the PBS First Person Singular, he expresses his fears for the world after the re-emergence of terrorism after 9/11 and his concerns for mankind’s