How Did Elie Wiesel Impact Society

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Elie Wiesel “Another day has gone for keeps into the bottomless pit of time. Again it has wounded a man, held captive by his brethren” (Anonymous 52). This quote from I Never Saw Another Butterfly describes the life of the majority of the Jews involved in the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, has made a very large impact on our society through his many contributions. He survived the Holocaust, wrote many books, and started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Elie Wiesel, born Elizer Wiesel, was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Romania to Shlomo Wiesel and Sarah Feig. He lived in a small village along with his three sisters: Hilda and Beatrice, the older two, and Tzipora, the youngest of them all (Elie Wiesel). …show more content…
He lived there for a few years, but later, in 1948, he began to study in Paris at Sorbonne. An article called Elie Wiesel Bio says that in 1948, Wiesel was involved with journalist work for a French newspaper called, L’arche. Elie later, in 1954, met a Nobel Laureate, Francois Mauriac, who influenced him to break his silence about his terrible experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. While Wiesel continued to write about his experiences, he traveled to New York City, where his taxi cab was hit head on by a semi and left him recovering in a wheelchair for a year. During Elie’s recovery, he couldn’t renew his French document, so he applied to be a U.S. citizen, along with continuing to write. While recovering, he wrote his book, Night. It started out as a 900 page book, but Elie manages to cut it down to 128 pages. Night became a best seller, and was then translated into many other languages. Wiesel also wrote two other books to form a trilogy, Dawn, and Day. The article, Elie Wiesel Bio, states that in 1964, Wiesel decides to return to his hometown of Sighet. He then travels on to Russia. In 1969, Elie met his future wife, Marrion Rose. In between his travels, he published another one of his books, The Jews of Silence. Elie and Marrion had a son of their own, in 1972. In the Academy of Achievement, it says that Elie became an unofficial spokesman for the survivors of the Holocaust. He used his fame to plead for justice for struggling people in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, and many other places. Elie decided to take his knowledge and experiences and become a college professor at Andrew Mellon of Humanities at Boston University. Eventually, Elie stopped teaching and still continued to write books, short stories, memoirs, and even plays. His latest books published are A Mad Desire to Dance and Sonderburg Case. Elie and his wife still live in New York City, and both write