Elie Wiesel

Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Night

"On Faith" panelist Elie Wiesel received the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his long-time advocacy for oppressed peoples. Wiesel was deported with his family to Auschwitz from Transylvania at age 15. His mother and younger sister perished there, and Wiesel and his father were moved to Buchenwald, where his father died before the concentration camp was liberated in 1945. Two older sisters survived as well. Wiesel’s book Night describes what he witnessed as a prisoner of the Nazis. Originally published in 1956 in Yiddish, it since has been translated into more than 30 languages and millions of copies have been sold. Wiesel’s writings, teachings, and advocacy have earned him more than 120 honorary degrees from universities in Europe, America and Israel. He holds the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor and has been awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal in the U.S. He and his wife Marion established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity after he received his Nobel Prize. Its mission is to advance human rights and encourage peace through dialogue. Since 1976, Wiesel has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. He has also taught at the City University of New York and Yale University. The latest of his more than 50 books, Un desir fou de danser, was published in France in 2006 and is set to be published in English by Knopf. Close.