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person1950s-2016

Elie Wiesel

Disciplines:
literature
politics/political activism

Summary

Romanian-American Jewish author and Holocaust survivor whose memoir Night is one of the most powerful testimonies of the Holocaust and whose subsequent career was dedicated to human rights advocacy.

Core Contribution

Night: the most widely read Holocaust memoir — the destruction of faith, family, and humanity in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Testimony as ethical obligation: Wiesel argued that silence in the face of atrocity is complicity — the survivor has an obligation to bear witness. Nobel Peace Prize (1986).

Notable Works & Achievements

Night

Dawn

The Accident

A Beggar in Jerusalem

Historical Influences

Dostoevsky Jewish Mysticism

Intellectual Lineage

Holocaust Literature Jewish Thought

Contemporaries & Peers

Primo Levi Paul Celan

Minds Influenced

Holocaust Studies Human Rights Discourse

Intellectual Posterity

Holocaust Literature Witness Ethics

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Elie Wiesel

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