The Holocaust Starring: Elie Wiesel By: Steven Pfaff Please click the mouse button to advance to the next slide.

In The Beginning  Time Frame Elie Wiesel was born Family lived in Sighet, Transylvania  Very close knit family in Jewish Community  World Events Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 World War II began in September of 1938

Before the “horror”  Elie was close to his parents and three sisters  Before age 15, he was involved in religious studies  Elie had a strong sense of humanism

The “Horror” Began  Elie and his family were sent to a concentration camp in Poland

The “Horror” Began  He never saw his mother and younger again

The “Horror” Began  When his father died in a concentration camp, Elie was with him  His father died of dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion  Elie is on the 2 nd row in the picture, 7 th from the left

The Results of the “Horror”  By the end of the war in May of 1945, 2 out of every 3 Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany  Approximately 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II

The “Survivor”  World War II ended in Europe with unconditional surrender of German armed forces in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945  Elie Wiesel survived  Elie was later reunited with his two older sisters, Hilda and Bea

And Then What?  Elie mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew  He became a professional journalist, writing for newspapers in both France and Israel

And Then What?  For ten years, he observed a self- imposed vow of silence and wrote nothing about his wartime experience  In 1955, at the urging of the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, he set down his memories in Yiddish, in a 900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent)

Why Elie came to America  In 1956, while he was in New York covering the United Nations, Elie was struck by a taxi cab. His injuries confined him to a wheelchair for almost a year.  Unable to renew the French document which had allowed him to travel as a "stateless" person, Elie applied successfully for American citizenship.  Once he recovered, he remained in New York and became a feature writer for the Yiddish- language newspaper.

The Rest of the Story  Wiesel’s efforts to defend human rights earned him: Presidential Medal of Freedom The U.S. Congressional Gold Medal The Medal of Liberty Award The rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor

The End of the Story  In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed him Chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council  In 1986, Elie won the Nobel Peace Prize for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism  Wiesel is now a Boston University Professor

Biblography  Text and audio of Elie Wiesel's famous speech on "The Perils of Indifference" Text and audio of Elie Wiesel's famous speech on "The Perils of Indifference"  Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. New York: Knopf,  Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs New York: Schocken,  bio-1 bio-1 