Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)
Awarded the Prize “for he has emerged as one of the most important spiritual leaders guides in an age when violence, repression racism continue to characterise the world; he is a messenger to mankind; his message is one of peace, atonement human dignity.”
American writer. Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 at Sighet, Romania. During World War II, as Jews, he and his family were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps but survived fortunately. In 1945 he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist. In 1963, he became an American citizen. He was a visiting scholar at Yale University, a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City College of New York, and since 1976 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University where he taught “Literature of Memory.” He was Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980-1986. Wiesel died on July 2, 2016 in New York, USA.
Major Works：
La Nuit (1958)
