HEY EVERYONE! This is my very first post! I thought that, for my first post, it would be a good idea to briefly write the biography of Elie Wiesel's life, so we can get to know him better. :) However, I don't want to go into much detail because, since Night is based on his life, I don't want to give anything away. SO here we go ♥
As you probably already know, Elie Wiesel grew up in the Jewish community of Sighet. Wiesel began religious studies in classical Hebrew at a very young age. The book shows how he centered his life around religion. The first years of World War II left Sighet safe, but that changed with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944. When he was 15 years-old, he was separated from his mother and sister immediately on arrival in Auschwitz. He never saw them again. In the last months of the war Elie's father died. After the war, Wiesel found an asylum in France, where he found out that his two older sisters had survived the war. Wiesel studied French and philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself by being a choir master and Hebrew teacher. Then he became a professional journalist, writing for newspapers in both France and Israel. Wiesel took a vow of silence for ten entire years, and wrote nothing about his wartime experience. However, in 1955, Francois Mauriac, a Catholic writer, urged him to share his story. Wiesel wrote his memories in Yiddish, in a 900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (meaning And the world kept silent). The book was first published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Ha ha that's weird!) Wiesel compressed the work into a 127-page French adaptation, called La Nuit (or Night), but he was unable to find a publisher for the French and English version of his book for many years. Even after Wiesel found publishers for the French and English translations, the book sold very few copies. If life wasn't bad enough at this point for poor Wiesel, he got hit by a taxi cab in 1956, and was confined to a wheelchair for an entire year. he continued to write for things like the Jewish Daily Forward (which is a newspaper), and French books including the semi-autobiographical novels L'Aube (Dawn), and Le Jour (translated as The Accident ). In his novel La Ville de la Chance (translated as The Town Beyond the Wall ), Wiesel imagined a return to his home town, a journey he did not undertake in life until after the book was published. He continues to write today, and his latest novel is A Mad Desire To Dance, written in 2009. :)
THE END
This is where I got my information
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wie0bio-1
-Gabriella ♥♥♥
Thanks for the bio! It was very interesting to read about his life. He had such a tough life growing up in the time of the war, and became very successful when he wrote books based on the time of the war and his life. I feel so bad that he got hit by a car and had to use a wheelchair for a whole year :( But at least his books became popular (:
ReplyDeleteIt's really cool how he found out that his sisters survived. I had pretty much figured tha his younger sister and his mother were killed, but I was wondering about his two older sisters... especially since the only time he ever really mentions him in the book is when he describes his family, in the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteIt is also really interesting to find out that the book that we just read has been translated twice from its original form. And I think I remember him mentioning something about "The town beyond the Wall" in "Night", although I can't really remember what he was talking about at the moment....
And it is really awesome that he is still writing in his old age. :]
That actually was very useful because I didn't know that two of his sisters survived the war. And everything after that I didn't know so thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteOMG i thought that Eliezer was the only one who survived in his family. I didn't know his two sisters also survived! I'm glad that at least part of his family survived :)
ReplyDelete