“Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free… One person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death,” said Elie Wiesel about the world in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. He was so passionate about these things--But why? The answer lies in this: he was a Holocaust survivor, in fact one of the most prominent. He was held at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and later went on, as this quote shows, to speak out against oppression in places across the world.
Elie grew up in a small town called Sighet, one where many cultures coexisted, in Romania. His family, consisting of himself, his mother, father, and three sisters, ran a small business, but he was never a part of this; instead,
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The two men were sent to the barracks, though at first it seemed they were to be incinerated. Elie explained this misinterpretation in Night in that a guard had told the prisoners “Over there will be your grave… You will be burned! Burned to a cinder!”(Wiesel 31) and as they were led to the barracks, they were only “two steps from the pit,”(Wiesel 34) when they were turned towards their quarters. From here, they were put through the wringer, made to run miles without stopping and such. This camp was meant to weed out the weak amongst the prisoners. After being in the camp for about a week, Elie and his father were moved to Monowitz, one of the Auschwitz subcamps, where they were sent to work on an electrical line, and (amongst most prisoners) both frequently beaten, usually for trivial or greedy reasons. This camp was meant to break its prisoners, mentally as well as sometimes physically. From being held here, the two were sent to Buchenwald, where Elie suffered the greatest blow to his spirit--he watched his father wither away to nothing, without any means whatsoever to help him. This camp was meant to rid the Nazis of the prisoners they could no longer use--many were on the brink of death, or as in Elie’s case, put in a vegetative state by the horrors they had witnessed (though for him, only after the death of his father). However, the day Elie’s section of the camp was to be liquidated--April 10, 1945--was when salvation came. US troops stormed the camp, defeating the Nazis, and a day later, April 11, Elie had left Buchenwald (and the savagery) behind. After his liberation, Elie moved to France, where he studied, became a journalist, and learned that both of his older sisters had survived the Holocaust. Over this time (around a decade), he never once spoke of his experiences.