Ellie Wiesel was born in 1928 at Sighetul Marmaţiei, and spent his first 15 years in Romania. Sighetul Marmaţiei reminds him of childhood memories, but also tragic memories relating to the loss of his family during the deportations from Horty's period, when many Jews fell victims of these events. In 1944, Ellie Wiesel together with the whole family and the other Jews from Sighet and Maramureş, counting over 38,000, were deported by the Horthys and the Nazis in death camps. The young adolescent would be marked for life by the unimaginable crimes and horrors that occurred in the Auschwitz, Birkenau and Buchenwald camps. The known novelist, playwright, essayist and memoirist Elli...e Wiesel has always pleaded for peace. Currently, Ellie Wiesel, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, is a titular of the Humanities chair of Boston University, while 55 universities worldwide awarded him the title of "Doctor Honoris Causa", including Yale University. Between 1980 and 1986 he was the president of the Holocaust Memorial Council in the USA, while currently he is a member of many councils. It is worth mentioning that in 1986 his name was engraved on the "Statue of Liberty", next to the names of other 11 immigrants to the USA, on the occasion of the 100 year anniversary from its inauguration in New York on the 29th of July 2002. His first book of memoirs, "La Nuit", issued in 1958, accounts his experiences in German concentration camps. From that year onwards, he signed almost 40 books, all of them inspired by the ordeal of the Jews during World War II. His works reveal his profound empathy with the condition of the Jews and of other ethnic groups, who suffered persecutions and humiliations because of their religion, race or national origin.
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