(Photo: World Economic Forum)
When he was 15 years old, the family of Elie Wiesel of Sighet, Romania was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp operated by Nazi Germany. Among them, only Wiesel and 2 of his sisters survived the 8 horrible months of torture, starvation, and murder that preceded liberation.
After the war, the orphaned Wiesel went to France, then to the newborn State of Israel. He became a journalist. In 1954, he wrote an 800-page memoir in Yddish of his Holocaust experiences. Four years later, he published a much shorter version in French, which has been translated into English with the title Night.
Through Night, Wiesel taught the world about the hell of the Holocaust. For his humanitarian work, he earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. More honors followed, including an invitation to become President of Israel in 2007. He died today at the age of 87. You can read more about Wiesel's life at Haaretz.
-via Laughing Squid