ELIE WEISEL (WIESEL, LEYZER VIZEL)

ELIE WEISEL (WIESEL, LEYZER VIZEL) (September 30, 1928-July 2, 2016)

            He was born in Sighetu Marmației, Transylvania, into a Hassidic merchant household.  He studied in religious elementary school, yeshiva, and later philosophy, psychology, and literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.  Until March 1944 he lived in his hometown, and thereafter he was deported by the Nazis, together with all the other remaining Jews from the city of his birth, to various concentration camps.  He was liberated in April 1945.  He debuted in print with the story “A bagegenish” (An encounter) in Tsien un kamf (Zion in struggle) in Paris (1947).  He also published in this same journal articles on political issues.  From that point forward, he contributed stories, journalistic impressions, and reportage pieces to: Unzer vort (Our word), Der veg (The way), and Teater-shpigl (Theater mirror) in Paris; Forverts (Forward), Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), and Der amerikaner (The American) in New York; in the last of these he also published his novel Shtile heldn (Quiet heroes) serially.  From 1950 he was a wandering correspondent for the Israeli evening newspaper Yediot aḥaronot (Latest news) in Tel Aviv, for which he traveled to Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, India, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and elsewhere.  From 1956 he was living in New York.  He was chief of foreign correspondents for Yediot aḥaronot and an internal contributor to Forverts (Forward) in New York.  His books include: Un di velt hot geshvign (And the world was silent) (Buenos Aires, 1956), 253 pp., a description of the experiences of a Jewish boy under the Nazis.  This book was praised by the critics as one of the most important and most direct works of Jewish Holocaust literature.  He prepared the same work in his own adaptation in French, entitled La Nuit (The night), with a foreword by François Mauriac who dedicated his recent work, Le fils de l’homme (The son of man), to Wiesel.  Yehude Elberg translated his novel Aube (Dawn) into Yiddish as Fartog (Tel Aviv: Hamenorah, 1973), 104 pp.  Wiesel also wrote for Algemeyne zhurnal (General journal) in New York.[1]  He died in New York.

   

Sources: Y. Botoshanski, in Di prese (Buenos Aires) (March 14, 1956); M. Shenderay, in Yidishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (April 7, 1956); D. Naymark, in Forverts (New York) (July 17, 1956); A. Nahur, in Yediot aḥaronot (Tel Aviv) (December 22, 1956); A. Mukdoni, in Tog-morgn zhurnal (New York) (January 13, 1957); E. Shulman, in Unzer shtime (Paris) (September 7-8, 1957); Rokhl Herman, in Unzer shtime (August 30-31, 1958); A. Vayzil, in Forverts (February 7 and February 28, 1960).

Khayim Leyb Fuks

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 237.

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[1] Needless to say, Wiesel has written and contributed considerably more since this entry appeared.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986. (JAF)