Elie Wiesel's Childhood

Category: Genocide

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Kingdom of Romania, to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel. He had 2 sisters who were older than him and one who was younger. His dad was an Orthodox Jew who owned a grocery store. His father had helped Polish Jews escape to Hungary.
In 1940, the town of Sighet was re-annexed to Hungary. In 1944 Elie, his family and the rest of the town were placed in one of the two ghettos in Sighet. On May 16, 1944, the Hungarian authorities deported the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz–Birkenau.


Romania & the Holocaust.
Romania joined the axis group and had various concentration camps. [see image 3]

2. VICTIMS- Jewish.
3. DEATH TOLL- Between 280,000 to 380,000 deaths. Though much of the killing was done in war zone by Romanian troops, there were also substantial persecutions in back of the front line. During the Iaşi pogrom of July 1941 over 12,000 Jews were massacred or killed slowly in trains travelling back and forth across the countryside.
Romanian soldiers also worked with the Einsatzkommando, German killing squads, to massacre Jews in conquered territories. Romanian troops were in large part responsible for the Odessa massacre, in which over 100,000 Jews were shot during the autumn of 1941.

"Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself. The murders committed in Iasi, Odessa, Bogdanovka, Domanovka, and Peciora, for example, were among the most hideous murders committed against Jews anywhere during the Holocaust. Romania committed genocide against the Jews. The survival of Jews in some parts of the country does not alter this reality."^ a b International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (November 11, 2004). Executive Summary: Historical Findings and Recommendations (PDF) (English). Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority). Retrieved on [[July 25, 2006]].

4. AFTERMATH- Under the 1947 Treaty of Paris, the Allies refused co-belligerent status to Romania. Northern Transylvania was recognised as an integral part of Romania, but the USSR was allowed to annex Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Parts in the north and south became part of the Ukrainian SSR; the rest, together with a thin stretch of land on the left bank of the river Dniestr, became a new "Moldavian SSR". Since 1991, these territories are part of Ukraine and of the Republic of Moldova, respectively.

In Romania, Soviet occupation following World War II led to the abdication of the king and the formation of a communist People's Republic in 1947.

[aftermath of elie wiesel]
Elie was sent to a French orphanage and was reunited with his two older sisters. He began to study philosophy and became involved with Irgun, a Zionist armed organization in Palestine, and translated for the Palistine newspaper. He taught Hebrew and became a proffesional journalist but did not talk about his experience for ten years after the war had ended. Wiesel first wrote the 900-page tome Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, and it was published as the 127-page novella La Nuit, and later translated into English as Night.Later he moved to NYC and won the Novel Peace Prize.