What was Elie Wiesel’s net worth?
Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American professor, author and activist who had a net worth of $5 million at the time of his death in 2016. It should be noted that Elie and his wife Marion lost at least $12 million, the vast majority of their liquid savings, in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Even worse, the Elie Wiesel Foundation lost another $15 million.
Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor who wrote 57 books and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work to end racism and violence. In 1944, those who were Jewish and lived in Sighet were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau by the German army, including Wiesel and his entire family. Elie and his father were separated from his mother and three sisters and sent to work in Auschwitz III-Monowitz. Wiesel’s father was murdered just weeks before the American Third Army liberated the prisoners on April 11, 1945. After the end of the war, Wiesel began working as a journalist, putting his Hebrew skills to good use as a translator. It was almost a decade before Wiesel began writing about his experiences with the Holocaust, although he eventually wrote “And the World Stood Still” in Yiddish. It totaled about 900 pages and was later shortened to “La Nuit” in French and “Night” in English. The book has since become a New York Times bestseller, with more than 10 million copies sold.
In the mid-1950s, Elie became an American citizen and subsequently wrote dozens of books. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Legion of Honor, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Wiesel was a political activist who championed causes supporting Israel, the victims of South African apartheid and ending violence in Darfur. In 2006, he returned to Auschwitz as part of a segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Elie has taught at several universities, including Boston University, the City University of New York, and Yale. Together with his wife Marion, he founded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Wiesel died on July 2, 2016 at the age of 87.
Early life
Elie Wiesel was born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Kingdom of Romania. He was the son of Shlomo Wiesel and Sarah Feig, and he grew up with three sisters, Hilda, Beatrice and Tzipora. Elie’s parents spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, German and Romanian. Wiesel’s genealogy dates back to Rabbi Schlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi), and Rabbi Yeshayahu ben Abraham Horovitz ha-Levi was one of his descendants. When Elie was 15 years old, his family was placed in a confinement ghetto in Máramarossziget (Sighet) after Germany occupied Hungary. In May 1944, Hungarian authorities began deporting Jewish community members to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and unfortunately, Sarah and Tzipora were murdered immediately upon arrival there. Elie and Shlomo were selected for labor, and later deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Shlomo died before Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945. In his book “Night,” Wiesel wrote about feeling ashamed when he heard the sounds of Shlomo being beaten and knew he couldn’t help him. Before being freed from Buchenwald at the age of 16, Elie’s left arm was tattooed with the prisoner number A-7713. After the end of the war, Wiesel joined a transport to Ecouis, France, of 1,000 young people who had survived Buchenwald. Then he and 90 to 100 other boys from Orthodox Jewish families went to a home in Ambloy with “kosher facilities and a higher level of religious amenities.” compliance.” The house later moved to Taverny, where it operated until 1947.
Career
Elie later went to Paris, learned French and attended the Sorbonne, where he studied psychology, philosophy and literature. He started working as a journalist at the age of 19, also taught Hebrew and took a job as a choir conductor. In 1949, the French newspaper “L’Arche” sent him as a correspondent to Israel, and the Israeli newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth” later hired him as a Paris correspondent and as an international correspondent. French author François Mauriac, a Nobel Prize winner in Literature, encouraged him to write about his experiences during the Holocaust, and Wiesel subsequently wrote the 900-page book “Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent).” Yiddish. The book was translated (and abridged) into English in 1960 with the title ‘Night’, and has subsequently been translated into 30 languages. In 2006, “Night” was featured as part of Oprah Winfrey’s book club. Elie moved to New York in 1955 to become a foreign correspondent for the newspaper ‘Yediot Ahronot’. After moving to the US, he wrote more than forty books, including ‘The Trial of God’ (1979), ‘All Rivers Run to the Sea’ (1994) and ‘And the Sea is Never Full’ (1999).
Private life
Elie married Marion Erster Rose on April 2, 1969, and they remained together until his death in July 2016. The couple welcomed son Shlomo Elisha Wiesel in 1972. Marion, a Holocaust survivor from Austria, translated several of Elie’s books. In 2007, Wiesel was attacked by a Holocaust denier in a San Francisco hotel but was not injured. His attacker, Eric Hunt, was later arrested and charged with several crimes.
Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
In 1986, Elie and Marion founded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. From 1978 to 1986, Elie chaired the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and directed the construction of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The museum’s Elie Wiesel Award is presented to “internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the museum’s vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.” Unfortunately, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity invested its donations in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, costing them $15 million. Elie and Marion also lost much of their personal savings to Madoff.
Dead
On July 2, 2016, Wiesel died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 87. A private funeral service was held at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, after which he was buried on July 3 at Valhalla’s Sharon Gardens Cemetery. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah paid tribute to Elie during a Senate speech the following week, saying, “With Elie’s passing, we have lost a beacon of humanity and hope. We have lost a hero of human rights and a luminary of Holocaust literature.” President Barack Obama tweeted: “Elie Wiesel was a great moral voice of our time and a conscience for our world. He was also a dear friend. We will miss him enormously.”
Awards and honors
In the 1960s, Wiesel won a Prix de l’Université de la Langue Française (Prix Rivarol) and a National Jewish Book Award for ‘The Town Beyond the Wall’, and he received a Prix Médicis for ‘A Beggar in Jerusalem’. In 1973, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters won a National Jewish Book Award, and in 1975 he received a Jewish Heritage Award from the University of Haifa and a Holocaust Memorial Award from the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists. Elie won a Prix Livre Inter, France, for ‘The Testament’ in 1980, a Grand Prize for Literature of the City of Paris for ‘The Fifth Son’ in 1983, and a Four Freedoms Award for freedom of worship in 1985. He received the SY Agnon Medal (1980), the Jabotinsky Medal of the State of Israel (1980), the Gold Medal of the United States Congress (1984), the Medal of Liberty (1986), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992), the Niebuhr Medal from Elmhurst College (1995), the National Humanities Medal (2009), and the John Jay Medal for Justice (2014).
Wiesel was appointed Commander of the French Legion of Honor in 1984 and Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1990, and in 2006 he received an Honorary Knighthood from Great Britain. In 1986 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award in 1996, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Man of the Year award in 2005, and the Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2011. Elie received a Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honor and an Order of Honor in 2000 the Star of Romania in 2002. He was honored with the International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth award in 2005, the Loebenberg Humanitarian Award from the Florida Holocaust Museum in 2012, and the S. Roger Horchow Award from the Jefferson Awards for the greatest public service by a private Citizen in 2013. Wiesel received dozens of honorary degrees from colleges and universities such as Lehigh University, DePaul University, Dartmouth College, Tel Aviv University, College of Charleston, University of Warsaw and Pontifical University of John Paul II.