Elie Wiesel Quotes

Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor (1928-2016)

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel (30 September 1928 – 2 July 2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books (mostly written in French and English), including Night, a work based on his experience incarcerated in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

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Alternative Names: Eliezer Wiesel • A-7713 • Élie Wiesel

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It is not always events that have touched us personally that affect us the most.

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must at that moment become the center of the universe.

The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing: we were entirely among ourselves. A small Jewish republic...

When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba...May His name be celebrated and sanctified..." whispered my father.
For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.

The duty of the survivor is to bear testimony to what happened . . . You have to warn people that these things can happen, that evil can be unleashed. Race hatred, violence, idolatries—they still flourish.