Word: wiesel
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After the war Wiesel settled in France, where he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, worked as a journalist and came under the influence of Albert Camus and Francois Mauriac. His first novel, Night (1958), was an indelible account of the Nazi atrocities as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy. The hell inside the death camps is described in austere, intense prose that became the author's emblem: "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night . . . Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget...
Night was followed by several other fictionalized treatments of the Holocaust -- a term Wiesel brought into currency but which he believes has since been "trivialized and vulgarized." Moving to the U.S. in 1957, he became a hypnotic, increasingly popular lecturer and professor, first at the City College of New York and later at Boston University...
...Wiesel's 30 books have ranged from biblical studies to an examination of the plight of Soviet Jews. Indeed, last week he exhorted Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to allow five Soviet Jews, as well as Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov, to emigrate, and this week he is traveling to Moscow to help organize a conference on non-Jewish victims of Nazism. Wiesel has also worked to help Cambodian refugees, the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua and starving children in Africa...
...most dramatic appeal came in April 1985, on the eve of President Reagan's controversial trip to the Bitburg military cemetery in West Germany, where members of Hitler's SS are buried. At a ceremony to receive the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement, Wiesel, standing on the same podium as the President, implored him to call off the visit. "That place, Mr. President, is not your place," he said. "Your place is with the victims of the SS." Reagan went to Bitburg despite the protests, but Wiesel's plea had a lasting resonance...
...Wiesel has been a Nobel contender for several years, for both the peace and literature prizes. (In a departure from custom, the Nobel Committee cited Bob Geldof, organizer of Live Aid and other fund-raising rock concerts, as runner- up for this year's peace prize.) Wiesel regards his award with an amalgam of gratitude and caution. "I don't think that prizes validate work," he says. "They give stature, texture, the possibility to reach more people. There's a mystique about the Nobel. It gives you a better loudspeaker...