CAN SOMEONE SUMMARIZE THIS FOR ME HELP Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, gave this impassioned speech in the East
Room of the White House on April 12, 1999, as part of the Millennium Lecture series, hosted by
President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In the summer of 1944, as a teenager in Hungary, Elie Wiesel, along with his father, mother and
sisters, were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz extermination camp in occupied Poland. Upon
arrival there, Wiesel and his father were selected by SS Dr. Josef Mengele for slave labor and
wound up at the nearby Buna rubber factory.
Daily life included starvation rations of soup and bread, brutal discipline, and a constant struggle
against overwhelming despair. At one point, young Wiesel received 25 lashes of the whip for a
minor infraction
In January 1945, as the Russian Army drew near, Wiesel and his father were hurriedly
evacuated from Auschwitz by a forced march to Gleiwitz and then via an open train car to
Buchenwald in Germany, where his father, mother, and a younger sister eventually died.
Wiesel was liberated by American troops in April 1945. After the war, he moved to Paris and
became a journalist then later settled in New York. Since 1976, he has been Andrew Mellon
Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. He has received numerous awards and
honors including the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was
also the Founding Chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial. Wiesel has written over 40
books including Night, a harrowing chronicle of his Holocaust experience, first published in 1960.
At the White House lecture, Wiesel was introduced by Hillary Clinton who stated, "It was more
than a year ago that I asked Elie if he would be willing to participate in these Millennium
Lectures...) never could have imagined that when the time finally came for him to stand in this
spot and to reflect on the past century and the future to come, that we would be seeing children
in Kosovo crowded into trains, separated from families, separated from their homes, robbed of
their childhoods, their memories, their humanity."