Remembering Elie Wiesel Trivia Quiz

Answer: Romania

Elie Wiesel was born in what is today Sighetu Marmației, Romania, and his family spoke Hungarian, Romanian, Yiddish, and German. His full first name was Eliezar.

Answer: Buchenwald

When he was a teenager, Elie Wiesel and his family were confined to a ghetto, after which they were sent to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were killed. His left arm was tattooed with the prisoner number A-7713. Elie was eventually deported to Buchenwald, which was liberated on April 11, 1945 by the U.S. Third Army. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945, Bergen-Belsen by the British on April 15, 1945, and Treblinka was destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.

After liberation, Elie Wiesel was transported to an orphanage in Ecouis, France, along with a thousand other child survivors of the Holocaust.

Answer: Journalist

In France, Elie Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy, literature, and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. There, he had the privilege of hearing lectures by famous philosophers such as Martin Buber and Jean-Paul Sartre. By the age of 19, he had become a journalist, and in his twenties, starting in 1952, he began to travel the world writing for the Tel Aviv newspaper "Yediot Ahronot." In 1956, he moved to New York City to become a permanent correspondent.

In 1963, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Answer: François Mauriac

François Mauriac, a devout Christian, angered Wiesel upon their first meeting by speaking at length and with passion about Jesus. As Elie Wiesel recounts the meeting in "A Jew Today," Wiesel told Mauriac, "[T]en years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more, than Christ on the cross. And we don't speak about them. Can you understand that sir? We don't speak about them." He quickly left Mauriac's presence, but the author caught up to him by the elevator and asked him to return. "And suddenly the man I had just offended began to cry," Elie Wiesel relates. Mauriac told him, "I think that you are wrong not to speak."

Answer: Shlomo Yitzchak (Rashi)

In 2009, Elie Wiesel published a biography of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchak (Rashi), who furnished commentary that is still relied upon today. Elie Wiesel is himself a descendant of Rashi, and his biography of the rabbi centers on his own personal interaction with the man's work as well as on Rashi's place in Jewish rabbinic tradition. Elie Wiesel's father was named Shlomo, and the author named his only son Shlomo.

Answer: A Holocaust denier

He was accosted by Eric Hunt, a 24-year-old Holocaust denier from New Jersey, who pulled him out of an elevator at the Argent Hotel in an attempt to persuade him to renounce the Holocaust. Although Elie Wiesel was fortunately uninjured, Hunt was convicted of a felony hate crime, misdemeanor battery, and misdemeanor elder abuse.

Answer: Religion & Philosophy

At Boston University, Elie Wiesel served as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and was a member of both the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Religion. Prior to that, he was Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at City University of New York from 1972 to 1976. He also served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University from 1982-83. Boston University created, in his honor, the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies.

Answer: The Nobel Prize for Literature

Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, but he has never been awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. The Norwegian Nobel Committee referred to him as a "messenger to mankind." The Medal of Liberty was awarded by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 as part of the ceremonies commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty.

It was given to twelve people, including Elie Wiesel, who had been chosen as representatives of the most distinguished naturalized citizens of the United States. Elie Wiesel received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 from George H.W. Bush.

He's received numerous other awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal.

Answer: The Elie Wiesel Award

From 1978 to 1986, Elie Wiesel served as chairman of the council that spearheaded the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is the nation's official memorial to the Holocaust. It opened to the general public in April of 1993. The museum established an annual award in 2011 to recognize "internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the Museum's vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity." The first award went to Elie Wiesel, after which it was renamed The Elie Wiesel Award.

In 2019, the Elie Wiesel Award went to Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld and also to the Syria Civil Defense (The White Helmets). This latter organization was formed during the Syrian Civil War and is a volunteer organization that performs search and rescue and medical evacuation in response to bombing. As of 2019, over 200 volunteers had lost their lives saving over 114,000 lives.

Answer: His emergency heart surgery

Elie Wiesel wrote "Open Heart" at the age of 82, after being confronted with his own mortality via his need for emergency open heart surgery. In the brief memoir, translated by his wife Marion Wiesel, he reflects on his life. He passed away on July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.