Born in the small town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was destined to win the Nobel Peace Prize and become a world wide best selling author. He'd be happily married and an avid supporter of human rights in his later years, but only after he'd undergone a horrific experience. Through his teenage years he would be one of the few to survive the most notorious concentration camp and one of the brave who shared his plight to the world to keep a horror from ever being forgotten.
Wiesel's life started out not very different from any other child, though his interests weren't of the typical little boy. Instead, he engrossed himself in books instead of sports and loved a good game of chess, even if it meant playing against himself. Though he knew the Jewish people were a persecuted race, he always felt it was a far off conflict that wouldn't effect him. It saddened him enough, however, that himself and two other friends, as young students, tried to evoke the Messiah to help their people. It was a tedious process ending in failure after failure and his two friends were quoted as losing their minds from frustration shortly after Wiesel left. (A Portrait of Elie Wiesel). .
Wiesel, however, never lost his faith in his childhood. He desired to learn of the Zohar but no one felt that he should be taught of such a thing at such a young age. However, a foreigner named Moshe the Beadle finally took pity on the boy and began teaching him all he knew. (Wiesel, 3) As the war grew closer, Wiesel desired to move to Palestine, but his father said no insisting that he was too old a man to take his entire family to another country so they could start anew. (Wiesel, 6). However, the move would have been one of good luck had they took action. In 1944, the ghetto of Sighet was formed. In a stroke of what could perhaps be considered luck, the ghetto was established on the Wiesels' street, enabling them to remain in their own home.