10 Famous People You Never Knew Were Refugees

8. Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jewish author who’s responsible for writing over 55 novels throughout his career. He’s most well-known for writing Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania, now Romania, in 1928. In 1944, Wiesel, his family, and the rest of their town were placed in one of the two ghettos in Sighet. A few months later, the German army deported the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz-Birkenau. While at Auschwitz, his inmate number, “A-7713,” was tattooed onto his left arm. Following his release from the concentration camp, Wiesel wanted to move to Palestine, but because of British immigration restrictions he was sent instead to Belgium, then Normandy. Less than a decade later, Wiesel migrated to Washington, D.C. By 2011, Night had been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than six million copies in the United States.