Wiesel was born Mary Renate Erster in Vienna, Austria, on January 27, 1931.[4] Her mother, Jetta (Hubel) Erster, chose the name Mary out of a love of Americana.[4] Her father Emil owned a furniture store.[4] She grew up in Vienna. At age seven, her family was forced to flee upon the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria.[5]
Her family first escaped to Belgium, where she began using the name Marion.[4] While in Belgium, she was active in the Irgun youth movement.[6] She and her family then fled to France, but after France was occupied by the Nazis in 1940, she and her family were interned in the Gurs internment camp, a French concentration camp.[1][4] The family then escaped the internment camp and managed to flee to Marseille, France, where neighbors helped them avoid detection.[4][7] In 1942, they were able to smuggle themselves into Basel, Switzerland, where her mother had a relative with Swiss citizenship, and they lived there until 1949.[5][6][8] A passionate Zionist, she later said: "We didn't have [a state of Israel] in the 1940s when my family needed somewhere to go, and a strong state of Israel is the best guarantee in the world than there will never again be an Auschwitz to consume six million Jews."[8][9]
Wiesel translated 14 of her husband's books from French into English.[4][13] Her 2006 translation of his book Night, based on his Holocaust experiences in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–45, sold three million copies after her translation.[4] She also advised and coached her husband on his public appearances, including his frequent TV interviews.[4]
In 1986, the Wiesels used the money from Elie's Nobel Peace Prize that year to establish the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which combats discrimination and injustice, promotes international dialogue, and teaches children to not be indifferent to the suffering of others.[1][4][15] The Foundation became her full-time job, and she served as its Vice President.[18][19]
As its Executive Director and Chairperson, she headed the Beit Tzipora Centers (named for Elie Wiesel's younger sister Tzipora, who was murdered at seven years of age in Auschwitz) in Israel, as part of the Foundation's work.[8] They provide schooling and support to over 1,000 Israeli Jewish children of Ethiopian origin every year who have faced challenges integrating into Israeli society.[1][4][7]
Personal life
In the late 1950s, she married F. Peter Rose, a real estate businessman who was her first husband.[4][6] The two of them had a daughter, Jennifer.[4] The marriage later fell apart.[4]
In the late-1960s, when she was known as Marion Erster Rose, she met Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, and fellow Holocaust survivorElie Wiesel at a dinner party in Manhattan, in New York City.[4][6][13] At the time, she was the mother of a young daughter and in the process of getting a divorce.[20][13] She was fluent in five languages.[13] Elie Wiesel wrote in his memoirs: "I wasn't sure what I found most striking about her. The delicacy of her features, the brilliance of her words, or the breadth of her knowledge of art, music and the theater."[6] On their first date, they discussed French literature.[4]
They married on April 2, 1969, in the Old City of Jerusalem in East Jerusalem.[20] Author Joseph Berger wrote in the biography Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence (2023): "In the alignment of stars that helped make Wiesel the international icon he became, his marriage to Marion was among the most significant."[4] They lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and spoke French at home.[21][22]
On June 6, 1972, she gave birth to their son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel (who goes by his middle name Elisha), naming him Shlomo after his paternal grandfather who was murdered in Buchenwald during the Holocaust, and Elisha meaning "God is salvation."[13][17][23] Elie Wiesel wrote that their son's birth "will mark my existence forever. The little fellow in the arms of his mother will illuminate our life."[6]
In 2001, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Presidential Citizens Medal.[15] The medal is awarded by a President of the United States in recognition of U.S. citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for the nation.[28] As he handed her the medal, President Clinton said that he was awarding it to her for her "mission of hope against hate, of life against death, of good over evil", and noted that out of her experience of the Holocaust, she "summoned the courage to commit her life to teaching others, especially children, about the human cost of hatred, intolerance, and racism."[1]
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