Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and who was awarded Nobel Peace Prize died on the morning of July 2, at his home in Manhattan at the age of 87.

[In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where up to 90% of the people were exterminated on arrival.

After he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were killed. Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey, his primary motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that his father was still alive: "I knew that if I died, he would die." After they were taken to Buchenwald, however, his father only survived for eight months, dying just a few weeks before the camp was liberated.

In 2006 Wiesel and Oprah Winfrey visited Auschwitz.

In large part he not only became the conscience of the word but would stand up for wherever people were being persecuted.