John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0

Deported to Auschwitz at fifteen and the only one of his immediate family besides two sisters to survive. Stayed silent for ten years, then wrote Night, and spent the next fifty insisting that neutrality helps the oppressor. Nobel Peace Prize, 1986, awarded to what the committee called a messenger to mankind.