14 Stories of Overcoming the Odds

Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel

He's one of the people that Oprah most respects: Elie Wiesel, an author, scholar and Holocaust survivor. At 15 years old, Elie and his family were deported by the Gestapo to the Auschwitz death camp and separated. There, he endured the unthinkable: starvation, torture and disease, not to mention the deaths of those he loved the most. Oprah has said the miraculous part of Elie's story is not just that he survived, but that he went on to live without hate. "The anger here is in me—hate is not," Elie says. "I write and I teach, and therefore, I believe anger must be a catalyst."

In 2006, Oprah selected Elie's book Night as one of her Book Club picks.