Mr Wiesel was born in the town in 1928 and later achieve worldwide acclaim after writing about his teenage years in Nazi concentration camps.
In 1944 his family was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters were killed in the death camps. His father died at Buchenwald.
It was Mr Wiesel's use of the term Holocaust that helped cement the word's association with Nazi atrocities against the Jews.
In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his role in speaking out against violence, repression and racism.
After his death, the head of the World Jewish Congress said he was "undoubtedly one of the great Jewish teachers and thinkers of the past 100 years".
