Aharon Appelfeld

Aharon Appelfeld (born February 16, 1932, Cernăuți, Romania [now Chernivtsi, Ukraine]—died January 4, 2018, Petaḥ Tiqwa, Israel) was a novelist and short-story writer who is best known for his Hebrew-language allegorical novels of the Holocaust.

Appelfeld at age eight and his parents were captured by Nazi troops. His mother was killed, and Aharon and his father were sent to a labour camp. Appelfeld eventually escaped and for two years roamed rural Ukraine. In 1944 he worked in the field kitchens of the Soviet army. He immigrated to Palestine in 1947 and served two years in the Israeli army, during which time he resumed his formal education, which had ended after the first grade. He later studied philosophy at Hebrew University and taught Hebrew literature at Israeli universities. Although Appelfeld’s works in English translation deal primarily with the Holocaust, his writings cover a wider range of subject matter.

Appelfeld’s fiction included Bagai ha-poreh (1963; In the Wilderness), Badenheim, ʿir nofesh (1979; Badenheim 1939), Ha-Ketonet veha-pasim (1983; Tzili: The Story of a Life), Bartfus ben ha-almavet (1988; The Immortal Bartfuss), Katerinah (1989; Katerina), Mesilat barzel (1991; “The Railway”), and Unto the Soul (1994). Beyond Despair: Three Lectures and a Conversation with Philip Roth was published in 1994.