February 16, 1932
Aharon Appelfeld, an author, professor and Holocaust survivor, is born near Czernowitz, then part of Romania and today in Ukraine. Appelfeld’s family is secular and assimilated into German culture, even banning the use of Yiddish in the home. In 1941 the Nazis, with collaborating Romanians, kill his mother and grandmother and shipped Aharon and his father to a concentration camp. Escaping from the camp alone when he is 10, he spends the next several years on the run, hiding in the Ukrainian countryside before joining the Russian army as a kitchen boy in 1944.
Appelfeld arrives in Palestine in 1946 after several months in a displaced-persons camp in Italy. He resumes his studies after completing only the first grade before the Nazis occupied his town. After completing his army service, he enrolls at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he begins writing.
In the early 1950s, Appelfeld finds his father’s name on a Jewish Agency list of survivors. Separated since 1941, he discovers that his father also is in Israel, living in a ma’abara (transit camp) in Be’er Tuvia. Recounting their reunion in an interview, Applefield says: “He had been at Be’er Tuvia for 10 days already, found a job and was working as a fruit-picker. I go to the grove and ask where he is, they tell me, ‘In that tree.’ I see a ladder, and on the ladder stands a very old Jew. I address him in German and say, ‘Herr Appelfeld?’ and he comes down the ladder, looks at me and cannot speak a single word, only the tears flow down his face. And for a whole day he could not speak a word, just this terrible crying. He does not tell me that he is my father, I do not tell him that I am his son.”
Often drawing upon his childhood experiences, Appelfeld depicts European Jews in the World War II era in many of his works. Titles such as For Every Sin, Tzili, Iron Tracks and The Healer gain him notoriety as a writer, catalyzing his receipt of the Bialik Prize in 1979 and the Israel Prize in 1983. Many of his works have been translated from Hebrew.
He finishes his career as a professor emeritus of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
