Aharon Appelfeld

Aharon Appelfeld was born in 1932 in Stara Zhadova

Appelfeld was born Ervin Appelfeld in 1932 in Zhadova, in the Bukovina region, then part of Romania and now in Ukraine. He was an only child, and his mother tongue was German. He learned Yiddish from his grandparents, who kept the Sadigura Hasidic tradition.

In 1941 his mother was murdered, and he and his father were deported to a labor camp in Transnistria. He escaped, hid in the forests, and later joined the Soviet army as a cook. After time in Italy, he reached the Land of Israel in 1946 with Youth Aliyah.

He studied at agricultural schools in Ein Karem and Nahalal and served in the IDF. From 1952 he studied Hebrew and Yiddish literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning bachelor's and master's degrees. He learned Hebrew in Israel and chose it as the language of his writing.

His first book, the story collection Smoke, came out in 1962. Most of his work deals with Jewish life in Europe before, during and after World War II, often without describing the Holocaust directly. From 1979 to 2000 he was a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

He was a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language and received many prizes in Israel and Europe. He lived in Mevaseret Zion and later in Jerusalem. He died in 2018, survived by his wife Yehudit and 3 children.