Ida Fink

Ida Fink was born in 1921 in Zbarazh

Ida Fink was born Ida Landau in Zbaraż, Poland, in 1921, to a Polish-Jewish family. Her father, Ludwig Landau, was a physician, and her mother, Fannie, was a teacher. She studied music at the Lwów Conservatory and decided at 16 to become a writer.

The German invasion of Poland in 1939 ended her studies. She and her family were held in the Zbaraż ghetto in 1941 and 1942. She then escaped with her sister using Aryan papers and moved between hiding places, working on German farms until the war ended.

After the war she married Bruno Fink, an engineer, and they had a daughter, Miri. In 1957 the family moved to Israel and settled in Holon. She worked as a music librarian and collected testimonies for Yad Vashem.

She wrote in Polish, and her books were translated into Hebrew. Her stories focus on individuals and their daily struggle to survive during the Holocaust, written in concise language. Her work won the Anne Frank Prize, the Buchman Prize, the Sapir Prize and the Israel Prize.

In her final years she lived in Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv. She died in 2011 and was buried in the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. Her archive is kept at the National Library in Jerusalem.