Miriam Akavia

Miriam Akavia was born in 1927 in Kraków

She was born Matylda Weinfeld in Kraków in 1927, the daughter of Bronia and Hirsch Weinfeld. After the German invasion in 1939, the family lost its property, and in 1941 it was sent to the Kraków Ghetto.

She was held in the Płaszów camp, then in Auschwitz, and was forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Her father died in Mauthausen and her mother died shortly before the British freed Bergen-Belsen. She then recovered in Sweden through a Swedish Red Cross operation.

In 1946 she came to the Land of Israel with Hanan Jakubowicz, whom she married at Kibbutz Degania Bet. In 1948 they helped found Kibbutz Nahsholim and later settled in Tel Aviv. She trained as a nurse, studied literature and history at Tel Aviv University, and joined her husband on diplomatic missions in Hungary and Sweden.

She began writing in the 1970s, mainly about her childhood and the Holocaust, and her books were translated into many languages. She translated between Hebrew and Polish and, as president of the Platform for Jewish-Polish Dialogue, organized meetings between young people of both countries. She died in 2015 and was buried in Nataf.