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Aharon Appelfeld
Aharon Appelfeld (Hebrew: אהרן אפלפלד; born Ervin Appelfeld; February 16, 1932 – January 4, 2018) was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor.
Ervin (Aharon) Appelfeld was born in Jadova Commune, Storojineț County, in the Bukovina region of the Kingdom of Romania, now Ukraine. In an interview with the literary scholar, Nili Gold, in 2011, he remembered his home town in this district, Czernowitz, as "a very beautiful" place, full of schools and with two Latin gymnasiums, where fifty to sixty percent of the population was Jewish. In 1941, when he was nine years old, the Romanian Army retook his hometown after a year of Soviet occupation and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a forced labor camp in Romanian-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After World War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list in 1960. (Both Appelfeld and his father had presumed the other had been murdered in the Holocaust. They had both made their way separately to Israel after the war.) The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld had never been able to write about it.
In Israel, Appelfeld made up for his lack of formal schooling and learned Hebrew, the language in which he began to write. His first literary efforts were short stories, but gradually he progressed to novels. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lived in Mevaseret Zion and taught literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and was often writing in Jerusalem's Ticho House (Beit Ticho).[citation needed]
In 2007, Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 was adapted for the stage by Arnold Wesker and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem.[citation needed]
Appelfeld was one of Israel's foremost living Hebrew-language authors, despite the fact that he did not learn the language until he was a teenager. His mother tongue was German, but he was also proficient in Yiddish, Ukrainian, Romanian, Russian, English, and Italian. With his subject matter revolving around the Holocaust and the sufferings of the Jews in Europe, he could not bring himself to write in German. He chose Hebrew as his literary vehicle for its succinctness and biblical imagery.[citation needed]
Appelfeld purchased his first Hebrew book at the age of 25: King of Flesh and Blood by Moshe Shamir. In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, he said he agonized over it, because it was written in Mishnaic Hebrew and he had to look up every word in the dictionary.
In an interview in the Boston Review, Appelfeld explained his choice of Hebrew: "I’m lucky that I’m writing in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very precise language, you have to be very precise—no over-saying. This is because of our Bible tradition. In the Bible tradition you have very small sentences, very concise and autonomic. Every sentence, in itself, has to have its own meaning."
Many Holocaust survivors have written an autobiographical account of their survival, but Appelfeld did not offer a realistic depiction of the events. He wrote short stories that can be interpreted in a metaphoric way. Instead of his personal experience, he sometimes evoked the Holocaust without even relating to it directly. His style is clear and precise, but also very modernistic.
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Aharon Appelfeld
Aharon Appelfeld (Hebrew: אהרן אפלפלד; born Ervin Appelfeld; February 16, 1932 – January 4, 2018) was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor.
Ervin (Aharon) Appelfeld was born in Jadova Commune, Storojineț County, in the Bukovina region of the Kingdom of Romania, now Ukraine. In an interview with the literary scholar, Nili Gold, in 2011, he remembered his home town in this district, Czernowitz, as "a very beautiful" place, full of schools and with two Latin gymnasiums, where fifty to sixty percent of the population was Jewish. In 1941, when he was nine years old, the Romanian Army retook his hometown after a year of Soviet occupation and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a forced labor camp in Romanian-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After World War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list in 1960. (Both Appelfeld and his father had presumed the other had been murdered in the Holocaust. They had both made their way separately to Israel after the war.) The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld had never been able to write about it.
In Israel, Appelfeld made up for his lack of formal schooling and learned Hebrew, the language in which he began to write. His first literary efforts were short stories, but gradually he progressed to novels. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lived in Mevaseret Zion and taught literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and was often writing in Jerusalem's Ticho House (Beit Ticho).[citation needed]
In 2007, Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 was adapted for the stage by Arnold Wesker and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem.[citation needed]
Appelfeld was one of Israel's foremost living Hebrew-language authors, despite the fact that he did not learn the language until he was a teenager. His mother tongue was German, but he was also proficient in Yiddish, Ukrainian, Romanian, Russian, English, and Italian. With his subject matter revolving around the Holocaust and the sufferings of the Jews in Europe, he could not bring himself to write in German. He chose Hebrew as his literary vehicle for its succinctness and biblical imagery.[citation needed]
Appelfeld purchased his first Hebrew book at the age of 25: King of Flesh and Blood by Moshe Shamir. In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, he said he agonized over it, because it was written in Mishnaic Hebrew and he had to look up every word in the dictionary.
In an interview in the Boston Review, Appelfeld explained his choice of Hebrew: "I’m lucky that I’m writing in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very precise language, you have to be very precise—no over-saying. This is because of our Bible tradition. In the Bible tradition you have very small sentences, very concise and autonomic. Every sentence, in itself, has to have its own meaning."
Many Holocaust survivors have written an autobiographical account of their survival, but Appelfeld did not offer a realistic depiction of the events. He wrote short stories that can be interpreted in a metaphoric way. Instead of his personal experience, he sometimes evoked the Holocaust without even relating to it directly. His style is clear and precise, but also very modernistic.
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