Aharon Appelfeld — author with roots in the USSR
Aharon Appelfeld was an Israeli novelist born in Jadova (then Romania, now Ukraine) whose mother was murdered at the start of the German invasion and who was deported to a concentration camp as a child. He escaped and survived for years hiding in the Ukrainian forests before making his way to Israel, where he became one of the most celebrated Hebrew-language authors of the 20th century.
Tracing the roots — Czernowitz (Ukraine)
Born in 1932 in a region that shifted between Romania and Soviet-occupied Ukraine, Appelfeld grew up in the borderland world of the Russian Empire's Jewish communities before the Holocaust destroyed it. His novels — Badenheim 1939, The Age of Wonders, The Iron Tracks — reconstruct the world of Central and Eastern European Jewish life before its annihilation with extraordinary delicacy.
Czernowitz (Ukraine). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.
A career defined by ambition
"I write about the world that was destroyed. I am its last witness."