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Aharon Appelfeld

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The writer Aharon Appelfeld was born Erwin Appelfeld on 16 February 1932 in Zhadova, about 45 km south-west of Chernivtsi. He grew up in a sheltered environment as the only child of a wealthy, middle-class and assimilated Jewish couple in Chernivtsi. His mother tongue was German, he spoke Yiddish with his grandparents, and he was also familiar with Ukrainian and Romanian in everyday life. Aharon Appelfeld later wrote about the family's self-image: My parents saw themselves as Europeans, not as Jews. The home library was in German and French.

Aharon Appelfeld

1932 (Jadova) - 2018 (Jerusalem)

Author

But his childhood ended abruptly. Shortly after the war broke out, his mother and grandmother were murdered by Romanian and German soldiers - the child heard the screams from next door. Together with his father, he was first sent to the ghetto in Chernivtsi, then on a death march to a camp in Transnistria, where Erwin Appelfeld was separated from his father. The ten-year-old boy managed to escape and lived through the war years in the Ukrainian forests, roaming and hiding. Later, as a writer, Aharon Appelfeld would write about this period numerous times, using the medium of fiction to approach his own memories and reconstruct his identity and biography. It was the small coincidences, the human encounters, that saved him during those years. In retrospect, many things seem fictional, not real - like the tree of red apples in front of which the starving Edwin suddenly found himself after his escape. But above all, it was hope that got him through the war years. He pretended to be a Christian orphan and helped out as a casual labourer on Romanian farms. Then he was allowed to stay for a while with a prostitute on the outskirts of a village in exchange for doing her housework. Later, in 1944, he joined the Red Army as a kitchen boy and survived until the end of the war.

Edwin Appelfeld eventually made his way from the Ukraine to Italy via a circuitous route. The journey was dangerous and the people were neglected. He came into contact with organized crime and had to work for thieves and smugglers - all of which shaped and educated the 12-14 year old boy. On the Italian coast near Naples, he was sent to a liberated camp where he waited with former prisoners for passage to Palestine. This was the beginning of a new life for him in 1946, when he found himself alone in a foreign land, a 14-year-old boy who was without language and had lost everything.

The beginning was not easy. To fit in, he changed his name to Aharon and, like all new arrivals, lived on a kibbutz. There they built terraces for orange trees and learnt Hebrew. They were to be educated to become 'new Jews', to forget, to leave the past behind. But Aharon Appelfeld could not leave his past, his memories, behind. He found refuge in writing, as he said: “I sit down and write and I am in my house.”

He began writing at an early age, taking advantage of every free hour. At first it was just a few words, as Hebrew was still foreign to him. But writing was "a necessity" for him - "I had to," he said in later years. Writing had a psychological meaning for him, allowing him to return to his memories and to his parents and grandparents. But it took years for Aharon Appelfeld to overcome his enforced loss of language and learn to write in Hebrew.

After his time on the kibbutz and his high school graduation, he studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba from 1975 to 2001. He published his first collection of short stories in 1962, followed by some 40 other works of prose, mainly novels. However, recognition as a writer was not easy at first. For a long time, there was no literature or discussion in Israel about the Holocaust - it only began hesitantly in 1961 with the Eichmann trial. Prose, non-documentary texts about the Shoah in Europe were practically non-existent.

Over the years, Aharon Appelfeld's work has gained international recognition and his books have been translated into over thirty languages, some of which are also available in English. His works are all biographical, but rather than offering authentic testimony, they combine physical and bodily memories, finding a language for the unspeakable. It was only in the autobiographical novel 'Sippur chajim' (2005; 'Story of a Life'), published in 1999, that the writer used 'I' for the first time. But he is always concerned with the question of why history cannot be left behind but is an integral part of every identity. The author, who received numerous international awards, lived in Jerusalem for many years. He died in Petach Tikva (near Tel Aviv) on 4 January 2018.

Text: Kirsten Heyerhoff

Works in English

Badenheim 1939 (1978, English translation: 1980)
The Age of Wonders (1978, tr. 1981)
Tzili (1982, tr. 1983)
The Retreat (tr. 1984)
To the Land of the Cattails (tr. 1986) (earlier published as To the Land of the Reeds)
The Immortal Bartfuss (1988)
For Every Sin (tr. 1989)
The Healer (tr. 1990)
Katerina (1989, tr. 1992)
Iron Tracks (1991, tr. 1998)
Unto the Soul (tr. 1993)
The Conversion (1991, tr. 1998)
Laish (2001, tr. 2009)
Beyond Despair: Three Lectures and a Conversation With Philip Roth (tr. 2003)
The Story of a Life: A Memoir (2003)
A Table For One: Under The Light Of Jerusalem (tr. 2005)
All Whom I Have Loved (tr. 2007)
Blooms of Darkness (2006, tr. 2010)
Until the Dawn’s Light (1995, tr. 2011)
Yalda Shelo Minhaolam Hazé = A girl from another world (fiction for children) (2013, not yet tr. in English), (published in French, Italian, 2014)
Suddenly Love (tr. 2014)
Long Summer Nights (2015)
Adam and Thomas (fiction for children) (2015)
The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping (2017)
To the Edge of Sorrow (2012, tr. 2020)