Background
Appelfeld was born Feb. 16, 1932, in Chernovtsy, Bukovina (then in Romania, now part of Ukraine). He was imprisoned in concentration camps but escaped and spent most of the war years hiding in the forests of Ukraine.
Appelfeld was born Feb. 16, 1932, in Chernovtsy, Bukovina (then in Romania, now part of Ukraine). He was imprisoned in concentration camps but escaped and spent most of the war years hiding in the forests of Ukraine.
He arrived in Palestine in 1947 and was educated in Youth Aliyah institutions and at the Hebrew University, where he studied Hebrew and Yiddish literature.
The hallmark of Appelfeld's fiction is the principled choice not to represent in his work the images and motifs central to most other Holocaust literature: the world of the concentration camps, the extermination mechanism, and the Nazis themselves. His art is based on techniques of restraint and aesthetic distance. The war years themselves are passed over in favor of the periods before and after the horror. Such works as Baddenheim, ir nofesh (1975; Baddenheim 1939, 1980) and Tor hapela'ot (1978; The Age of Wonders, 1981) explore the paradox of how German-speaking Jewry, one of the most enlightened and accomplished groups in Europe, could have been blind to their fate as Jews. Other works examine the persistence of the past in the lives of middle-aged survivors in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Appelfeld presents an unidealized image of the Holocaust survivor, yet one that is depicted with understanding rather than judgment. His other works in English translation are Tzili (1983) and The Immortal Bartfuss (1988), which were taken from the Hebrew volume Haketonet vehapasim (1983) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `description` = VALUES(`description`); To the Land of the Cattails (1986) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `description` = VALUES(`description`); For Every Sin (1989) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `description` = VALUES(`description`); The Healer (1990) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `description` = VALUES(`description`); and Katerina (1992).
