Background
He was born into a Jewish family in Sachsenberg, part of Český Těšín.
He was born into a Jewish family in Sachsenberg, part of Český Těšín.
He studied Slavonic philology in Lviv, which then was a part of Poland.
During the World World War II, he was a soldier in the Czechoslovakian units of the Soviet Army in the Soviet Union. Between 1945 and 1950 he worked in the Czechoslovakian state radio and after that he became government-sanctioned "writer"
After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he left for exile and until 1976 lived in Munich.
He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.