Aharon Appelfeld is an Israeli writer of Hebrew fiction. Appelfeld's writing is concerned almost entirely with the destruction of European Jewry in World War II, and from the 1960's through the 1980's his work represented the most successful and sustained treatment of the subject in Israeli literature.
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.
Education
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.