The Immortal Bartfuss

Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018) was one of Israel's most celebrated novelists and a leading voice in Holocaust literature.

Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (then part of Romania, now Ukraine), Appelfeld was eight when the Nazis invaded. His mother was murdered, and he was deported with his father to a labor camp in Transnistria. He escaped and spent years surviving alone in the forests and villages of Ukraine, then served with the Soviet army before making his way to Palestine in 1946. There he learned Hebrew, a language he would adopt as his literary medium, and later studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Appelfeld published more than forty books, including novels, story collections, essays, and a memoir. His spare, restrained prose rarely depicts the Holocaust directly. Instead, he explores the world on its edge: the assimilated European Jewish life that preceded catastrophe, and the dislocation of survivors afterward. Among his best-known works are Badenheim 1939, The Iron Tracks, Tzili: The Story of a Life, The Story of a Life (his memoir), and Blooms of Darkness.

His honors include the Israel Prize (2004), the Prix Médicis étranger, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Nelly Sachs Prize, among others. He taught literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was a longtime resident of Mevaseret Zion, near Jerusalem.

Appelfeld's work has been translated into dozens of languages. He is remembered for giving quiet, humane expression to experiences that many considered beyond the reach of words.