Aharon
Appelfeld was born in 1932 in Czernovitz, Bukovina (now part of the
Ukraine). At the age of nine he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration
camp, from which he escaped. Having witnessed the murder of his mother
by the Nazis and having been separated from his father, Appelfeld hid
in the forests. He eventually joined the Soviet army as a kitchen boy,
immigrating to Palestine in 1946.
Appelfeld
has been exploring the existential themes of the Holocaust for more
than forty years. The author of twelve internationally acclaimed novels,
including Badenheim 1939, The Iron Tracks, Unto the Soul, The Retreat,
and The Age of Wonders. Appelfeld's depth of insight and distinctively
stark, elegant style have won him recognition as one of the world's
great writers. Appelfeld lives in Jerusalem.
Click
on a selection below to hear a moving audio webcast
interview
with author Aharon Appelfeld:
Photo:
Hadar Shtull-Trauring
If
you don't already have the Real Audio plug-in for your browser, you
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Networks in order to hear the broadcast.
Click
on a topic:
1. The fundamentals of my writing
2. I was surrounded by many wonderful
people
3. It is a privilege to be a Hebrew writer
4. The religious tune that has been lost...
5. I am surrounded with Jewishness
6. Creativity is a permanent memory
7. The Holocaust was my childhood
8. I am not a Holocaust writer
9. Healing means to become a Jew
again
10. The purpose for a writer is to bring hope
11. I am the Israeli writer
12. You are drinking coffee in a coffee house
and so you are connected...
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IRON TRACKS
How does one
live after surviving injustice? What satisfaction comes from revenge?
Can the past be left behind? The Iron Tracks is a haunting exploration
of one survivor's complex, wrenching inner world.
Ever since
he was released from a concentration camp forty years earlier,
Erwin Siegelbaum has been obsessively riding the trains of postwar
Austria. His days are filled with drink, his nights with brief
love affairs and the torments of his nightmares. What keeps him
sane is his mission to collect the menorahs, kiddush cups, and
holy books that have survived their vanished owners. And the hope
that one day he will find the Nazi officer who murdered his parentsand
have the strength to kill him.
A
short selection from The Iron Tracks
Guide
questions for discussion of The Iron Tracks
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