Hello
Gentle Reader
Aharon
Applefeld was a celebrated Israeli author, whose early life was marked and
scarred by the Second World War and the Holocaust, has died recently at the age
of eighty five years old. Applefeld was
born February 16th 1932, in a part of Romania (which now is enclosed
in the Ukraine). During the Second World War, Aharon Applefeld along with his
father was sent to a German labour camp in the Romanian controlled district of Transnistria.
The young Applefeld escaped the camp and would later hide in the forest, where
he was adopted by a band of Ukrainian bandits, where he was able to pick up a
bit of the Ukrainian language. After two years living with the Ukrainian
bandits and working as a gopher; Applefeld would work as a cook in the Red Army,
where he learned Russian; during this time he also lived with a prostitute for
five months, and later spent time in Italy in a refugee camp where he picked up
a bit of Italian. Throughout most of his childhood Aharon Applefeld, was under
the impression that his father had died in the labour camp; however, he would
find his father’s name on a Jewish Agency list, and would locate his father
without preemptive notice, to ensure it was his father. The reunion was
emotional and difficult; Applefeld never wrote about it, only made slight references
to it in interviews. Throughout his life, Aharon Applefeld was highly regarded
as a prominent Israeli writer, despite in his youth he did not read a Hebrew
language book until he was twenty-five, and did not know any aspect of the
Hebrew language until he was fourteen or fifteen he immigrated to Israel. Learning
and reading Hebrew, Applefeld had described it as torturous due to the fact he
had to look up so many words in the dictionary. Yet as he aged, Aharon
Applefeld would go on to learn Yiddish as well as English. His literary output
is noted for being overshadowed by the holocaust and marred by his early experiences
at life. His themes and subject matter often dealt with displacement,
disorientation, guilt and grief, the cruelty of man, and the experience of loss
of home, normalcy, and family.
Rest
in Peace Aharon Applefeld, God knows you deserve it.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
No comments:
Post a Comment