Alfred Hellmuth Andersch was a German writer, publisher, and radio editor. The son of a conservative East Prussian army officer, he was born in Munich, Germany, and died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland. Martin Andersch, his brother, was also a writer.
Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood is a 1995 book, whose author used the pseudonym Binjamin Wilkomirski, which purports to be a memoir of the Holocaust. It was debunked by Swiss journalist and writer Daniel Ganzfried in August 1998. The subsequent disclosure of Wilkomirski's fabrications sparked heated debate in the German- and English-speaking world. Many critics argued that Fragments no longer had any literary value. Swiss historian and anti-Semitism expert Stefan Maechler later wrote, "Once the professed interrelationship between the first-person narrator, the death-camp story he narrates, and historical reality are proved palpably false, what was a masterpiece becomes kitsch."
Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. Schulz was shot and killed by a Gestapo officer in 1942 while walking back home toward Drohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.
Jonas Mekas was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwide. Mekas was active in New York City, where he co-founded Anthology Film Archives, The Film-Makers' Cooperative, and the journal Film Culture. He was also the first film critic for The Village Voice.
Winfried Georg Sebald, known as W. G. Sebald or Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was according to The New Yorker ”widely recognized for his extraordinary contribution to world literature.”
Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
Salomon Isacovici was a Jewish Holocaust survivor who became a writer and businessman in Ecuador. Born in Romania, he moved to Ecuador following World War II, and co-authored with Juan Manuel Rodriguez the book Man of Ashes.
Chaim Grade was one of the leading Yiddish writers of the twentieth century.
The Reader is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades.
Itzhak Katzenelson (Hebrew: יצחק קצנלסון, Yiddish: (יצחק קאַצ נעלסאָן was a Polish Jewish teacher, poet and dramatist. He was born in 1886 in Karelichy near Minsk, and was murdered on 1 May 1944 in Auschwitz.
Dan Jacobson was a South African novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist of Lithuanian Jewish descent.
Austerlitz is a 2001 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. It was Sebald's final novel. The book received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it was ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
Michael Hulse is an English poet, translator and critic, notable especially for his translations of German novels by W. G. Sebald, Herta Müller, and Elfriede Jelinek.
The Rings of Saturn is a 1995 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. Its first-person narrative arc is the account by a nameless narrator on a walking tour of Suffolk. In addition to describing the places he sees and people he encounters, including translator Michael Hamburger, Sebald discusses various episodes of history and literature, including the introduction of silkworm cultivation to Europe, and the writings of Thomas Browne, which attach in some way to the larger text. The book was published in English in 1998.
Visas and Virtue is a 1997 narrative short film directed by Chris Tashima and starring Chris Tashima, Susan Fukuda, Diana Georger and Lawrence Craig. It was inspired by the true story of Holocaust rescuer Chiune "Sempo" Sugihara, who is known as "The Japanese Schindler". Sugihara issued over 2,000 transit visas to Polish and Lithuanian Jews from his consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania, in August 1940, in defiance of his own government (Japan), thereby allowing an estimated 6,000 individuals to escape the impending Holocaust.
Arthur Allen Cohen was an American scholar, art critic, theologian, publisher, and author.
Vertigo is a 1990 novel and the first by the German author W. G. Sebald. The first of its four sections, titled 'Beyle, or Love is a Madness Most Discreet', is a short but conventional biography of Stendhal, who is referred to not by his pen name but by his birth name of Beyle. The second, 'All'estero', is a travelogue of two journeys made to the Alpine region by an unnamed narrator whose biography resembles Sebald's; an episode from the life of Casanova is also featured. The third, 'Dr K Takes the Waters at Riva', describes a difficult period in the life of Franz Kafka, referred to only as "Dr. K." Kafka's short story The Hunter Gracchus is re-told in summary form and the meaning of the hunter's ceaseless voyage interpreted by the narrator as Kafka's penitence for a longing for love. And the fourth, 'Il ritorno in patria', is a nostalgic recounting of the narrator's visit to his German hometown of "W," a rural village which he has seen nothing of for decades. The narrator recalls one of the town's residents, Hans Schlag the huntsman, who, falling to his death, suffers the same fate as the huntsman in Kafka's short story. Sebald makes notable use of leitmotif, such as sensations of dizziness as suggested in the title, and deceased persons lying covered on platforms. The novel functions along with Sebald's subsequent works The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn as a trilogy. All three works were translated into English by Michael Hulse in partnership with Sebald.
The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize is an annual British literary prize inaugurated in 1977. It is named after the host Jewish Quarterly and the prize's founder Harold Hyam Wingate. The award recognises Jewish and non-Jewish writers resident in the UK, British Commonwealth, Europe and Israel who "stimulate an interest in themes of Jewish concern while appealing to the general reader". As of 2011 the winner receives £4,000.
Jacob Gens was the head of the Vilnius Ghetto government. Originally from a merchant family, he joined the Lithuanian Army shortly after the independence of Lithuania, rising to the rank of captain while also securing a college degree in law and economics. He married a non-Jew and worked at several jobs, including as a teacher, accountant, and administrator.
