Aharon Appelfeld

Aharon Appelfeld (; born Ervin Appelfeld; February 16, 1932 – January 4, 2018) was a Romanian-born Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor. He lived in Mevaseret Zion and taught literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and was often writing in Jerusalem's Ticho House (Beit Ticho).
In 2007, Appelfeld's "Badenheim 1939" was adapted for the stage and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem.
In 1941, when he was nine years old, the Romanian Army retook his hometown after a year of Soviet occupation and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a Nazi concentration camp in Romanian-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook.