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Miriam Akavia
An Israeli writer born in Krakow, where she
spent her childhood and early youth. During the war, she managed to
survive a month on "Aryan papers", but she was eventually put in the
Krakow ghetto, and then sent to the concentration camps at Plaszow,
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen.
After the Second World War, in 1946, she left Europe. After the
humiliation and Gehenna she experienced in the camps, she decided to
begin her life anew in Israel, helping to build that new state.
Her debut as a writer came only thirty years after she arrived in
Israel. She has written several books. Nowa Poezja Hebrajska [Polish,
New Hebrew Poetry] (Lodz: Oficyna Bibliofilow, 1995); a story titled
Cena [Polish, The Price] (Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, 1992);
Galia i Miklosz (Galia and Miklosz) - children's fiction, (Poznan: CIA
books svaro, 1992); the novel Jesien mlodosci (Polish, Autumn of Youth)
(Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1989); the novel Moja winnica (Polish,
My Vineyard) (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1990).
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In his forward to the Polish edition of
Autumn of Youth, written as a private letter, Elie Wiesel, a professor
at Boston University and a Nobel Prize laureate, writes: "...this week, I
returned from your town. From the world of your lost childhood. I
returned from Krakow. [...] A strange feeling came over me: around me
was Krakow, and I was strolling through the pages of your books. You
were a good guide, dear Miriam. [...] That's important. People should
know that once Poland was a country where there was also a different
kind of childhood, and Sabbath candles."
(asw/cm)
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