Edgar Hilsenrath
(born 02.04.1926 in Leipzig, died 30.12.2018 in Wittlich), author
Edgar Hilsenrath fled to Romania in 1938 with his Jewish family. In 1941 he was deported to a ghetto in Ukraine, which the Red Army dissolved three years later. Hilsenrath finished up in Palestine, where he made ends meet as a casual labourer. He later emigrated to the USA. There he wrote his first novel, Nacht (Night), which was published in 1964 and in which he described his experiences in the ghetto. Hilsenrath returned to Germany in 1975. His literary work, which mostly focused on the Holocaust, received multiple awards, including the Alfred Döblin Prize, the German Audio Book Prize and the Hilde Domin Prize for Literature in Exile.