Author Arnošt Lustig dies at 84

Czech Jewish writer and concentration camp survivor Arnošt Lustig, whose writings on the Holocaust have won numerous awards and been translated into 17 languages, has died at the age of 84.

Lustig passed away Feb. 26 at Prague's Královské Vinohrady Faculty Hospital after battling cancer for the past five years, Markéta Mališová of Franz Kafka Publishing House said.

"He survived concentration camps, but did not survive an insidious disease with which he fought until the last moments. Then it overwhelmed him," she told the Czech News Agency.

Lustig wrote a number of novels and short-story collections based on his experiences during World War II, including A Prayer for Katerina Horowitzowa (1974), Dita Saxova (1962), Night and Hope (1957), Diamonds of the Night (1958) and Lovely Green Eyes (2004).

Dita Saxova, Night and Hope and Diamonds of the Night were all later made into films.

Mališová said Lustig's illness had not prevented him from looking to the future, with the author still planning at the time of his death to finish a number of books and pay a visit to fellow Czech émigré author Milan Kundera in Paris.

Born in Prague in December 1926, Lustig was sent to the concentration camp in Terezín, north Bohemia, in fall 1942 at the age of 15, and later deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

"During three years there, I was three times sentenced to be shot dead and umpteenth times to be gassed," Lustig later recalled.

He escaped a train taking him to the Dachau camp at the end of World War II when it was strafed by a U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber, and returned to Prague in May 1945.

One of Lustig's primary literary themes was the internal force of human beings that allows them to resist humiliation and keep their dignity even in situations of extreme danger.

After World War II, Lustig studied journalism at Charles University and later worked for a number of daily newspapers. He served as a war correspondent during the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948.

He also later worked as a reporter at Czechoslovak Radio, an editor of the youth magazine Mladý svět and scriptwriter at Prague's Barrandov film studios.

In 1968, Lustig left the country, living first in Israel, where he met his future wife, Věra Weislitzová, and Yugoslavia, before settling in the United States in 1970 and becoming a professor of literature at American University in Washington, D.C. in 1973. After the 1989 fall of the communist regime, he returned regularly to the Czech Republic.

Twice awarded the U.S. National Jewish Book Award, Lustig's novel Lovely Green Eyes was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2003, and in 2009 he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize.

In October 2008, a jury of 15 renowned authors awarded Lustig the eighth Franz Kafka Literary Award. Fellow recipients of the $10,000 prize include Václav Havel, Harold Pinter, Haruki Murakami and Philip Roth.

Asked about his experience of being an award-winning writer, Lustig told Radio Prague in 2007, "You know, writers are like clowns. When you applaud them, they are ready to dance forever. ... You have met me when I am very happy, like old clowns and writers being praised."

He is survived by his son Josef and daughter Eva.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com