Fred Wander (5 January 1917 – 10 July 2006) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n writer and

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivor. Wander was born Fritz Rosenblatt in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he left school at 14 and worked as an apprentice in a

textile mill Textile Manufacturing or Textile Engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful goods ...

, before travelling around Europe taking whatever jobs were going. He spent quite some time in pre-war

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and this is where he first started to write. In 1938 after the German

annexation of Austria The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the Nazi Germany, German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Ger ...

, Wander escaped back to Paris via

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. After

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

declared war on Germany in 1939 he was

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

and eventually sent back to Austria, where he ended up in

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

, later being sent to

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

.
Wander survived the camps and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he lived in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

(GDR) from 1958 – 1983. It was while a resident in the GDR that in 1971 ''The Seventh Well'' () was published, it was an account of his experiences in the concentration camps. The book won much critical acclaim following a later re-release, including the 2009

JQ Wingate Prize 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 ...

. In 1983, Wander left the GDR and moved back to his native Vienna. He continued to write up until his death.

External links

Wander's bibliography
at

Copac Copac (originally an acronym of Consortium of Online Public Access Catalogues) was a union catalogue which provided free access to the merged online catalogues of many major research libraries and specialist libraries in the United Kingdom and Ire ...

. 1917 births 2006 deaths Writers from Vienna Austrian Jews Austrian male writers East German writers Heinrich Mann Prize winners Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Buchenwald concentration camp survivors German male writers Austrian emigrants to Germany {{Austria-writer-stub