Jona Eliëser Joseph Oberski (20 March 1938) is a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

writer, and a nuclear physicist. A year before his birth, his parents escaped from

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, and settled in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

. But when

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 opposing ...

broke out, the country was soon occupied, and there remained no other route available than the one forced upon all the other Jewish families. The family was transported through Westerbork and to

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...

. Jona survived the war, but both his parents died. Oberski was on The Lost Train, a train heading East with no clear destination. The train was captured by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

in Tröbitz. He was taken care of by a foster family. He dedicated his first book ''Childhood'' to his foster parents: After the war he went to school and university, specializing as a nuclear and particle physicist. Oberski is married, having three children. In 1962, he started to work for the National Institute for Subatomic Physics.

Published works

In the '70s, Oberski joined a poetry workshop, after which it occurred to him to write about his own experiences of the

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...

. In 1978, the book ''Kinderjaren'' (''Childhood'') was first published in The Netherlands. The book, in particular, follows the events through the eyes of a small child. Translations of ''Childhood'' have been published in Canada, Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Croatia, Norway, Poland, Spain, USA, Sweden. ''Childhood'' was filmed as "Jonah who lived in the whale", put unto DVD as "Look to the sky". He further published two more literary works in Dutch, ''De ongenode gast'' (1995) (''The Uninvited Visitor'') and ''De eigenaar van niemandsland'' (1997) (''The Proprietor of No Mans Land''), and columns and articles for several magazines. Other published works are related to his science specialty, physics, like his: "An alpha-deuteron correlation experiment on carbon with the multidetector BOL (Ph.D. thesis) (1971)"

References

External links

Jona Oberski at the Digital Library for Dutch Literature
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oberski, Jona 1938 births Living people Dutch male poets Dutch non-fiction writers Dutch nuclear physicists Dutch Jews Westerbork transit camp survivors Writers from Amsterdam Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Male non-fiction writers