Friedrich Torberg

Critic and journalist Friedrich Kantor, who wrote under the name Friedrich Torberg, was born in Vienna but fled to France in 1938. After spending a year in the Free Czech Army during World War II, Torberg moved to the United States, where he worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. He returned to Vienna in 1951 and remained there for the rest of his life. In addition to his own works of satirical fiction and nonfiction, Kantor is known for his German translations of the works of Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon. Until his death, Torberg remained among the most prominent Jewish critics in Austria, openly condemning collaborators in the Holocaust and writing in tribute to its victims.