Ilse Aichinger

Born in Vienna to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, Ilse Aichinger was raised as a Christian. Nevertheless, she was persecuted as a Mischling by Nazi policy and spent the war as a forced laborer. In 1945, she began writing about her experiences of Nazi oppression and won many literary prizes for her often surreal and allegorical short stories and poems. Aichinger was among the first Austrian writers to address the events of the Holocaust. She participated in the Gruppe 47, a postwar German writers’ group.