Arnost Lustig was born in Czechoslovakia in 1926. After internment in Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, he escaped from a train of prisoners bound for Dachau. He returned to Prague to fight for the Czech resistance in 1945 and went into exile following the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Lustig now lives in the United States, where he teaches writing, literature, and the history of film at American University. Recently he received a 2004 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

It occurred to me why I was able to forgive the Italians. but never the Germans. Was it because the Italians never slept on mattresses stuffed with the hair of Luster Leibling or Weltfeind Flusser?

Arnost Lustig was born in Czechoslovakia in 1926. After internment in Theresienstadt, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, he escaped from a train of prisoners bound for Dachau. He returned to Prague to fight for the Czech resistance in 1945 and went into exile following the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Lustig now lives in the United States, where he teaches writing, literature, and the history of film at American University. Recently he received a 2004 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

It occurred to me why I was able to forgive the Italians. but never the Germans. Was it because the Italians never slept on mattresses stuffed with the hair of Luster Leibling or Weltfeind Flusser?