Arnost Lustig

Arnost Lustig was born in Prague in 1926. He had completed 7 grades when the Nazis prohibited all Jewish children from attending school. In 1942, he was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Two years later, he was transferred to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald. In the spring of 1945, he escaped a train carrying him to his death in Dachau, when an American fighter-bomber dive-bombed the engine thinking it a military transport. He managed to get back to Prague and took part in the anti-Nazi uprising in May 1945. After the war, Lustig studied journalism at Charles University and worked for Radio Prague. Lustig left Prague during the Soviet occupation in 1968. He has been in the United States since 1970 and is now a Professor of Literature at the American University in Washington, DC.