Author Description

Memoirs of a Jewish German-language poet, born in Czernowitz in 1906. Pp. 55-100 deal with the World War II period. The city was under Russian occupation during 1940-41; in June 1941 the Romanians recaptured it, taking revenge on the population (i.e. Jews) which had welcomed the Red Army. The Jews had to move to the ghetto; soon thereafter the deportations to Transnistria began, and Kittner and his wife were sent to a labor camp. They escaped selections several times, and were liberated in 1944. They returned to Czernowitz for a short period, then moved to Bucharest, and in 1981 settled in Düsseldorf, where he died in 1991.