André Schwarz-Bart was the author of The Last of the Just, which tells the story of a Jewish family from the the Crusades to Auschwitz. Published in French, it won the Prix Goncourt in 1959 and was acclaimed as one of the great postwar novels.
He was born Abraham Szwarcbart at Metz in Alsace-Lorraine, his parents having moved there from Poland. During the war, the children of his family born in Poland were separated from those born in France, and as eldest of the latter group he took charge as they were shuttled around farms. In 1943 they were sent to an internment building in Paris. There he contacted the Resistance, and the children reached the Free Zone while he lived underground until arrested by the Germans in Limoges. Again he escaped, living exiguously until the Liberation, when he joined the French Army.
When in 1945 it became clear that part of his family, including his parents, had been killed in a camp, he took a series of mundane jobs, passed his baccalaureate and attended the Sorbonne. He also started to write.
His later work included two more novels, Plat de porc aux bananes vertes (1967), on which he collaborated with his wife, Simone Brumant, and A Woman Named Solitude (1972).
Advertisement
André Schwarz-Bart, writer, was born on May 23, 1928. He died on September 30, 2006, aged 78