Badenheim 1939

Author	Aharon Appelfeld
Original title (if not in English)	באדנהיים עיר נופש (translit.: Badenhaim `ir nofesh)
Translator	Dalya Bilu
Country	Israel
Language	Hebrew
Genre(s)	Allegorical, Satire, Historical
Publisher	David R Godine (translation)
Released	1978 (November 1980 English translation)
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	144 pp. (translation paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-87923-342-7 (translation hardback edition) & ISBN 0-7043-8026-9 (translation paperback edition)

Badenheim 1939 is the first novel by Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld. First published in Hebrew in 1978 as באדנהיים עיר נופש (Badenhaim `ir nofesh), it was soon translated in to many other languages. Badenheim is an allegorical satire that tells the story of a fictional Jewish town in Austria shortly before its residents are relocated to the Polish concentration camps. Aharon Appelfeld (b. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ... An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, other, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, to speak in public) is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. ... The World According To Ronald Reagan - a Finnish satirical poster from 1984 Satire is a technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... History is often used as a generic term for information about the past, such as in geologic history of the Earth. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of human societies. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... Paperback may refer to a kind of book binding by which papers are simply folded without cloth or leather and bound - usually with glue rather than stitches or staples - into a thick paper cover; or to a book with this type of binding. ... Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe; title page of 1719 newspaper edition A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... Aharon Appelfeld (b. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, other, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, to speak in public) is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. ... The World According To Ronald Reagan - a Finnish satirical poster from 1984 Satire is a technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... A concentration camp is a large detention centre created for political opponents, aliens, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, often during a war. ...

Plot summary

Badenheim is a primarily Jewish resort town in Austria that hosts a yearly arts festival, organized by Dr. Pappenheim. Slowly, the Nazi regime, represented by the "Sanitation Department", begins shutting down the town and preparing to move its residents to Eastern Europe. The citizens begin blaming each other and losing their minds. Despite impending doom, others remain optimistic and refuse to see the coming Holocaust. Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... The definition of continental subregions in use by the United Nations. ... Selection procedure of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz camp on 26 May 1944, where the Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation. ...

Characters in Badenheim 1939

• Dr. Pappenheim – festival organiser

Literary significance and criticism

Some critics have attacked Appelfeld for his negative portrayal of the characters, claiming that by doing so the text is implying that the European Jews were somehow deserving of their fate. Others have analyzed the text as a Zionist piece, as it criticizes the lack of unity among the Jews of Badenheim. ^{[citation needed]} A bilingual poster in Romanian and Hungarian promoting a film about Jewish settlement in Palestine, 1930s. ...