Ludvík Aškenazy

Ludvík Aškenazy (24 February 1921 – 18 March 1986) was a Czech writer and journalist. He was born into a Jewish family in Stanisławów, then part of the Second Republic of Poland, now present-day Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine (also the site of the Stanisławów Ghetto). Aškenazy was born on 24 February 1921 in Český Těšín, Czechoslovakia. He studied Slavonic philology in Lviv, which was then part of Poland.

During World War II, he was a soldier in the Czech units of the Soviet Army in the Soviet Union. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Between 1945 and 1950 he worked in the state Czechoslovak Radio and after that, he became a government-sanctioned "writer."

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he left for exile and until 1976 lived in Munich. Between 1976 and 1986, he lived in the Italian town of Bolzano with his wife, Leonie Mann, daughter of the German writer Heinrich Mann. He had two sons, Jindřich Mann, also a writer, and Ludwik Mann, who illustrated a number of his books.

He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1977 for his book Wo die Füchse Blockflöte spielen, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 1993 for Der Schlittschuhkarpfen.Aškenazy died on 18 March 1986 in Bolzano, Italy, at the age of 65. He is celebrated in an annual festival in the town of Český Těšín, Czech Republic.