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Saul Friedlaender: Jewish historian gets top German prize

French-Israeli historian Saul Friedlaender has been awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, officials announced in Frankfurt Thursday.

The prize, with a value of 25,000 euros (33,000 dollars), is Germany's most prestigious literary award. It is to be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 14.

The jury said Friedlaender was an "epic storyteller of the history of the Shoah, the persecution and extermination of Jews in the time of Nazi dominance in Europe."

Friedlaender had provided people burnt to ashes with a voice and a memorial, it said.

Friedlaender was born in Prague in 1932, surviving the Holocaust in France. He has taught at the universities of Geneva and Tel Aviv, and is currently a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His two-volume work, Nazi Germany and the Jews, is perhaps his best known.

Read entire article at Expatica