Edith Bruck

Edith Bruck (born 3 May 1931) is a Hungarian-born writer, director and Holocaust survivor. She has lived most of her life in Italy and writes in Italian.

Early life The daughter of poor Jewish parents, she was born Edit Steinschreiber in the village of Tiszabercel near the Ukrainian border. In 1944, with her parents, two brothers and a sister, she was sent to Auschwitz, where her mother died. The family was transferred to Dachau where her father died, then to Christianstadt and finally Bergen-Belsen, where the remaining children were liberated by the Allies in 1945. One brother also died in the concentration camps. She returned to Hungary and then went to Czechoslovakia, where another sister was living with her family.

Career Bruck is a transnational Italian writer and the author of two dozen novels, short story collections, books of poetry and works of nonfiction. Most of her literary production has been devoted to Holocaust testimony, and she has also written several novels about her long marriage to Italian writer and film director Nelo Risi.

Since 1959, five years after settling in Italy while with a dancing troupe, her works of literature have been published in Italian. She later said that making the film was a "terrible ordeal" but she felt it was her duty. The doc became available for streaming on Kanopy in 2025 with English subtitles.

Personal life When she was 16, she married Milan Grün and moved to Israel; the couple divorced the following year. She then married Dany Roth, but that marriage also ended in divorce. She next married an acquaintance named Bruck to postpone her compulsory military service; she had divorced him by the time she was 20 but kept his surname. In 1954, Bruck moved to Rome and later married Italian writer and director Nelo Risi. Nuda proprietà (1993), finalist for the Strega Prize Il silenzio degli amanti, novel (1997) L’amore offeso, novel (2002) Quanta stella c’è nel cielo, novel (2009), received the Viareggio Prize, adapted to film as Anita B.

English translations

Who Loves You Like This, translated by Thomas Kelso (Paul Dry Books, 2001) ISBN 9780966491371 Lost Bread, translated by Gabriella Romani and David Yanoff (Paul Dry Books, 2023) ISBN 9781589881785 This Darkness Will Never End, translated by Jeanne Bonner (Paul Dry Books, 2025) ISBN 9781589882010

Filmography Source:

Improvviso, director (1979) Quale Sardegna?, director (1983) Fotografando Patrizia, writer (1984) Altare per la madre, director (1986) Per odio per amore, writer (1991)