Hungarian Auschwitz Survivor Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz Hospitalized After Fall

Image by getty images
Hungarian novelist and Auschwitz survivor Imre Kertesz, 84, winner of the 2002 Nobel Literature Prize, had surgery on Thursday to repair a broken hip and was in stable condition, the medical director of the hospital said.
Kertesz was admitted early on Thursday after falling in his home and hitting his right hip, Lajos Zsiros told a news conference.
“We performed surgery to unify the fractured bones in the morning,” he said. He said Kertesz would have to remain in hospital for about 10 days.
“This bone fracture can heal, however, we need to add that given his other illnesses, his age of 84 years, this is very dangerous at this age, so we are doing everything to prevent any complications,” Zsiros said.
Kertesz won the Nobel Prize for works the judges said portrayed the Nazi death camps as “the ultimate truth” about how low human beings could fall.
In his work, Kertesz returns repeatedly to the experience of Auschwitz, the camp in German-occupied Poland where over one million Jews and other victims of the Nazis died.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.