Aaron Appelfeld, one of the most widely read Israeli authors, was born in Chernivtsi. During the war years, he wandered around Bessarabia and Bukovina, hiding from the Germans and Romanians. At the age of fifteen he came to Palestine. Lives in Jerusalem. The main theme of Appelfeld's works is the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust, the horror of blind hatred of Jews. Many of the writer’s works are autobiographical, including the novel “Katerina,” inspired by childhood memories. This is an amazing story of a Ukrainian peasant woman, told on her behalf. After the death of her mother, Katerina leaves her home and finds herself serving in a Jewish family. Remaining a Christian, she becomes attached to the people around her and sees with horror how they die from pogroms. The injustice and cruelty of her relatives towards Jews leads to the fact that she tries to raise her only son in the Jewish tradition. Having lost her son and survived hard labor, in her declining years she returns to her village, where she lives with bright memories of people long gone.