Aranka Siegal

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. in 2008. Aranka Siegal is the young Piri of the narrative. The nine stories in this book are inspired by Siegal's own experiences in the Ukrainian countryside with her grandmother, Babi, whom the book is titled after.

Awards: NYPL Book for Reading and Sharing, 2008 National Jewish Book Awards (Children's and Young Adult Literature Finalist), 2009 Bank Street College, Best Children's Books of the Year List, 100th Anniversary Edition, and Sydney Taylor Honor AwardRecommendations: Booklist, Horn Book, and Kirkus Reviews.

Aranka and Gilbert Siegal resided in the New York City suburbs for most of their life together, before moving to Aventura, Florida in 2000. They had two children, Joseph and Rissa. After their two children had gone on to college, Aranka, in her mid-forties, returned to school in pursuit of her undergraduate degree. In 1977, she received her bachelor's degree in Social Anthropology from New York University. That same year she hosted a radio show on which she recounted her experiences in Hungary and other countries.

Siegal has resided in Aventura, Florida since 2000. Her husband, Gilbert died in 2004. She spends much of her free time visiting schools around the country telling the story of her life and experiences during World War II. Her latest book, Memories of Babi, was published in May 2008. Website : https://www.arankasiegal.com

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. in 1985. Siegal is the fourteen-year-old Piri of the narrative. Like her first novel, the title, Grace in the Wilderness, also comes from a Biblical passage. The title of her second novel comes from Jeremiah 31.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1981. Siegal is the nine-year-old Piri of the narrative. The name 'Piri' comes from the Yiddish name Siegal's grandmother used to call her by, 'Perele'. During her summers visiting her grandmother, the children Siegal played with picked up on the name, but would instead say 'Piri'. Also, the title, Upon the Head of the Goat, comes from the Biblical passage, Leviticus 16, which Siegal came across while looking up the definition of "scapegoat".

In August 1948, Aranka and Iboya, sailed from Sweden to the United States. They were reunited with some of their family in New York, where the two sisters would begin life anew. Now in the U.S., Siegal had to master her sixth language English. In 1951, Siegal, then twenty-one years old, married her husband of late, Gilbert Siegal. Gilbert Siegal, ten years her senior, was a Harvard Law graduate and an officer of the United States Airforce during World War II.

Other works include Grace in the Wilderness: After the Liberation 1945-1948 and Memories of Babi. Her novels are sold worldwide and have been translated into several different languages including, but not limited to, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, and German. She speaks six languages.

Little more than half a year had passed since their initial arrival into Auschwitz when they were rescued by the British First Army in early 1945. By the end of World War II, only two of Siegal's immediate family remained alive: her older sisters, Iboya and Etus. Via the Swedish Red Cross, Aranka and Iboya were brought to Sweden, where they were rehabilitated and attended a makeshift school. They later worked in a factory. The two lived in Sweden for three and a half years before emigrating to the United States in 1948, when Siegal turned eighteen years old.

Sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, she was separated from her family and was only with her elder sister, Iboya. They were sent to work in Christiansted's kitchen and left for the walk to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In April 1945, she and her sister were liberated by Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army and taken to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross. They immigrated to the United States in 1948.

Soon after Siegal and her family had arrived in the ghetto, they were deported to Auschwitz. Upon their arrival on May 9, 1944, she and Iboya, were separated from the rest of the family, and they never saw them again. Eventually, the two girls were sent to another concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen.

Aranka Siegal (born Aranka Meizlik; June 11, 1930) is a writer, Holocaust survivor, and recipient of the Newbery Honor and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, both awarded to her in 1982. She is the author of three books, the best known of which is Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1930-1944, a memoir of her childhood in Hungary before her 12-month imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz – Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen.