Paul Celan

On 21 June 1942 his parents were deported to Transnistria while he was away. His father died there, probably of typhus; his mother was shot, having been judged unfit for labour. He himself was in Romanian labour camps in 1942–44.

And he went on writing in German—the language of his mother's murderers. He put it this way: "there is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German." Death Fugue, with its "black milk of daybreak", is written in that language.

In 1969 he went to Israel and wrote a late cycle out of the journey. He drowned in the Seine around 20 April 1970; the body was found on 1 May. The Goll affair must not be printed as established plagiarism: Claire Goll's accusations were false, were pursued for years, and contributed to his breakdown.