Salomon Isacovici

Salomon Isacovici (born 1924 in Transylvania, Romania; died 1998), was a Holocaust survivor, famous for his autobiography, "Man of Ashes".

Isacovici grew up on his parents' farm until, in 1944, he became a witness to the atrocities of World War II when he was captured and sent to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Lucky to escape during a massacre, he was shot, recaptured, and sent to another concentration camp, Gross Rosen. He was still there when U.S. soldiers liberated the camp.

At the end of the he returned to his original home only to find another family in residence. He drifted between many European nations. Eventually, he emigrated to Ecuador, becoming nationalised there in 1958. He would soon find that the Ecuadorian natives were forced to live in poor conditions comparable to those of the concentration camps that he had experienced before.

Following this experience, he set about penning his autobiography around his growing up on the farm and his years at the mercy of Nazi Germany. It would be first published in Mexico in 1990 as "A7393: Hombre de Cenizas". The book would immediately win the Fernando Yeno literary prize. The English translation was written by Dick Gerdes, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

There was controversy over the book after an ex-Jesuit priest Juan Manuel Rodriguez, credited as co-writer on its initial Mexican release, claimed that it was a novel, not Isacovici's autobiography, and that he wrote it. This led to its withdrawal from print in Mexico; however the English version's publishers denounce this claim.

Isacovici died in February 1998, a year before the launching of the English version of "Man of Ashes" published by the University of Nebraska Press.