"Selected from Traumbuch eines Gefangenen ... and Was war was ist." In English and German.
Horst Bienek (May 7, 1930, Gleiwitz – December 7, 1990, Munich) was a German novelist.
"and in 1944
I saw the first corpse with
a placard round it's neck...
That was on the way to School." From his poem "Childhood in Gleiwitz"
Bienek was born in Gleiwitz, Germany (today in Poland). He was forced to leave Gleiwitz in 1945, when the use of the German language was forbidden in Silesia. He resettled in the eastern part of Germany. For a time, he was taught by Bertolt Brecht. In 1951, he was arrested by NKVD and sentenced to 25 years of labour in Vorkuta (a gulag). He was released on the power of an amnesty in 1955. He settled in West Germany.

Bienek was the winner of numerous prizes, including the Nelly Sachs Prize in 1981. His best-known work is the four-volume series of novels dealing with the prelude to World War II and the war itself, Gleiwitz, Eine oberschlesische Chronik in vier Romanen (ISBN 3423127732)