Paul Celan was a poet from Czernovitz, Romania, born to a German-speaking Jewish family. He was fluent in Russian, French, and Romanian, as well. He worked as a translator later in life.
During World War II, Celan worked in a forced labor camp for nearly 2 years, while his parents were deported to a concentration camp. Many of Celan’s poetry relates to this subject, including the titles of his collections Sand from the Urns (1948) and Poppy and Memory (1952). He is best-known for the poem “Death Fugue” (published as “Todesfuge”).
In 1958, Celan received the Bremen Prize for German Literature, and in 1960, the Georg Buchner Prize.
Information from the Poetry Foundation.