GROSMAN, LADISLAV

GROSMAN, LADISLAV (1921–1981), Slovak writer and scriptwriter. Born in Humenn, Slovakia, Grosman was deported to a forced labor camp during World War II. In 1945, he settled in Prague. He worked as an editor in Prague and Slovakia until 1963. From 1965 to 1968 he worked as a scriptwriter. In 1968 to immigrated to Israel, where he taught at Bar-Ilan University. Before then, more than 40 of his short stories and articles had been published in Czech cultural reviews and magazines. He rewrote his story Past ("The Trap," 1962), retitling it Obchod na korze ("The Shop on Main Street," 1965). The screen version of the story (directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos) won an Academy Award in 1966 for Best Foreign Language Film. (The main protagonist of the story, the old shop owner played by Ida Kaminska, who is being "Aryanized," lives under the delusion that she cannot be harmed. The new owner respects her, and a special bond of esteem develops between the two.) A collection of stories Nevěsta ("The Bride," 1969) appeared just after Grosman left for Israel. It is comprised of seven stories from Slovakia's Jewish milieu. In Israel, Grosman wrote a screenplay for the TV movie Dod David Holech Lirot Kala (1972) and for an American TV movie The Seventeenth Bride (1986), based on his stories from the Bride. A new series of stories appeared in Zurich in Czech, entitled Hlavou proti zdi ("With a Head against the Wall," 1976); it was also published in Hebrew. His last work, a novel entitled Z pekla těst ("To Be a Lucky Dog," 1994), tells the story of a Jewish boy who was sent from Slovakia to Hungary to escape the Holocaust. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Slovník českch spisovatelů (Dictionary of Czech Writers, 1982). (Avigdor Dagan / Milos Pojar (2nd ed.)