Jean-François Steiner
Jean-François Steiner is a
French-Jewish writer born on 17 February 1938 in
Paris, France. He is the son of
Kadmi Cohen (1892–1944), a French lawyer and writer who died at the concentration camp of
Gleiwitz. In 1952 he was adopted, together with his sister
Josée Steiner and elder brother
Olivier Cohen-Steiner by his mother's second husband, a physician.
He is best known for his controversial
non-fiction novel ''Treblinka: The Revolt of an Extermination Camp'' first published in 1966 as ''Treblinka: la révolte d'un camp d'extermination''; translated a year later by Helen Weaver for
Simon & Schuster. The book is a semi-fictional attempt to layout the logic of the
Nazi concentration camp system and the experiences of the victims who eventually succeeded in revolting against their exterminators in the Treblinka camp. It is written in a third person almost-omniscient way, as the author tries to tie the behavioral conditioning used on the Jews to the narrative perspective of those who endured the violent human experiment. Following outrage among French, Jewish and foreign academics, Steiner agreed to republish his book (which became a bestseller), by presenting it as a fictional account of the
Treblinka extermination camp operation. The book remains very popular in France.
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