Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt (born 2 May 1928) is a French writer and translator of German origin.
Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt was born in Reinbek near Hamburg, into a Jewish family of magistrates converted to Protestantism.
His father was an adviser to the Hamburg Court of Appeal until 1933. He was then deported to Theresienstadt where he served as Protestant pastor of "Protestant Jews" deported because of their origin.
Georges-Arthur fled Germany in 1938. He took refuge in Italy with his brother, then in France, in a boarding school in Megève. From 1943 to September 1944, he was hidden in Haute-Savoie among farmers, particularly François and Olga Allard, who were honoured on August 6, 2012 as Righteous Among the Nations.[1]
Goldschmidt obtained French nationality in 1949. He was a professor ("agrégé d’allemand") until 1992. He taught at Lycée Paul Eluard for 19 years.[2]
A writer and essayist, Goldschmidt chose French as a language of expression and writing, without abandoning German. He is a translator, among others, of Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka and Peter Handke.
