“Germany was the homeland of my maternal grandparents and mother, from which they were fortunate enough to escape. However, it swallowed up a large part of their family in its concentration camps: my great-grandparents, uncles and aunts, seven siblings on one side and eight on the other, both children and adults.”
As reported by Corriere della Sera, Anita Raja, a translator, spoke at Humboldt University in Berlin and recalled part of her family history, which was deeply marked by the experience of her German Jewish mother, who escaped the Holocaust. This past profoundly influenced Raja’s relationship with the German language. At the event held the day before she received the Goethe Medal, she described her conflicting feelings as “a strong attraction and interest, but also a sense of rejection; fascination on the one hand and fear on the other.”
The Goethe Medal is one of the most important cultural honors Germany confers on foreign citizens. “Anita Raja has dedicated her career to translating and promoting significant German-language authors, such as Christa Wolf, in Italy. As a librarian, she has also strongly supported the diversity of European culture,” explained Gesche Joost, president of the Goethe Institute.
Born in Naples in 1953, Raja is one of the most important translators from German into Italian. In the early 1980s, she discovered Christa Wolf and introduced her work to the Italian public. She later translated the works of authors such as Georg Büchner, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Franz Kafka. In a recent interview with Frankfurter Rundschau, Raja discussed her relationship with these authors. She began with Cassandra, the first Wolf work she translated. Raja described it as “my first, moving encounter with her language.” The novel remains highly relevant today. According to Raja, Cassandra “urges us to look beyond the blindness of our daily lives.” It encourages us to understand that, in the atomic age, “all of humanity and the entire planet are on the brink of self-destruction.”
Raja also translated Kafka’s The Trial and The Metamorphosis in 2024. Speaking about Kafka, she said he “handles words with extreme care, as if keeping them at a distance. He examines them, reaches their core, and then steps back.”
A family history deeply connected to the tragedies of the 20th century informs her work as a translator. In 2016, she attracted intense media attention. According to journalist Claudio Gatti, who investigated her financial and publishing history, Raja was the writer behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. In an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gatti reconstructed the story of Raja’s mother, Golda Frieda Petzenbaum, also known as “Goldi.” A Jew, she was born in Worms in 1927. Her parents had fled the pogroms in Poland.
In 1937, the family escaped Nazi Germany and moved to Milan. However, after the racial laws were introduced in 1938, they were persecuted there as well. Goldi’s parents were interned as foreign Jews. Goldi managed to escape to Switzerland. She arrived in November 1943 after crossing the border on foot at night through knee-deep snow. Goldi and her parents, who had been interned in the Ferramonti camp, survived. The rest of the family, who had remained in Poland, were killed in Belzec and Auschwitz. Goldi only returned to the German language later in life. She taught her daughter some German and wrote two German grammar textbooks.
According to Raja, she began translating from German almost by chance. Over the years, she became one of the most respected translators in the field. “I have no formal training as a translator. I studied Italian literature, and I speak German because it was my mother’s language,” she explained to the Frankfurter Rundschau. However, today she believes that artificial intelligence threatens the profession of translators. “It is certainly at risk, especially if we convince ourselves that work produced by machines no longer needs human review and correction.” Raja also expressed hope regarding the award in Weimar. She hopes that it will support the work of young translators and increase their visibility.
d.r.
Translated by Elizabeth El Khoury and revised by Caterina Mansani, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.