Esther Hautzig, Lithuanian-American author (d. 2009)
Esther R. Hautzig (Hebrew: אסתר האוציג, born October 18, 1930 – died November 1, 2009 in America) was an American writer, best known for her award-winning book The Endless Steppe (1968).
Esther Hautzig (previously known as Esther Rudomin) was born in Vilna, Poland (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania). Her childhood was gravely interrupted by the beginning of World War II and the conquest in 1941 of eastern Poland by Soviet troops. Her family was uprooted and deported to Rubtsovsk, Siberia, where Esther spent the next five years in harsh exile. Her award-winning novel The Endless Steppe is an autobiographical account of those years in Siberia. After the war, when she was 15, she and her family moved back to Poland, although in her heart, Esther wanted to stay. Hautzig reportedly wrote The Endless Steppe at the prompting of Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, to whom she had written after reading his articles about his visit to Rubtsovsk.