German poet Gunter Grass, a former Nazi SS soldier whose recent poem called Israel a “danger to world peace,” will keep his Nobel Prize, a senior member of the prize committee has said. The Swedish Academy members said Grass “won his prize for literary excellence alone, like all the other winners.”
Grass has been banned from Israel over his poem. Israeli poet Itamar Yaoz-Kest, a Holocaust survivor, has written his own poem in response to Grass’s condemnation.