Ilana Shmueli was the daughter of a furniture maker and grew up in Czernowitz (Bukovina) in a polyglot environment. In March 1944 her family managed to escape the Russian occupying forces and eventually to settle down in Palestine. After a career in the social sector and in criminology, she devoted her time to writing and translating prose and poetry. For her friend Paul Celan she fulfilled in a sense the role of Kafka’s Milena.

Besides various essays and translations, she has published Sag, dass Jerusalem ist - Aufzeichnungen über Paul Celan, Oktober 1969-April 1970 (2000) and Paul Celan-Ilana Shmueli, Briefwechsel, Ilana Shmueli and Thomas Sparr eds. (2004). More recently, she published her memoires Ein Kind aus guter Familie. Czernowitz 1924-1944 (2006), of which a first sample has been published in Nexus 42 (2005).