Google honors poet Nelly Sachs with new Doodle

Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating poet Nelly Sachs on what would have been her 127th birthday with a new Doodle.

Sachs and her Jewish family lived in Berlin where she published her poetry in German periodicals and in a collection of short stories titled Legends and Tales.

She began working with Swedish writer Selma Lagerlof, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. Lagerlof saved Sachs and her mother's lives when she successfully petitioned the Swedish royal family to help the Sachs family escape from Germany during World War II.

Sachs, in Sweden, wrote poems about the aftermath of the war and about family members who died in concentration camps. Her work also explored themes or transformation and forgiveness as seen in her play, Eli: A Mystery Play of the Sufferings of Israel .

She won a number of awards including the Nobel Prize and the 1965 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

"In spite of all the horrors of the past," she said while accepting the award. "I believe in you."

Google's homepage features an illustration by German and Finnish artist Daniel Stolle. The artwork appears to evoke Sachs' poem O the Chimneys which discussed the spirits of the dead through the image of smoke rising from the concentration camps.

The illustration features a typewriter and two hands moving towards each other in the sky as smoke from the camps rises.