BERLIN -- German-Australian author Walter Kaufmann, who survived the Nazi persecution of Jews and later played a prominent role in the literary scene of Communist East Germany, has died at the age of 97.Kaufmann's death was confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday by Dirk Szuszies, a Berlin filmmaker who made a documentary about the author's life.Born Jizchak Schmeidler to a young Polish Jew in Berlin in 1924, he was adopted at the age of three by a wealthy family — the Kaufmanns — from