Ruth Bondy

Ruth Bondy was born in 1923 in Prague

Ruth Bondy was born on 19 June 1923 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Josef and Františka Bondy. She attended Czech and German schools. In 1939 she joined a Zionist youth movement led by Jakob Edelstein.

She started out translating from English to Czech for the United Press agency. In 1942 she was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and in December 1943 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After several Neuengamme subcamps she reached Bergen-Belsen, where the British army freed her in April 1945.

In early 1949 she immigrated to Israel with Gahal, learned Hebrew and worked at Hador, then from 1951 at Omer and Davar. For decades she was on the staff of Davar and Devar ha-Shavua, where she wrote a satirical column called Yihye Tov. She also taught writing in the journalism program at Tel Aviv University.

She wrote biographies of Enzo Sereni, Jakob Edelstein, Chaim Sheba and Pinchas Rosen, and an autobiography. She translated Czech writers such as Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Hašek and Milan Kundera into Hebrew. She was a founder of Beit Theresienstadt.

She was married to journalist Raphael Bashan from 1954 until 1981, and they had one daughter, Tal Bashan. In 2014 she deposited her archive at the National Library. She lived in Ramat Gan and died at home on 14 November 2017.