Tom Segev

Tom Segev was born in 1945 in Jerusalem

Segev was born Thomas Schwerin in Jerusalem on March 1, 1945. His parents, Jewish artists from Germany who had studied at the Bauhaus, fled the Nazis in 1935 because of their Communist ties. His father, an architect who made toys, died on February 3, 1948, during the 1948 war, and his first language was German.

He attended the high school near the university in Jerusalem. He earned a BA in history and political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in history from Boston University. During his army service he changed his name to Tom Segev.

In the 1970s he was a correspondent for Maariv in Bonn, and in 1977 he headed the bureau of Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. He joined Haaretz in 1979 and writes a weekly column there. From 1983 to 1987 he edited the weekly Koteret Rashit with Nahum Barnea.

His books deal with the history of Israel and the Holocaust and have appeared in 14 languages. They include The Seventh Million, One Palestine, Complete, a book on 1967 and a biography of David Ben-Gurion. Some works drew sharp criticism from other scholars, and he taught as a visiting professor at several American universities.

He has an adopted son from Ethiopia. In 2023 he received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the Political Book.