Uri Orlev

Uri Orlev was born in 1931 in Warsaw

Uri Orlev was born Jerzy Henryk Orłowski in Warsaw in 1931, the son of a physician. During World War II he lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, and his mother was killed by the Germans. He and his brother were hidden, then sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1943, where he wrote poems, and they were freed by the British Army in 1945.

The brothers came to Israel and were placed at kibbutz Ginegar, where he worked in the cowsheds. He served in the IDF as an infantryman and later fought as a reservist. His father joined them in 1954.

His first book, The Lead Soldiers, about his life in the Holocaust, came out in 1956. He moved to Jerusalem and from 1976 focused on books for children and youth, including The Island on Bird Street and Run, Boy, Run. His books were translated into 36 languages, and he translated Polish works into Hebrew, such as Quo Vadis.

In 2005 Yad Vashem published the poems he wrote in Bergen-Belsen. He lived in Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem, and his son Itamar Orlev is also a writer. He died in 2022.