Yaakov Orland

Yaakov Orland was born in 1914 in Tetiiv

Orland was born in 1914 in Tetiiv, Ukraine. As a child he survived a pogrom in the town in which 8 members of his family were killed, while he hid in a wooden barrel. He moved to the Land of Israel with his parents, and the family settled with the Labor Battalion at Migdal before moving to the Bukharan Quarter in Jerusalem.

He studied at Tachkemoni and at the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia. He later completed philosophy studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and went to Britain to study theater.

He joined the Notrim and defended Jerusalem in the War of Independence. Afterward he moved to Tel Aviv, where he met his wife Bat-El and befriended poets such as Natan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky and Alexander Penn. In 1954 he moved to Haifa as part of an artists' housing project.

In 1943 he wrote a satirical rhymed column in Haaretz under the pen name "Uri". Many of his songs were set to music by his friend Mordechai Zeira and performed by Shoshana Damari. He also translated works by Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Eugene O'Neill for the Ohel and Haifa theaters.

In 1992, after publishing the poem "Kiev" about his life and the pogrom, he traveled with his wife to Tetiiv, Kiev, Moscow and Saint Petersburg on behalf of the Jewish Agency. He received the Israel Prize in 1994 and the Bialik Prize in 1996, and died in 2002.