Guest of the ilb 2001
Uri Orlev was born Jerzy Henryk Orlowski in Warsaw in 1931, as the son of Jewish were parents. Some of his childhood was spent in the Warsaw Ghetto. His father, who was a doctor, served in the Polish Army and was taken prisoner by the Russians. His mother, a chemist, was put to the firing squad by the Germans. Orlev and his brother were smuggled out of the Ghetto by an aunt and went to live in hiding with Polish families. In 1943 they were all transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the U.S. Army liberated the camp in 1945, fourteen-year-old Uri and his twelve-year-old brother went to Paris with other children and from there moved on to Israel. Orlev lived in a kibbutz until 1962.
Orlev did not begin to write books for children and teenagers until 1976. Since then he has published 31 books for various age groups. His works have been translated into 25 languages. The author himself has translated Polish children’s literature into Hebrew.
As a child, Uri learned how to escape the horrors of war by seeking refuge in his imagination. He even felt it was a kind of adventure. "I always used to read a lot and I envied the American Indians because of the terrible and exciting things that happened to them". He recorded his experiences and dreams in his biography, 'The Sandgame' (1994), which was written for children. "At one stage I decided that the war and the Holocaust were not at all real. That I was just dreaming it all. In reality I was the son of the Chinese emperor."
A child’s perspective is not simply a literary device for the author: "When I write about my childhood it is like walking across a frozen lake. I mustn’t tread too heavily, I mustn’t dwell upon my childhood as an adult, or I will fall through the ice, submerge and never resurface."
Orlev has dealt with his wartime experiences in many of his novels, such as 'The Man From the Other Side' (1988) and 'The Island on Bird Street' (1981). However, he does not consider himself a Holocaust writer. He claims he has the simple desire to make his childhood the topic of his literary endeavours, as do many other artists, because a child experiences events much more intensely than any adult.
Sometimes he finds it hard to believe that he has been back to Germany talking about his stories and experiences, as he has done for several years now. At the age of 14, he swore that he would never return to the country. He was greatly afraid that he might recognize some old man as his mother’s murderer and that he might again feel hatred welling up inside him. Orlev is one of the top-selling Israeli children’s writers and has received various prizes, including the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (1996) for his complete works. The jury commented: "Whether his stories are set in the Warsaw Ghetto or his new country Israel, he never loses the perspective of the child he was. [...] Uri Orlev shows how children can survive hard years of deprivation and despair without bitterness in harsh and terrible times." Orlev now lives in Jerusalem. He is married and has four children.
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