The War Poet: Ten Illustrated Facts About Haim Gouri

1. Many of Haim Gouri’s poems were written following the wars in which he participated (the War of Independence, the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War). This garnered him the nickname "The War Poet".

2. Gouri was sent to meet Holocaust survivors in the displaced persons camps in Hungary in order to organize them for Aliyah to the Land of Israel. He attested that this encounter changed his life and his poetry.

3. Gouri covered the entire Eichmann trial for "LaMerhav" newspaper. He said that he finished his assignment mentally broken, and all his life remembered the testimonies and names he heard.

4. In 1975, Gouri was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature, and in 1988 the Israel Prize for poetry. He received the Sokolov Award and the Newman Award for Hebrew literature, honorary doctorates from Ben Gurion University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, as well as an honorary Tel Aviv citizenship and the “Yakir Yerushalayim prize” in Jerusalem.

5. Gouri studied at the Kadoorie Agricultural High School in Yitzhak Rabin’s class.

6. Despite being completely secular, for years he would go every Yom Kippur to the Yeshurun Central Synagogue in Jerusalem and read all the prayers, whose linguistic and spiritual richness left a great mark on him.

7. The holocaust documentary “The 81st Blow”, which Gouri wrote, co-produced, and co-directed, was nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It was created following one of the harsh testimonies he heard in the Eichmann trial. He worked on it for no less than 13 years.

8. Gouri, born in Tel Aviv, moved to Jerusalem in 1949 following his wife-to-be Aliza. He lived in Jerusalem ever since but always continued loving Tel Aviv.

9. Haim Gouri decided at the age of 17 to join the Palmach, after a conversation with Yigal Allon (later to become commander of the Palmach, a military leader and politician) at Kadoorie Agricultural High School.

10. Gouri was vegan. His father, MK Yisrael Gouri, was a well-known activist on this issue. The fact that he was vegan seemed strange to Haim’s friends, especially those who joined him on his travels.

For more on Israeli poetry, see Beit Avi Chai’s new poetry reading and writing workshop, “Exploring the Birth of Hebrew Poetry in Israel” (in Hebrew).

Illustrator - Yonatan Wachsmann