1923 -
Israeli poet, writer, and journalist.
Guri was born in Tel Aviv and educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris. A principal representative of Dor ha-Palmah (the Palmah generation), he fought against the British in Mandatory Palestine and in the Arab - Israel Wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973. As a Haganah member sent to rescue survivors of the Holocaust, Guri had his first encounter with diaspora Jews, which profoundly affected him and his identity as a Jew. From that time on, the question of "who is a Jew" has significantly influenced his works.
Guri's songs and poems, written during the 1948 Arab - Israel War, portray the experiences of the Palmah fighters and the battlefield. From 1953 to 1970, Guri was a reporter and an essayist for the paper la-Merhav, for which he covered the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann (1961 - 1962). His notes of the trial were published in the book Mul Ta ha-Zekhukhit (Facing the glass booth). After the June 1967 Arab - Israel War, Guri, along with other members of Israel's literary elite such as Natan Alterman, Moshe Shamir, S. Y. Agnon, Yitzhak Tabenkin, and Naomi Shemer, was among the founders of the Movement for Greater Israel.
From 1970 to 1980, Guri was on the editorial staff of the Davar. From 1972 to 1984, he made several documentaries dealing with the Holocaust (The 81st Blow), Jewish resistance against the Nazis (Flame in the Ashes), and the illegal immigration to Palestine (The Last Sea). An anthology of his poems, Heshbon Over (1988), won him the Israel prize for literature. His novella, Iskat ha-Shokolada (1965; The chocolate deal, 1968), takes place in an anonymous European city with a flourishing black market and deals with the state of anarchy among the refugees of the Holocaust after World War II. In 2002 he published (in Hebrew) a compilation of poems entitled Meʾuharim (Late poems). As of 2003, Guri has published nineteen books, nine of them poetry.
Bibliography
Guri, Haim. The Chocolate Deal: A Novel, translated by Seymour Simckes. New York: Holt Rinehart, 1968.
Guri, Haim. Words in My Lovesick Blood: Milim be-dami ha-holeh ahavah, translated and edited by Stanley F. Chyet. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
— ANN KAHN
UPDATED BY ADINA FRIEDMAN
