non-fiction-authors-from-israel

"Hawaiian Islands, Max 2.4 ... ... May be discoloured reddish or greenish by algal growth. • Foreflippers proportionately very short and broad with small claws; hindflippers long and slim."

"In Israel, the 1980s and early 1990s were marked by a core of c.15 young , among them Y. Baser, A. Ber, A. Ben Dov, E. Dovrat, Y. Golan, O. Horin, R. Mizrachi, E. Shochat and myself. From a European perspective, activity mostly centred on the migration hotspot of in the south, to which thousands of birders flocked each spring. The Eilat International Birdwatching Centre was founded in 1984, but prior to that the above-mentioned observers made casual visits to Eilat, mainly between summer and winter, especially to study and to find s."

"This impressive book is an invaluable, fully illustrated, wildlife guide for tourists and scientists visiting the and . ... ... The individual species accounts are preceded by a general account of groups of related species, such as s, es,etc. Species identification is aided by beautiful colour plates (35 in total) by the wildlife artist Brett Jarrett, as well as accompanying colour photographs of high quality. The whole book is actually packed with excellent colour photographs (almost 600) of birds, s and landscapes. A distribution map is presented for most species."

"Thousands of people, young and old, had been torn from their loved ones during the Nazi occupation and never knew what had become of them -- in the ghettos, the deportations, the death camps, the forests. In Israel, they found one another purely by chance, or through advertisements in the papers or with the aid of the heartrending radio program Who Recognizes, Who Knows? "Aryeh Kantrowitz, now in Kibbutz Hazorea, is looking for his mother Fanya, nee Margolin," the announcements would run. "Bluma Langer, nee Wasserstein, formerly of Kovno, now in the immigrant hostel in Raanana, is looking for her husband, Aharon Langer. Leah Koren of Lublin, now in Israel, is looking for her sister Sheina Friedman, nee Koren." All were recent immigrants on the threshold of a new life."

"Is it possible that what was lost — or indefinitely suspended — on October 7 was the minuscule chance for real dialogue, for each nation’s true acceptance of the other’s existence? And what do those who brandished the absurd notion of a "binational state" say now? Israel and Palestine, two nations distorted and corrupted by endless war, cannot even be cousins to each other — does anyone still believe they can be conjoined twins? Many warless years will have to pass before acceptance and healing can even be considered. In the meantime, we can only imagine the magnitude of fear and hatred that will now rise to the surface. I hope, I pray, that there will be Palestinians on the West Bank who, despite their hatred of Israel — their occupier — will set themselves apart, whether through action or words, from what their compatriots have done. As an Israeli, I have no right to preach to them or tell them what to do. But as a human being, I have a right — and an obligation — to demand of them humane and moral conduct. Are we capable of shaking off the well-worn formulas and understanding that what has occurred here is too immense and too terrible to be viewed through stale paradigms? Even Israel’s conduct and its crimes in the occupied territories for 56 years cannot justify or soften what has been laid bare: the depth of hatred towards Israel, the painful understanding that we Israelis will always have to live here in heightened alertness and constant preparedness for war."

"We didn’t say a word to Poroshenko about antisemitism on the day they put a plaque up for [Symon] Petliura."

"The passage of a ban on Nazism and Communism equates the most genocidal regime in human history with the regime which liberated Auschwitz and helped end the reign of terror of the Third Reich. In the same spirit the decision to honor local Nazi collaborators and grant them special benefits turns Hitler's henchmen into heroes despite their active and zealous participation in the mass murder of innocent Jews. These attempts to rewrite history, which are prevalent throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe, can never erase the crimes committed by Nazi collaborators in these countries, and only proves that they clearly lack the Western values which they claim to have embraced upon their transition to democracy."

"I have one piece of advice for Poles: pursue communists with all available means. If they committed crimes, they should be held accountable. Every person who shed innocent blood in the name of a criminal ideology should be punished. … Whether they represented brown or red ideology is irrelevant. I say this with full responsibility, although – as you can probably guess – I believe the Holocaust was a unique event and cannot be compared to anything else."

"Holodomor is definitely not a genocide. [...] Stalin decided he wanted to eliminate the kulaks – the private farmers – and get them all into collective farms, and totally change the nature of agriculture in Ukraine. [...] Ukrainians were the largest number of victims, but it wasn’t directed against them, it wasn’t a plan to eliminate the Ukrainian people. [...] There were Jews who died from the hunger, as did Belarusians and Russians – Stalin used force to get people into his system, but was not trying to exterminate the Ukrainians. That is absurd. The largest number of victims were Ukrainians, but it was not genocide. One of the biggest problems we are facing now is something called the ‘double genocide theory,’ something prevalent throughout eastern Europe, where governments are trying to say that Communist crimes amounted to genocide. [...] It was not ethnically oriented, it was economically and politically oriented – these were crimes against a particular class of people, like the kulaks – or against political opponents."

"There has not been a single conviction in Ukraine against a person who committee antisemitism. This is ridiculous."

"Again she reaches for the photograph, raises it to her nearsighted eyes, looks at it for a long time, and says, "You can still see the traces of footprints." And a moment later, "That's very strange." That's the direction they walked in. From the Judenrat down Miesna Street. She looks at the footprints, the snow, and the stalls once again. "I wonder who photographed it? And when? Probably right afterwards: the footprints are clear here, but when they shot them in the afternoon it was snowing again." The people are gone-their footprints remain. Very strange. "They didn't take them straight to the fields, but first to the Gestapo. No one knows why, apparently those were the orders. They stood in the courtyard until the children were brought." She breaks off: "I prefer not to remember..." But suddenly she changes her mind and asks that what she is going to say be written down and preserved forever, because she wants a trace to remain. "What children? What trace?" A trace of those children. And only she can leave that trace, because she alone survived. So she will tell about the children who were hidden in the attic of the Judenrat, which was strictly forbidden under pain of death, because children no longer had the right to live. There were eight of them, the oldest might have been seven or so, although no one knew for sure, because when they brought them over they didn't look at all like children, only like...ach...The first tears, instantly restrained. They heard the rumbling, a horse cart drove up to the yard, and on it were the children. They were sitting on straw, one beside the other. They looked like little gray mice. The SS-man who brought them jumped down from the cart, and said kindly, "Well, dear children, now each of you go and run to your parents." But none of the children moved. They sat there motionless and looked straight ahead. Then the SS-man took the first child and said, "Show me your mother and father." But the child was silent. So he took the other children one by one and shouted at them to point out their parents, but they were all silent. "So I wanted some trace of them to be left behind." ("Traces")"

"It was silent in the forest. There were no birds, but the smell of the trees and flowers was magnificent. We couldn't hear anything. There was nothing to hear. The silence was horrifying because we knew that there was shooting going on and people screaming and crying, that it was a slaughterhouse out there. But here there were bluebells, hazelwood, daisies, and other flowers, very pretty, very colorful. That was what was so horrifying-just as horrifying as waiting for the thundering of the train, as horrifying as wondering whom they had taken. ("Jean-Christophe")"

"It was near the end. They had already shot my sons and my husband. I remember that people were saying, 'How can she do it? Why should she save herself? For whom?' But you know, the life force has such strong roots, you can't tear it out. Even after those we love most have died. But you are young, what do you know about that? ("The Other Shore")"

""I always wanted to paint. Always, before the war, that is. But I was thirteen then." ("Splinter")"

"Father called us to his office, to the animated Mrs. Kasinska, who, once the price was agreed on, promised to make Kennkarten for us so we could be saved, so we would not be killed. ("The Garden that Floated Away")"

"The girl who had been crying was now sobbing louder; all of us were aware that every passing minute brought the train's thunder nearer, that any moment now we would hear death riding down the tracks. One girl cried "Mama!" and then other voices cried "Mama!" because there was an echo in the woods. ("Jean-Christophe")"

"Only the end of the war brought us the truth about his last hours. The peasant who delivered the note did not dare to tell us what he saw, and although other people, too, muttered something about what they had seen, no one dared to believe it, especially since the Germans offered proofs of another truth that each of us grasped at greedily; they measured out doses of it sparingly, with restraint a perfect cover-up. They went to such trouble, created so many phantoms, that only time, time measured not in months and years, opened our eyes and convinced us."

"I recall one image from those days of difficult waiting: the train in the meadow. It was on a day when a thunderstorm was brewing. Under the black, rain-swollen clouds we were raking hay in the fields. A long, serpentine train slithered through the meadow. Watching it disappear from sight, I felt—very clearly, very palpably--the proximity of danger and the futility of my desperate scrambling, my frantic efforts to break out of this closed circle. It was as if a metal band was suddenly squeezing my ribs. The world went quiet and dark. A thick, heavy silence fell. I dropped my rake on the ground, loosened my blouse. I was gasping for breath. (p185)"

"How can I explain what happened in the weeks that followed? At the time, we blamed it on the stupidity of the girls who were involved. Possibly they didn't realize that they were passing sentence on us-sealing our doom. Their behavior on the final day would seem to suggest as much. Possibly they weren't evil. But a blind hatred was deeply rooted in all of them, and neither words nor kindness could penetrate that dark jungle of primitive instinct. (p84-5)"

"The car was silent. But just as we reached the door, came the first whispers: "Jews. They caught some Jews." (p29)"

"That was the Sunday when, as Anna and I parted at the train station, Walenty said the words I never forgot: "Why is she hugging and kissing you as if you two were never going to see each other again?" (p166)"

"The days were filled with a kind of double waiting: waiting for news of Jadwiga and waiting for the police. I made myself get through the time, as if I were trudging through a snow drift: step by step, hour by hour, not a moment of rest from the hard labor of waiting, except perhaps at night. (p184)"

"Again we thought, let us survive-but now we were talking about the bombs and the rattling guns. (p237)"

"They were saying that we had eaten up all our fruit while it was still green, and that we were right to do so, because who knows what would happen to us by winter. What they were saying was absolutely true. ("The Garden that Floated Away")"

"It was then-the old men of our town were already on their way and were passing their homes and the children and grandchildren hidden behind their windows-it was then that the door of one of those houses opened and we saw a woman running across the marketplace. She was thin, covered with a shawl, carrying her huge pregnant belly in front of her. She ran after those who were walking away, her hand raised in a gesture of farewell, and we heard her voice. She was shouting, "Zei gezint, Tate! Tate, zei gezint!" And then all of us hidden in the darkness began to repeat, "Zeit gezint," bidding farewell with those words to our loved ones who were walking to their deaths. ("*****")"

"The moment when the silhouette of an SS-man appeared in the pointed arch of the pigsty and his hand carelessly brushed the apple tree, dried by the summer heat-that moment gave us a taste of suspension in that limbo between life and death. ("A Dog")"

"And what will you say when they ask you about your parents?" "Mama's at work." "And Papa?" He was silent. "And Papa?" the man screamed in terror. The child turned pale. "And Papa?" the man repeated more calmly. "He's dead," the child answered and threw himself at his father, who was standing right beside him, blinking his eyes in that funny way, but who was already long dead to the people who would really ring the bell. ("The Key Game")"

"...everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I'm not. I know-every crazy person says that, but really, there's nothing wrong with my head. If only God would make me crazy! It's my heart that's sick, not my head, and there's no cure for that. ("Crazy")"

"One pebble had fallen; I awaited the avalanche. ("The Other Shore")"

"There are thoughts that wither under the gaze of others, that are wounded by the breath of others, that the slightest disruption destroys. ("The Other Shore")"

"the seemingly quiet days were in fact full of anxiety and insecurity. We were walking on shaky ground, mined with guesses and speculations. We dissected every fragment of every sentence, every look, every smile; we studied them, as if under a magnifying glass-and we waited. In those early days we felt a growing sense of siege. We wondered: What next? (p87)"

"Ruhe? The city whose name promised serenity greeted us with ominous banners: countless swastikas fluttered above the station square. This treacherous city was celebrating some sinister holiday. We should have left immediately, but we walked defiantly through the square, the black twisted crosses above our heads. (p222)"

"June turned into July; the linden trees perfumed the air; the frogs croaked in the river; the dogs bayed at the moon; the nights were bright and sleepless. The white posters demanded tribute. The Jews gathered gold and silver, coffee and tea, and money, money. The Landrat insisted on silver tableware and valuable china. From nearby towns came news of gold and silver, of coffee and tea and money, money. Gold and silver, coffee and tea, were supposed to buy peace and quiet in the town, peace that was not peace, quiet that was not quiet. "People are naive," Szymon shouted, "whoever believes them is naive. This is only the prelude," he shouted, "only the beginning." He did not say what it was the beginning of. He didn't have to."

"She says, "Other people suffered so much.... But no one beat or tortured me.... I never saw a German.... But still it's as if they killed me. Because I'm not the same person. My name, my date of birth-they're not mine. The doctor said it's shock. I don't know what happened before then, or what I was like. So it's as if I didn't exist.""

"Finally she says, "What I remember best is the silence. But you can't talk about silence. Silence is the opposite of talk," she explains."

"Tiny drops of moisture bead up on her forehead. She wipes them off with the back of her hand and with this gesture seems to wipe away the thoughts that torment her, because once again she smiles and says, "Did you ever see someone who was killed in the war but who is still alive?""

"Because many places that year had posted signs that said NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED, the only amusements left were strolls along the river that flowed through the clean, Germanized town."

"September came, and with it the war; the radio spoke a strange new language of exhortations and abbreviations."

"Sometimes even I would return from work, open the door, and feel as if I were seeing a stage on which the last act of a play was about to begin at any moment. (p18)"

"I heard the gentle click of Aunt Julia's knitting needles. No one knew what she was knitting, but we all knew why. (p18)"

"It's hard to reconstruct those days, to push through the nebulous expanses of memory. The fog thickens and thins, the picture blurs and clears. All the bits and pieces must be assembled into one continuous whole, and the task is difficult, and, above all, painful. (p33)"

"It suddenly seemed to me that the further away we got from Poland, the more complicated everything became-nothing was getting easier. We were dragging along all the obstacles we had overcome, and they were spawning new ones, and no sooner did we overcome these than they gave birth to even more. I looked at the young, pink-faced woman, and I could hear her musical, childlike laughter, and her voice, saying, "The important thing is to find a boyfriend." Would she give us away? (p66)"

"After he left, no one laughed out loud anymore. Quiet snickering, muffled by blankets, rippled through the room. And those laughing whispers frightened us more than the hysterical screams. (p93)"

"The only things we didn't discuss were the things that mattered most. Those we circled around, avoided, pushed away. (p135)"

"For the first time, I decided to break our most sacred rules, to let someone in on our secret. Perhaps I was too weak to bear one more blow alone. (p173)"

"If the police didn't show up before then. Always that little word: if. (p178)"

"In the evening, in my spacious attic room, I wrote, "Will I find peace here? Peace. I yearn for peace." Out of habit, I hid the sheet of paper under the mattress, where it stayed, blank, except for that one line of fine handwriting at the top. (p228)"

"Less and less often we used the word "if"; more and more often we simply said "when," and wondered whether we would ever be like we used to be. Our fear of being found out or recognized had not gone away. It had only dug itself in deeper and was taking a little nap. Sometimes this fear would awaken suddenly and mistake a salesman for a secret policeman-like the cattle merchant who spoke to the baker behind closed doors. It would awaken suddenly and then fall back asleep. The more time passed, the deeper it slept. But even toward the end, after the British occupied the Ruhr Valley, when our fear should have disappeared completely-even then remnants of it still remained within us. They lingered in us until the very end, until that day-still far off-when two armored cars from General de Gaulle's army drove through the village, and Gottfried, the local party leader, climbed onto the roof of his house and jammed a flagpole into a crevice between the roof tiles-a flagpole with a white sheet attached. (p231-2)"

"Our fate suddenly came to a halt and hung there for a moment, suspended over the abyss it had been racing toward, hung there for a few minutes (five? six?) and then, just as suddenly, turned...This was why I had come here, just for that moment at the crossroads, that sudden turn, that circus trick performed by our fate. (p248-9)"

"Standing by the window, she thought: If only a star would fall. She was superstitious; in those days everyone was superstitious, each in a secret, private way. She had a great many personal superstitions, but shooting stars weren't among them--to wish on a shooting star would have seemed too romantic, too impossible. Nevertheless, that evening she thought: If only a star would fall—even though it was already late autumn, and everybody knows that stars fall only in summer. Still, she kept her eyes stubbornly fixed on the heavens and suddenly saw a flash of light on the horizon: some careless person had turned on a lamp without first covering the window. This flash in the darkness was not the star she was waiting for, but it could have been, and she took it as a good omen. (first lines)"