The Island on Bird Street

Novelist Uri Orlev, born Jerzy Henryk Orlowski, was renowned for his children’s books, many of which engage with themes of the Holocaust drawn directly from his own childhood. Born in Warsaw, Orlev survived the Warsaw ghetto, living in hiding on the Aryan side, and was finally flushed out in the Hotel Polski affair. Deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he began writing poetry in Polish. After the war, he arrived in Mandatory Palestine with his younger brother, learned Hebrew, and lived on various kibbutzim before moving to Jerusalem. He published more than thirty books and was a major translator from Polish into Hebrew. In addition to his literary career, Orlev wrote for television and radio in Israel. The Lead Soldiers, his first and most famous book, was written for adults, not for children.