Background
Haim Gouri was born in Tel Aviv.
Haim Gouri was born in Tel Aviv.
After studying at the Kadoorie Agricultural High School, he joined the Palmach and completed a commander"s course. Gouri studied literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris.
He participated in the bombing of a British radar station being used to track Aliyah Bet ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine. In 1947 he was sent to Hungary to assist Holocaust survivors to emigrate to Mandate Palestine. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War he was a deputy company commander in the Palmach"s Negev Brigade.
As a journalist he worked for Lamerhav and later, Davar.
Gouri"s first published poem, Sea Voyage, appeared in Mishmar, edited by Abraham Shlonsky, in 1945. His first complete volume of poetry, Flowers of Fire, was published in 1949 following the Israeli War of Independence.
The film The 81st Blow, which he wrote, co-produced, and co-directed, was nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. lieutenant is part of a powerful Holocaust trilogy that includes The Last Sea and Flames in the Ashes. In 1975, Gouri was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature. In 1988, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for Hebrew poetry. In 1998, he won the Uri Zvi Grinberg award. In 2016, Gouri rejected an award from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport of the annual 50,000 shekel prize for “Zionist works of art”.
