Rescued Jewish Children
Shalom Kaplan-Eilati
Shalom Eilati
About me
…And I also ask myself, still, endlessly, how is it that from that crowded press, from the piles of thousands of corpses, the rows of mass graves and mounds of ashes, how is it that I, a random creature like me, was pushed out to remain alive? That question, too, remains unanswered.
….But Lot's wife looked back…
How hard it is to look behind and not to turn to stone.
(From the Epilogue, Crossing the River, The Alabama University Press, 2008)
Shalom Eilati (Kaplan) was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1933. His mother was a nurse and poet, his father a teacher and author. In 1941 he and his family were imprisoned in the ghetto, where he survived the various Aktionen until 1944 when, at his mother’s initiative, he escaped from the ghetto alone and survived the war.
In 1946 he came to Palestine, finishing junior school in Tel Aviv and high school in Tel Yosef in the Jezreel Valley. He became a member of Kibbutz Tel Yosef, and later served as the secretary of the Kibbutz.
He is an officer in the Israeli Defense Force, an agronomist with a Ph.D. in horticulture, a tour guide, and publishing editor. He was a volunteer in the group that prepared the ground for the agricultural settlement of Kibbutz Ein Gedi on the shores of the Dead Sea, a regional orchard researcher in the Arava valley in southern Israel, and a lecturer of Horticulture in the Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew University in Rehovot.
He is among the founders of the Environmental Protection Service and, from 1974 to 1980, served as the editor of the Service’s national annual report. Between 1981 and 1994 he compiled the "Cathedra", a scientific quarterly published by Yad Ben Zvi on the history and settlement of Israel.
In 1999, he published in Hebrew a literary autobiography, "Crossing the River", about his childhood during the Holocaust. The book won 4 consecutive editions,(2000,2002,2011) and was granted a prize by the Prime Minister's fund for Literature 2022.
The English version appeared in 2008 by the University of Alabama Press and was widely reviewed. In summer 2009, he made a highly successful book tour in the U.S.A.
On 2013 a second, softcover edition of the book has been published. On 2016 a German translation of the book: "Ans Andere Ufer Der Memel" was published by the Stiftung Denkmal fur die ermordeten Juden Europas.
During the years he published a memoir about his mother , the poetess Lea Greenstein ("To Flicker", 2010). It includes her poems, selective letters and essays that were writen about her.
Another project was the deciphering and typing of the written in Yiddish diaries of his father , the historian and writer Isrel Kaplan, that were discovered aftre his death. It covers in detail his life in the ghettoes of Kaunas and Riga, and the KZ Lagers of Kaiserwald and Spilule in Latvia, as well the detailed toil in several sub-camps of Dachau until the liberation and afterwards.
The first part of those memoirs has been published by Yad Vashem 2018 ("I will not die but live and tell"). The other part is still under preparation, 2023.
He is married, lives in Jerusalem, father to two daughters and a son, grandfather of five.
About me
…And I also ask myself, still, endlessly, how is it that from that crowded press, from the piles of thousands of corpses, the rows of mass graves and mounds of ashes, how is it that I, a random creature like me, was pushed out to remain alive? That question, too, remains unanswered.
….But Lot's wife looked back…
How hard it is to look behind and not to turn to stone.
(From the Epilogue, Crossing the River, The Alabama University Press, 2008)
Shalom Eilati (Kaplan) was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1933. His mother was a nurse and poet, his father a teacher and author. In 1941 he and his family were imprisoned in the ghetto, where he survived the various Aktionen until 1944 when, at his mother’s initiative, he escaped from the ghetto alone and survived the war.
In 1946 he came to Palestine, finishing junior school in Tel Aviv and high school in Tel Yosef in the Jezreel Valley. He became a member of Kibbutz Tel Yosef, and later served as the secretary of the Kibbutz.
He is an officer in the Israeli Defense Force, an agronomist with a Ph.D. in horticulture, a tour guide, and publishing editor. He was a volunteer in the group that prepared the ground for the agricultural settlement of Kibbutz Ein Gedi on the shores of the Dead Sea, a regional orchard researcher in the Arava valley in southern Israel, and a lecturer of Horticulture in the Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew University in Rehovot.
He is among the founders of the Environmental Protection Service and, from 1974 to 1980, served as the editor of the Service’s national annual report. Between 1981 and 1994 he compiled the "Cathedra", a scientific quarterly published by Yad Ben Zvi on the history and settlement of Israel.
In 1999, he published in Hebrew a literary autobiography, "Crossing the River", about his childhood during the Holocaust. The book won 4 consecutive editions,(2000,2002,2011) and was granted a prize by the Prime Minister's fund for Literature 2022.
The English version appeared in 2008 by the University of Alabama Press and was widely reviewed. In summer 2009, he made a highly successful book tour in the U.S.A.
On 2013 a second, softcover edition of the book has been published. On 2016 a German translation of the book: "Ans Andere Ufer Der Memel" was published by the Stiftung Denkmal fur die ermordeten Juden Europas.
During the years he published a memoir about his mother , the poetess Lea Greenstein ("To Flicker", 2010). It includes her poems, selective letters and essays that were writen about her.
Another project was the deciphering and typing of the written in Yiddish diaries of his father , the historian and writer Isrel Kaplan, that were discovered aftre his death. It covers in detail his life in the ghettoes of Kaunas and Riga, and the KZ Lagers of Kaiserwald and Spilule in Latvia, as well the detailed toil in several sub-camps of Dachau until the liberation and afterwards.
The first part of those memoirs has been published by Yad Vashem 2018 ("I will not die but live and tell"). The other part is still under preparation, 2023.
He is married, lives in Jerusalem, father to two daughters and a son, grandfather of five.