Dinur, Ehiel

Born May 16, 1909 in the city of Sosnowiec .

He studied at the yeshiva in Lublin and later joined Zionism .

In 1931 he published a collection of poems in Yiddish, which he tried to destroy after World War II ^[10] .

During the war he was a prisoner of Auschwitz for two years.

He wrote his first book about Auschwitz, “The Salamander,” in 1945 in the two and a half weeks he spent in an Italian hospital. The original manuscript was in Yiddish, but a finished book was published in Hebrew in 1946 ^[10] .

On June 7, 1961, he acted as a witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, however, he later abandoned this role, because after saying that Auschwitz this “planet of ashes” lost consciousness.

On February 6, 1963, in an interview with Mike Wallace in the television program 60 Minutes , he described the incident with his swoon as follows: ^[11]

Did Dinur overcome hatred? Fear? Horrible memories? Not; nothing out of this. Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, he immediately realized that Eichmann was not the god-like army officer who had sent so many to death. This Eichmann was an ordinary person. “I was afraid,” Dinur said. “... I saw that I was capable of it, I ... just like him.”

Dinur was married to Nina Asherman, the daughter of Professor Joseph (Gustav) Asherman, a renowned gynecologist in Tel Aviv . Nina was looking for him after reading the Salamander and they eventually got married. Later Nina changed her name to Eli-Yah-De-Nur. In the 1970s, she studied with Virginia Satir , and also played an important role in the translation and publication of many of Dinur's books. They had two children, a son Lior and a daughter Danielle, named after the heroine of the “Doll House”. Lior and Danielle live in Israel.

In 1976, due to recurring nightmares and depression, Dinur agreed to take a course of psychedelic psychotherapy , which was promoted by the Dutch psychiatrist Jan Bastian to the surviving prisoners of concentration camps . Treatment included the use of the hallucinogen LSD . The visions experienced by Dinur during this therapy became the basis for his book “Shivitti”, the title of which goes back to 8-11 verses 15 of the psalm from the Psalm תהילים טז: שיויתי ה 'לנגדי תמיד, identical to verse 25 of chapter 2 of the Acts of the Holy Apostles : "For David speaks of Him: I have always seen the Lord before me, for He is at my right hand, so that I will not hesitate."

The House of Dolls (Hebrew Beit HaBubot, The House of dolls ) was first published in 1953. The cover of the book “Doll House” depicts a young prisoner of spectacular appearance with red sensual lips, and on her chest there is an inscription stylized as a tattoo : “Front concubine 135833”. The author of the novel, which survived the Holocaust , stated that the “Doll House” is built on the real story of his younger sister Miriam, a prisoner of Auschwitz .

This novel, which is still part of compulsory reading programs in Israeli high schools ^[8] , describes the story of a young Jewish girl from Poland who is forced to work in a camp brothel for German officers ^[5] . Later, Dinur wrote the novel "The Boy", in which a similar situation was repeated - only now the Jewish youth became the main character ^[12] .

As in the case of his sister Miriam, Dinur assured that the second novel was built on the events that occurred with his brother during the Holocaust. However, it turned out that he never had a sister or brother ^{[8] [13]} . As it became known recently, brothels in some concentration camps did exist, but they were intended to "encourage" the prisoners, and not to please the officers. Moreover, in principle, they were not Jewish. ^{[5] [8]} .

In the documentary film “The Stalag: The Holocaust and Pornography in Israel, "Writer and translator Ruth Bondi claims that" Tsetnik caused tremendous damage. His books were, in fact, the first source of information on the Holocaust in Israel and had the status of ultimate truth. ”

• Salamandra , 1946; as Sunrise over Hell , translated by Nina Dinur, 1977
• Beit habubot , 1953; as House of Dolls , translated by Moshe M. Kohn, 1955
• Hashaon asher meal harosh ( The Clock Overhead ), 1960
• Karu lo pipl ( They called Him Piepel ), 1961; as Piepel , translated by Moshe M. Kohn, 1961; as Atrocity , 1963; as Moni: A Novel of Auschwitz , 1963
• Kokhav haefer ( Star of Ashes ), 1966; as Star Eternal , translated by Nina Dinur, 1972
• Kahol miefer ( Phoenix From Ashes ), 1966; as Phoenix Over The Galilee , translated by Nina Dinur, 1969; as House of Love , 1971
• Nidon lahayim ( Judgment of Life ), 1974
• Haimut ( The Confrontation ), 1975
• Ahavah balehavot , 1976; as Love in the Flames , translated by Nina Dinur, 1971
• Hadimah ( The Tear ), 1978
• Daniella , 1980
• Nakam ( Revenge ), 1981
• Hibutei ahavah ( Struggling with Love ), 1984
• Shivitti: A Vision , translated by Eliyah Nike Dinur and Lisa Herman, 1989
• Kaddish , (Contains Star Eternal plus essays written in English or Yiddish), 1998
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), House of Dolls (London: Grafton Books, 1985)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), House of Love (London: WH Allen, 1971)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), Moni: A Novel of Auschwitz (New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1963)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), Phoenix Over The Galilee (New York: Harper & Row, 1969)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), Shivitti: A Vision (California: Gateways, 1998)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), Star Eternal (New York: Arbor House, 1971)
• Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (Yehiel De-Nur), Sunrise Over Hell (London: WH Allen, 1977)

• Anthony Rudolf 'Ka-Tzetnik 135633,' // Sorrel Kerbel, Muriel Emanuel and Laura Phillips (eds.), Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century . London: Routledge , 2003. p. 267
• Yechiel Szeintuch: Ka-Tzetnik . // Dan Diner (Hrsg.): Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur (EJGK). Band 3, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, S. 338–341
• Isaac Hershkowitz Asmodeus and Nucleus on Planet Auschwitz: Katzetnik's Theological and Demonological Kabbalah , a paper presented at the International Workshop: Ka-Tzetnik: The Impact of the First Holocaust Novelist in Israel and Beyond, University of Calgary , March 10–12, 2013.

• Dinur, Ehiel at the German National Library .