Haim Chaimoff

Haim Chaimoff was born in Chirpan, Bulgaria in 1931. He began writing when he was nine, and completed his first novel when he was 17. In 1941, the Nazi-inspired Law for the Protection of the Nation was promulgated, abolishing or severely restricting the rights of Bulgaria’s Jews. His father, a physician, was conscripted and sent to work in remote areas, and the whole family moved around with him. Along with other Bulgarian Jews he was narrowly saved from the fate of other European Jews in the Holocaust, when the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, and top clergymen overcame the pro-Nazi government and convinced Tsar Boris III to rescue Bulgarian Jewry from extermination.

After the war, Chaimoff emigrated with his family to Israel. After serving in the army, where he learnt Hebrew, he studied medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Chaimoff has written 40 novels, 24 plays, 19 books of poetry, four short story anthologies, a book for children, as well as two for babies.

Photo by: Yehuda Sobol