Ruth Bondy (19 June 1923 – 14 November 2017) was a Czech-Israeli journalist and translator. Bondy was a Holocaust survivor who wrote for the Israeli newspaper Davar and translated books written in Czech to Hebrew. She was awarded the Sokolov Award in 1987 and the Tchernichovsky Prize in 2014.
Early life and education
Bondy was born on 19 June 1923 in Prague.[1] She studied literature and journalism in Czechoslovakia and was a member of a Zionist group as a teenager.[2]
Career
Bondy began her career as a translator for the UP News Agency in the 1940s. During the Holocaust, Bondy was sent to Theresienstadt in 1942 and Birkenau in 1943.[1] After the end of World War II, Bondy trained in the military as a volunteer and moved to Haifa, Israel in 1948. After arriving in Israel, Bondy was a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Davar before working for the news magazine Devar ha-Shavua and the newspaper Omer in 1953.[2] She remained in journalism for over thirty years and taught at Tel Aviv University.[3]
Outside of journalism, Bondy translated Czech books into Hebrew and wrote multiple biographies including ones about Jakob Edelstein and Pinchas Rosen.[4] Her 1976 book The Emissary: The Life of Enzo Sereni won the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize.[3]