About the Author

Born Harry Taub on February 1, 1940, in Bucharest, Romania, Haim Tal survived WWII and the Holocaust when he and his family were hidden in a local farmer’s house.  He arrived in Israel in 1950, serving in the Israeli Defense Forces in both the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars.  In between, he received a BA in social and political sciences and would become a journalist with the Itim News Agency and later a news editor for Ha’aretz, Israel’s largest daily.  He also served as the head of public relations for the WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) and the editor of the professional publications of the Israeli Institute of Petroleum and Energy.
 
Since childhood, Haim was deeply affected by stories of those who survived the Shoah (Holocaust). He wrote four books on the topic and continued his work at uncovering and bringing to life these personal accounts when he wrote The Fields of Ukraine.  He was an amateur travel guide and parlayed his love of travel into the authorship of a book on South American travels that was made into the documentary “Lost in the Galapagos”.

Haim passed away on September 2, 2009 of heart failure, after a long and heroic battle against cancer.  He is survived by his loving wife Simona, three children, and three grandchildren.  He will be missed.


Haim Tal (on left) with Josef Laufer in 2008