Living history

Born during the Irish revolution to Ireland's chief rabbi, Chaim Herzog spent his formative years in Dublin's Irish-Jewish ghetto before being sent to school in Palestine. An officer in the British army during World War II, he helped to liberate the German concentration camps and was one of the first Allied witnesses to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Herzog returned to Palestine as a Zionist dedicated to the formation of the State of Israel. Through his eyes we see that process: from his days in the underground movement to his rise to the rank of general in the Israeli army and his involvement in creating Israel's superb intelligence agency. In the turbulent 1970s Herzog was appointed Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, never shrinking from the fight even when it seemed the entire world was against him and his country. And in 1983 he achieved his greatest success when he was elected president of Israel, a position he held for ten years. As soldier, politician, journalist, leader, or observer, Herzog has been present at almost all the great and tragic events in Israeli history. He has fought in too many of its wars and can explain all too clearly what it's like to live in constant expectation of terrorist attacks. He can place the relationship between Israel and the PLO into historical context and tell us what it was like to deal personally with Yasir Arafat. He describes lunch with the queen of England, negotiating with Ronald Reagan, and his final conversation with Yitzhak Rabin, shortly before the prime minister's assassination.