Zvi Kolitz
Co-writer/co-producer of Israel's first film
He co-wrote and co-produced "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer" in 1955, about the battle for Israel's independence; pic won an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
He also co-produced the 1964 Broadway production of Rolf Hochhuth's "Deputy," one of the first plays to challenge the Vatican's silence during the Holocaust. In addition, he co-produced the Broadway shows "The Megilla of Itzik Manger" and the musical "I'm Solomon," both in 1968.
He was a columnist for Yiddish newspaper Algemeiner Journal the last 32 years and wrote fiction and philosophy, including "The Tiger Beneath the Skin: Stories and Parables of the Years of Death" (1947), "Survival for What?" (1969), "The Teacher: An Existential Approach to the Bible" (1982) and "Confrontation: The Existential Thought of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik" (1993). In addition, he taught courses in Jewish thought at Yeshiva U.
He was best known for "Yosl Rakover Talks to God," a short story he wrote in 1946 for a Jewish newspaper in Buenos Aires. It took on a life of its own, being reprinted in numerous anthologies and prayer books, but without his name attached for two decades; instead it was thought to be an authentic first-person account by a Holocaust victim and presumably found in a bottle in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto.
Alytus, Lithuania, native from a prominent rabbinical family escaped to Italy in 1936, attended the U. of Florence and the Naval Academy, then moved to Palestine, where he became a prisoner of the British, a soldier in the British Army, an emissary for the World Zionist Congress and a part of the radical Jewish underground.
He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Mathilde; a son; two daughters; eight grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; a brother; and a sister.
