WE'VE COOKED UP
A GREAT SALE!
For Uris, A Need
To Tell The Story
GARY ROSENBLATT
Editor
L
eon Uris thought that
his recent month-long
trip to the Soviet
Union would be "a vic-
tory lap of sorts" —
the author of Exodus, the
compelling best-seller about
the birth of the state of Israel
that inspired so many Soviet
Jews, visiting the USSR for
the first time.
"What was dreamed of, a
heartwarming trip, turned in-
to a nightmare," says Uris,
the 66-year-old Baltimore
native who now lives in New
York. "In a word, the Jews of
the Soviet Union do not need
an emigration. They need an
evacuation."
Uris believes that while
American Jewish leadership
is "getting on top of the situa-
tion, there is no sense of
urgency or alarm in the gen-
eral American Jewish popula-
tion."
That's why he wrote the ac-
companying piece, he says,
and why he felt it imperative
to reach American Jews with
his message.
Despite his commercial suc-
cess as the author of nine
novels, Uris says his first
priority has been to tell the
stories he felt must be told.
Though he failed English at
City College as a high school
student in Baltimore and
never graduated from high
school, Uris was committed
to becoming a writer. But a
month after Pearl Harbor, he
ran away from home and
joined the Marine Corps at
the age of 17. After the war,
he did become a writer,
though he says he went "from
failure to failure:'
In the mid-1950s, after hav-
ing published two novels,
Battle Cry and The Angry
Hills, Uris had a break-
through as a Hollywood
screenwriter with Gunfight
At The O.K. Corral, which
became a classic Western.
Despite his success, he says
he was "unhappy with life as
a screenwriter, and unhappy
with life." He had become
obsessed with the idea of
Israel.
"I hadn't been involved in
Jewish life as an adult," he
recalls, "but we all became
Jews when we heard about
the Holocaust."
Uris went to Israel in 1956,
and traveled there for
months, interviewing hun-
dreds of people and collecting
endless notes. He spent 1957
writing his novel, Exodus,
which was published in 1958,
and became one of the great
successes in American pub-
lishing.
He estimates that between
15 million and 20 million
copies of the novel are in print
in virtually every language.
"It was a book whose time
was right," he says, noting
that its message of Zionism's
rebirth inspired countless
Jews, including those behind
the Iron Curtain. Dozens of
underground translations
were made in the USSR at
great risk.
Exodus included an ac-
count of the Warsaw Ghetto,
and the theme of the Holo-
caust continued to haunt
Uris. He traveled between
New York, London, Israel and
Poland to track down sur-
vivors of the ghetto uprising,
and the result was the book of
which he is the most proud,
Mila 18.
"I was advised by everyone
not to follow up with a ghetto
story after Exodus," says
Uris. "It was the one thing I
wrote not caring if it sold 10
copies or 10,000. I simply had
to tell the story."
The book became a best-
seller, as have subsequent
Uris novels like Topaz and
QB VII. A novel about the
Middle East through Arab
eyes, The Haj, was published
in 1984, and though it was
criticized as an overly neg-
ative and even racist depic-
tion of Arab life, Uris has no
regrets.
"I decided to write it like I
saw it with no apologies," he
says. "It was the toughest
decision I ever had to make as
a writer. lb know what I knew
and to walk away from it
would have been a betrayal. I
could never call myself a
writer again."
Combative and controver-
sial throughout his long
career, Uris has never been
afraid to express his beliefs,
and his current priority is
calling attention to what he
considers to be the impending
doom for Jews in the USSR.
"A massive pogrom is shap-
ing up in Russia," says Uris.
"We have to help save the
Jews"
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
33