But the man who served as Israel’s sixth president from 1983-1993 also offered insights into more personal, lesser-known aspects of his life. As the son of Ireland’s chief rabbi of Ireland and later chief rabbi of Palestine, Herzog spent his childhood in a Dublin Jewish ghetto during the Irish Revolution.
Interviewed by Brian Lurie, president of the Jewish Museum San Francisco, the octogenarian Herzog said one of his most formative experiences “was wandering out as a tiny child amidst the Irish civil war into the streets and seeing somebody being shot. This remained with me forever.”
Although he attended school in Palestine as a teenager, after his family immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1935, Herzog never lost his ties to the British Isles. Serving in the English army during World War II, he was, in fact, one of the first Jews to enter and liberate a concentration camp — an experience he still recalls with horror.
“I had no idea that man could stoop to such a philosophy,” said the Cambridge-educated Herzog, speaking with a velvet tongue that reminded listeners of Israeli diplomat Abba Eban. “I never forgot it.”
Later, in one of many key historic moments Herzog witnessed, he was present for the surrender and interrogation of SS officer Heinrich Himmler, who subsequently committed suicide.
In many ways, Herzog’s life mirrors the development of Israel itself. He served in the underground before World War II, and later held a variety of command and staff posts in the Israel Defense Force.
Before becoming president, he served as a member of Knesset and as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. The author of several books on Israel and military affairs, he was for many years Israel’s leading political commentator.
But he is probably best known for his service as president, a post traditionally seen in Israel as that of a figurehead. “Above all, he is moral force, a moral influence,” Herzog said of the president’s position.
Now, no longer shackled by a cadre of bodyguards, by daily media scrutiny or by the imperative to be diplomatic, Herzog says he is reveling in the exhilaration of being a “free man.” As he states in his book, “I can openly discuss and express myself on any subject, no matter how public.”
Having come in contact with a bevy of Israeli and world leaders over the decades, Herzog last week offered opinions on some of them.
Asked whom he considered the most outstanding leader he has known, Herzog pointed to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and first defense minister, who headed the struggle for Jewish independence.
In his book, Herzog recalls the late leader as “our Jefferson and our Washington.”
“Ben-Gurion was something special; he was a prophet,” Herzog said. “But for him, we would never have achieved independence.”
He also pointed with great admiration to Shimon Peres (even though there is “not a single mistake in the book of politics that he has not made”), and to the late Yitzhak Rabin, whom Herzog first met during the War of Independence.
Herzog recalled Rabin as a man with an uncanny grasp of details, “an unusual person, very hesitant. He had to be absolutely certain he was doing the right thing.”
But even more than their merits as individuals, Herzog praised Peres’s and Rabin’s power as a duo.
“They were bitter rivals,” he said. “And yet when they came together on the peace issue, we couldn’t have had a better team.”