Great Regulars: [Dina] Porat makes clear that,

in a sense, [Abba] Kovner never really belonged in Israel--even though his Zionism was all that sustained him through the Holocaust, and even though he became famous in the 1948 war for the powerful, angry bulletins he wrote as an information officer in the Givati Brigade.

For the rest of his life, as he wrote poetry, planned Holocaust memorials and museums, and worked on his kibbutz, Kovner belonged in some sense to the past--to the Vilna that was destroyed, to the partisan bands that were scattered and killed, to the Zionist idealism that existed before the founding of the actual state of Israel. He felt this difference above all in his poetry, Porat writes.

from Adam Kirsch: Tablet: Partisan Poet

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