Biography
Shlomo Kalo was born on the 25th of February, 1928, in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the age of 12, Kalo joined the anti-Fascist underground in Bulgaria. Aged 15, when Bulgaria was under Nazi occupation, Kalo was imprisoned in an improvised concentration camp in Somovit..", Aged 18, in 1946, he won a prize in a poetry competition and went to Prague, where he studied medicine at the Charles University, worked as a freelance journalist and wrote short stories. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Shlomo Kalo joined the MAHAL ("Foreigner Volunteers": individuals outside Israel who volunteered to fight together with the Israeli forces during its war of independence) and trained as a pilot in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia. In 1949, at the age of 21 he immigrated to Israel. In 1958 he was awarded M.Sc. in microbiology by the Tel Aviv University. For 26 years and until his retirement in 1988 he worked as the regional director of medical laboratories at the General Health Services, Kupat Holim Klalit, in Rishon-leZion. His first book in Hebrew, a short stories collection was published in 1954 by "Sifriyat Poalim".
In 1969, a sharp turn in his life occurred and was described in the last pages of his autobiographic novel "Erral". It affected his life, thoughts and literary activity ever since. Kalo wrote about it: "First Sunday of the year 1969 A.D., twelve noon. Body tensed like a bow-string. Not he. Warmth rising from the region of the heart. Not he. He stopped being what he was. He will no longer be as he was, forever and ever, for all eternity. He was, he is, he will be, forever and ever, for all eternity.", In 1979 an informal group known as "DAAT" (Hebrew acronym, meaning knowledge, standing for "know yourself always") formed around Shlomo Kalo. This group had a varying nuber of members or supporters till it disbanded in 2009. Some well-known and influential journalists and artists (Shlomo Bar-Abba, Odetta Schwartz and Rivka Zohar, for example) were associated at times with the group. Kalo's many books influenced people who had never met him.
In 2009, the Israeli Newspaper Ha'aretz reported that rumours were persistent that Shlomo Kalo was among few Israeli writers who had been shortlisted as candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature, similar reports were made by other news sites in 2010 and in 2011.
Shlomo Kalo is married to Rivka Zohar-Kalo, a prominent Israeli singer, who performs and records, among others, songs he has written (music and lyrics).
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