Pioneering Israeli journalist Yudkovsky dies

Veteran Israeli journalist Dov Yudkovsky, who survived the Holocaust and later became editor of Israel’s best-selling newspaper, has died aged 89.

Mr Yudkovsky worked for more than 40 years at Israel’s mass-circulation Yediot Ahronot daily.

In a full-page eulogy today the paper credited him with training younger reporters to write in a “simple, upfront, clear and colloquial” style.

Mr Yudkovsky was born in Warsaw in 1923 but grew up in Belgium.

After the outbreak of the Second World War he fled with his family to France but the Nazis arrested them and sent them to Auschwitz. No one else in his family survived.

After the war he moved to pre-state Israel where he managed to get the paper printed in Jerusalem while the city was under siege during the 1948 war that surrounded Israel’s creation.

In 2002 Mr Yudkovsky was awarded the Israel Prize, the Jewish state’s highest honour, for his work in the media.

The Israeli daily Haaretz dubbed him the “father of modern Israeli journalism,” and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mourned his death.

“He crafted a journalism that reached out toward its readers, looked them in the eye and spoke their language,” Mr Netanyahu said. “With his passing, an era in Israeli media has come to a close.”

Mr Yudkovsky is survived by his wife, Leah, a daughter and grandchildren.