Last year, the Israeli military launched operation “Rising Lion.” This year, it fought operation “Roaring Lion.”
On Tuesday, a different lion—this one fictive, living in the Central Park Zoo and with a Nazi ring in its belly—will debut in English in a translation of Israeli author Yishai Ishi Ron’s latest novel, “The Girl Who Rode the White Lion.”
The novel, translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan, is based on the true story of the Althoff family, which owned a circus where it hid Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. The family was later recognized as righteous gentiles.
Ron, 54, told JNS that when he first heard the story of the family, he was inspired.
“The combination of saving Jews and an adventure during the Holocaust of a girl being saved by a circus—it is a magical thing by itself,” he said. “But this story happened for real, which is crazy.”
He opted to pen a work of historical fiction, rather than nonfiction.
“I’m more of a fiction writer,” he said. “My imagination is very, very developed and taking me to crazy places.”
“As an author, I never know which thing will ignite my imagination,” he told JNS.
In the novel, the circus hides a Jewish girl, Sarah Frank, from an SS officer, who is obsessed with targeting her family after a years-long friendship with her father.
The officer tells the circus owners that he will stop pursuing Sarah if she learns to ride the white lion.
Many years later, a Nazi ring is found in the belly of the same white lion, now living at the Central Park Zoo.
Ron spoke with expert lion tamers as part of his research.
“Being a writer in our age, the internet enables us to almost contact anyone,” he said. “Fifty years ago it would have been much harder to research in libraries, and today you can almost talk with your characters.”
The novel’s villain is driven by a familiar antisemitic impulse: jealousy.
Ron told JNS that the character’s resentment of successful Jews continues today. “They were always doing it,” he said. “This is the essence of antisemitism. It’s like this today. We all feel it and know it and see it around us.”
Ron told JNS that Ann Marie Sabath, founder of Soncata Press, which published the book, deserves praise for publishing the book and an English translation of his prior book “Dog,” which came out in 2025.
Other publishers and agents told him that “it’s not a time for them to represent an Israeli,” he told JNS.
“They were not even hiding it,” he said. “They were nice. I didn’t encounter anyone who said, ‘apartheid’ or stuff like that.”
Ron, whose grandfather survived concentration camps, told JNS that the Holocaust has shaped him since childhood.
His last novel, “Dog,” explored themes of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on his own experiences in the Israel Defense Forces. This new novel also explores the lasting effects of trauma.
Living in Israel after World War II, Sarah struggles with nightmares and alcohol, “so she will not have to deal with the horrific things that happened to her,” Ron said.
Based on his own experiences with his grandfather, Ron said that he knew Sarah “had to cope with something very big.”
“It for sure influenced her older life, what she had experienced,” he said.
Writing helps with his PTSD, Ron told JNS. He added that Israelis and Jews around the world have “PTSD from Oct. 7.”
“What those murderers did to us—you cannot compare it to anything but the Holocaust,” he said. “I think Jews are still suffering. Not just Jews, but people in wars everywhere.”
“That’s why it was very important to me to have this book accessible for people in English,” he said.
