Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin — prime minister with roots in the Russian Empire

Menachem Begin was born on 16 August 1913 in Brest-Litovsk, then in the Russian Empire, now Brest in Belarus, the son of Zeev Dov Begin, a timber merchant, and Hassia Kossovsky, who came from a line of rabbis; he had an elder brother, Herzl, and a sister, Rachel. The family left the town during the First World War and returned after it ended, when Brest had become part of Poland.

He was educated in a Jewish-Zionist atmosphere, joined the Betar youth movement in 1930, and studied law at the University of Warsaw from 1931, graduating in 1935. In 1939 he became head of Betar in Poland and married Aliza Arnold.

After the outbreak of the Second World War he left Warsaw for Vilnius. On 20 September 1940 he was arrested there by the Soviet NKVD, held in Lukiškės Prison and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp in the north. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 he was released and enlisted in the Polish army formed in the USSR under General Władysław Anders, with which he reached Palestine in May 1942.

Released from the army, he became commander of the Irgun in December 1943 and led it until it was disbanded in 1948. He then founded the Herut party and was elected to the first Knesset; in 1965 Herut joined the Liberal Party in Gahal, and in 1973 Gahal and other parties formed the Likud. For most of the next three decades he led the parliamentary opposition.

After the Likud won the elections of May 1977 he became Israel's sixth prime minister. In November 1977 he received Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Jerusalem; in September 1978 they signed the Camp David Accords, and that December the two men shared the Nobel Peace Prize. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington in March 1979. He was re-elected in 1981 and resigned in 1983, the year after his wife's death.

He spent his last years in seclusion and died in Tel Aviv on 9 March 1992, aged seventy-eight. He is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Tracing the roots — Brest-Litovsk, Grodno Governorate (now Brest, Belarus)

Born on 16 August 1913 in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire (now Brest, Belarus), to Zeev Dov and Hassia Begin. Arrested by the NKVD in Vilnius in 1940 and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp, he was released in 1941, joined the Anders Army and reached Palestine in 1942.

Historical context

Russian Empire · c. 1721–1917

Brest-Litovsk, Grodno Governorate (now Brest, Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.

Map: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

A career defined by ambition