Menachem Begin

Shortly after his wife Aliza died in 1982, he retired and returned to an apartment, leaving only to visit his wife’s grave. They left a son, two daughters and 9 grandchildren.

Menachem Begin will be remembered primarily for the peace initiative between Israel and Egypt in 1978, as well as his lifetime of commitment to the creation and preservation of Israel.

Born August 16, 1913, in Brisk, now Brest-Litovsk, then of Tsarist Russia (now Belarus), Menachem was the youngest of three children. As the son of Zeev Dov and Hassia Biegun, he was born into a family of devout Zionists.

In 1928, Begin joined the ‘Polish Zionist Betar Youth Group’. Betar was a pan-European activist group dedicated to the eventual development of a separate Jewish state that would encompass both sides of the Jordan River, an area occupied by the British-ruled Palestinian State.

While actively participating in Betar, in Poland, Begin earned a law degree at the ‘University of Warsaw’. By 1938, at age 25, he was named the leader of the organization, a position considered to be one of the most important Jewish positions in pre-Nazi European.

Once the Nazis began their occupation of Poland and other parts of Europe, Jews were desperate for escape and safe haven. His parents and brother were captured in 1940 and later died in a Nazi concentration camp.

In 1940, Menachem escaped the Nazis but was soon captured and held by the Soviets. Promptly he was sent to a Siberian work camp, where he was held and then released a year later.

In 1941, he joined a Polish exile group which traveled to British-ruled Palestine to continue their work toward establishing an independent Jewish state.

Starting in 1942, Begin and his compatriots dedicated led numerous raids and terrorist attacks on the ruling British and Palestinians throughout Palestine. The assaults continued for the next three years.In 1943, he became commander of ‘Irgun Zvai Loumi’ party. At one point, the British issued a sizable bounty for his capture.

His book ‘The Revolt’, written in 1951, is a recount of the struggle against the British and the development of an independent Jewish state prior to the establishment of Israel.

‘White Nights’, is a story of his imprisonment in Russia depicting the hopelessness and separation of incarceration in such a remote location, was published in 1957. The autobiographical account originally published in Hebrew was later translated to English.