Blackwell Reference Online

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Menachem Begin was born in the Polish city of Brest-Litovsk in 1913. He was the youngest of three children and, like his lifelong rival David Ben-Gurion, he was born into a family with strong Zionist leanings. He was educated in a Mizrachi Hebrew school, a Polish gymnasium (high school) and later, in 1935, he obtained a law degree from the University of Warsaw. While still young, Begin became a follower of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionist movement which sought the immediate founding of a Jewish state in Palestine by violent means if necessary. Begin joined the Revisionist youth movement organization Betar at 16, worked for it full time after graduation, and became its leader in Poland by 1939. During this time he encouraged thousands of young Polish Jews to move to Palestine.When the Nazis moved into Poland in 1939 Begin fled to Vilna (then controlled by the Soviet Union). There he was arrested in 1940 by the Soviets for Zionist activity and sentenced to eight years of prison in Siberia. He was in Siberia for over a year (he would subsequently write a book about this time of imprisonment entitled White Nights) when he was recruited, along with other Polish prisoners, into a newly formed Free Polish Army to fight the Nazis. It was as a member of this Polish Army that he found his way to Palestine in 1942. His parents and one older brother remained trapped in Poland and perished ... log in or subscribe to read full text