David Ben-Gurion - Biography

Biography

David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk, Congress Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a lawyer and a leader in the Hovevei Zion movement. His mother, Scheindel, died when he was 11 years old. Aged 14 he and two friends formed a youth club, Ezra, promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to the Holy Land.

In 1905, as a student at the University of Warsaw, he joined the Social-Democratic Jewish Workers' Party – Poalei Zion. He was arrested twice during the Russian Revolution of 1905. In 1906 he immigrated to Ottoman Palestine. He does mention his hometown in his memoirs and says: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication . I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Plonsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Plonsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Plonsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant."

A month after his arrival he was elected to the central committee of the newly formed branch of Poalei Zion in Jaffa, becoming chairman of the party's platform committee. He advocated a more nationalist program than other more leftist/Marxist members of the committee. The following year he complained about the Russian domination of the group. At the time the Jewish population in Palestine was around 55,000 – of whom 40,000 held Russian citizenship. In 1907, having been working picking oranges at Petah Tikvah, Ben-Gurion moved to the settlements in Galilee where he worked as an agricultural labourer and withdrew from politics. In 1908 he joined an armed group acting as watchmen at Sejera. On 12 April 1909, following an attempted robbery in which an Arab from Kfar Kanna was killed, Ben-Gurion was involved in fighting in which one of the watchmen and a farmer from Sejera were killed.

In 1909 he volunteered with HaShomer, a force of volunteers who helped guard isolated Jewish agricultural communities. On 7 November 1911, Ben-Gurion arrived in Thessaloniki in order to learn Turkish for his law studies. The city, which had a large Jewish community, impressed Ben-Gurion who called it "a Jewish city that has no equal in the world". He also realized there that "the Jews were capable of all types of work," from rich businessmen and professors, to merchants, craftsmen and porters.

In 1912, he moved to Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, to study law at Istanbul University together with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and adopted the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion, after the medieval historian Joseph ben Gorion. He also worked as a journalist. Ben-Gurion saw the future as dependent on the Ottoman regime. He was living in Jerusalem at the start of the First World War where he and Ben Zvi recruited forty Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army. Despite this he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he made his way to the United States where he remained for three years. On his arrival he and Ben Zvi went on a tour of 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army, Hechalutz, of 10,000 men to fight on Turkey's side. Settling in New York City in 1915, he met Russian-born Paula Munweis. They were married in 1917, and had three children. He joined the British Army in 1918 as part of the 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Jewish Legion) part of Chaytor's Force (following the Balfour Declaration in November 1917). He and his family returned to Palestine after World War I following its capture by the British from the Ottoman Empire.