Personal Life
He was born on 12 February 1942 in kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. He is the eldest of four sons of Esther (née Godin; born June 25, 1914) and Yisrael Mendel Brog (August 24, 1910 - February 8, 2002).
His paternal grandparents, Frieda and Reuven Brog, were murdered in Pušalotas (Pushelat) in the northern Lithuania (then ruled by Russian Empire) in 1912, leaving his father orphaned at the age of two. Barak's maternal grandparents, Elka and Shmuel Godin, died at the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust.
Ehud hebraized his family name from "Brog" to "Barak" in 1972. It was during his military service that he met his future wife, Nava (née Cohen, born April 8, 1947). They had three daughters together: Michal (born August 9, 1970), Yael (born October 23, 1974) and Anat (born October 16, 1981). Barak divorced Nava in August 2003. On 30 July 2007 Barak married Nili Priel (born April 25, 1944) in a small ceremony in his private residence. In his spare time, Barak enjoys reading works by writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In 2005, he was voted the 61st-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.
Read more about this topic: Ehud Barak
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