Early Life
Yaakov Banai (Tunkel) was born on March 20, 1920 in Baranovichi, Poland. He was the third child of four children. His father was Shraga (Feivel) Tunkel and his mother Brakha née Sokolovsky. The family owned a barber shop and his father served as the head of the town's volunteer fire department. His father was the first cousin of Yosef Tunkel, the Yiddish humorist known as Der Tunkeler. Both of his parents and two of his siblings perished in the Holocaust.
As a youth, Banai was a member of Betar, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement and was a founding member of the Irgun in Poland and leader of the Eastern Poland branch of the party. He graduated from the state Gymnasium high school in 1938 and studied law for one year at Vilnius University (1939–1940). In 1941, following the Soviet invasion and shortly before the German invasion of Lithuania, Banai obtained a Sugihara visa and made his way to Israel via Turkey with other members of the Betar.
Read more about this topic: Yaakov Banai
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)