1.
David Ben-Gurion
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David Ben-Gurion was the primary founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben-Gurions passion for Zionism, which early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader. On 14 May 1948, he proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces, subsequently, he became known as Israels founding father. Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israels first Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, as Prime Minister, he helped build the state institutions, presiding over various national projects aimed at the development of the country. He also oversaw the absorption of vast numbers of Jews from all over the world, a centerpiece of his foreign policy was improving relationships with the West Germans. He worked very well with Konrad Adenauers government in Bonn, in 1954 he resigned as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, although he remained a member of the Knesset. However, he returned as Minister of Defense in 1955 after the Lavon Affair resulted in the resignation of Pinhas Lavon, later in the year he became Prime Minister again, following the 1955 elections. He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from life in 1970. He then moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, posthumously, Ben-Gurion was named one of Time magazines 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk in Congress Poland – then part of the Russian Empire and 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, Ben-Gurions birth certificate, when rediscovered in Poland in 2003, indicated that he had a twin brother who died shortly after birth. At the age of 14 he and two formed a youth club, Ezra, promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to the Holy Land. In 1905, as a student at the University of Warsaw and he was arrested twice during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Ben-Gurion discussed his hometown in his memoirs, saying, For many of us, I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it, nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland. Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough, there were three main communities, Russians, Jews and Poles
2.
Moshe Sharett
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Moshe Sharett was the second Prime Minister of Israel, serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurions two terms. He continued as Foreign Minister in the Mapai government, Sharett steered the government through a turbulent period, was an experienced diplomat, with a liberal policy, a conciliatory approach, and a modernising attitude to the West. The renewed war with the Arabs split the socialist Left commencing another period of instability, born in Kherson in the Russian Empire, Sharett emigrated to Ottoman Palestine as a child in 1906. In 1910 his family moved to Jaffa, then one of the founding families of Tel Aviv. He graduated from the first class of the Herzliya Hebrew High School and he then went off to Constantinople to study law at Istanbul University, the same university at which Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion studied. However, his time there was cut due to the outbreak of World War I. He served a commission as First Lieutenant in the Ottoman Army, after the war, he worked as an Arab affairs and land purchase agent for the Assembly of Representatives of the Yishuv. He also became a member of Ahdut HaAvoda, and later of Mapai, in 1922 he went to the London School of Economics, and while there he actively edited the Workers of Zion. One of the people he met while in London was Chaim Weizmann and he then worked on the Davar newspaper from 1925 until 1931. In 1931, after returning to Mandatory Palestine, he became the secretary of the Jewish Agencys political department, after the assassination of Haim Arlosoroff in 1933 he became its head. During the war via his wife Zipporah, Sharett became embroiled in the question of emigration of refugee Jews stranded in Europe, some Polish refugees, children with and without parents were deported to Tehran with the Soviets agreement. The Tehran Children became a cause celebre in the Yishuv, Sharett flew to Tehran to negotiate their return to Palestine. The success of negotiations and others was a hallmark of Sharetts more cerebral approach to practical problems. He met with Tel Aviv bound Hungarian Jewish refugee representative Joel Brand, Yishuv leadership mistrusted Brand, and the British thought him a criminal. Sharetts response was to hand the self-appointed liberator over to the British authorities, like Weizmann, whom he admired, Sharett was a principled Zionist, an implacable opponent of fascism, but a practical realist prepared to co-operate fully with the Mandate. Sharett, as Ben-Gurions ally, denounced Irguns assassination squads on December 13,1947, atrocities escalated, mainly upon Jews, but with reciprocal revenge killings, by the end of the war 6000 Palestinian Jews, 1% of the population, had died. Sharett held the foreign policy post under the Agency until the formation of Israel in 1948, the main culprits on the Jewish side were Palmach, whose brigade, with help from the Haganah patrolled the Negev, saving it for Israel. Sharett was one of the signatories of Israels Declaration of Independence, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, he was Foreign Minister for the Provisional Government of Israel
3.
Chaim Weizmann
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Chaim Azriel Weizmann D. Sc, Sc. D, LL. D was a Zionist leader and Israeli statesman who served as President of the Zionist Organization and later as the first President of Israel. He was elected on 16 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952, Weizmann convinced the United States government to recognize the newly formed state of Israel. Weizmann was also a biochemist who developed the fermentation process. His acetone production method was of importance for the British war industry during World War I. He founded the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and was instrumental in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weizmann was born in the village of Motal near Pinsk in Belarus. He was the third of 15 children born to Oizer and Rachel Czermerinsky Weizmann and his father was a timber merchant. Until the age of 11, he attended a traditional cheder, at the age of 11, he entered high school in Pinsk. In 1892, Weizmann left for Germany to study chemistry and he began his studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt. In 1894, he moved to Berlin to study at the Technische Hochschule Berlin, in 1897, he moved to Switzerland to complete his studies at the University of Fribourg. In 1899, he was awarded a PhD in organic chemistry, in 1901, he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Geneva and, in 1904, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. In 1910, he became a British citizen, and held his British nationality until 1948, when he renounced it to assume his position as President of Israel. Chaim Weizmann and his family lived in Manchester for about 30 years in 1904, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, while in Britain, he was known by many as Charles Weizmann, a name under which he registered about 100 research patents. Of Chaim Weizmanns fourteen siblings, twelve survived to adulthood, the majority of his family emigrated to Palestine, and two were also chemists, Dr. Anna Weizmann worked in his Daniel Sieff Research Institute lab, registering several patents in her name. His brother, Prof. Moshe Weizmann, was the head of the Chemistry Faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, however, two siblings remained in the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution, a brother, Shmuel, and sister, Maria. Shmuel Weizmann was a dedicated Communist and member of the anti-Zionist Bund movement, during the Stalinist Great Purge, he was arrested for alleged espionage and Zionist activity, and executed in 1939. His fate only became known to his wife and children in 1955, another sister, Maria, was a physician who fell victim to Stalins fabricated Doctors plot in 1952 and was sentenced to five years imprisonment in Siberia. She was released following Stalins death in 1953, and was permitted to emigrate to Israel along with her husband in 1956, Weizmann was married to Dr. Vera Khatzmann. The younger one, Flight Lieutenant Michael Oser Weizmann, fought in the Royal Air Force during World War II, while serving as a pilot in No.502 Squadron RAF, he was killed when his plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay in February 1942
4.
Zalman Shazar
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Zalman Shazar was an Israeli politician, author and poet. Shazar served as the third President of Israel from 1963 to 1973, shneur Zalman Rubashov was born to a Hasidic family of the Chabad-Lubavitch denomination in Mir, near Minsk, in the Russian Empire, he received a religious education as a youth. He later carried on a correspondence with the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. In his teenage years he became involved in the Poale Zion Movement, Shazar immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1924, and became a member of the secretariat of the Histadrut. Shazar died on October 5,1974 and he is buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Shazar served as the editor-in-chief of the Israeli newspaper Davar from 1944 to 1949 and he was elected to the first Knesset in 1949 as a member of Mapai, and was appointed Minister of Education in David Ben-Gurions first government. He was not a member of Ben-Gurions second cabinet, but retained his seat in the 1951 and 1955 elections and he also became a member of the Jewish Agency Executive in 1952. He resigned from the Knesset in 1956, and from 1956 to 1960 was acting chairman of the Jewish Agencys Jerusalem Executive, Shazar was elected president by the Knesset in 1963. That same year, he attended the Funeral of John F. Kennedy after his assassination in Dallas. In 1964, when Pope Paul VI visited Israel, Shazar read to him the verse in Micah stating that other nations might follow other gods. He was re-elected for a term in 1968. In 1969, Shazar sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing, the message still rests on the lunar surface today. It states, From the President of Israel in Jerusalem with hope for abundance of peace so long as the Moon endureth, in 1973 he was succeeded by Ephraim Katzir. Morning Stars, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia,1967, translated from the Hebrew, Kochvei boker by Shulamith Schwartz Nardi. Library of Congress Card Catalog Number, 66-17828, in 1966, Shazar was the co-recipient of the Bialik Prize for literature. Shazars portrait appears on 200 shekel bills, Zalman Shazar Junior High School in Kfar Saba is named after him. List of Bialik Prize recipients The Zalman Shazar Center Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem site, Zalman Shazar on the Knesset website
5.
Poltava
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Poltava is a city located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the city of the Poltava Oblast and of the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltavas estimated population is 294,962 as of 2015 and it is still unknown when Poltava was founded, although the town was not attested before 1174. However, for unknown, municipal authorities chose to celebrate the citys 1100th anniversary in 1999. The settlement is indeed an old one, as archeologists unearthed a Paleolithic dwelling as well as Scythian remains within the city limits, the present name of the city is traditionally connected to the settlement Ltava which is mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1174. With the Mongol invasion of Rus in 1238-39 many cities of the middle Dnieper region were destroyed, in the mid 14th century the region was part of the Duchy of Kiev that was a vassal of the Algirdas Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to the Russian historian Aleksandr Shennikov, the region around modern Poltava was a Cuman Duchy of Mansur who was a son of Mamai. Shennikov also claims that the Mansur Duchy joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a state rather than a vassal state. In 1399 the army of Mansur assisted the army of Grand Duchy of Lithuania in battle of the Vorskla River, the city for the first time is mentioned under the name of Poltava no later than 1430. Supposedly in 1430 the Lithuanian duke Vytautas gave the city along with Glinsk, in 1430 Murza Olexa was baptized as Alexander Glinsky who was a progenitor of the Glinsky family. In 1482 Poltava was razed by the Crimean Khan Mengli I Giray, in 1537 Ografena Vasylivna Glinska passed Poltava to her son-in-law Mykhailo Ivanovych Hrybunov-Baibuza. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the territory around Poltava was passed to the Crown of Poland, in 1630 Poltava was passed to a Polish magnate Bartholomew Obalkowski. In 1641 it changed its owner again who was Alexander Koniecpolski, in 1646 Poltava became part of Wiśniowiecki Ordynatsia governed by the Ruthenian-Polish magnate Jeremi Wiśniowiecki. In 1648 Poltava was the base of a regiment of the Ukrainian Cossacks. In 1658 Poltava became a center of anti-government revolt led by the local leader Martyn Pushkar who contested legitimacy of Ivan Vyhovskys election to the post of Hetman of Zaporizhian Host, the uprising was extinguished with help of Crimean Tatars. On the issue boyar Vasily Borisovich Sheremetev wrote to Alexei Mikhailovich on 8 June 1658, and if the Great Sovereign allows to place a voivode in the city and rebuilt the city until the fall that in Plotava Circassians and residents built their houses and stock-piled their food. With the signing of the 1667 truce of Andrusovo, the city part of the Tsardom of Muscovy. The city suffered from the Great Turkish War when in 1695 Petro Ivanenko led anti-Muscovite uprising with help of Crimean Tatars who ravaged the local monastery, the same year the Poltava Regiment actively participated in the Azov campaigns which resulted in taking the Turkish fortress Kyzy-Kermen
6.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
