Childhood and Youth
Isser Harel was born in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus) to a large, wealthy family. The exact date of his birth was not passed on to him because the book of Gemara in which the date was recorded was lost in the migrations of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and World War I. The family had a vinegar factory in Vitebsk. It was a gift of his maternal grandfather, who had a concession to make vinegar in large parts of Tsarist Russia. Young Isser was five years old when the revolution broke out and Vitebsk passed several times between the Whites and the Reds. On one occasion he saw Leon Trotsky give a speech in the town.
The Harel family faced hardship when the Soviet regime confiscated their property. In 1922 they emigrated from the Soviet Union to Dvinsk in independent Latvia. On the way, Soviet soldiers stole their suitcases, which contained the rest of their possessions. In Dvinsk, Isser began his formal studies, completed primary school, and began secondary school. As he grew, a Jewish national consciousness grew within him and he joined a Zionist youth organization.
When he was 16, Harel began preparations to immigrate to British Mandate for Palestine. During this preparatory year he worked in agriculture with the aspiration to join a kibbutz.
With the outbreak of the 1929 Hebron massacre, his friends decided to move up their immigration date in order to reinforce the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Documents were prepared for the 17-year-old Harel stating that he was 18 and eligible for a British visa. At the beginning of 1930 he immigrated to Israel. He crossed Europe from north to south to board a ship in Genoa, carrying a pistol that he concealed in a loaf of bread.
After the creation of Israel in 1948, Harel founded and became the first director of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Bet. Later, he took over the Mossad a year after it was created in 1951. As chief of two of the nation's three intelligence agencies, Harel wielded considerable power in Israel's first 15 years.
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