Shimon Peres, 9th President of the State of Israel was born Szymon Perski near Voloshin Poland on August 21st, 1923. At the age of eleven, he immigrated to Palestine with his parents Yitshak and Sara Persky and his younger brother Gershon. On reaching Palestine they changed their name to Peres. He is a first cousin to the American actress Lauren Bacall who was born Betty Joan Perski. All his relatives that remained in Poland were murdered during the Holocaust and many of them including his grandfather Rabbi Meltzer were burnt alive in the synagogue in Wizniewo.
While in High school, he joined the Hanoar Haoved Youth movement and subsequently left school after 9th grade and moved to the Ben Shemen Agricultural School and Youth Village. At home his family spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian, and while at school Peres also learned Polish. As well as Hebrew, Shimon Peres is also fluent in English and French.
Shimon Peres was one of the founders of Kibbutz Alumot where he spent several years, he had also lived for a time at Kibbutz Geva. In 1945 he met and married Sonya (Gelman). They have 3 children, a daughter, and two sons.
In 1946 Peres was a delegate to the 22nd World Zionist Congress where he met David Ben Gurion and in 1947 Shimon Peres and a number of others were chosen by Ben Gurion to seek out officer talent for the Haganah (which after the declaration of the State formed the basis of the Israel Defense force). Ben Gurion then Drafted Shimon Peres into the High Command of the Haganah in charge of manpower and later on the production of arms and arms procurement.
In 1948 he served as chief of the naval department and in 1950 traveled to the U.S. on an arms procurement mission. While there, Peres studied at the School for Social Research in New York and after that at Harvard.
On his return to Israel, Peres was appointed to the post of Director-General of the Defense Ministry, a post he held from 1953 until 1959 when he was elected to the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) serving as Deputy Minister of Defense. During his time in the Defense Ministry, he built up a special relationship between Israel and France and established the country’s Electronic Aircraft Industry.
Shimon Peres had a long and illustrious career serving his country all his life.
During the time of the National Unity Government from 1984 – 1988, he served as Prime Minister for the first two years of the term and for the second two years as Vice Premier and Foreign Minister. His handling of the disastrous inflation rate in Israel was nothing short of miraculous as he managed, in a very short time to bring the inflation rate down to around 15% from its unbelievable 400% and stabilize the economy.
Shimon Peres was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. In 2007 he founded the Peres Center For Peace with the intention of building an infrastructure of peace and co-existence between all the peoples of the Middle East. He was elected President of Israel on June 13 of the same year.
In November 2008 he received an honorary knighthood from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. After the ceremony, Shimon Peres had a private meeting with the queen and discussed the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear program, and the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Shimon Peres passed away on 28 September 2016, two weeks after suffering a stroke.