Ariel Sharon — prime minister with roots in the Russian Empire
Ariel Sharon was born Ariel Scheinerman on 26 February 1928 at Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav in Mandatory Palestine. Both his parents were born in the Russian Empire, in towns now in Belarus: his father, Shmuel Scheinerman (1896-1956), in Brest-Litovsk, and his mother, Vera Schneirov (1900-1988), in Mogilev.
They met at university in Tiflis, now Tbilisi, where Shmuel was studying agronomy and Vera had begun her fourth year of medicine. They came to Palestine with the Third Aliyah and settled at Kfar Malal, a secular, socialist community; four years after their arrival their daughter Yehudit was born, and Ariel two years after her. Like many Israelis in the early years of the state, he later took a Hebrew surname, Sharon.
He fought as a junior officer in the war of 1948 and was seriously wounded at Latrun. In August 1953 he was appointed to establish and command Unit 101, which in January 1954 was merged into a paratroop battalion under his command. He later headed Southern Command and retired from active service in 1973, commanding a reserve armoured division in the war of that year.
From June 1975 to March 1976 he was special adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1977 he joined Menachem Begin's first government as Minister of Agriculture, and in June 1981 Begin appointed him Minister of Defence. In 1983, after the report of a state commission of inquiry, he left the Defence Ministry and remained in the government as minister without portfolio. He went on to serve as Minister of Industry and Trade, of Construction and Housing, of National Infrastructure (a post created for him in 1996) and, from 1998, as Foreign Minister. In 1999 he succeeded Benjamin Netanyahu as leader of the Likud.
In February 2001 he defeated Ehud Barak and on 7 March became Israel's eleventh prime minister. On 4 January 2006 he suffered a stroke; Ehud Olmert became acting prime minister, and in April the government declared him permanently incapacitated.
He remained in a coma until his death in Ramat Gan on 11 January 2014, aged eighty-five. That year a commemorative event was held in Brest, his father's home town.
"Parents Shmuel Scheinerman of Brest-Litovsk and Vera Schneirov of Mogilev met as students in Tiflis and came to Palestine with the Third Aliyah, settling at the moshav Kfar Malal."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Brest-Litovsk (father) and Mogilev (mother), now Belarus
His father, Shmuel Scheinerman, came from Brest-Litovsk and his mother, Vera Schneirov, from Mogilev, both then in the Russian Empire; they met as students in Tiflis before emigrating to Palestine.
Father Shmuel Scheinerman (1896-1956), from Brest-Litovsk, studied agronomy in Tiflis; mother Vera Schneirov (1900-1988), from Mogilev, was a medical student there. Both towns were in the Russian Empire.
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Brest-Litovsk (father) and Mogilev (mother), now Belarus. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.