Paula Ben-Gurion
(1892-1968)
BIRTH
1892
PLACE
Minsk, Belarus
NAME
Paula Munweis
DEATH
January 29, 1968
PLACE
Beersheba, Israel
FAMILY
HOMES
POLITICAL VIEWS
ANARCHISM ADVOCATE
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED
DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Paula Ben-Gurion was the wife of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. Paula Munweis was born in 1892 in Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish family. Soon after their wedding, Ben-Gurion joined the Jewish Legion to fight in the British campaign in Palestine. Paula joined him there in 1919, and after spells in London and Poland the family settled in Tel Aviv. In 1953 she moved with him to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev Desert.
EARLY LIFE
Paula Munweis was born in 1892 in Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, into a Jewish family. As a young woman she emigrated to the United States, settled in New York and trained as a nurse at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. She was drawn to left-wing politics and was involved in anarchist and socialist circles. In 1916 she met David Ben-Gurion, then a young Zionist organizer living in New York after his expulsion from Ottoman Palestine. They married at City Hall in New York in December 1917.
Soon after their wedding, Ben-Gurion joined the Jewish Legion to fight in the British campaign in Palestine. Paula joined him there in 1919, and after spells in London and Poland the family settled in Tel Aviv.
They had three children: Geula, Amos and Renana. As Ben-Gurion rose to lead the Zionist movement and became prime minister in 1948, Paula guarded his health and time and was famous for her blunt comments to visitors.
In 1953 she moved with him to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. She died in January 1968 and was buried at Sde Boker, where Ben-Gurion was laid beside her in 1973.
CAREER
DEATH
Paula Ben-Gurion was the wife of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. Paula joined him there in 1919, and after spells in London and Poland the family settled in Tel Aviv. As Ben-Gurion rose to lead the Zionist movement and became prime minister in 1948, Paula guarded his health and time and was famous for her blunt comments to visitors. In 1953 she moved with him to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. Soon after their wedding, Ben-Gurion joined the Jewish Legion to fight in the British campaign in Palestine. Paula Ben-Gurion died in the Beer Sheba Hospital on 29 January 1968, at 76 years old. At her deathbed, her husband read the verse "thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (Jeremiah 2:2). He subsequently retired from politics and public life. David Ben-Gurion had never discussed with Paula where she would have liked her body to be buried. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
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