1. Benjamin Dunkelman was the son of Ashkenazi immigrants from the town of Makov in the Russian Empire.
23 Facts About Ben Dunkelman
1. 2.
Ben Dunkelman's father was David Dunkelman, the founder of the Canadian men's retailers, Tip Top Tailors and his mother Rose was a committed Zionist.
3.
Ben Dunkelman later recalled about growing on Sunnybrooke Farm that "it was a dreamland, a children's paradise".
4.
Ben Dunkelman attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, where he was noted for his active social life and for excelling at football.
5.
Besides his love of sports, Ben Dunkelman enjoyed sailing Lake Ontario in his yacht.
6.
In 1931, financial losses caused by the Great Depression forced David Ben Dunkelman to sell off Sunnybrook Farm.
7.
At the age of 18, Ben Dunkelman went off to work on a kibbutz in Palestine, at that time a League of Nations Mandate administered by Great Britain.
8.
Ben Dunkelman was inspired by his Zionist mother to go to the Palestine Mandate.
9.
Ben Dunkelman was back in Toronto in 1939 when the Second World War broke out.
10.
Ben Dunkelman attempted to join the Royal Canadian Navy, but antisemitism in the RCN at the time precluded a naval career.
11.
Ben Dunkelman enlisted with the Second Battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles in 1940.
12.
Ben Dunkelman was in the second wave to land on Juno Beach, the beach assigned to Canada in the Normandy landings on D-Day, 6 June 1944.
13.
Ben Dunkelman fought in the difficult campaigns in northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, including bloody battles of Caen, the Falaise pocket, and the Battle of the Scheldt to open up the critical port of Antwerp.
14.
In March 1945, Ben Dunkelman played a key role in taking the steep Balberger Wald ridge in the dark forests of the Hochwald.
15.
Ben Dunkelman returned to Canada, but again decided to travel to war, this time to fight for Israel in the spring of 1948.
16.
Ben Dunkelman arrived there at a time when the Israeli army was short of officers with combat experience.
17.
Shortly after the capture of Nazareth, Ben Dunkelman received orders from General Chaim Laskov to expel the Palestinian civilian population from the town, which he refused to carry out.
18.
Israeli journalist and translator Peretz Kidron, with whom Ben Dunkelman collaborated in writing Dual Allegiance, reproduced his record of Ben Dunkelman's account of the capture of Nazareth in a book chapter entitled "Truth Whereby Nations Live":.
19.
Twelve hours after Ben Dunkelman refused to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth, Laskov appointed another officer as military governor.
20.
Ben Dunkelman's unit was implicated in numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians during Operation Hiram, including the Safsaf massacre and the Sa'sa' massacre.
21.
Ben Dunkelman was one of the founders of the Island Yacht Club, which he founded in 1951 after the Royal Canadian Yacht Club refused to accept him on account of his being Jewish.
22.
In September 1969, the Ben Dunkelman Gallery hosted the personal archaeological collection of the Israeli Defense Minister, General Moshe Dayan, which mostly consisted of art from ancient Canaan and Phoenicia.
23.
Ben Dunkelman's story is told in the film Ben Dunkelman: The Reluctant Warrior.