Uzi Eilam’s rich and fascinating military career peaked when he commanded his paratrooper unit to retake the Old City of Jerusalem

Reserve General Uzi Eilam

1934 Born on Kibbutz Tel Yosef

1952 Enlisted in the IDF’s Gadna unit

1954 Volunteer paratrooper; founding member of the elite Unit 101
//BSc in mechanical engineering and business studies; MSc in operations research

1955 IDF medal of valor
Six-Day War Commander of the 71st Battalion in the 55th Paratrooper Brigade

1972 Pioneered weapons development research in the IDF General Staff

1976 Director of the Atomic Energy Commission

1986 Appointed head of army research, weapons development, and technological systems management
// Award-winning author of Eilam’s Arc: How Israel Became a Military Technology Powerhouse plus three novels
// Married to Naomi, with three children and six grandchildren

What are your roots?

I was born on Kibbutz Tel Yosef, in the Jezreel Valley. My parents had come separately to Mandate Palestine from Ukraine during the third wave of Jewish immigration (1919–23).

My father left home at sixteen, after a wave of pogroms, to join the Red Army. He later became a Zionist, was exiled to Siberia, and then arrived here.

My mother’s family lived in the town of Skvyra (Skver), not far from Kiev. My grandmother ran a flour business and managed to have eleven children, of whom seven survived, while my grandfather stayed close to the rebbe of Skvyra. After pogroms swept the town, my grandparents fled to Romania with their two youngest children. My mother and one of her sisters had emigrated to the land of Israel around 1922.

My father joined a commune and worked in quarries. My mother studied at Hana Meisel’s agricultural school in Nahalal but quit to take care of her sister.

My parents met at a gathering of Russian emigrants and decided to marry and join the fledgling Kibbutz Tel Yosef. Because of what happened to my remaining family in Ukraine, and to the Jews in general, “Never again” is etched deep in my consciousness. I take that conviction with me everywhere.

How long did you stay on the kibbutz?

I left in two stages: first mentally, when I was seventeen and decided I wasn’t going to stay there; and then in fact, around a decade later, when I got married. I was extremely independent and didn’t want to be told what to do.

Though I was a youth leader on the kibbutz and in the army, as well as playing in an orchestra, I didn’t feel I was doing what I wanted. So in my last year of high school, I decided to drop out and matriculate externally. I got seven or eight classmates together, and instead of coming to work, we studied for our exams. That caused a real stir on Tel Yosef, of course, but we stuck to our guns, and in the end the kibbutz even provided us with teachers. For me, my matriculation certificate still symbolizes my independence and freedom from servitude to the kibbutz.