Where did David Ben-Gurion grow up and live?

📍Plonsk, Masovian, Poland

1886 – 1973

“I was born David Grün on the 16th of October 1886 in Płońsk, a small town in the Russian-controlled Pale of Settlement in what is now Poland. I went to Palestine at the age of twenty, became a Labour Zionist organiser, changed my name to David Ben-Gurion, and spent the following forty years building the institutions that became the State of Israel. On the 14th of May 1948 I read the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel in the Tel Aviv Museum. Eleven minutes later the United States recognised us. The following day five Arab armies invaded. We survived. I served as Prime Minister for most of Israel's first fifteen years. Płońsk, the Pale of Settlement, the pogroms that shaped every Jewish family's understanding of what a homeland meant — these were always present.”

👍 LovedThe Declaration of Independence on the 14th of May 1948. The survival of the War of Independence. The building of a state from the institutions of a movement.

👎 DislikedThe expulsion of Palestinian Arabs that accompanied the founding — the Nakba whose weight I carried. The wars that surrounded Israel from its birth. The Płońsk childhood's knowledge of what persecution meant.

Map showing where David Ben-Gurion lived — Plonsk, Masovian, Poland

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of David Ben-Gurion's home at Plonsk, Masovian, Poland

📍 Street view today

Sources: Teveth, S. Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground (1987), Houghton Mifflin; Bar-Zohar, M. Ben-Gurion: A Biography (1978), Delacorte Press