Adolf Hitler born in Braunau am Inn, Austria
Hitler is born to Alois and Klara Hitler in Austria. He is their fourth child, however the only one who survives. Throughout his early days, young Hitler’s mother fears losing him as well and lavishes much care and affection on him. His father is busy working most of the time as a customs official and also spends a lot of time on his main hobby, keeping bees and dies when Hitler is thirteen. Hitler is lazy and is only able to focus on what interests him in school. He succeeds greatly in those interests but is otherwise a dreadful achiever.
He was never an ardent worker, was unable to get up in the morning, had difficulty in getting started and seemed to be suffering from a paralysis of the will.
Dorothy Parker born in Long Branch, New Jersey
Parker is born to Jacob and Eliza Rothchild. She grows up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She has an unhappy childhood. Both her mother and step-mother die when she is young. She attends a Catholic grammar school, then a finishing school in Morristown, NJ. Her formal education abruptly ends when she is 14.
All those writers who talk about their childhood! Gentle God, if I ever wrote about mine, you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
Levi Eshkol born in Oratov, Ukraine
Levi Eshkoll is born in Czarist Russia in the shtetl of Oratov, which is in modern day Ukraine. His mother, Dvora comes from a family of Hasidic Jews, while his father, Joseph Shkolnik, is from a “Lithuanian” background, which often opposes Hasidism. Joseph is a farmer and merchant. He trades all he produces and also owns a flour mill. Eshkoll is the second of nine children. He is educated at a traditional Jewish primary school but is refused acceptance to the public high school because of his religion. Instead he attends the Hebrew Gymnasium in Vilna. When his parents offer to support him in highschool he replies:
Only if I come empty-handed will these hands be ready to work.
Golda Meir born in Kiev, Ukraine
Golda Meir is born in Kiev,Ukraine to Moshe and Bluma Mabovitch. When she is eight years old the family moves to Milwaukee Wisconsin, in an effort to escape pograms. Her father is a carpenter. Although she has several brothers and a sister who die in childhood, she has two surviving sisters she was very close to. She attends the Fourth Street Elementary School graduating as class valedictorian.
I identified most with my tenacious, intransigent relatives, especially my paternal grandfather, who was kidnapped at age thirteen into the Czar’s army but resisted conversion to Christianity and refused to eat traif (nonkosher food). Our family kept kosher, observed Jewish holidays, and shared traditional Sabbath meals with the extended family—all later lost in the Holocaust. I remember everyone sitting around the table singing Hebrew songs, yet I grew up in a not particularly religious household. I vividly recall my early childhood as a time of abject poverty and terrifying pogroms, and attribute my lifelong commitment to Jewish security to my memories of antisemitic violence and the experience of hiding from the Cossacks. I also remember my sister Sheyna, nine years my senior, risking her life to attend Labor Zionist meetings, and my sister Zipke, the baby, getting the lion’s share of our meager gruel. In 1903, my father left for America; three years later, he sent for us and settled us in a two-room flat in the poor Jewish section of Milwaukee. I was eight years old.
Chaya Mushka Schneerson born in Babinovitch, Russia
Chaya Mushka (Moussia) Schneerson is born in Babinovitch near the city of Lubavitch, the second of three daughters born to the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yoseph Yichak and the Rebbetzen Nechama Dina. She is schooled at home due to the mounting antisemitism and lack of Jewish education where she lived. While still a child she and her family had to flee for fear of being harmed to Rostov and then Leningrad. From a young age she aided her father and grandfather in disseminating Torah Judaism. Her Grandfather the fifth Rebbe of the dynasty sent a telegraph on the occasion of her birth stating:
Mazal tov on the birth of your daughter …if she has not yet been named, she should be called Chaya Mushka (the name of the wife of the Tzemach Tzede, the third Lubavitcher Rebbe).
Menachem Mendel Schneerson born in Nikolaev, Russia
Menachem Mendel Schneerson is born in Nikolaev, Russia, to the famed kabbalist, talmudic scholar and Chasidic leader Rabbi Levi Yitchak and Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson, who aids her husband in his scholarly pursuits. Schneerson is educated in Chabad institutions throughout his life. He has two brothers. Mother:
In 1905 when there were pogroms in Russia, my children and I, together with other mothers and children, hid in a pharmacy. As is normal during chaotic times, the children cried a lot. The pharmacist was fearful that the noise would expose him for sheltering Jews, placing his own life in danger…My then three-year-old son would walk around the room and quiet all the children. This was a remarkable scene. We could not talk because voices could be heard outside, so he silently motioned to them and gestured with his hands to keep quiet, calming each child in a different manner.
Bruno Bettelheim born in Vienna
Bettelheim is born in Vienna of a non-religious middle-class Jewish family. As a child, Bettelheim is entrusted to a wet-nurse, but when he falls ill, his mother takes care of him. His childhood is happy at first, spent in a loving and numerous family (Bettelheim has fourteen aunts and uncles). At age four he contracts life-threatening dysentery. His is influenced by fairy tales:
The literature, which exerted a strong influence on me at the very beginning, were fairy tales, the first my mother told me, and I read itself. But I can not remember exactly whether these stories had a formative force for me. However, this must have been the case, because otherwise I would not have tried, aged over the years, to understand their psychological meaning for children. (…) How and in what way tales for me were at that time so important, I can not fathom today, but I’m pretty sure the reason being that they were telling me mainly from my mother
His father runs a wood factory, but loses a large part of its assets in the First World War, and has a stroke in 1918. He remembers his father as a weak, broken man who was no longer able to take responsibility for his family in times of change. The relationship between his mother and father deteriorates when she discovers that her husband has caught syphilis from a prostitute. His father becomes anxious and depressed, because he is suffering from many other diseases.
Salvador Dali born in Figueres, Spain
Salvador Dali is born to Salvador Dali Cusi, a prominent notary, and Felipa Domenech Ferres. His mother often encourages his eccentric side. Dali’s artistic talent is obvious from a young age, and both of his parents support it. His mother dies when he is sixteen.
[My mother’s death] was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her… I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul
Nicholas Wertheim (Winton) born in London, UK
Nicholas Wertheim Winton is born in West Hampstead, England. His father is a businessman who imports glassware from Bohemia. Although his parents are German Jews, they join the Anglican Church and have Nicholas baptized, and he is raised a Christian. His parents changed the family name to Winton after joining the church in 1938. He attends Stowe School. He has one sister and one brother
My upbringing had taught me not to show emotion or to despair. I grew up knowing that to achieve anything I would need to remain focused.
Jack Ruby born in Chicago
Ruby is born the fifth of eight children to Fannie Turek Rutkowski and Joseph Rubenstein. Ruby moves around a lot as a youth, mostly throughout the Jewish neighbourhoods of Chicago. The Rubenstein home is marked by constant strife and the parents are reported to occasionally strike each other.
[We lived] below the middle class, but yet it wasn’t the poorest class.
Hedy Lamarr born in Vienna
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiessler Lamarr is born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary too parents Emil Kiesler and Gertrud or “Trude” Kesler. Her father is a Bank of Vienna director and her mother a concert pianist. Lamarr attends schools in Vienna and is sent to a finishing school in Switzerland as a teenager. Her mother downplays her looks and abilities:
When she was dressed for a party and looked lovely, I would say, ‘You look very well.’ When she did something clever, I would say, “You did alright.” But I under-emphasized praise and flattery, hoping in this way, to balance the scales for her.
Moshe Dayan born in Palestine
Moshe Dayan is born in Palestine, Ottoman Empire, near the shores of Lake Kinneret at Kibbutz Degania Alefin. His parents Shmuel and Devorah Dayan are Jewish immigrants couple from the Ukraine. The family later move to Nahalal, a settlement in northern Israel. He has a younger brother and sister. He is educated at the Agricultural School in Nahalal. He is named for Moshe Barsky a family friend murdered by a hostile Arab faction. Friend:
Moshe inherited with his very name at birth a direct association with the struggle between Jews and Arabs that would characterize the rest of his life.
John F. Kennedy born in Brookline, Massachusetts
JFK is born to businessman/politician Joe Kennedy and philanthropist/socialite Rose Fitzgerald-Kennedy in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States of America. He has three brothers and five sisters.
Clark Terry born in St. Louis
Clark Terry is born to parents Clark Virgil Terry and Mary Scott. He is one of 11 children.
Yitzhak Rabin born in Jerusalem
Rabin is born in Jerusalem. His father Nehemiah Rabin, is immigrant from the U.S. who serves with the Jewish Legion and works with the Palestine Electricity Corporation. His mother Rosa Rabin (nee Cohen) is one of the founders of the Jewish defense force, Haganah, and works as a bookeeper. The family moves to Tel Aviv when Yitchak is one. There he goes to Beit Hinuch Leyaldei Ovdim elementary school followed by the Kadoorie Agricultural School at Kfar Tabor which he chooses to attend because he wants to become a farmer. He has one younger sister.
At my parents house I absorbed values that guided me throughout my life.
Kurt Vonnegut born in Indianapolis
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., is born to Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., and Edith Vonnegut in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father and grandfather were both architects at Vonnegut & Bohn and were expecting Vonnegut, Jr., to continue the family business, but Vonnegut failed to fulfill their expectations.
Shimon Peres born in Visnieva, Belarus
Shimon Peres, originally named Szymon Perski, is born to Yitzhak and Sarah (nee Melzer) Peres, in Poland (now Visnieva, Belarus). His father is a wealthy timber merchant and his mother is a volunteer librarian. When he is 11 years old the family immigrates to Israel (then Mandatory Palestine) and settles in Tel Aviv. He is educated at the Balfour and Geulah schools. He has one younger brother.
As a child, I grew up in my grandfather’s home. … I was educated by him. … My grandfather taught me Talmud. It was not as easy as it sounds. My home was not an observant one. My parents were not Orthodox but I was Haredi [observant]. At one point, I heard my parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it.
Richard Attenbourogh born in Cambridge, England
Richard Attenborough is born in Cambridge, England. His mother, Mary Clegg is one of the founders of the Marriage Guidance Council. His father Frederick Levi Attenborough, is a don, scholar and academic administrator at Emmanuel College. Attenborough attends grammar school at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester.
My family was principled and socially responsible. My parents adopted two German Jewish refugee orphan girls in 1939 and raised them in addition to their own three boys. [I] definitely imbibed my parents’ dedication towards their respective professions, their idealism and sense of social responsibility.
Robert Mugabe born in Southern Rhodesia
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is born to Gabriel (a Malawian) and Bona Mugabe in Khutama Mission, Zvimba District north east of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia. In 1934 his father, who was a carpenter left for South Africa and then to Bulawayo to look for work and never came back leaving his mother to bear the burden of taking care of him alone. He is the third born of six children. He has two older brothers Michael and Raphael, young brother Donato and two sisters Bridget and Sabina. His older brothers both die young. He is educated by Jesuits and attended secondary school at Kutama College. Speaking in 2014:
Michael was born in 1919 and Raphael in 1922. I played together with Michael until 1934 when he died of poisoning. Raphael died when he was only six months so I could not see him. Donato also died then Sabina, now Bridgette. That was Mbuya Bona’s family. Michael and Raphael passed on, so I became the first born. After the poisoning, my father was not happy and said there was something wrong at our home before going to Bulawayo in 1934. Bulawayo was fine, actually better than Harare in terms of social life. So most of the young men from different areas preferred to go to work in Bulawayo. I was not happy after he had taken his time to come back home and wrote a letter to him expressing my displeasure.
Pol Pot born in Prek Sbauv, Cambodia
Pot is born named Saloth Sar the second son of a successful landowner in Cambodia. Pot’s father has political connections at the royal court at the Cambodian capital. Visits by court officials and even by the Cambodian king himself to Pol Pot’s father’s home appear to be common. Pot is a poor student, yet he receives a good education and studies hard. Pot’s only brother:
When he was young, he was really gentle, as I knew him. His character was kind and he studied hard.