Benjamin Telem

Benjamin Telem was born in 1928 in Dessau

Telem was born Klaus Blumenthal in Dessau, Germany, in 1928. His family moved to Haifa in 1933. He finished the Haifa Naval School in 1947 and later took a staff officers course in Greenwich, England.

He joined the Palyam and helped smuggle weapons into the country aboard the ship Kedma. In June 1948 he moved to the Navy and served on the corvette Wedgwood during the War of Independence. He later commanded patrol and torpedo boats, and in 1957 he took command of the destroyer Yaffo.

In 1964 he became commander of the destroyer flotilla, and in 1966 he headed the team for the Saar missile boat program. In 1968 he was named head of the Naval Department and helped plan the operation that brought the Cherbourg boats to Israel. In September 1972 he became Commander of the Navy with the rank of Major General.

Before the 1973 Yom Kippur War he accepted the naval intelligence view that war was coming and ordered the Navy to prepare. The Navy lost no ships in the war. He retired in 1976, served as special assistant to the ambassador to South Africa, and was CEO of Israel Military Industries from 1980 to 1991. He died in 2008, and his autobiography was published after his death.