Benjamin Tene

Benjamin Tene was born in 1914 in Warsaw

Benjamin Tene was born in Warsaw in 1914. His mother was secular and his father was a Hasid from a well-off family. After his mother died, he joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement and began writing a diary and poems in Hebrew.

He studied at a cheder and finished high school at the Hebrew Gymnasium of the Tarbut network in Warsaw. In 1937 he moved to the Land of Israel with the pioneers of Kibbutz Ayalon and helped found it. During World War II he sheltered the Polish poet Wladyslaw Broniewski, and his father and sister Sarah were killed in the Holocaust.

In 1946 he went to Poland as an emissary to bring Jewish children hidden in monasteries to the Land of Israel. The trip inspired his long poem Tmolim Al HaSaf. After returning he moved to Tel Aviv.

He edited Mishmar LaYeladim for several decades, working with illustrator Shmuel Katz. He wrote stories about his youth in Warsaw and translated dozens of books from Polish, as well as Yiddish works including poems by Itzik Manger. He won a prize from the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation in 1970 and the Ze'ev Prize in 1975.

He lived in Ramat Aviv with his wife Sarah and had two children, Yael and Abraham. He died in 1999 and was buried in Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv.