Chaim Shoham

Chaim Shoham was born in 1935 in Rehovot

Chaim Shoham was born on May 1, 1935, the second son of Noah and Miriam Ratnovsky. His father helped found the newspaper Davar in 1925 and ran its printing press. At age 7 he was sent to Kibbutz Gvat to live with his uncle Binyamin Shoham.

He joined the IDF in 1953 and volunteered for Shayetet 13, where he operated two-man underwater craft. He took part in raids into enemy territory and patrols in the ports of Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon.

After his discharge in 1959 he married Yael Lifshitz and studied at the Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. He then studied medicine in Jerusalem and later trained in gastroenterology at Ichilov and Kaplan hospitals.

He returned to Shayetet 13 as its doctor, the first of its fighters to do so, and was named chief medical officer of the Navy in May 1981. He began building the naval medicine institute in Haifa and introduced a pressure chamber for diving accidents. He left the IDF in 1986 as a colonel.

In 1988 he became director of Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat, and in 1989 director of the government geriatric hospital in Pardes Hanna. He died in 1994 of an autoimmune disease, and the hospital was named after him. He is buried at Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha.