Dov Shafir

Dov Shafir was born in 1931 in Tel Aviv

Dov Shafir was born in Tel Aviv on December 28, 1931, the youngest child of a family that had come from Poland in 1928. His father Yaakov was a textile technician from Lodz. Most of his mother's family stayed in Europe and was killed in the Holocaust.

He started school at Alliance in Neve Tzedek and later moved to the Bilu school. During World War II the family moved to Givatayim. He attended the Balfour high school in Tel Aviv, joined Hashomer Hatzair and Gadna, and took part in the War of Independence.

He joined the Navy after the IDF was founded and volunteered for the naval sabotage unit that became Shayetet 13, where he served as a diving instructor. In 1954 he took part in a training infiltration of Beirut port. He was deputy commander of the unit from 1957 and its commander from December 1960.

As commander he founded the unit's professional training school and in 1963 initiated the defensive diving unit. In 1965 he went to study at the French naval college in Paris. He returned in 1967 and led Shayetet 13 again in the Six-Day War.

After leaving the IDF he served as a director at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He sat on the board of Ashkelon College and the board of trustees of the University of Haifa. He helped found a center for maritime strategy studies and restore the ancient Ma'agan Michael ship.