Zeev Salai

Zeev Salai was born in 1925 in Pruchnik

Zeev Salai was born Zeev Yaakov Plezner in 1925 in Pruchnik, in eastern Galicia, to a religious family of 9 children. His father was a cantor and ritual slaughterer. He left the heder and studied seafaring at a technical school, against his father's wishes.

When World War II began in 1939, he fled to Siberia with 5 of his siblings and studied nursing there. His father and 3 of his siblings died in the Holocaust. After the war he reached the American zone in Germany.

In 1946 he joined the Haganah, helped bring Holocaust refugees to displaced persons camps and set up a kibbutz in Deggendorf. In 1948 he commanded one of the decks on the ship that brought him to Israel. He married Yona Roter and they lived in Haifa and later Givatayim.

He served in Givati and then Golani, and was wounded at Tel Mutila in 1951. He later instructed at officer and infantry schools and worked to reduce training accidents in the IDF. In 1965 he changed his surname to Salai at the suggestion of David Ben-Gurion.

He died in 2014. His son Moshe Salai is an orthopedic surgeon.