Moshe Arens

Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, to a Jewish family. His father was an industrialist and his mother was a dentist. When he was a year old, his family moved to Riga, Latvia. where he attended elementary school. In 1939, his family immigrated to the United States, where his father had business interests. The family settled in New York City, where he attended George Washington High School. As a youth, he was a leader in the Betar youth movement. He studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aeronautical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

During World War II, he served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers as a technical sergeant.

Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, he moved to the new State of Israel and joined the Irgun, despite the opposition of his father. He was sent to North Africa (mostly Morocco and Algeria) and Europe to help local Jewish communities establish self-defense groups. In March 1949, he returned to Israel, and became a founding member of the Herut party, which had grown out of the Irgun. After being denied a job in Israel's military industries, he began working as an engineer for an American company dealing in designing water systems for Tel Aviv. In 1951, he returned to the United States, and studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aeronautical engineering at the California Institute of Technology where he was a student of Qian Xuesen, then worked for a time in the aircraft industry. He returned to Israel in 1957, and became professor of aeronautics at the Technion, serving in this position until 1962. From 1962 until 1971 he was a Deputy Director General at Israel Aircraft Industries, and won the Israel Defense Prize in 1971. After the Yom Kippur War he entered politics and was elected to the Knesset as a member of Likud in the 1973 elections. After being re-elected in 1977, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He was re-elected again in 1981, but resigned from the Knesset on 19 January 1982 when appointed ambassador to the United States. He returned to Israel in February 1983 after being appointed Minister of Defense. He was re-elected in 1984, but was only appointed Minister without Portfolio. After another re-election in 1988 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and in 1990 returned to the Defense portfolio. After Likud lost the 1992 elections, he retired from politics. In 1999 he was appointed Minister of Defense. Since retiring from the government, he has devoted considerable efforts to researching and commemorating the story of the Jewish Military Union (ZZW) which fought alongside the better known Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Arens is the author of a number of articles on the revolt as well as a popularly acclaimed book, Flags over the Ghetto, which appeared in Hebrew, Polish and English.

He was a member of the public council of the Museum of the Jewish soldier in World War II.