Menachem Begin was born the son of Zeev-Dov and Hassia Begin in Brest-Litovsk, White Russia (later Poland), on August 16, 1913. Menachem Begin was educated at the Mizrachi Hebrew School and later studied law at the University of Warsaw in Warsaw, Poland. Menachem Begin had witnessed many acts of violence against Jews in Europe. He went to work for a group associated with the Revisionist Zionist Movement, which Vladimir Jabotinsky had founded. The movement called for the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, which at that time was controlled by Great Britain.
In 1939 Menachem Begin married Aliza Arnold, with whom he had three children. Later that year the British moved to put limits on the immigration (coming to a country of which one is not a native) of Jews to Palestine. Menachem Begin organized a protest in Warsaw in response and was imprisoned by the Polish police. Menachem Begin escaped, but he was arrested in 1940 by Soviet authorities. He was held in Siberia from 1940 to 1941, but was released because he was a Polish citizen. In 1942 Menachem Begin arrived in Palestine as part of the Polish army.

In 1943, after his release from the Polish army, Menachem Begin became commander of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi, a military organization dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. He declared "armed warfare" against the government in Palestine at the beginning of 1944, and led a determined struggle against the British. With the independence of the State of Israel in 1948, Menachem Begin founded the Herut (Freedom) Party and represented it in the Knesset of Israel, starting with its first meetings in 1949. Menachem Begin became known as a gifted public speaker, writer, and political leader. He remained in the legislature until he joined the Government of National Unity on the eve of the Six-Day War of June 1967. In that war Israeli forces gained control from Arab groups of two major sections of Palestine. Begin and several others resigned from the government in August 1970 over opposition.