PART 1/3 OF MENACHEM BEGIN'S LEGACY LEADERSHIP SERIES

The most badass Israeli Prime-Minister who never bent a knee.

BIRTHDAY: 16 AUGUST 2013 / Shabbat Nachmu - "Comfort, comfort our people"

The protocol they put in front of him read priznaius vinovnim — "I confess I am guilty of having been chairman of Betar in Poland." Every word of it true and every word of it something he was proud of. Starving, eight months in, no lawyer, sentence already decided elsewhere — and he asked for one word changed. Not priznaius, "I confess," but priznaio, "I admit." One is the confession of a guilt; the other is the admission of a fact. He could hear it because Polish is close enough to Russian, and because he was a lawyer.

The interrogator: you were chairman, so you are guilty. Begin: "To yo ...