Benjamin "Ben" Dunkelman (26 June 1913 – June 11, 1997) was a Canadian Jewish officer who served in the Canadian Army in World War II and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In Israel, he was called Benjamin Ben-David. Biography Early life Benjamin Dunkelman was the son of Ashkenazim immigrants from the town of Makov (modern Maków Mazowiecki, Poland) in the Russian Empire. His father was David Dunkelman, the founder of the Canadian men's retailers, Tip Top Tailors and his mother Rose was a committed Zionist. Dunkelman and his siblings grew up on an estate, Sunnybrook Farm (now the site of Sunnybrook Medical Centre), northeast of Toronto built by his wealthy father. Dunkelman later recalled about growing on Sunnybrooke Farm that "it was a dreamland, a children’s paradise". He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, where he was noted for his active social life and for excelling at football. Besides his love of sports, Dunkelman enjoyed sailing Lake Ontario in his yacht. In 1931, financial losses caused by the Great Depression forced David Dunkelman to sell off Sunnybrook Farm. At the age of 18, Dunkelman went off to work on a kibbutz in Palestine, at that time a League of Nations Mandate administered by Great Britain. Dunkelman was inspired by his Zionist mother to go to the Palestine Mandate. At the kibbutz, he worked as a shomer, an armed watchman, whose duty it was to protect the kibbutz from being attacked by Palestinian raiders. Dunkelman recalled: "I went off a flabby, pampered boy; I returned as a tough young man who had seen the world." He loved the Holy Land, and only reluctantly returned to Toronto. He returned to Toronto in 1932 to assist his father, but went again to Palestine in the late 1935 to develop new settlements. Military career He was back in Toronto in 1939 when the Second World War broke out. He attempted to join the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), but anti-semitism in the RCN at the time precluded a naval career. Instead Dunkelman enlisted as a private with The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada; as the war progressed he rose from Private to Major. Dunkelman enlisted with the Second Battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles in 1940. Dunkelman later gave his reasons for enlisting as an "active" (willing to fight overseas) member as: "I am a Canadian, proud of Canada’s heritage and