Ben Dunkelman

Ben Dunkelman
Ben Dunkelman in October 1948, during Operation Hiram
Born	1913 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	June 1997 (aged 83–84) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	soldier
Spouse(s)	Yael Lifshitz

Benjamin "Ben" Dunkelman (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.

Benjamin Dunkelman was the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. His father was David Dunkelman, the founder of the Canadian men's retailers, Tip Top Tailors and his mother 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. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto.

At 18 Dunkelman went off to work on a kibbutz in Palestine, at that time still under a British mandate. He returned to Toronto in 1932 to assist his father, but went again to Palestine in the late 1930s to develop new settlements.

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. He was in the second wave to land on Juno beach, the Canadian beach in the Normandy landings on D-Day 6 June 1944. During his career with the regiment he earned numerous commendations and a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his service in the Hochwald campaign. He also fought in the difficult earlier campaigns in northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, including bloody battles at Caen, Falaise, and the Battle of the Scheldt Estuary that led to the critical port of Antwerp.