Professor David Danon (October 17, 1921 – October 17, 2015) was a physician, a scientist, a leader in the study of the biology of aging, and a painter. He was the inventor of a unique treatment for the healing of pressure ulcers and other severe wounds that do not respond to conventional treatments. Before the creation of the state of Israel, he was a commander in Irgun, the Zionist paramilitary group also known as "Etzel". He was the founder and the first commander of the Israeli Air Force's first airborne military medical evacuation unit, the founder and first president of the Israeli Association for Electron Microscopy, director of the Gerontology Center at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Health.
Childhood and youth
David Danon was born in 1921 to Regina and Moshe Danon in Pazardzhik (Bulgarian: Пазарджик, also spelled as Pazardjik or Pazarjik), Bulgaria. David's parents were doctors: his mother was a gynecologist and his father was a family physician. His parents were Zionists and in 1924 they immigrated with three children (Nora, David and Ida) and settled in the Jaffa section of Tel Aviv.
Irgun activity
Immediately after graduation from high school, David Danon joined the Irgun (Etzel) and his nom de guerre was "Ehud". He joined the Irgun together with his two classmates and close boyhood friends Amichai Paglin (who was later to become the Chief Operations Officer of the Irgun, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's counter-terrorism advisor, and Prime Minister Begin's Ambassador to the United States) and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri (who later joined the more militant Lehi, and was executed in Egypt for the assassination of Lord Moyne). Over time, as a member of the Irgun, David Danon was appointed a commander in the punch units. With the declaration of rebellion against the British Mandate by Menachem Begin, Danon participated in several of the first attacks against British government targets, and was sent to Beirut to try to obtain weapons. During what was then dubbed The Hunting Season (the Saison), as was proclaimed by the Haganah, he was arrested based on information obtained by an informant, taken to jail in Jaffa, and later sent to detention in Latrun. Seven month later, David's father succeeded in negotiating his release from the British by promising to register David as a medical student at the University of Geneva Medical School (where David's father had professional connections) and by committing to the British that David would not return to Palestine for the duration of the British Mandate. Per agreement with the British, David traveled to Geneva by ship within one or two days of his release from Latrun and began his medical studies. By the end of 1947, however, he postponed his medical studies and returned to Irgun activity, seeking out and collecting weapons in France to be sent to Irgun fighters in Palestine. He did so primarily by obtaining weapons left over from World War II from sympathetic former members of the French Resistance. Having collected the needed arms, he prepared to send them from France to the Irgun on the ill-fated ship, the "Altalena", which departed for the newly created state of Israel, then in the midst of its War of Independence. While David remained in exile in Geneva to continue his studies, several of his Irgun friends and compatriots were either injured or killed when Israeli forces clashed with Irgun fighters from the Altalena and ultimately shelled the ship. Later, David was sent to ][Tunis\\ to organize self-defense among the Tunisian Jewish community.