David was born on the 16th of January 1903 in Berlin into a Portuguese orthodox Jewish family settled in Hamburg,[citation needed] the oldest son of Benjamin Sealtiel and Helene Wormser.[1] At 16, Shaltiel joined the Zionist youth movement Blau Weiss, and he went to Palestine in 1923. However, he was not happy there, and returned to Europe in 1925. From 1925 to 1930 he was enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.