Ester Don, nee Fierer, was born on February 22, 1922, in Lutsk, Ukraine (then Poland). She was the child of Yehoshua (b.c.1885), a bookkeeper, and Channa, nee Tiktiner, (b.c.1899), a housewife. Ester and her siblings, Ronia, Nunik, and Reva, were involved in the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair in the 1930s. In September of 1939, the Soviets occupied eastern Poland per their pact with Nazi Germany. The Soviets moved Ester into the Soviet interior, along with between 100,000-200,000 other Polish Jews. Ester was sent to Kattakurgan, Uzbekistan, where she remained in a forced labor camp until the end of 1946. For two years, she was in Hindenburg-Kaserne, a Displaced Persons camp in Ulm, Germany. She gave birth to Hana Don (Helen Weisman) in the DP camp with her husband, Itsik Don. The family later emigrated to Palestine in 1948. They lived in Tel Aviv until 1960.