Gila Alexandrowitz (Almagor) was born in Petah Tikva to Jewish emigrant parents from Europe. Her German-Jewish father Max Alexandrowitz was killed by an Arab sniper while working as a policeman in Haifa four months before she was born. Her mother Chaya was from a Polish Orthodox Jewish family. Almagor grew up caring for her mother, who was slowly losing her sanity after realising that all her family in Europe had perished in the Holocaust. When her mother was institutionalized in 1954, Almagor was sent to Hadassim youth village.