Ben-Tor was born as Kurt Winter in the Baltic city of Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany, (since 1945 Kaliningrad, now in Russia) in 1910.Winter began studying Law in his home town, continuing in Berlin and then studied Linguistics at the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, prior to leaving Europe. With the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, he emigrated to the then British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel) in 1933, where he later hebraicized his name.