Meir Brand was born in 1936 in Bochnia, Poland. In August 1943 his parents paid a Pole to take Meir and his cousins to safety. After a three-week hike to the Slovakian border, Meir arrived alone in Budapest.

There, he joined the refugees and orphans wandering the streets of the city, and in April 1944, he was taken in by a member of the Zionist underground. He was liberated in April 1945 and immigrated to the land of Israel. Meir later learned that his parents and older brother had been deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

Meir settled on Kibbutz Neveh Eitan, and in 1954 enlisted in the IDF, participating in all of Israel's wars from the Sinai Campaign to the First Lebanon War. Meir has three sons and eight grandchildren.