Thanks for the reply, Baruch. When you say "every one" of the founding members has a harrowing story, I believe it, which is humbling considering all the founding members I remember from my time there.
It's good to know that you have an archive of these stories and are working to make it available digitally and in English.

Thanks also for the tip about your monthly newsletters. I've started reading the obituaries and will continue. I just finished reading one of Raul Hilberg's compendiums of the Holocaust, and to see how the Matzuva founders' first person narratives match up with Hilberg's overview is sobering. Indeed, to have survived at all required an extraordinary amount of luck, fortitude, or both, as some of the survivor stories in the newsletters indicate.

I can only imagine what it was like to live through something like that, particularly when everyone around you didn't survive. As a visitor to Matzuva, it was nice to see the continuity between the survivor generation and their children and grandchildren growing up Israeli in the idyllic environment of the kibbutz.

It is so important to record every single survivor story while still possible. The chronicling of the Holocaust does not end when the last survivor passes, the research is only beginning. As a field of study it grows with each passing year, and it will be studied by historians in perpetuity.

Thanks again, Baruch. It's good to know people on Matzuva are ensuring these stories are not forgotten!

Hi Dave ,
It is heartwarming to read your messages.
The holocaust survivors here live through their traumas nearly every day.
They are aware of the importance of recording their ordeals and most of our members have done so even though this was very painful for them and opened up old wounds.
The problem is not the material, believe me there is lots in the world, but education.The holocaust should be kept as a subject in schools, and if some countries want to change this, we need many "Daves" to start shouting at their governments.
Dave ,thank you again.
Ps, I am a survivor myself and was hidden at a farm in Holland.