Shlomo Bezeq
(1917 – 1971)

Shlomo was born with the name Sal Lorsch in 1917 at Scheveningen in Holland.
Before the Second World War – when he still was child – he changed his name when his parents send him to Palestine, like many Jewish parents did at that time.

That young boy became later a founder of three kibbutzim: Beit HaShita, Ayelet HaShahar and Nes Ammim, all of them in the north of the country.

1965: Schlomo Bezeq (links) mit Manager Ge Dorland in Rosch HaNikra.

Already then he told stories to entertain the people who had to work hard every day of their life. Shlomo was a very passionate and pastoral person, he cared for the people of Nes Ammim. When his car appeared, from all sides people run to him and he made appointments with them, he took time for each of them.

He married Alice, an Amsterdam woman. They got two sons and a daughter. When living at Ayelet HaShahar he got devorced and married Miriam, also Dutch, studying chemistry before the outbreak of World War Two. She came to Israel after the war. Shlomo and Miriam had four daughters.

Schlomo mit seiner Frau Miriam und seinem weißen Nes-Ammim-Saab. Schlomo war auf dem Weg zu einem Treffen mit Premier Levi Eschkol.

Shlomo met Johan Pilon during the birth of his daughter Rachel in the Scottisch Hospital at Tiberias, where Johan worked as a gynaecologist. There the vision of a christian settlement was born during the discussions between these two men and their wives!

Jakov Ben-Zvi, Schlomo Bezeq und Johan Pilon diskutieren darüber, wie man die Wasserleitungen legen will.

Nes Ammim was founded thanks to the work of Shlomo and Johan. Shlomo worked mostly in the organisation in Israel, while Johan was raising funds in Europe and America.

Shlomo had the open way of kibbutzniks in meeting the authorities. He justed walked into the offices, passing the secretaries to speak with the boss himself about the plans of Nes Ammim, in order to get the necessary papers! In this way he also met Levi Eshkol, the prime minister in those days, who agreed with the founding of Nes Ammim.

In the same open way he spoke to the new people of Nes Ammim: Why did you come here? What are your intentions?

Schlomo Bezeq und die junge Karin Koller.

I myself worked a lot together with him in the administration and bookkeeping, because I was a secretary and had learnt Hebrew in the kibbutz. In 1968 Shlomo sent me and my husband on a further ulpan for half a year. He also slept in our house during the weekdays when he was at Nes Ammim.

1964: Schlomo Bezeq (links) und Hans Vetterli im Schweizer Bus.

Once he brought his youngest daughter with him to Nes Ammim for a day, and later on he told us with laughter that she was very proud that she had learnt a Dutch word. What word is that, Shlomo had asked her. She said: “Nesammim!� That was the word she had heard all that day long!

Schlomos Grab im Kibbuz Ayelet HaSchahar, das er selbst mitgegründet hatte.

He died just before his heart operation in the hospital of Tel Aviv, in the night that our first daughter was born, on April 5/6th, 1971.

The people of Nes Ammim made a memorial for him, a garden bench of stone in front of the Village Center according to an idea of my husband Wim.

I am sure that without Shlomo there had never been a Nes Ammim!
His memory surely is a blessing for everyone who knew him!