Davidovich, Matityahu

Matityahu was born in 1915 in north-eastern Poland, in the city of Knyszyn, in the Bialystok district, where tens of thousands of Jews lived and grew up in Kinshin. It is not known what Matityahu experienced during the Holocaust. It is known that his whole family was destroyed, he remained the only survivor and it seems that he joined the partisans for a while. A few months after the war ended, on December 14, 1945, Matityahu boarded the ship “Hanna Szenes” on his way to Israel. The ship, which was purchased in Italy by the Haganah’s Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet, sailed from the port of Savannah, Italy, carrying 252 immigrants, mostly members of Zionist youth movements. The conditions of the voyage were harsh; the overcrowding was high, the air was overcrowded, the food and the water were insufficient, the sea stormed and the number of patients grew during the voyage. On December 24, 1945, “Hannah Szenes” arrived at the shore of Nahariya, where she ran aground. Members of the Palyam beach group (fighters of the Palmach naval company), with the help of residents from Nahariya and the surrounding area, transferred the immigrants to the shore using ropes. They were then transported by bus and truck to the surrounding kibbutzim, from where the immigrants were dispersed throughout the country. Matityahu was absorbed in Kibbutz Kfar Hahoresh in the Nazareth Mountains. On December 25, 1947, Matityahu was among those escorted by a convoy of trucks carrying foodstuffs from the settlements of the Nahalal bloc to Haifa. When the convoy reached Nazareth Street in East Haifa, the Arabs opened fire at it and hit its passengers. Matityahu was wounded, managed to escape to a nearby police station and was rushed to the Rothschild Hospital in Haifa. The next day, 13 Tevet 5708 (26.12.1947), he died of his wounds. Matityahu was thirty-two years old when he fell, one of the first casualties in the War of Independence. He was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Kfar Hahoresh, along with another member of the kibbutz who was killed in that incident. He is a “last scion”, a survivor of the Holocaust who was the last surviving member of his family.