Israel’s Memorial Day is the 4th of Iyar because it’s the day that Kfar Etzion fell, just hours before the State was declared in 1948. In the Fall of 1967 former Angeleno Sandy Zusman moved to the newly resettled kibbutz Kfar Etzion just after the Jordanian occupation was ended in June’s Six Day War. The former kibbutz lands had been liberated along with Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Gaza. Many of those who had survived the fall of Kfar Etzion (and subsequent murder of its defenders after they surrendered) returned to reestablish modern Jewish life for the 4th time in the Hills between Bethlehem and Hebron. She met her husband Avinoam Amichai there and they had 3 children before he fell in battle in Sinai in 1973’s Yom Kippur War at age 28. Sandy raised her children alone on the kibbutz where they all still live, now with many grandchildren, some named for the grandfather they never knew. She speaks with Eve Harow about those years, continuing the dream, and the archives and memorial center to which she has devoted her life.
