Netzer Sereni


Netzer Sereni is a kibbutz in central Israel. Located in the Shephelah between Be'er Ya'akov and Ness Ziona, it falls under the jurisdiction of Gezer Regional Council. In it had a population of.

History

Kibbutz Netzer Sereni was founded in 1948 by Holocaust survivors liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp, who had established themselves in 1945 as the "Kibbutz Buchenwald", an agricultural collective designed to prepare Jews for life in Palestine - the first such Hakhshara group established in Germany after the war.
The kibbutz was established on the land of the depopulated Palestinian village named Bir Salim.
The founders were Holocaust survivors and the village was initially named Kibbutz Buchenwald after the concentration camp in which many of its founders had been detained. The name was changed later to Netzer by the Buchenwald members. The kibbutz was named Netzer Sereni after Enzo Sereni, a Jewish Italian intellectual, Zionist leader and Jewish Brigade officer. Sereni was one of the founders of Givat Brenner. He was parachuted into Nazi-occupied Italy in World War II, only to be immediately captured by the Germans and executed in Dachau concentration camp; in Hebrew netzer means sprout, shoot or branch.
In 1948-51 a national political separation between the two labour parties, Mapam and Mapai, led to a split within the kibbutz movement. In 1952 120 Mapai members of Kibbutz Givat Brenner broke away for ideological reasons and moved to Kibbutz Netzer.

Notable residents