Strangers welcomed us so warmly
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Dov, née Oskar, Strauss was born on 25 March 1924 into a Jewish family in Benešov nad Ploučnicí. In 1934 the family moved to Jihlava. Growing antisemitic tendencies persuaded the parents to send their only son to Palestine with a group of young Zionists. He participated in a preparatory Hachshara course in Brno in April 1939; in August 1939 he was chosen to go to Denmark, where he travelled together with about 50 young Jews from Czechoslovakia in late October 1939. He spent a year in Denmark on a farm with the Poulsen family near Thisted. In October 1940 he continued to Palestine with a group of Zionists. He settled down in the kibbutz of Geva. In 1945 he got married; he and his wife moved to a farm in Jokneam in Jordan Valley in 1952. They raised three children, who still help them tend to the family farm in Jokneam. The story of Dov Strauss and other Czech Jews who found shelter from the war in Denmark was recorded and published in 2013 by journalist Judita Matyášová in her book Přátelství navzdory Hitlerovi (Friendship in Spite of Hitler).
