Thea Bester

Thea (Tamar) Bester, the eldest daughter of Chaja Bester and Abraham Hübenstreit, was born on November 12, 1921 in Berlin, Germany. She had one sister, Betti, who died at the age of 12 from a brain tumor and is buried in Weissensee Cemetery, Berlin. Tamar’s parent were divorced circa 1930, and her father’s fate is unknown, although it is assumed that he immigrated to South America. Her parents’ unhappy marriage was compensated by a loving maternal aunt, uncle and cousins who were the family’s neighbors in Berlin. Tamar received Zionist education during her teens in Habonim Youth Movement, and studied to be a preschool teacher in the Jewish Community Seminary. In 1938, in face of the growing threat to Jews in Germany, Tamar decided to immigrate to Palestine with one of the last Youth Aliyah groups who were allowed to arrive there. She fled Germany in September 1938 and in Palestine made Kibbutz Givat Brenner her home. In 1941 she married kibbutz member Menachem Dorman (1909-1994), who immigrated from Leipzig in 1933. Dorman was an author, ideolog, translator and publicist. He was a leading figure in the Kibbutz Movement and among the founders of the Kibbutz Publishing House. Tamar and Menachem had three children: Naomi (b. 1942), Ze’ev (b. 1947) and Uri (b. 1952). Tamar worked in preschool education in the kibbutz and then forged a career as an accountant in several of the kibbutz’ leading industries and enterprises. In 1996 Tamar returned to Berlin to retrace the tragic fate or her mother, whom she already knew was killed in the Holocaust. Tamar died in Givat Brenner on December 7th, 2012, at the age of 91.