Yehiam was founded by a group of the socialist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement – Holocaust survivors from Hungary and members from Yishuv – who named themselves Kibbutz HaSela (lit. "The Rock"), whereas "kibbutz" is still understood here as a wandering "collective", not as a settlement. For a while the HaSela collective lived in tents in the area of Kiryat Haim, looking for an appropriate place to settle. Eventually, on 26 November 1946, Kibbutz Yehiam was established at the site of the medieval castle, with only the men taking residence, at first within the castle and then in tents at its foot, while the women, children and some men remained at Kiryat Haim, where they worked in order to support the group up at the castle. According to one guidebook, there were 50 founding members, who transformed the castle ruins into a military training camp. The UN Partition resolution came almost exactly one year later, on 29 November 1947, placing the kibbutz within the envisaged Arab state, rather than the Jewish one. The new name, Yehiam, was adopted in honour of Yehiam Weitz, son of Jewish Agency official Joseph Weitz, who had been killed not far away, near the Arab village of al-Kabri, in the "Night of the Bridges", a Palmach operation which took place on 16–17 June 1946. The decision to establish the new kibbutz was taken after consultations with Joseph Weitz.