Youth Aliyah - History

History

Recha Freier, a rabbi's wife, founded Youth Aliyah in Berlin on the same day that Adolf Hitler took power, Monday 30 January 1933. The organisation was founded to protect German Jewish youth from the impending Holocaust by sending them to pioneer training programs in Palestine after completing elementary school. The idea was supported by the World Zionist Organization. Freier supervised the organization's activities in Germany, and Henrietta Szold in Jerusalem.

Szold was initially skeptical about the merits of Freier's proposal because, as the person responsible for social services by the Jewish Agency for all of Palestine, she was extremely pressed for funds and loath to take on a totally new untried program for German Jewish children. Then Recha Freier approached Dr. Sigfried Lehman, founder and director of Ben Shemen Youth Village. He agreed to accept 12 children. Henrietta Szold was informed and changed her mind, agreeing to organize and lead the effort.

At the time, Tamar de Sola Pool, a former national president of Hadassah, and her husband had just completed a visit to Palestine and were about to return to the US. Szold met her and explained the decision to initiate the major effort of Youth Aliyah and that Mrs de Sola Pool must convince Hadassah to accept it as an important project. She was convinced and, after convincing Hadassah, called Eddie Cantor, the acter-comedian. He wrote her a check for $25,000 to start the program. Hadassah has continued to be the major supporter of Youth Aliyah to this day.

With Hitler's rise to power the Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935 and on 31 March 1936 German elementary schools were closed to Jewish children. Szold coordinated an appeal to Jewish communities around the world in conjunction with the Jewish Agency.

After a brief period of training in Germany, Youth Aliyah youngsters were placed on kibbutzim for two years to learn farming and Hebrew. Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley was one of the first cooperative settlements to host such groups.

Just before the outbreak of World War II, when immigration certificates to Palestine became difficult to obtain, Youth Aliyah activists in London came up with an interim solution whereby groups of young people would receive pioneer training in countries outside the Third Reich until they could immigrate to Palestine. Great Britain agreed to take in 10,000 endangered children, some from Youth Aliyah groups. As the war spread across Europe, the program expanded to save children from occupied countries such as Yugoslavia.

Freier experienced significant opposition from the Jewish community in Germany, who continued to believe that appeasement and accommodation was the best course for Germany's Jews. In 1938 she was expelled from the board of the organisation that she had founded, the Jewish Youth Support Committee, because of her controversial use of illegal methods. In 1940 she was denounced by colleagues for anti-Nazi agitation, but was warned in time, and managed to flee to Palestine, taking 40 teenagers with her.

After World War II and the Holocaust, emissaries were sent to Europe to locate child survivors in displaced persons camps. A Youth Aliyah office was opened in Paris. Children's homes in Eastern Europe were moved to Western Europe, Youth Aliyah believing (correctly) that immigration from Communist countries would be difficult later on.

In all 5,000 teenagers were brought to Palestine before World War II and educated at Youth Aliyah boarding schools. Others were smuggled out of occupied Europe in the early years of the war, some to Palestine, others to the United Kingdom and other countries. After the war an additional 15,000, most of them Holocaust survivors, were brought to Palestine.

Later, Youth Aliyah became a department of the Jewish Agency. Over the years, the organization has brought young people to Israel from North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Soviet Union and Ethiopia.