Exiles in New Home

Member of the Jewish National Council in Palestine)

When the Hitler regime in a single day destroyed the foundations of the German Jewish community built and fortified in the course of generations, two voices were raised. One voice protested, the other proclaimed plans of rehabilitation. Among the latter, the constructive plans, none met with louder acclaim than that which provided for the withdrawal of the Jewish youth from the poisoned air of Germany. The proposal was not to provide a refuge, but an opportunity, the opportunity to live untrammelled in the Jewish spirit and secure the education and the training that fit for a life of useful activity. Palestine alone, of all the countries of the world, offered such an opportunity in a measure at least approximately adequate to the need.

The German youth themselves, the boys and girls of adolescent age, responded to the idea of removal to Palestine as quickly as the leaders and planners. The youth organizations, of which there were not a few, had been imbued from their inception with the national ideal. For them, therefore, the natural way out of the impasse, spiritual and economic, into which the Nazi ideology and Nazi action had choked them, was Palestine. To Palestine their number would go for a new life, with their parents, if so it could be, without their parents if circumstances or views stood in the way of sympathetic cooperation from the side of the parents. To realize the plan all the Jewish youth organizations of every shade of political and religious opinion united in a Federation called the Joint Committee for Children’s Emigration.

AID FOR CHILDREN PROGRESSES RAPIDLY

There is a children’s village in Palestine called Ben Shemen. For seven years it has been collecting funds in Germany and in other European countries, and children have been sent to it in numbers by parents who wanted them to become adjusted to Palestinian life.

There is a second institution, a children’s home, called Ahawah, at Belin. The system of education in the home had always been Palestine – directed. When a change of scene became imperative its patrons, its directors and its wards all were ready to make a reality of what had long been an ideal. In the course of years these two institutions, Ahawah and Ben Shemen, had gathered a clientele accustomed to raising funds for the education of children in and for Palestine. They agreed to join forces with the Juedische Jugendhilfe to the end of bringing the plan of Jewish youth immigration into Palestine to their former contributors as well as to new circles whose hearts could be made to respond to the idea. So there was formed a union of the two institutions and the youth immigration movement and this union propagated the idea and won adherents and supporters in England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Jugoslavia and a number of other European countries in which committees were formed to raise the other required funds.

EDUCATION PLANNED FOR ABSORPTION

Meantime, connection was made with Palestine. The Jewish Agency busied itself with negotiations to secure from the Government of Palestine the youth certificates enabling entrance into Palestine. A survey of the financial possibilities made it seem likely that funds could be raised sufficient to bring over five hundred boys and girls in the year 1933-1934. A second survey, of another kind, made it seem advisable to limit the first year’s detachment primarily to boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, though parents in Germany were pleading to have their younger children included, too.

Palestine’s second duty was to find the proper places for the settlement, the education, and the training of the boys and girls, and to develop the general lines along which their education should be planned to ensure their absorption into Palestinian life as farmers or as artisans at the end of their training. Buildings had to be erected to house the expected young immigrants, for since they were destined chiefly for settlement in rural districts, housing accommodations could not be counted upon.

It took a few months to make the necessary arrangements and adjustments at both ends. The young candidates had to be selected and listed from the point of view of their fitness, physical and temperamental, for transplantation in general and for Palestinian life in particular. That was done in training camps organized at several points in Germany. The personal data on the life and status of each candidate had to be secured and a physician’s certificate testifying to the candidate’s physical and psychic health was indispensable.

ARRIVALS DISTRIBUTED TO VARIOUS SETTLEMENTS

Meantime the committee carried on its fund-raising to meet the expense of equipment, of traveling, and of maintenance and education for the average period of two years. The monthly outlay for maintenance and education is $15. This monthly rate should be guaranteed until the candidate reaches the age of seventeen, the age up to which the Government of Palestine requires a guarantee from the Jewish Agency against the possibility of a minor’s falling a burden upon the community. A simple calculation will show that the sum of five hundred youthful settlers is not small.

By the middle of February of 1934 the preparatory steps had been achieved in Germany and in Palestine. The groups began to arrive. The first, of forty-three, later joined by eighteen additional candidates, was destined for Ain Harod; the second, of twenty-four, consisting entirely of girls, went to the Girls’ Training Farm near Talpiot, the suburb of Jerusalem within sight of the High Commissioner’s stately residence; the third, of thirty, was the first Ahawah contingent; the fourth was settled at the Kubbutz Rodges near Petach-Tikwah; the first, again composed entirely of girls, went to the Technical School established at Jerusalem by the Mizrachi women; the sixth went to Tel-Yosef, adjacent to Ain Harod. Then there was a cessation until the Fall. In October a second detachment was to arrive for Ahawah, a second detachment for Rodges and still others for Mishmar Ha-Emek near Nahalal and for the group of four settlements known as Emek Ha Yarden, at the southern end of the Sea of Tiberias. Meanwhile the number at Ben-Shemen reached over one hundred and fifty.

WORK AND STUDY BASIS OF PROGRAM

In all places the general program has a two-fold basis, work and study — agricultural and manual work, Hebrew, general, and technical studies. The Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine of the Jewish Agency exercises general supervision over the young settlers. They are in reality its wards. It is responsible for them, legally towards the Government, morally towards their parents and the Jewish nation. At the same time, while the general plan of living and study and work is laid down and secured by means of a contract endorsed by the Jewish Agency between the Juedische Jugendhilfe and the Palestinian institutions, each place and institution is autonomous as to details, especially such as the work bound up with the locality. In all cases the aim is to give the boy or girl the chance of becoming an independent worker in his chosen department by the time he reaches the age of seventeen and to place him so that by then he can enter into the practical life of Palestine.

This great constructive movement has only just begun. Five hundred young people is not more than five per cent of the number that should be drawn out of Germany into the productive, promising life of Palestine. Funds will have to be provided for another detachment of at least fifteen hundred for maintenance, education and training. It is obvious that the old fund-raising groups cannot be permitted to rest on their oars, and new fund-raising groups will have to be organized in additional countries of the Diaspora.