Between Home and Homeland: Youth Aliyah from Nazi Germany

2. Spreading the Word

As the Weimar Republic collapsed during the early 1930s and while Recha Freier envisioned a mass exodus of young Jews to Palestine, Chanoch Reinhold (later Rinnot) seemed destined to follow the path of the stereotypical bourgeois German Jew. Though an ardent Zionist and former member of the youth group Kadimah, at the beginning of 1933 Reinhold lived in Vienna, studying at university, presumably destined for a middle-class professional career back in Germany.1 Reinhold’s path demonstrates the turbulent nature of Jewish life in Germany during the¤rst year of Nazi rule. By February 1934 this law student found himself teacher and guide for sixty German Jewish teenagers, leading the ¤rst of¤cial Youth Aliyah group to Kibbutz Ein-Harod. In early 1933 the new political leadership in Germany ushered in unprecedented changes, bringing great anxiety and uncertainty to German Jewry. During the ¤rst year of National Socialist rule, as Jews in Germany assessed their prospects, Youth Aliyah was transformed from Freier’s idealistic vision into an organization dedicated to transplanting groups of children from Germany to agricultural settlements in Palestine . In order to realize this program, Youth Aliyah set out to accomplish three main tasks: promoting interest in the program among thousands of young German Jews; working to gain the support of Zionist and communal institutions and leaders in Germany; and initiating fund-raising efforts in Germany and abroad to support the project. Youth Aliyah’s activity re®ected both the Jewish community’s desire to ensure the future of its younger generation and the response to challenges from sources inside and outside Germany in attaining this goal. 2 Spreading the Word The growing number of young Jews hoping to immigrate to Palestine, as well as the numerous older individuals who labored to realize this objective, re®ect the rising interest in both Zionism and immigration to Palestine in response to Hitler’s assumption of power.2 The emotional scene that accompanied the Ben-Shemen group’s departure from the Anhalter train station in Berlin inspired the Zionist youth groups to promote large-scale youth immigration programs to ideologically compatible agricultural settlements.3 Speci¤cally, the groups Kadimah and Brith Haolim, which would merge in February 1933, the religious Zionist youth group Zeire Misrachi (Mizrachi youth), the Werkleute, and the smaller Hashomer Hazair (Young Watchmen) agreed to cooperate and facilitate the project.4 On January 30, 1933, the same day Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the Jüdische Jugendhilfe ( Jewish Youth-Aid), representing the interests of the Jewish youth groups, registered as a legal corporation in Germany. Freier was elected president and Adam Simonson of Brith Haolim was elected secretary . With the future of Jewish institutions in Germany undetermined, the founders deliberately chose to avoid assigning any ideological labels to the new corporation, lest they be shut down before they could even begin their work.5 The Jüdische Jugendhilfe was incorporated with the following mission : “The vocational training of unemployed Jewish youths in Germany and their settlement in Palestine.” This cautious approach, as opposed to immediate panic and ®ight, re®ected most German Jews’ attitude to the change in the country’s leadership. Jewish organizations in Germany shared an anxiety regarding how they would be treated in the new order, and each group initially maintained that its particular ideological outlook was best suited to confront the new political reality.6 The Zionist establishment had no clear perception of how National Socialism would treat its institutions. Contacts with Nazi of¤cials led some Zionists to anticipate the imminent dissolution of their organizations .7 They feared that Hitler’s regime would give preference to Jews af¤liated with the right-wing Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of German Nationalist Jews) led by Max Naumann, who, in contrast to the Zionists, contended that German Jews had not immersed themselves deeply enough in Germany and its culture.8 On the other hand, both before Hitler assumed power and during the initial months of 1933, other Zionist leaders believed a Nazi government would recognize the Spreading the Word 33 ZVfD as the most suitable partner for resolving the Jewish question in Germany. According to this theory Nazis and Zionists shared the view that Jews were really a separate nation living as foreigners in Germany. The new government’s ambiguous attitude toward Zionism was characterized by authorities working with Zionists and simultaneous Nazi violence directed at Zionist establishments.9 For supporters of the nascent Youth Aliyah movement, however, Germany’s changing political...