[Jewish True Tales] Recha Freier

[Lawrence J. Epstein]

[http://www.jewishtruetales.com]

Recha Freier (1892-1984). Youth Aliyah was the program that began bringing children to the land of Israel in the early 1930s to save them from Nazism. The idea for the movement came from Recha Freier, the wife of a rabbi in Berlin. She was an accomplished musician, an ardent Zionist, and one very determined woman.

In 1932 a group of teenage Jewish boys had just been fired from their jobs. Despondent because of the anti-Semitism in the society that had caused their job losses, they came to Recha Freier seeking an answer about what to do. It was still a year before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, but she knew the future was not good for young Jews. Recha went to the Jewish Labor Exchange where she was told the boys might get jobs when the economy improved. There was, it seemed, nothing that could be done, and so the implication was that nothing should be attempted.

Dissatisfied with the answer, Recha thought through what those boys might do. Then a novel idea came to her: the boys should move to the land of Israel and work on an agricultural settlement. She presented the idea to the German Zionist leadership, but they were indifferent to such a revolutionary notion. But Recha would not stop. She began speaking about the idea, and many students especially wanted to be included.

Finally, after seeing such enthusiasm, the German Zionist leaders relented. They told Recha that they would accept her plan if the Vaad Leumi, the National Assembly of the Jews in Israel, would establish a group to arrange for settling the children and assume financial obligations. She was told to contact the director of the Social Service Bureau in Jerusalem, Henrietta Szold, the woman who had founded Hadassah, and who one one would assume a major role in the ingathering of Jewish youngsters.

But as she read Recha's letter, Henrietta Szold was shocked at the idea. She knew the facts of pioneer life. Ten thousand children living in the country had never attended a school. And this woman in Germany wanted to send more children, without their parents no less. Szold rejected the idea.

Recha Freier searched for alternatives. In June 1932 she discovered that at least a few German Jews could be sent to the Ben Shemen Children's Village. One of Recha's friends pawned jewelry to guarantee the children's support. A few boys finally departed from a crowded Berlin railway station on October 12, 1932, just a few months before Hitler's rise to power.

Eventually the organization Recha Freier established saved the lives of 22,000 Jewish children. She suffered her entire life because she felt she might have saved more from the Holocaust.

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Posted By Lawrence J. Epstein to Jewish True Tales at 4/07/2011 01:00:00 PM