Youth Aliyah

Jewish humanitarian organization

Youth Aliyah (Hebrew: עלית הנוער, Aliyat Hano'ar, German: Jugend Alijah, Youth Immigration) is a Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich. Youth Aliyah arranged for their resettlement in Palestine in kibbutzim and youth villages that became both home and school.

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 as a work study training program but became a means to save Jewish children from the growing Nazi regime. The idea was supported by the World Zionist Organization. Freier supervised the organization's activities in Germany, and Henrietta Szold, after at first opposing Freier's initiative, in Jerusalem. Szold was 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 new untried program for German Jewish children. Then Recha Freier approached Dr. Siegfried 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 actor 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 Racial 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 children 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. After this British policy was formulated in November 1938, it facilitated not only thousands of Jewish children settling in the United Kingdom on a permanent basis, but also 3,400 staying there temporarily on the way to Palestine. As the war spread across Europe, the program expanded to save children from occupied countries such as Yugoslavia. Britain would continue to allow foreign policy to affect their support of the Youth Aliyah program which resulted in the organization saving less children from Nazi tyranny and violence. In 1938, the British government withdrew their previous support of the Balfour Declaration, limiting their commitment to create a Jewish homeland. As violent anti Semitism metastasized in Europe, Britain attempted to move 5,000 children from Germany into Palestine. In 1939, only 240 children were brought to Palestine. 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.

Directors of Youth Aliyah after the establishment of the State of Israel include Moshe Kol, Meir Gottesmann (1978–1984), Uri Gordon and Eli Amir.