- Person
- Recha Freier
- Lived
- 1892–1984
- Field
- Child rescue
- From
- German-Israeli
The story
Recha Freier was born Recha Schweitzer in Norden, Germany, in 1892, into an Orthodox Jewish family of teachers. As a schoolgirl she met antisemitism early: classmates mocked her for refusing to write on the Sabbath, an experience that made her a committed Zionist. She studied philology in Breslau and Munich, married Rabbi Moritz Freier in 1919, and settled in Berlin in 1925, where she worked as a teacher, writer and folklorist while raising four children.
In 1932, a year before the Nazis took power, her husband asked her to help five Jewish teenage boys who had been refused training and jobs because they were Jewish. The Jewish employment agency could only advise patience. Freier had a bolder idea: send the boys to Palestine to train as farmers in the Jewish workers' settlements. By the end of 1932 the first group left Berlin, paid for with money she raised, including a donation from Wilfrid Israel.
Youth Aliyah was founded in Berlin on 30 January 1933, the same day Adolf Hitler came to power. Parents and Jewish organisations were at first sceptical about sending children alone to a distant country, but after the Nazi takeover the Zionist Congress endorsed the plan and it became a large-scale rescue operation. Freier ran the work in Germany. Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, at first thought the plan unworkable, but she agreed to take charge of the young people in Palestine and directed the Jerusalem office. Teenagers spent a short period training in Germany and then two years on kibbutzim, learning farming and Hebrew.
Freier was willing to break rules to save lives. In 1938, when Jews of Polish nationality in Germany were sent to concentration camps, she took 100 emigration permits without authorisation and filled in the names of prisoners, who were released and reached Palestine. The episode cost her her leadership role in Berlin. In 1940 she crossed illegally into Yugoslavia with the help of smugglers, saved 150 more young people whose parents had perished, and reached Palestine in 1941.
In all, Youth Aliyah under her early leadership helped about 7,000 children escape. In Palestine she founded an agricultural training centre in 1943 for children from poor families, and later the Israel Composers' Fund and the Testimonium music project. Recognition came late: an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University in 1975 and the Israel Prize in 1981. Youth Aliyah itself received the Israel Prize in 1958 and still runs youth villages in Israel for newcomers and young people at risk.
Why it matters
Youth Aliyah rescued thousands of children from Nazi Germany and became a lasting network of youth villages that has educated generations of young people in Israel.
About Recha Freier
Berlin rabbi’s wife who conceived Youth Aliyah, sending Jewish teenagers from Nazi Germany to Palestine, and fought for decades to be credited as its founder.
Sources
- Recha Freier Jewish Virtual Library
- Youth Aliyah Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.