The debate on whether the Zionist Establishment in Palestine did enough to save their European Brethren during the Holocaust has troubled many people in the decades since. One document I acquired recently adds a sliver of information to the discussion, shedding light on the activities of the JNF, Jewish National Fund during this period. This letter, dated March 29, 1943 was sent by JNF to members of Kfar Malal, a moshav in central Israel founded in 1911.
The letter states: “The crucial time we are in has placed an urgent obligation on the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, to whom the eyes of the Jews in the oppressed and downtrodden exiles are looking for support. The Zionist Congress has called out to the members of the yishuv with a demand that they amplify their efforts to support JNF, the central financial institution of the Jewish people. It is required now more than ever, to enable JNF to enact the emergency actions necessary in such times:
The Jewish Agency has accepted upon itself the responsibility for the children of the diaspora, to bring them to Eretz Yisrael and settle them in Eretz Yisrael. This attempt is crucial and a fateful mission to attempt and save whatever possible so long as the opportunity to do so exists….”
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 Third Reich forbade Jewish children from attending general schools and there was a sense of urgency of getting Jewish youth out of the country to a safe alternative. Henrietta Szold joined the initiative and the organization Hadassah became instrumental in orchestrating and settling the youth making aliyah. At the time, Tamar de Sola Pool, a former national president of Hadassah, and her husband Rabbi David De Sola Pool, 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. After a brief period of training in Germany, Youth Aliyah children were placed on kibbutzim for two years to learn farming and Hebrew. While Germany at the time was allowing the German Jewish children out of the country, Britain was steadfast in its refusal to allow anything above a trickle into Palestine, then under their control. 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.
