Recha Freier

Recha Freier (~1964)
Recha Freier Square, Katamon, Jerusalem
Memorial plaque for Recha Freier located in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany

Recha Freier (Hebrew: רחה פריאר) born Recha Schweitzer, (October 29, 1892 in Norden, East Frisia – April 2, 1984 in Jerusalem) founded the Youth Aliyah organization in 1933. The organization saved the lives of 22,000 Jewish children by helping them to leave Nazi Germany for Palestine. Her merits have been regularly underestimated or left unmentioned.[1]

Recha Freier, gifted with many talents, was a poet, musician, teacher and social activist.[1]

Early life

Recha Schweitzer was born into a Jewish Orthodox family. Her parents were Bertha (née Levy, 1862–Theresienstadt, 1945), a French and English teacher, and Menashe Schweitzer (1856–1929), who taught several subjects at a Jewish primary school.[1] She grew up in a music-loving family and learned to play the piano.[1]

Already as a child Recha Schweitzer was confronted with antisemitism: a notice in Norden's city park stated that "Dogs and Jews are forbidden."[1] In 1897 her family moved to Silesia, where she received home-schooling for a while before attending the lycée in Glogau, where she was mocked by her classmates because she wouldn't write on the Sabbath.[1] Her reaction to the humiliation inflicted upon her had a lifelong impact on her and made her to become a full-hearted Zionist.[1]

Recha Schweitzer completed her gymnasial studies in Breslau, passed the exams for teachers of religion, and studied as a graduate student philology in Breslau and Munich.

Family life and career

In 1919 she married Rabbi Dr. Moritz Freier (1889–1969), with whom she moved to Eschwege, Sofia, and finally in 1925 to Berlin, where her husband worked as a rabbi. Their sons Shalhevet, Ammud and Zerem were born in 1920, 1923 and 1926 respectively, and their daughter Ma'ayan in 1929. During this time, additionally to her family obligations, Recha Freier worked as a teacher at a German high school in Sofia, and as a writer and folklorist.[1]

Youth Aliyah activities

In 1932, one year before the Nazi seizure of power, Recha Freier was confronted with the situation of Jewish teenagers who already by then had no more chance of receiving professional training and employment in Germany.[1] Dealing with five teenage boys her husband had asked her to help, whom not even the Jewish employment agency could provide with a job, she conceived the idea that they could be sent to Palestine, where they could be trained as farmers in the Jewish workers' settlements.[1] This was the beginning of the Youth Aliyah. "The utter senselessness of Jewish life in the Diaspora stood palpably before my eyes," she wrote. She devoted the rest of her life to the rescue of Jewish children and arranging for their transport to Palestine.

In January 1933, Recha Freier founded in Berlin the Committee for the Assistance of Jewish Youth (Hilfskomitee für Jüdische Jugend), with offices later opening in Jerusalem and London.[1] Recha Freier contacted the labor movement in Palestine, as well as Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, asking Szold to take charge of the teenagers after their arrival in Palestine.[1] Szold initially opposed the plan, finding it unfeasible[1] and an unwanted interference with the youths' education. At first unaware of the rising danger in Germany, Szold eventually accepted the role offered to her by Freier, once she became convinced that Germany, ruled from 1933 on by Hitler and by 1935 enacting the Nuremberg Racial Laws, offered no more options to its Jews. Henrietta Szold agreed to become the director of Youth Aliyah's Jerusalem office, and due to her well-established profile many wrongly assumed her to be the initiator of Youth Aliyah.[1] The two women now worked on the same project, but due to their very different personalities never managed to develop a good working relationship with each other.[1]

The man who was Freier's pioneer emissary and agent in rescuing thousands of Jewish youngsters was Solomon Dzubas. Dzubas was married to Rivkah Suesskind, the daughter of Rabbi Freier's assistant, Rabbi Mordechai Suesskind. Dzubas was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and sent to Auschwitz where he died. His wife who was also arrested by the Gestapo, died in the Terezin concentration camp. Her parents, the Suesskinds, were shot to death during the arrest. Their two daughters Dvorah and Judith were on the last train he sent off. After Dzubas's capture Recha had to take over the campaign single handed.

Youth Aliyah used controversial, gray-zone and even illegal methods, to get as many as possible children out alive. Though Youth Aliyah succeeded in saving more than 7,600 children from Nazi Germany, Freier suffered great sorrow all her life for not having saved more.

Freier's son Shalhevet escaped to England in 1937, her husband Moritz and the other two sons following him the next year.[1] Recha nad her husband, already estranged, would never again live together.[1]

With the onset of World War II through Nazi Germany's aggression against Poland, Polish Jews became the target of extreme brutality, motivating Recha Freier to attempt to rescue some from concentration camps.[1] After saving some men from the camps and setting them on the way to Palestine, her very daring methods and the now extended scope of her activities led to conflict with both the Jewish organisations in Palestine and in Germany, culminating in her suspension from all her functions in the Youth Aliyah in 1940.[1]

In 1940 Freier was betrayed by some colleagues. Having been forewarned, she managed to fleeto Yugoslavia with her eleven-year-old daughter.[1] From Zagreb she pressured the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) to send another 120 children and teenagers to Vienna, from where she smuggled them over the Yugoslav border.[1] For 80 of them she managed to receive immigration certificates for Palestine, while the remaining 40 were sent for the duration of the war to Switzerland.[1]

Recha Freier and her daughter Ma'ayan managed to reach Palestine via Istanbul and Syria in March 1941. Here her differences with Henriette Szold prevented her from receiving any work with the Youth Aliyah.[1] Forced to direct her energy in another direction, Recha Freier founded the Agricultural Training Center for Israeli children, took up community work and became active as a writer.[1]

Artistic activities

In 1958, Freier established the Israel Composer's Fund, and in 1966 she founded, together with the composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, the "Testimonium",[1] a music event that took place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She wrote poetry and prose,[2] and some of her poems were set to music by German Jewish[3] and other composers, such as Mark Kopytman (Chamber Scenes from the Life of Süsskind von Trimberg, chamber opera, 1982).

Late recognition

For a long time it was Henrietta Szold who was credited with establishing the Youth Aliyah, a fact which sometimes affected Recha Freier at a late age.[1] Recognition finally came in 1975, when the 83-years-old received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for her initial idea of "organized transport of youth into kibbutzim", and in 1981 she received the Israel Prize for her special merits.[1]

Death

Recha Freier died in 1984 in Jerusalem.

Awards and commemoration

Published works (selection)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Gudrun Maierhof (2009). "Recha Freier". Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved 7 December 2015.
  2. ↑ Libretto for the opera Amnon und Tamar by Josef Tal
  3. ↑ A Letter to a Friend No. 16, May 1984, Youth Aliyah, the Jewish Agency for Israel
  4. ↑ "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1981 (in Hebrew)".

External links

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