Between Aliyah and Escape. Jewish Youth Movement and Zionist Education under the Nazi Regime and in pre-State Israel 1933–1945

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Ulrike Pilarczyk
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392108129

This project seeks to expand and enrich the findings of the first project period, which highlighted the dynamics of the transnational, intergenerational pedagogic networks and development of youth culture among women and men who were inspired by Jewish-national ideologies prior to 1933. The results of the project’s first period accentuated the continuous impact of pedagogical ideas before emigration and after the arrival of the youth groups to Mandate Palestine. The ideological principles and institutions that supported Zionist upbringing and training since World War One, had played a fundamental role in facilitating Aliyah and escape of Jewish children and youth after 1933.The current research considers the contribution of the Zionist youth movement to the survival of Jewish youth from Germany and Europe. We intend to analyze the emergence of the Youth Aliyah as a globally active Zionist education and rescue project, and its influence on the kibbutz movement and on the development of a new Zionist pedagogy in pre-state Israel. This approach is fundamentally transnational and geared towards the reconstruction of the divergent perspectives of those involved. Consequently, gender-related experiences and perspectives will take center stage in our analysis. We will also emphasize the roles of gender in the inter-generational nature of the discourse and the institutions that developed within the youth movement and shaped its activities. Based on extensive surveys of archival sources, especially from Israeli archives, the research will be structured as two interconnected sub-projects, both require German-Israeli cooperation.The first sub-project examines the contribution of the German Zionist youth movements, and of Hechaluz, to the education, training, emigration and rescue of Jewish youth after 1933. The main focus will be on the conflict-ridden developments of three agencies that were supported by the youth movement – the influential Zionist movement Habonim, and the training and rescue institutions Hachshara and Youth Aliyah – in National Socialist Germany, Europe and Palestine. Within this framework, the project considers the changes in the concepts of self-education among the migrating youth, and analyzes the tensions between the movement’s ideals of autonomy and the fundamentals of Zionist-socialist education.The second sub-project highlights the integration of young German-speaking Aliyah in the kibbutzim and considers its influence on the establishment of new kibbutz-pedagogy and teacher-training processes since the mid-1930s. Our research aims to map the networks, the individual and the ideas that made their ways from the German Zionist youth movement to the pedagogical and educational policies of the Kibbutz movement. The archival findings of these elements would enable us to elucidate and evaluate the contribution of the German youth movement to one of the essential developments in Zionist education.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• International Co-Applicant: Professor Ofer Ashkenazi, Ph.D.