1892 - 1984
Founder of Youth Aliyah, writer, musician.
Born in Norden, Ostfriesland (Germany), Recha Freier studied philology at Breslau and Munich universities, worked as a teacher and pianist, and began research on children's tales, moving with her rabbi-husband to Sofia (Bulgaria) and then Berlin. In 1932 Freier, disturbed by discrimination against Jewish jobseekers in Germany, conceived the idea of settling groups of young Jews on kibbutzim in Palestine. The head of the Jewish Agency's Social Welfare Department, Henrietta Szold, initially rejected the idea, so, in 1933, Freier raised funds to establish Youth Aliyah, sent a first group to Bet Shemen, and established an office in Berlin. That year she persuaded Szold, the Zionist Organization, and the main representative body of German Jews, to take on the program, and she spent the next eight years helping young Jews across Europe to emigrate. In 1941 she fled Germany and settled in Palestine, remaining active in children's welfare activities and founding an agricultural training school. After the establishment of the state of Israel, she founded the Israel Composers Fund (1958) and Testimonium (1966), a fund sponsoring accounts of events in Jewish history set to music. Freier published one such composition, a book of poetry (On the Steps, 1976), and a novel (Shutters, 1979). In 1954 Albert Einstein nominated her for a Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1981 she was awarded the Israel Prize. Freier saved more than 5,600 children - some say 10,000 - and Youth Aliyah has to date given support to more than 300,000 impoverished refugee and Israeli children.
Bibliography
Freier, Recha. Let the Children Come: The Early History of Youth Aliyah. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961.
— GEORGE R. WILKES
