Metadata: Hanoar Hazioni - The Zionist Youth
Collection
- Country:
- Israel
- Holding institution:
- Massuah, International Institute for Holocaust Studies
- Holding institution (official language):
- משואה, המכון הבינלאומי ללימודי השואה
- Postal address:
- Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, 45805
- Phone number:
- +972-9-7497211
- Web address:
- https://www.massuah.org.il/eng/Archives
- Email:
- milka@massuah.org.il
- Title:
- Hanoar Hazioni - The Zionist Youth
- Title (official language):
- הנוער הציוני
- Creator/accumulator:
- Hanoar Hazioni Movement
- Date(s):
- 1929/1993
- Language:
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains materials related to Hano’ar Hatzioni, the international Jewish youth movement in Lithuania and Latvia, including reports on activities of the branches, correspondence of the movement’s secretariat and other bodies on organisational issues, financial issues, immigration to Eretz Israel, the Jewish Agency, the Hehaluts Department, the Jewish National Fund and more. For example, the collection contains circulars of Hano‘ar Hatzioni in Lithuania and Latvia from 1937 (AR-NZ-00029-008) and correspondence from 1933-1939 on Zionist activity in Lithuania and Latvia, immigration to Palestine and about training for life in Eretz Israel. A file from 1934 (AR-NZ-00120-007) includes a memorandum from the Central Committee Association of the Advanced General Zionists in Lithuania regarding the history of the split in the Hano‘ar Hatzioni movement in 1934, and failed attempts to reach a compromise. This file also contains a memorandum about the Seventh General Zionist Conference, regulations in Yiddish ahead of the elections to the 19th Zionist Congress and reports on hakhsharah (training in handicrafts, agricultural skills and Zionist ideology before Aliyah) in Lithuania. The collection also includes letters written in 1935 from Yitzhak Rattner, a prominent Hehaluts activist in Kaunas, to Moshe Kol (Kolodny) and activists in Palestine and a report from 1941 describing the activities of Hano‘ar Hatzioni in some Lithuanian cities following the Soviet occupation (AR-NZ-00016-012). The report relates to the cessation of activity in some towns and the division of groups into smaller cells in other towns. There are also reports of new contacts between Zionist groups in Lithuania with Jews in Pinsk, Bialystok and Chernivtsi. In Pinsk the organisation's emissary met with former students of the Hebrew Gymnasium, who aspired to know what was happening in the Zionist movement, in private homes. There were also attempts by movement members in Lithuania to issue Japanese and American visas to leave. In one such attempt by one of the groups, members tried to travel to Moscow in order to emigrate via Turkey or Japan. This failed attempt resulted in the arrest of two group members, and others feared they would be sent by the Soviet authorities into exile. The report mentions the suffering endured by the arrested members of Hano‘ar Hatzioni in Soviet camps and of exiled members. The collection also contains lists of refugees and survivors who were members of the organisation in Soviet Lithuania (AR-NZ-00078-015) and letters, telegrams and writings of Hano‘ar Hatzioni members in Lithuania from 1940-1941 (AR-NZ-00108-001).
- Archival history:
- Information on the history of the collection is unavailable.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Hano’ar Hazioni was a Zionist youth movement that rejected the ideology of socialist Zionism adopted by the HaShomer Hatsair movement in 1927. Hano‘ar Hatzioni was affiliated with the General Zionist movement. The movement was established in 1926-1927 in Poland and in 1931 became an international movement by holding unifying conventions in Lwow and Warsaw, an election of the movement’s leadership and the creation of local organisations in various countries including Lithuania. In 1933 the movement was established in Latvia. In 1934 the movement split into two. Although the split was ideological, it was organised geographically: the movement in Poland, Lithuania and other countries was led by Moshe Kolodny and Daniel Tenenbaum. The movement in Galicia remained separate. During World War II many of Hano’ar Hatzioni members were part of the partisan movement fighting against the Nazis.
- Access points: locations:
- Bialystok
- Chernivtsi
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Pinsk
- Access points: persons/families:
- Kol, Moshé
- Finding aids:
- An internal database and information on the file in Hebrew are available on the website of the Massuah.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Ilya Vovshin; Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People; 2021