Metadata: Estate of Heini Bornstein
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- Holding institution:
- Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- NL Heini Bornstein
- Title:
- Estate of Heini Bornstein
- Title (official language):
- Nachlass Heini Bornstein
- Creator/accumulator:
- Bornstein, Heini
- Date(s):
- 1941/1996
- Language:
- German
- English
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- 0.1 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- In 1994, the AfZ invited Heini Bornstein and Nathan Schwalb for an interview about their activities in the Zionist organisations and their participation in the rescue operations of Jewish refugees in Switzerland. The resulting audio documents are supplemented by some fragmentary documents and typescripts.
- Archival history:
- The textual documents were handed over by Heini Bornstein.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Heini Bornstein was born in Basel on 17 September 1920 as the son of Malka Ber and Bernhard Bornstein, a textile trader and Zionist. Heini Bornstein’s parents emigrated in 1913 from Lodz to Switzerland and were naturalised in 1931. Heini Bornstein attended agricultural schools in Liestal and Münsingen from 1941 to 1943. In 1933, he became a member of the Socialist-Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair with the aim to make aliyah. In 1939, Bornstein participated in the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva. In 1943, he was appointed delegate of the Hashomer Hatzair in Geneva. During the war, Bornstein took part in refugee rescue operations across the Swiss border near Basel and in the canton of Jura. He kept in close contact with the French resistance organisation Organisation Juive de Combat (OJC) and participated in the establishment and supervision of the Jewish refugee camps in Sierre, Bex, Versoix, and Trevano. In April 1945, he attended the refugee conference on return and onward migration issues in Montreux. In 1947, Bornstein married Chasia Bielicka, a Polish native, who received the Order of Stalin for her cooperation with the partisans in Bialystok. That same year, the couple arrived illegally in Palestine and settled in Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan. Bornstein held various functions in the Kibbutz Movement, the Zionist World Organisation, the Jewish Agency as well as in the Israeli Socialist party MAPAM. Chasia Bielicka and Bornstein had three daughters, Yehudit, Racheli and Dorit.
- Access points: locations:
- France
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Refugees
- Zionism
- Zionism--Zionists
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2019