Hans Beyth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black and white portrait photo by Hans Beyth
Hans Beyth

Hans Shmuel Beyth (born October 5, 1901 in Bleicherode ( Prussia , now Thuringia ); † December 26, 1947 in a firefight in Castel , British Palestine ) was a German banker and Zionist. From 1935 he was Henrietta Szold's closest collaborator and at the beginning of 1945 he took over the management of the child and youth Aliyah in Palestine until his death shortly before the founding of the state of Israel . Through his activities, he saved the lives of thousands of children and young people.

Life

Germany

Beyth came from a long-established, locally very respected, Jewish family from Bleicherode, which has been in Brandenburg-Prussia since 1648 (today part of Thuringia). The Beyth family was involved in building up the textile industry, and several members of the family received military awards in the First World War. As a teenager, Beyth had already been involved in the Jewish youth movement that was particularly active in Thuringia and Prussia , which had emerged from the Wandervogel shortly before the First World War , in which anti-Semitic and ethnic-nationalistic ideas were increasingly spreading and Jewish youths were systematically pushed out of the organization were. Shortly after the First World War, the Jewish youth movement began to become increasingly involved in Zionist projects under the banner of “blue and white”, partly under the influence of the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks after the lost war, which resulted in the first boycotts and the murder Walter Rathenau culminated. Beyth was active in this movement right from the start, for example by training the young Zionists in agriculture and horticulture as part of the “ Hachshara ”, etc. a. helped organize the Hechaluz facility in Wolfenbüttel .

Ein Harod, 1934: The first group of the youth Aliyah from Germany arrives.

After attending the Realgymnasium in Nordhausen, Beyth completed a banking apprenticeship in Hildesheim until 1920. Based on the experiences described above, he was already active in Zionist organizations at that time. from 1920 to 1924 he worked in Berlin for various companies as a stockbroker (Hochmann, Zeidler & Co., Lichtenstein). In 1923 he visited Palestine for the first time. 1924-25 he trained in the manufacture of canned food, from 1925 to 1934 he worked again as a stockbroker in Berlin (Kurzynski and Co., Cohn and Bernstein).

After 1933, Beyth was initially involved in the “Jewish Youth Welfare Service”, which was founded by Recha Freier , the wife of a well-known Berlin rabbi, and which became the primal cell of the child and youth alijah . He then worked at the “Hechaluz” training facilities in Harlingen (Netherlands). Hans Beyth knew Hugo Rosenthal from his youth work , with whom he was a close friend. He was one of its most important advisors in the construction of the Jewish rural school home in Herrlingen before he emigrated with his family to Palestine in 1935/1936 . It was also Beyth who introduced Klaus Dreyer , who was not licensed as a doctor, to Rosenthal and thus secured Dreyer a job as a sports teacher in Herrlingen.

Palestine

In Palestine, Beyth first became the representative of Germany in the children's and youth aliyah and, as an experienced German banker, was supposed to bring order to the organization's finances. Due to his considerable organizational skills , however, he soon became the closest collaborator of Henrietta Szold , who led the organization in Palestine. Beyth saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children through his activities. He organized their transport from Europe to the Jewish settlements in Palestine and partly looked after them personally in facilities for Jewish refugees in Cyprus and, after 1945, in the numerous so-called “ DP camps ” all over Europe.

One of the most spectacular actions was the rescue of the so-called “Tehran Children”, over 700 Jewish orphans from Poland who were stranded in Tehran in 1943 together with Polish emigrants. Szold and Beyth brought them to Palestine and integrated them into Jewish communities there.

Golda Meir, 1943. She survived the attack on December 26, 1947 unharmed, in which Beyth was killed.

Beyth took over the management of the organization in 1945 after the death of Henrietta Szold.

On December 26, 1947, Beyth accompanied a transport of refugee children from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as part of the armed convoys organized by the Zionists at the time. After the UN partition resolution on November 29, 1947, attacks by Arab groups on the Zionist settlers and attacks by radical Jewish groups such as the Lehi quickly escalated into civil war, which raged particularly fiercely west of Jerusalem, where Arab troops on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem partly under their control and fired at Zionist convoys there. Beyth originally wanted to accompany the bus with the children in a passenger car. Two prominent representatives of the Jewish Agency , Golda Meir and Jitzchak Gruenbaum , traveled with him . But then he made the space in the car available to an American representative of the Youth Aliya who was traveling with him and traveled with the children on the bus. The Zionists were not officially allowed to arm themselves and were accompanied by British army units, which (according to the Zionist account) "left the convoys in the vicinity of the Arab positions to their fate" so that the Zionists had to defend themselves with weapons secretly carried with them. Like other convoys at the time, this transport came under Arab fire at Latrun and later at Castel . Both places were Arab enclaves at the time, with which the Arab side was able to partially interrupt the connection between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

During the second attack in Castel, Beyth drew his pistol and returned fire, but was fatally hit in the subsequent firefight.

Zionist truck convoy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, 1948

aftermath

The Alijah for children and young people, which Beyth helped build, and its founder, Recha Freier, were proposed by Albert Einstein for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954. A large thoroughfare in Jerusalem was named after Hans Beyth (“Shmu'el Bait”, also “Hans Beyth Street”) ), which leads from the Herzlberg ( Yad Vashem ) towards the city center and connects the streets "Sderot Herzl" and "Sderot Menachem Begin".

literature

Movie

  • YOUTH LEAVE! (Germany, Palestine, 1936) - A film from the life of the Jewish youth from Germany in Palestine: on behalf of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kinder - und Jugend - Alijah Berlin, made by Lou Landauer (Jerusalem). Edited by Eva Stern and Marta Goldberg (original opening credits, transcript as per copy: Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Jerusalem) (Hans Beyth can be seen in the film.) Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt - Cinematographie des Holocaust - FBW002570 (Link currently not available, as of May 12, 2014)
    • Rahel Wischnitzer-Bernstein : The film of Jugendalija. In: Community Gazette of the Jewish Community in Berlin. Volume 26, No. 22, May 31, 1936.
    • N: Our youth - our future. An evening of youth alijah. In: Jüdische Rundschau. (Berlin), Volume 41, No. 45, June 4, 1936.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alemannia Judaica: The Jewish community in Bleicherode (with several documents about the Beyth family)
  2. ↑ Carl Beyth, b. 1903, has documented this impressively in his estate deposited in the LBI in New York ( The Carl Beyth Collection at the LBI New York - estate of Carl Beyth (born 1903) - extensive material on the Beyth family and the history of the Jewish community in Bleicherode (available online))
  3. ^ W. Röder, HA Strauss: Handbook of German Emigration: Politics, Economy, Public Life. de Gruyter, 1980, ISBN 3-11-097028-7 , pp. 61-62.
  4. ^ Hugo Rosenthal: Otto Hirsch and the beginnings of the Jewish country school home in Herrlingen. In: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance: The Jewish Landschulheim Herrlingen 1933–1939. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 , p. 40. There also a short portrait of Hans Beyth, p. 253.
  5. ^ A b Sylva M. Gelber: No Balm in Gilead - a personal retrospective of mandate days in Palestine. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, Canada 1989, ISBN 0-88629-104-6 , p. 271.
  6. ^ Sara Kadosh: Heroic Acts and Missed Opportunities: The Rescue of Youth Aliyah Groups from Europe during World War II. In: Children and the Holocaust - Symposium Presentations. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM - CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES, Washington, DC 2004, p. 20. (ushmm.org)
  7. ^ The Tehran Children. ( Memento of April 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) IsraCast.com, February 2010.
  8. ↑ Hans Beyth (1901-1947) - in: Aliyat Hanoar Exhibit - History of Youth Aliyah - (Massuah - (Canadian information website on the history of the Holocaust and Zionism))
  9. ↑ A detailed description of the circumstances of Hans Beyth's death can be found in a published private letter from Chedva Margalit (Esra Magazine, Issue 144, April – May 2008, link here ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / esra-magazine.com
  10. ^ Youth Aliyah: Escaping Nazi Germany, Heading for Palestine - Escaping the Holocaust, Heading for Israel. ( Memento from May 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) ITS Arolsen

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Beyth, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beyth, Hans Shmuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker and Zionist
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Bleicherode , Prussia (today Thuringia )
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1947
Place of death Castel , British Palestine