Manja Shochat

Manja Schochat (ca.1900)

Manja Wilbuschewitsch / Wilbushewich Schochat (also: Mania Wilbuszewicz / Wilbuschewitz / Wilbushewich Schochet ; * 1880 on the Łosośna estate near Grodno , Russian Poland , today Belarus ; † 1961 in Israel ) was a leading Zionist from a distinguished aristocratic family. Together with her husband Israel Shochat , she founded and directed the HaSchomer organization .

Life

Manja Shochat left her wealthy father's house as a teenager and traveled to America to raise money for the Chaluzim . In Paris and London she came into contact with Nordau and Zangwill and with the leading Poale Zion . Later she hired herself as a worker in her brother's factory in Minsk in order to get to know the living conditions of the workers from her own experience. There she came into contact with revolutionary circles and was arrested in the summer of 1899. In prison she met the head of the Moscow secret police , Sergej Wassiljewitsch Zubatow (1864-1917), who suggested to her the idea of ​​founding a workers' movement that should be loyal to the tsar and be supported by the police (so-called "police socialism" or Zubatovshchina ). Zubatow argued that the establishment of a Jewish workers' party under official protection, devoted exclusively to professional and economic issues and renouncing political, anti-regime activities, would be a blessing for the Jewish masses and would lead to an extension of their civil rights for the Jews. Under Zubatov's influence, Manja Wilbuschewitsch took part in the founding of the "Jewish Independent Workers' Party" in the summer of 1901. The workers organized in this party and the strikes they called were initially successful because they could count on the support of agents of the Russian secret police. However, they encountered resistance from the Bund and other Jewish socialist groups.

The changed government policy towards Zubatov's projects and the influence of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 led the party into a hopeless situation, so that it dissolved itself in the summer of the same year. After a severe crisis, Manja accepted an invitation from her brother Nachum Wilbuschewitsch to Erez Israel at the beginning of 1904 , where she toured the country for a year and came to the conclusion that a Jewish working class could only emerge as a result of collective agricultural settlement. In 1907 she toured Europe and the United States to research conditions in various communist settlements. On her return she joined the group of Bar Giora members, which was led by Israel Shochat. Under their influence, the members settled on an estate near Sejera (Ilanija) and managed it on a collective basis. This was the first experiment of collective settlement in Erez Israel.

In 1908 she married Israel Shochat and founded HaSchomer with him the following year . She became a leading figure in the organization. In 1915 she and her husband were exiled to the Turkish city of Bursa by the Turkish authorities . In 1919 they both return to Palestine. In 1921 Manja visited the USA as a member of the first delegation of the newly founded Histadrut . In the following years she devoted herself to the activities of the "workers battalion " ( Gedud ha-Avoda ) and after its dissolution was active in the kibbutz Kfar Giladi . In 1930 she was one of the founders of the League for Jewish-Arab Friendship. In 1940 she joined the Mapam party and settled in Tel Aviv . She published her memoirs in Divre Poalot ("Words of Workers", 1930), Kovez ha-Shomer ("Collection of Shomer", 1937) and Sefer ha-Shomer ("Book of Shomer, 1957).

literature

• Citron : Lexicon zioni . Warsaw 1924
• Encyclopedia Judaica . 1971, Volume 14, pp. 1441-1442

Commons : Manya Shochat  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files