HABONIM AT WAR (1943-1945)

All youth movements were greatly affected by the inroads the draft made on their membership, but Habonim, which relied entirely upon itself with no professional assistance, felt the impact of the war most deeply. Yet we more than held our own. In terms of membership, our figures did not decrease; in fact, with the inclusion of the chaverim who served in the armed forces, they increased somewhat. At the end of the war, Habonim was organized in thirty machanot in the United States and Canada.

During that period, in most cities, the leading members were between sixteen and eighteen years old, and the average membership age was fourteen to fifteen. This was a basic factor in the conduct of our activities. Despite this, our work for the various funds increased. The movement did substantial work in many political Zionist endeavors. Educational seminars were held, and centers were maintained; our chaverim worked effectively on the campus mainly through Hillel. But all these normal activities were carried out under the handicap of the youth and inexperience of our local leadership.

We conducted nine camps during the summers of 1943 and 1944, and eleven during the summer of 1943. For each, we found an older rosh (director); but the staffs consisted, at best, of these sixteen-to eighteen-year-olds, some of whom had comparatively little movement experience. Externally, our camps were successful: they had large registrations, and reports of "fun" and "good times" were plentiful. But Camp Kvutza meant so much more than just that— not only to Habonim, but to the entire Labor Zionist movement. Our camps were ventures in democratic, cooperative living in America; and to have the largest measure of success required a nucleus of experienced and intensively aware Habonim members at each Camp Kvutza. They were also ideal ground for leadership training of younger members; but those summers the younger members were the leaders, and the older ones were scattered so thinly that there was little opportunity for actual leadership training.

Prior to those years we depended a good deal upon capable organizers stationed in the cities to do intensive cultural and organizational work. Since the personnel for continuing such methods of work was lacking, we tried to supplement the knowledge which our members were able to acquire at group meetings and seminars with a variety of publications. Furrows presented a mature Labor Zionist viewpoint to our members, who needed this kind of guidance so badly, and to an interested outside public. We continued publication of Haboneh for our members up to fifteen years of age. Haboneh succeeded in achieving the same ends for the younger members as furrows did for the older. For direct educational use we continued to mimeograph the Menahel, which was sent to all group leaders and included leadership techniques and program material. The members of Kibbutz Aliya received Alot as well as special bulletins on happenings in Eretz Israel.

None of those measures, however, could replace the personal participation in Habonim life of the close to one thousand chaverim in the armed forces. Among these there were at least one hundred and fifty or more who were the leading and most responsible, as well as the best-educated, in the movement. We maintained contact with them through periodic soldiers' bulletins, containing news of the movement and of the Zionist and Jewish world. As a group, their ties to the movement were intensified during the period they were in the service. Many who had not planned to be chalutzim decided on aliya. Many actually served as our shlichim throughout the world. In Jewish communities in North Africa, India, and Italy, particularly, they spread the message of the movement, put those communities in touch with us, worked with the Eretz Israel units in reconstruction, assisted in the cultural reawakening of Jews wherever they were.

The same intensification of chalutz feeling that existed among the soldiers developed among our chaverim on the home front, probably because of two factors: the upheaval resulting from the fate of overseas Jewry and, more directly, the establishment of a kibbutz which included American Habonim at Naame. Those at Naame very consciously forged a tie between themselves and the English-speaking Habonim throughout the world. They worked toward the creation of a world movement, particularly in the English-speaking countries, based on the fundamentally common attributes and aims of Habonim in each of these countries.

Members of Habonim in America responded to the effort to create this tie, with the tangible goal of establishing their own kibbutz as the central motivating force. During 1944, the Kibbutz Aliya framework increased its membership to two hundred. Since no one younger than seventeen was in Kibbutz Aliya, there existed a large backlog of younger members who were preparing to join when they reached the required age. The members of Kibbutz Aliya saved money in a joint account and eventually went on hachshara, most of them at the Cream Ridge farm. The leading members of Habonim were members of Kibbutz Aliya, which gave the entire movement an increasing emphasis on chalutziut.

Despite the fact that we advanced in many fields during this period, our major problem was to secure a well-prepared leadership, to provide a more thoroughgoing education for our membership, and to train a group of older chaverim capable of carrying on our work. 

The problems of leadership and education were interrelated; and for this we had an ambitious, long-range plan, combining the facilities of both America and Eretz Israel. In 1945, we established the Habonim Institute in New York, which ran from mid-February to mid-May. The school was open to members of Habonim from all over the country who had completed high school. It offered intensive courses in all aspects of Habonim life, specifically, and of the Labor Zionist background, ideology, and movement, in general, as well as techniques of group leadership. Those who attended the school were chosen from various cities and came on scholarship. The establishment of this school was of significance not only to Habonim but to the entire Labor Zionist movement.

But, as had been said, this was only part of a larger plan. Naame had undertaken to build an institution. Bet Habonim, with the financial assistance of the Habonim movements of all the English-speaking countries. Bet Habonim would house a school, the movement archives and library, and a world office. The school was to have a dual purpose: to train those already in Eretz Israel to go to the countries of the Diaspora as shlichim, and to receive students sent on scholarship for a year's training in Eretz Israel, after which they would return to their respective countries to take their part in leading the movements there. These students would live in and with the kibbutz, would become acquainted at first hand with Eretz Israel, and would be taught how to lead the movements in the English-speaking countries.

There were many American Jewish soldiers who made their first acquaintance with Labor Zionism through members of Habonim in the army. Our chaverim gave them the names of those to contact in cities near which they were stationed while in America. As a result, there were many among them who became members of our
movement after the war. Then there were our own members in the armed forces who returned to the movement after the war. In addition, there were many non-members and former members who were shaken from apathy in the final years of the war and were now ready to join. In order to be able to give all these elements a place in our movement life, we decided to extend our age level to about twenty-five.

During 1944-45 new inter-organizational contacts of vital content were established. An organic outgrowth of our concern for the proper functioning of the American Zionist Emergency Council was the creation of the Young Zionists Action Committee. The merkaz made repeated representations to the Emergency Council for the establishment of a youth division, but no action resulted. The merkaz spent a great deal of time exploring the advisability of joining the American Youth for a Free World. Contacts were made with the non-Jewish youth groups preparing for a world conference of youth in London.

During this period there was a remarkable increase in our funds work. Fifty-seven thousand dollars was raised for the Jewish National Fund alone, and another thirty thousand for the Histadrut Campaign, Hechalutz, and projects at Kfar Blum. Each year the total raised for each fund was higher than that of the year before.
During these years we suffered from the loss of the largest part of our older membership, and thus our leadership, to the armed forces and war industry. We suffered, also, from the general devitalization which suffused all of organized youth life in America. The record of these years is replete with the story of youth organizations and councils that passed out of existence. Hardly a Jewish or Zionist youth organization withstood the war strain and the loss of manpower without undergoing serious weakening. Not one showed appreciable progress or substantial gains in strength. The goal was simply to hold the line, let alone provide Jewish youth with real leadership or inspiration.

We were proud, therefore, that in the face of such organizational handicaps and an intellectually lethargic youth climate, Habonim went through the years stronger in number and in spirit than we were at the beginning of the war. We were proud of the younger chaverim throughout the country who, undismayed by the responsibility that fell upon them, took the leadership into their hands; built up their machanot, maintained all our existing institutions, strengthening many, such as JNF and Camp Kvutza, and creating new ones, like the Habonim Institute and Naame Projects; and multiplied the number of chalutzim in our ranks many times over. We were proud of the tiny group of veteran chaverim who carried the full heavy brunt of
national leadership through those difficult and lonely years, and our shlichim, who, with real understanding and unfailing energy were our chief guides through the war's confusion. Most of all, v were encouraged by the manifest devotion of all our chaverim in tl armed forces, who maintained regular contact, offered their advice participated in our projects, and in countless ways reassured us of the loyalty.

We shall be eternally proud of our chaverim who lost their lives in the great struggle against Hitlerism:

Nachum Alexander, Philadelphia; Shalom Beitchman, Philadelphia; George Bernheimer, New York; Leon Aryeh Byers, Dallas; Moshe Chipkin, Bronx; Gideon Ben Cohen, Philadelphia; Alvin Epstein, Los Angeles; David Funnan, Bronx; Daniel Ginsburg, Detroit; Asher Horowitz, Winnipeg; Joseph Kopstein, Atlantic City; Bernard Dov Lichtenstein, Dallas; Kalman Lidsky, New York City; N. Nichols, Montreal; Louis Nutick, Montreal; Yak Pelner, Brooklyn; Moshe Polson, Kfar Blum; Joseph Rosenberg, Detroit; Eddie Shandler, Philadelphia; Michael Sirota, Brooklyn; Yossel Spector, Winnipeg; Yochanan Tartakower, New York; Nathan Weiner, St. Paul.

Strengthened by this tradition of steadfastness, reliability, and sacrifice, and by the many concrete achievements during those years, we met at our convention in Detroit during December, 1945, to organize for the great responsibility of building a large Labor Zionist youth movement in the post-war years.

D.B., 1960