Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 43

— 43 — Palestine needs first and foremost are workmen, above all agricultural workers, whose hands, bodies and minds respond to the call of work in general, while at the same time the standards of a formal education and of intelligent citizenship must be established and maintained. That is to say, the kjbbutsim cannot turn out agronomists and engineers, but they can produce, and in fact have already produced within the ranks of the Youth Immigration Movement, practical working farmers. The new Ludwig Tietz Trade School and the Trade School of the Haifa Technical Institute offer the possibility of giving the German boys the specified vocational training some of them, backed by their parents, prefer to the exclusion of what the kibbuts can bestow, while the girl have aspired to training in the care of young children. It has been found necessary, in a limited number of instances, to yield to the solicitations of individual boys and girls who have not been able, on the one hand, to adjust themselves to the collective form of living in the kibbuts and, on the other hand, to accept the ideal of a trained, intelligent, general worker set up by the kibbuts. In such cases, the two trade schools mentioned have been used for the boys, but hitherto most of them have been placed as apprentices with master craftsmen in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, and a few with individual farmers. Separation from their Group does not imply that supervision of such boys and girls ceases. A social worker visits them from time to time and reports regularly on their well-being and progress. In addition to these educational considerations and tasks of a more or less technical nature, there are psychologic questions that overtop them all : How do the young people from Germany adjust themselves to life in Palestine? Do they identify themselves with the aspirations of the Jewish community? The disturbances of 1936 yield a partial reply. Without exception every Youth Group demanded of its host- Kibbuts to be given a responsible share in the defence of the settlement by day and by night. While the high spirits of youth must be regarded as the primary source of such devotion, the manner in which the self-imposed tasks were fulfilled betokens conscious, desired identification with the national aim and fate. The same acceptance of Jewish ideals may be gathered from a perusal of the journals, diaries, and