שנה ראשונה לבד בעין חרוד: חינוך, הצלה ובניין אומה מבעד לעיניהם של חברי הקבוצה הראשונה של עליית הנוער

This article focuses on the group of 60 teenagers who immigrated to Kibbutz Ein Harod from Germany in 1934 under the auspices of the Youth Aliya Institution, the first group of its kind. It covers these youths’ first year in pre-state Israel, during which the voices of all the project’s participants are still clearly audible: the young immigrants themselves, their educational team, and the organizers of the project. The article reveals the change in the educational objectives that the project under went in its first year, concomitantly with the geographic transition between Germany and the Land of Israel: Shifting its focus away from pursuing an agenda of rescue and vocational training, which was prevalent at that time in the field of social work, the Youth Aliya became a Zionist educational venture designed to effect a profound change, an ‘inner revolution’, in these young people’s consciousness.