The German Jewish teacher Recha Freier moved to Berlin in 1925. She and her husband Moritz Freier had four children. She was a convinced Zionist.
Recha Freier was quick to recognize the threat posed to Jews by the rise of National Socialism. In reaction, she began organizing the emigration of Jewish children and young people to British Mandatory Palestine in 1932. She founded an aid organization in 1933, from which Youth Aliyah emerged. Due to the growing antisemitic threat, more and more parents across Europe entrusted their children to Youth Aliyah.
In July 1940, Recha Freier herself fled National Socialist persecution with her daughter, traveling via Vienna to Yugoslavia. From her new base in Zagreb, she worked with escape aid networks to smuggle more than 130 Jewish children and young people out of the German Reich and annexed Austria. In the spring of 1941, Freier and her daughter reached Palestine, along with 90 children and young people. The organization managed to save a total of a thousand Jewish children from deportation and murder.
Recha Freier experienced the end of the Second World War in Palestine.
Message from the carer Josef Indig to the founder of Youth Aliyah Recha Freier on the rescue of a group of children to Switzerland, October 21, 1943. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem
