Summary
The Pioneer organisations in the countries emigrants came from, which in Simpson’s 1930 report train Jewish boys and girls in agriculture and industry for manual labour in Palestine and supply the bulk of the human material for Zionist work based on manual labour (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 2695-2725).
Details
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In each source country an organisation gives preliminary training in agricultural practice: a large farm near Warsaw where the Chalutzim (the Pioneers) train, paid agricultural labour in Galicia, and similar arrangements in Germany and France; the General Federation of Jewish Labour deputes the instructors to these centres — twenty teachers at the time of writing, paid only their journey by the Federation, their expenses met by their own earnings or Zionist funds (lines 2695-2703).
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The General Federation’s Memorandum to the Commission on the Disturbances, as quoted by Simpson, states that the Hehaluz organisations exist “practically all over Europe”, are organically linked with the Histadruth, which controls their educational work, and that an immigrant Halutz automatically becomes a member of the Histadruth on arrival in Palestine (lines 2715-2725).
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Simpson’s conclusion from this training chain is that all Labour Schedule immigrants are trained by Federation-deputed teachers before they are chosen, so that in the great majority of cases an immigrant would have no chance of a permit unless persona grata to the Labour authorities (lines 2699-2705).
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In the Jewish Agency’s July 1930 immigration memorandum the organisation (also spelt Hechalutz there) trains youth for work in Palestine in all emigration countries, in two main groups — the Mizrachi and the General Zionists — and a “Trumpeldor” organisation, financially supported and periodically inspected by the Agency’s Immigration Department; its methods are training farms and agricultural groups, trade schools and classes, seasonal labour groups and individual apprenticeship, with cultural work in Hebrew, historical geography and natural history; two years of agricultural training are usually required (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.99).
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Its own recent census in the same memorandum gives 4,003 Chalutzim in training abroad: Poland 1,360, Galicia 775, Roumania 368, Germany 335, Lithuania 211, Czecho-Slovakia 161, Latvia 150, Russia (estimate) 500, Austria 70, Holland 32, France 23 and Bulgaria 18; selection for immigration gives general, but not exclusive, priority to the Hechalutz-trained with a fair knowledge of Hebrew (PDF p.100-101).
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The memorandum derives the movement from the “Bilu” of fifty years before — the initials of “House of Israel, Arise and let us go!” — which it says laid the foundation of Rishon-le-Zion and Gederah (PDF p.105).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Histadrut, Labour Immigration Schedule, Jewish Agency