Jewish emigration estate Groß-Breesen / Brzeźno

Before the end of 1935, it was decided to found a non-Zionist emigration school for German-Jewish youths, which was to offer an alternative to the Hachsharot. On January 16, 1936, the constituent assembly took place in the offices of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany (RV). Representatives of the most important Jewish organizations in Germany, with the exception of the Zionist Association for Germany (ZVfD), took part in the board of trustees and the working committee. In addition to the RV, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV), the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (RjF) and the Bund deutsch-jüdischer Jugend (BdjJ) were of central importance for the establishment of the Lehrgut. Curt Bondy, a qualified psychologist who had made a name for himself in the Weimar period with his reform efforts in the juvenile penal system and was himself a youth activist and reformist socialist, was entrusted with the management of the estate and the spiritual and character education of the young people. The plan was to train up to 125 young people between the ages of 15 and 23 in agriculture, horticulture and crafts, as well as home economics for the female participants. However, the actual workforce varied considerably over the years. At the end of 1936, there were only 70 trainees on the estate, but by summer 1937 the workforce had grown to around 100 people. The aim was to create a communal settlement in Übersee and, as a result, to establish long-term roots for the trainees in agriculture.After a long search and in the absence of better alternatives, the RV leased the Groß-Breesen estate in the former Lower Silesia, around 30 kilometers north of Breslau, in April 1936. This was owned by the Polish-Jewish Rohr family, who had fled to Poland in 1933. The estate had already been used by the Hechaluz for the Hachshara in 1930/31.