Alonei Abba

Coordinates: 32°43′46″N 35°10′18″E / 32.72944°N 35.17167°E / 32.72944; 35.17167
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Alonei Abba
אַלּוֹנֵי אַבָּא‎
Hebrew transcription(s)
 • officialAllone Abba
Alonei Abba is located in Jezreel Valley region of Israel
Alonei Abba
Alonei Abba
Coordinates: 32°43′46″N 35°10′18″E / 32.72944°N 35.17167°E / 32.72944; 35.17167
Grid position166/237 PAL
CountryIsrael
DistrictNorthern
CouncilJezreel Valley
RegionLower Galilee
AffiliationHaOved HaTzioni
Founded1948
Founded byAustrian and Romanian Jewish immigrants
Population
 (2022)[1]
990
Websitealoneyaba.org.il

Alonei Abba (

Kiryat Tivon,[2] it falls under the jurisdiction of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 990.[1]

The modern village was founded in 1948 on the site of the historical Arab village of Umm el Amad, later the

German Protestant Colony
of Waldheim.

History

Archaeological investigations indicate that this was an industrial agricultural processing area in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Among the remains found are Roman-period industrial oil press and a winepress, in addition to a paved path from the same era.[3]

Ottoman era

Umm al-Amed

Umm al-'Amad was mentioned in the

Shefa-ʻAmr and some parts are incorrect.[5]

In 1859 the British consul Rogers stated that the population of Umm al-Amed was 100 and the tillage was ten

feddans.[6] In 1875 Victor Guérin found Umm al-Amed situated on a small plateau, surrounded by gardens. In spite of its name Umm al-Amed, which meant "The place with the columns", Guérin could find no columns.[7][8]

In 1881 the

Muslims.[9]

Waldheim

In 1907 the colony Waldheim (German: "Forest Home" or "Forestville") was founded by German Protestants affiliated with the

Lutheran and United church bodies. This created an atmosphere of mistrust and envy among the German colonists in Haifa.[11] Due to population increase and the ongoing urbanisation of Haifa, they searched for land to found new monodenominational colonies. Thus the Protestants founded Waldheim, while Templers settled in the neighbouring Bethlehem of Galilee
.

The purchase price of 170,000 francs was financed by a Haifa-based bank Darlehenskasse der deutschen evangelischen Gemeinde Haifa GmbH and completely refinanced by the Stuttgarter Gesellschaft zur Förderung der deutschen Ansiedlungen in Palästina. The colony comprised 7,200,000 square meters (7,200 dunams).[12]

The settlement was inaugurated on the occasion of

Harvest Festival on 6 October 1907. At this time, the new Waldheimers were still living in the simple clay huts purchased from the previous owners. The Haifa engineer Ernst August Voigt presented the plan of the streets and the 16 allotments around a central plot reserved for a church. In 1909 the Jerusalemsverein [de] (Jerusalem Association), a Berlin-based organisation supportive of Protestant activities in the Holy Land, contributed money for the development of a water supply. By 1914, the residents planted 5,000 square metres of vineyard and more than 500 olive trees.[13]
In December 1913 the farmers of Waldheim and Bethlehem keeping dairy cattle founded a common dairy cooperative to pasteurise milk and deliver it to Haifa.

British Mandate era

Umm el Amad and Waldheim 1918–1931

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British authorities, Umm al Amad had a population of 128; 63 Christians and 65 Muslims.[14] Of the Christians, 62 were Protestant and one was Greek Catholic (Melkite).[15] This had increased slightly in the 1931 census, when Umm el Amad had a population of 231; 163 Muslim and 68 Christians, in a total of 76 inhabited houses.[16]

Waldheim Germans 1932–1945

Most of the residents bore German citizenship. In the course of the 1930s some Waldheimers joined the Nazi party, indicating the fading affinity to the Evangelical ideals. Until August 1939 17% of all gentile Germans in Palestine were enrolled as members of the Nazi party.[17]

After the

Hitler youth was built up by the help of German government subsidies. By 1935 the Nazis had succeeded to streamline the municipal bodies of the settlements of Gentile Germans in Palestine. On 20 August 1939 the German government ordered the recruitment of Gentile German men into the Wehrmacht. 350 followed the call. According to one Nahalal resident, until the outbreak of World War II the German community had good relationships with local members of the Yishuv, sold stock to them while the Jewish farmers went there to study agricultural methods, and the Germans would bring them gifts of bread on the last day of Passover.[19]

After the start of the war, all Germans in Palestine were classed as

Wilhelma were converted into internment camps. Most enemy aliens living elsewhere in Palestine—comprising Gentile Germans,[20] Hungarians and Italians—were interned in one of the settlements, while the inhabitants of the settlements simply stayed where they were. In summer 1941, 665 interned Templers from all their settlements, mainly young families with children, were transported to Australia for internment. Many of the remaining Germans were either too old or too sick to leave. The internees could maintain the agricultural production to feed themselves and supply surplus to market in return for supplies not available within the camps. In 1941, 1942 and 1944, by way of internee exchanges, another 400 Evangelical and Templer internees, mostly wives and children of men who had followed the call for recruitment, were repatriated, via Turkey, to Germany for family reunification.[21]

Umm el Amad and Waldheim in 1945

In the 1945 statistics, the population of Waldheim/Um el Amad consisted of 260 people, and the total land area was 9,227 dunams, according to an official land and population survey.[22] There were 150 Muslims and 110 Christians.[23][24] 170 dunams of land were designated for plantations and irrigable land, 4,776 for cereals,[25] while 102 dunams were built-up areas.[26]

Final years of Waldheim, 1945–48

After the war the

Jewish Agency requested that Palestine's German colonies be liquidated, and their properties turned over to the Agency as part of reparations Germany owed the Jewish people.[29]

According to

Amin al-Husayni had had contact with the Nazi government during WW2.[30] The two Templar villages, the other being Betlehem, were under British protection, and both considered 'unreliable' by Jewish forces.[31] There was a perception that the British, who were due to evacuate Palestine in May, tended to hand over areas under their control to local Arabs, and the area was strategic because close to the main axis leading to the Nahalal police station.[32] According to Hagai Binyamini, the German estates were very neat, and emblematic of german order and efficiency. with housing made of stone in contrast to the sheet metal, old pipes and wiring used to build local Jewish settlements.[33]

At 04:00 on 17 April 1948 a unit composed of three platoons of Golani troopers from the Dror and Nafat Levi Battalions, drawn from members of the Nahalal, Alonim, Kfar Yehoshua Sde Ya'akov and Sha'ar HaAmakim settlements and backed by armoured trucks mounted with machine guns. penetrated into Waldheim via the woodland. Some of the soldiers were Holocaust survivors, and many were fresh from combat at Mishmar HaEmek.[34] The Germans put up no resistance, and shots fired were attributed to Arabs.[35] The few British soldiers under camp commander Alan Tilbury were unable to impede the attack during which two colonists, Karl and Regina Aimann, were shot dead, 'before they could even say 'good morning',' in the words of Meir Amit.[36] Newspaper accounts the day after reported they were shot when they resisted arrest while armed, and that the action was taken to intercept plans by 'Arab gangs' to take over the property.[37] The killings occurred in front of their eldest son Traugott. Having ordered their three children, Traugott, Helmut and Gisela to hide in a bedroom, the couple went to the door when two Jewish soldiers began knocked loudly and were cut down when they opened it. The family had reportedly taken refuge close to a British defensive position.[38] A third woman, Katharina Deininger (65), who was milking in the cow shed at the time, suffered a severe wounding when she was shot in the head.[39][40]

Medical assistance was denied to the father, who was still alive, and the community once rounded up was locked up in a building and later subjected to a long speech in which they were all denounced as Nazis. They also underwent a body search to discover, without success, whether anyone bore SS tattoos.[41] One trooper assured the internees that "we are not like the Germans, we will not behave like the Germans".[42] The internees were given 20 minutes to collect what remained of their belongings, all their valuables and good clothes having been looted in the meantime, together with ploughs, disks and tractors.[43] The Germans were then stripped of any documents and some books they recovered, before being handed over to the British, who evacuated them to Haifa.[44] The soldiers who shot the Almanns were reprimanded,- one of them, Chummi Zarchi from Nahalal, had angry memories of several Ukrainian relatives killed in the Holocaust -[45] and the looting deplored not on moral grounds but because it endangered operative priorities.[46]

This incident and the end of the Mandate forced the British to hasten the resettlement, thus all the internees, 51 Germans and 4 Swiss, as well as those from the other settlements, were transferred to Cyprus, into a camp of simple tents near Famagusta. By 14 May 1948, when Israel became independent, only about 50 Germans, mostly elderly and sick persons, were living in the new state. They voluntarily left the country or were later expelled by the government.[47]

Alonei Abba

Map of Alonei Abba, 1956, on the previous sites of Umm el Amad and Waldheim

On 12 May 1948 a group of young Zionist pioneers from Czechoslovakia, Austria and Romania, members of HaNoar HaTzioni, established kibbutz BaMa'avak (In The Struggle) in the abandoned colony, after four years of agricultural training in Herzliya. Three years later, the kibbutz became a moshav shitufi and the name was changed to Alonei Abba in memory of Abba Berdichev, who was parachuted into Czechoslovakia in 1943 to assist clandestine British forces, but was captured and executed in 1945.[48][49]

Landmarks

Waldheim Evangelical Church, built between 1914 and 1921 by Haifa-based architect Otto Lutz.

Hans Martin Kuno Moderow (1877-1945), pastor of the Haifa Evangelical Congregation (1908–18),[50] also provided services in Waldheim, at the beginning in the living room of the new house of Waldheim's then mayor Gottlob Weinmann. The Waldheimers saved funds for a church of their own and could thus lay the cornerstone for the church in early 1914. The Haifa-based architect Otto Lutz led the construction works. In 1921, the Evangelical church at Alonei Abba, which still stands today, was inaugurated.[51] The Alon winery, surrounded by a grove of oak trees, is located in the former dairy cooperative (est. 1913).[52]

Alonei Abba nature reserve

In 1994, a 950-

terebinths (Pistacia terebinthus), storax trees (Styrax officinalis), carobs (Ceratonia siliqua), buckthorns (Rhamnus palaestinus), and Judas trees (Cercis siliquastrum). Most of the reserve is open for experimental grazing by cattle from the moshav.[54]

Notable residents

References

  1. ^ a b "Regional Statistics". Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  2. ^ Yet to Be Discovered: The Jezreel Valley 20 Nov 2006, Haaretz
  3. ^ Alexandre, 2008, Alonēy Abba
  4. ^ Rohde, 1979, p. 101
  5. ^ Karmon, 1960, p. 162 Archived 22 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b Conder and Kitchener, 1881, SWP I, p. 273
  7. ^ Palmer, 1881, p. 117
  8. ^ Guérin, 1880, p. 394
  9. ^ Schumacher, 1888, p. 175
  10. ^ Eisler, 1998, p. 84
  11. ^ Eisler, 1998, pp. 99seq.
  12. ^ Eisler, 1998, p. 97
  13. ^ Eisler, 1998, p. 98
  14. ^ Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Haifa, p. 33
  15. ^ Barron, 1923, Table XVI, p. 49
  16. ^ Mills, 1932, p. 97
  17. ^ Sauer, 1996, p. 17
  18. ISBN 3-89702-304-0
  19. ^ Goldman, 2009 pp.163,169-170.
  20. ^ Jewish Germans living in Palestine had mostly given up their German citizenship or were successively denaturalised by the Nazi government. Even if they were still German citizens, the Britons did not regard them as potential supporters of Nazi Germany. All Jewish Germans living outside the extended Greater German Reich still holding German citizenship were denaturalised by ordinance (Elfte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz), decreed on 25 November 1941.
  21. ^ Sauer, 1996, pp. 18 seqq.
  22. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 49 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  23. ^ Village Statistics April 1945, The Palestine Government, p. 12 Archived 9 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ Department of Statistics, 1945, p. 15
  25. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 92 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  26. ^ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 142 Archived 2 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ISBN 978-3-110-30652-1
    p.127.
  28. ^ Goldman 2009, pp.172-173.
  29. ^ Goldman 2009, p.171.
  30. ^ Goldman 2009 p.156.
  31. ^ Goldman 2009 p.156.
  32. ^ Goldman 2009 p.157.
  33. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.163, 169:' The conditions here were rough. It was unpaved, dusty, dirty, thorns… over there it was all spic and span, every German family had an Arab family to serve them..'
  34. ISBN 978-1-425-13891-2
    Trafford Publishing 2009 pp.146-177, pp.146,157, 161,163,164
  35. ^ Goldman 2009 p.157.
  36. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.157,159.
  37. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.160-161.
  38. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.147,149. 150-151
  39. ^ Sauer, 1996, p. 19.
  40. ^ Goldman 2009 p.147.
  41. ^ Goldman 2009 p.151
  42. ^ Goldman 2009 p.161
  43. ^ Goldman 2009 p.158.
  44. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.153,155.
  45. ^ Goldman 2009 pp.168-169.
  46. ^ Goldman 2009 p.158.
  47. ^ Sauer, 1996, p. 20.
  48. ^ Hareuveni, Imanuel (2010). Eretz Israel Lexicon (in Hebrew). Matach. p. 38.
  49. ^ "Zionist Parachutists - Zionism and Israel -Encyclopedia / Dictionary/Lexicon of Zionism/Israel/". Zionism-israel.com. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
  50. ISBN 9781786733184
    .
  51. ^ "JPost | French-language news from Israel, the Middle East & the Jewish World". Fr.jpost.com. Retrieved 14 March 2014.[permanent dead link‍]
  52. ^ Saversky, By Ronit (20 June 1995). "Galilee takes visitors back in time - Israel Travel, Ynetnews". Ynetnews. Ynetnews.com. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
  53. ^ "List of National Parks and Nature Reserves" (PDF) (in Hebrew). Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 October 2009. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
  54. ^ "Alonei Abba Nature Reserve" (in Hebrew). Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 27 September 2010.

Bibliography

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