“Is there still [a] Need for Circular Letters?”

The eighteenth circular of the former Gross-Breesen trainees was published two years after the previous edition of 1947 under the overarching question “Is there still [a] Need for Circular Letters?” Curt Bondy, Richmond, Virg., November 1948, in: Rundbrief (1949), 1–5, here 1. It served to discuss not just the meaning and purpose of further correspondence collections, but especially the fundamental question concerning the significance and negotiation of belonging to the ‘Breesen community’ in 1949. This community had its origins in the summer of 1936 on the Gross-Breesen agricultural training farm near Breslau (Wrocław). Now, thirteen years later, the former trainees were scattered all over the world.

While Cramer’s introductory words from 1949 can be understood as a call to all those concerned to get involved in the discussion about the further publication of the circulars and their significance, Bondy’s contribution can be read as a sort of stocktaking. Thus, he pointed out that “the ‘pillars’ on which we built G.B. [Gross-Breesen] eventually all crumbled: German culture, a common language, Judaism, and a mutual profession.” Bondy therefore asked: “What remains? Is there really nothing more than a romantic longing, a ‘do you remember?’”  Ibid., 1.

As was already the case in earlier circulars, Bondy’s present contribution can also be seen as a continuation of his pedagogical exertion of influence. As the former head of the training farm, he had been responsible for the spiritual education of the young trainees. He continued to perform this function in exile through the medium of the circulars, alongside private correspondence. Bondy’s contributions served to frame the various experiences of the German-Jewish exiles and to offer them the bonds they temporarily experienced in Gross-Breesen as a new mutual point of reference, a sense of community now mediated in written and recurring form.

On the one hand, the question “What remains?” tested the resilience of this sense of community. On the other hand, Bondy’s stocktaking was oriented toward the future: using one’s own experiences and opportunities to improve relations between people and to make the postwar world a better place. In this context, Bondy presented the experience of antisemitic discrimination, persecution, and forced migration from Nazi Germany, as well as the positive communal life experienced on the training farm, as a binding realm of experience for the former Gross-Breesen trainees, which was supposed to continue enabling them to live a conscious, full, and valuable Jewish life in the diaspora.

With this appeal to their own active life choices in the present and future, and with his call to continue corresponding with each other, Bondy – once again – located the significance of the circulars and of the Gross-Breesen community beyond the realm of mere romantic nostalgia. Consequently, he ended his contribution with a little wink when writing:

“Of course, I would also really like to know whether and to what extent you agree with my positions and especially in what respects you disagree and where you see potential for further efforts, and/or in what respects you are already working in this direction. Perhaps your answers will more than justify the publication of another circular.”  Ibid., 5.

Searching for New Beginnings

The question concerning the relevance and meaning of the circulars and of the Gross-Breesen community generally depended on individual life trajectories, experiences of exile and persecution, and the place from which the authors wrote their respective contributions at a given point in time. This is most evident in the letters penned by the Berlin-born historian Werner Tom Angress (1920–2010) on the one hand and by Rudolf (1921–?) and Henny Weiss, née Lemmlein (1917–?) on the other. Angress emigrated via the Netherlands to the United States in 1939, returning to Europe as a soldier in the Allied forces in early 1944, and commenced his studies in history in the United States after the end of the war. Describing his own situation as a “stage of arrival,”  W. [Werner] T. [Tom] Angress, Middletown, Conn., October 1948, in: Rundbrief (1949), 5–6, here 6. his life in Germany, including Gross-Breesen, was now in the past for him.

The last sentence of his letter shows especially clearly his desire not to allow the past to become the determining factor for his present and future life. Thus, he emphasized writing in English that “gradually, most Breeseners have become citizens of their new homelands. The old ties have weakened as time went by… The interest as to what other Breeseners are doing has given way to closer and more immediate considerations, and for most of us, only a tradition is left today. […] We cannot live by memories all our lives.”  Ibid., 6. In contrast to Bondy and Cramer, who switched between languages, he wrote his contribution exclusively in English, as did most of the other former Gross-Breesen trainees who emigrated to English-speaking countries in the late 1930s. The choice of language in these letters, which were directed at a German-language community, can be interpreted as an expression of having arrived in one’s host country and society, and also of delineating oneself from the past and from one’s former German homeland.

Fig. 1: Trainees in Gross-Breesen working in the garden together, around 1940; private collection of Albrecht Weinberg.

By contrast, Rudolf, who was known as Rudi, and Henny Weiss regarded the connection to their (shared) past as a meaningful moment for their present lives in postwar Germany. In their deeply personal contributions, they consequently emphasized above all their profound gratitude: “We thank you, Breeseners and our Bo [Bondy] from the bottom of our hearts for all your willingness to help us in every respect. Your letters and your great material help provided us with so much joy; you gave us the courage to live again.”  Rudi and Henny Weiss, Berlin, December 1948, in: Rundbrief (1949), 15–18, here 16.

Neither of the two ultimately managed to flee from Nazi Germany; after Gross-Breesen, they were interned in various forced labor camps before being deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, where they were liberated by the Red Army in May 1945. In 1948, they were working as so-called new farmers on an agricultural settlement in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SOZ), with Rudi Weiss having moreover commenced studying agriculture in Berlin. He thereby hoped to aid their chances of emigrating from Germany, a wish that was not yet possible at the time.

For the Weiss couple, the circular of 1949 held exactly the meaning that Angress had already ascribed to the circulars in the late 1930s and 1940s: “a lifeline, a moral booster, a piece of security. People read it because they felt then that contact with other Breeseners was essential to them, gave them support.”  W. T. Angress, 5.

The sense of community that the former Gross-Breesen trainees felt and experienced offered them stability and a positive point of reference in a life shaped by experiences of persecution, of the immediate privations of the postwar years, and – in the case of Rudi and Henny Weiss – of continuing antisemitism in (Eastern) Germany.

The ‘Pillars’ of Gross-Breesen in the German-Jewish Diaspora

In his introductory contribution to Letter 18, Curt Bondy addressed the crumbling of the pillars of Gross-Breesen (“German culture, a common language, Judaism, and a mutual profession”), which had already been decisive, but not undisputed, in the establishment of the training farm. Yet these pillars simultaneously continued to shape the circular in terms of both content and structure.

The ‘Farm Letters’ (pages 7 to 18) include reports from Argentina, the United States, Israel, and the SOZ, which demonstrate that life and labor on the land continued to serve as an ideal for at least some of the former trainees. Engagements with developments in postwar Germany are especially visible in the 1949 circular. Like some other German Jews, Bondy traveled to Germany in the postwar years in order to get an impression of the state of the country. He was particularly interested in the political atmosphere among the population – explicitly with regard to continuing or resurgent Nazi and antisemitic attitudes – as well as reconstruction, the problem of so-called Displaced Persons (DPs), and the potential for a Jewish future in Germany.

The circular only includes an abridged version of Bondy’s extensive report on his trip (see page 19). By contrast, the subsequent letter by Ernst Cramer was notably longer and addressed similar topics. Both correspondents were evidently worried about the political situation in (West) Germany, given that the Allies’ democratization efforts were only making inroads with parts of the population while antisemitism remained present. At the same time, the authors tried to emphasize positive developments within German postwar society. In Cramer’s case, this may also have been related to his decision to join the few Jewish survivors who returned permanently to Germany – he was already living in Munich at the time.

Being Jewish, by contrast, which was understood in a very pluralistic manner by the former Gross-Breesen trainees, was discussed in the 1949 circular above all in relation to engagements with antisemitism in the non-Jewish majority societies in which they now lived and with the establishment of the State of Israel and its War of Independence in 1947–49. In contrast to most other training farms for Jewish emigrants, Gross-Breesen was not Zionist in its orientation. Only a small number of the former trainees emigrated to Palestine/Israel. Nevertheless, reports from the kibbutzim located there and about the war waged by neighboring Arab countries against the newly established Jewish state occupied a significant number of pages in this circular. This may have been due to the context of recent history, but it also pointed to the increasing significance of Israel for the Jewish diaspora. Yet attitudes on this topic were not unanimous among the former Gross-Breesen trainees, albeit only Anneliese Loeser (?–?) in the United States adopted a clearly negative position: “The Palestine question,” as Loeser wrote in English, “also isn’t very hopeful, besides the fact that I never will and never did believe in the ultimate aim of the Zionist movement. […] Besides, even in Germany, we fought for not being a Jew by nationality, I do it even worse now [sic].”  Anneliese Loeser, Decatur, Mich., January 1949, in: Rundbrief (1949), 13–14, here 13.

By contrast, Eva Landecker (1923–1998) joined a Zionist youth group in exile in Chile and decided to make Aliyah even before the foundation of the State of Israel. To Rudi and Henny Weiss, Israel constituted a potential future place of refuge should they manage to emigrate from Germany. Others, meanwhile, like Pitt [Peter] Hanff (?–?), hoped in 1949 that their relatives who had managed to escape Nazi persecution to what was then a British mandatory territory would soon leave the Jewish state again for their own safety.

Omissions

Following the editors of prior circulars, Ernst Cramer took over the responsibility of compiling this edition of the letters in April 1949. The letters were only reproduced in part, as he indicated in various instances with an ellipsis (“…”). It remains unclear which passages were removed and why. The short messages at the end of the collection, moreover, indicate that some letters were only mentioned in the circular in an extracted form. It may be assumed that further letters were not included in the compilation at all. Yet the question as to what criteria prompted these choices remains open. Likewise, the depiction of Jesus on the title page is open to interpretation. In contrast to the title page design of previous circulars, this image is not explicable from the content of the letters, and at no point in the text is reference made to this picture.

Additionally, the number of individuals cited in the list of addresses at the end of the circular does not correspond to the number whose letters were published. The selection naturally determined the narrative of the circular. The fundamental question concerning the meaning of the Gross-Breesen community in the German-Jewish diaspora was consequently only discussed by those who still felt in any way connected to it. Thus, this source does not allow for any conclusions about individuals who, for whatever reasons, no longer participated in this group correspondence. The next circular was only published in 1954, meaning five years later. Further compilations were published at similar intervals through to 2003. Even if these retained the circular format, the need on behalf of the correspondents to communicate regularly via this medium decreased over the decades.

The Circulars as a Medium of Transnational Communication

Despite, or perhaps precisely because of, the discussion held about the future significance of Gross-Breesen and its ‘pillars’ as foundation stones for a future diasporic Jewish existence, the circular format served as a mutual point of reference for a community that was experienced as specifically transnational in nature. In this context, the great diasporic centers in the United States, Israel, and South America were perceived by the individuals affected as clearly variable. This was all the more true because – as became clear in Letter 18 from 1949 – some of the contributors had not yet arrived permanently in the location of their choice, but still found themselves subject to relocation, reorientation, and new beginnings. Due to their dispersal, the network of the former trainees encompassed a transnational space, with the correspondents acting beyond cultural, political, and national boundaries.

The individual contributions primarily convey impressions of everyday life from the former Gross-Breesen trainees in their various countries of refuge, while at the same time addressing international events alongside transnationally active organizations and their conduct. Thus, the letters from all over the world offer their readers – into the present day – a personal point of entry into the diverse lived realities of the German-Jewish diaspora and represent the continuity of a specific German heritage of the youth movement through to old age.

Selected Bibliography

Further Resources

Wiebke Zeil, “Jewish Emigration Training Gross-Breesen”, in: Hakhshara as a Place of Remembrance, 2022: https://hachschara.juedische-geschichte-online.net/en/site/14

For more information on the concept of Hakhshara and the various training locations in Germany and Europe, see the digital project: Hakhshara as a Place of Remembrance

Stones from the Soil, Documentary film by Michael Caplan about the fate of his father, Rudolph Caplan, and the Groß-Breesen training farm, 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr7w5RcE0m8