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Virginia, Farms for Jewish Refugees: 19th Century Russians, 20th Century Germans

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Thanks to a participant in the Haberman Institute webinar on Baron Hirsch, whose question about Jewish farming projects in Virginia sparked my interest, and to Albert Sherman for sending me an article on the nineteenth-century Virginia venture, inspiring me to prepare this post.

Thanks also to Robert H. Gillette for providing so much information about the Hyde Park Farm for Jewish refugees in his book the Virginia Plan, William B. Thalhimer and a Rescue From Nazi Germany. and to Michael Caplan for his documentary film Stones from the Soil, which follows his search for the Gross Bressen farm in Germany, where many of the refugees who later settled in Virginia in the 1940s had trained.

Do click on the links below for much much more, and fascinating, information.

Virginia’s First Jews

As related in the Jewish Virtual library, “The Jewish experience in Virginia dates back to Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated Roanoke Colony, then a part of the Virginia territory when Joachim Gaunse, a Prague metallurgist, landed with Raleigh in 1585.”

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, first restored by Commodore Levy, from National Park Service

A few other Jews trickled in. Among the most notable, Jacob Myer accompanied George Washington in his 1754 expedition across the Allegheny Mountains. Dr. John de Sequeyra, of Williamsburg, was credited by Thomas Jefferson with introducing the custom of eating tomatoes and Commodore Uriah P. Levy of New York  purchased and began the first restoration of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in 1836.

Virginia Seeks Immigrants

After the Civil War had so devastated much of the South, the Commonwealth of Virginia, looking at least in part to replace the free labor of slaves, decided to include increased immigration in its recovery plans.

This 1868 article describes Virginia’s efforts to recruit immigrants at Castle Garden in New York (the forerunner of Ellis Island).

On February 5, 1866 the legislature passed ‘An Act to Incorporate the Virginia Land and Aid Immigration Company….To purchase or lease lands in Virginia, to be resold or relet to immigrants; [and/or]To act as agents for the sale or leasing of lands, in Virginia, to immigrants.

“By May of 1866 the [Company] was advertising in the Richmond Examiner that it was sending a Director abroad to secure tenants and laborers.”1

Waterview Colony for Russian Refugees

From an article describing the life in the Waterview colony from the Baltimore Sun of April 9, 1883. Read the whole article here. (Zoom in)

In the early 1880s when the great wave of Russian Jewish emigrees began, Joseph Friedenwald, a German Jewish Baltimore businessman, bought 783 acres at Waterview in Middlesex County, Virginia, on the banks of the Rappahannock River, where he settled 72 Russian Jewish refugees. They were to raise tobacco, corn, oats, wheat and rye. But the settlement seemed to disband after only two years.2

A Colony That Never Made It

New York Times, August 27, 1908, page 4.

Then in 1908, Rabbi Leonard Levy, Chairman of the Jewish Agriculturalists‘ Aid Society, bought 2000 acres near Richmond, planning to settle Russian Jews as farmers.3 But it seems that never happened.

Hyde Park Farm

The Thalhimer store in Richmond, Virginia. See a video on the history of the 26 stores here.

In 1938, inspired by his earlier visit to Germany where he was horrified by the violent anti-semitism, William Thalhimer, owner of the Thalhimer department store chain, based in Richmond, established a farm for young Jewish refugees on Hyde Park Farm in Burkeville, Va. Listen to Robert H. Gillette discuss the Hyde Park Farm experience at this link.

Gross Bressen to Hyde Park

Gross Bressen students unloading a hay wagon. From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of George Landecker

The approximately 30 young Jews that came to Hyde Park had been students at the Jewish Emigration Training Farm at Gross Breesen on Germany’s then eastern border, a farm that was the property of a wealthy Jewish landowner. The farm was part of a movement to give young Jewish Germans skills they could use after emigrating, or as hoped by some, to change Jewish occupations in the hope that they would be more acceptable to other Germans. Read all about Gross Bressen in this article by Heidi Landecker, the daughter of a Gross Bressen participant who then went to Hyde Park Farm in Virginia.

The Gross Bressen Experience

Curt Bondy

Gross Bressen was led by the forward leading psychologist Curt Bondy4 who was recommended for the post by the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. In the evenings, after the students spent the days learning farming skills, Bondy taught crucial subjects, resilience, mindfulness and the importance of strong characters,

Jewish men captured on Kristnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, line up at Buchenwald’s special camp set up for these mass arrests. photo from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Life at Gross Bressen was almost idyllic until November 9, 1938, Kristalnacht. On that night the German SS raided the farm and carried off most of the students and Bondy himself to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Buchenwald had yet to become a death camp so after 30 days the group was allowed out with the proviso that they all leave Germany as soon as possible.

Members of the Gross Bressen group left for Australia, Palestine, Kenya, England, Argentina and Hyde Park Farm in Virginia. It wasn’t easy to obtain U.S. visas. At that time, those who couldn’t offer proof that they could support themselves were barred entry and those who came with the promise of a job were barred entry as well. So Thalhimer gave each refugee a share in the Hyde Park farm making them self supported investors.

From Idyllic Hyde Park to Spying in Europe

Training for deployment to Europe at Camp Ritchie, National Archives NARA, Wikimedia.

In 1941 Thalhimer had a major heart attack and for financial reasons Hyde Park Farm had to close. Almost all the young men joined the U.S. Army. Because of their native German and their deep understanding of German culture, many became spies for the U.S., many joining the famous Ritchie Boys, a secret U.S intelligence corps. Members interrogated prisoners and performed counter-intelligence duties. Some even convinced German soldiers to surrender.

Other Hyde Park participants went on to work as counselors and farm hands at the Carson College Orphanage near Philadelphia.5 After the War many Hyde Park participants received university educations with funds from the G.I. Bill.

Bondy Publishes First Studies of Concentration Camp Prisoners

Through Thailhimer’s friendship with the president of William and Mary College, Bondy had already become a professor at the College’s Richmond branch, the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI). In 1943 he published some of the first studies on the behavior of prisoners in concentration camps.6. Following WW II Bondy returned to his native Hamburg, Germany where he continued his academic career.4

Hyde Park Alumni

For first hand accounts of the lives of many Gross Bressen alumni following WWII, including those that had been at the Hyde Park Farm, see this article which describes letters written by the alumni. To read the letters themselves, some in German, some in English, click on the original document under Source in the right hand corner of the page and then you can download all the letters.

The documentary film Stones from the Soil includes interviews with many of the Hyde Park alumni describing life at Gross Bressen.

In his second book, Escape to Virginia, From Nazi Germany to Thalhimer’s Farm, Robert Gillette tells us the story of two Hyde Park participants, Eva Jacobsohn Loew and Werner “Tom” Angress from the time they first heard of Gross Bressen through to their lives after WW II. With a Ph.d from U. of California, Berkeley, Werner became a distinguished history professor at SUNY Stony Brook University. Eva became a registered nurse, married another Hyde Park participant, Ernst Loew, and together they ran a dairy farm in Hampton, Connecticut where she served on the school board. Ernst also became a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

From Gillette’s the Virginia Plan, and other sources noted below we can learn about the lives of several other Hyde Park alumni. (Discussed in alphabetical order of surname.)

Spies, Artists, and Agriculturists

Corporal Ernst Cramer, 1943 from the Ritchie Museum

During WW II Ernst Cramer became a member of the U.S. Army’s secret spy corps, the Ritchie Boys. Ernst landed on Omaha Beach three days after D-Day . He interrogated German soldiers and wrote propoganda leaflets that were dropped over Germany. After the war Ernst returned to Germany where he became one of the leaders of the Axel-Springer News Conglomerate, founded in 1946 to reinstate a free press in Germany. For his efforts to support the new German democracy, Ernst was awarded one of Germany’s highest medals, the Federal Cross of Merit with Star and Band

Fallen Dream by Friedel Dzubas, 1958.

Friedel Dzubas became a very important abstract artist and studio mate of the well known artist Helen Frankenthaler. Dzubas’ work is in the collections of the Whitney and Guggenheim museums and many other prestigious institutions. See a video on Dzubas’ life here.

Hans George Hirsch spent the war years in the U.S. Army interpreting for German prisioners and then teaching farm management techniques to convalescing U.S. soldiers. After WW II he received a Ph.d in agriculture from the University of Minnesota and then joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture and eventually the Department’s Foreign Agricultural Service. An interview with Hans Hirsch about his whole life can be heard at this link.

Harvey P. Newman, né Neustadt, also served in the U.S. army during WW. II and then also made a career in the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service. Read more about him at this link to the Center for Jewish History archives.

Soldiers, Journalist, and Dairy Farmers

Isidor Kirshot served in the U.S. Army in Northern Africa during WWII. He then remained in the army for his whole career, retiring as a colonel.

Virginia Holocaust Museum, Richmond, Virginia

George Landecker served in the U.S Army in WWII and then ran a farm in Remsen (Oneida County) New York for the rest of his life. He is featured at the Virginia Holocaust Museum

Marianne Regensburger returned to Germany after graduating on a scholarship from the Quaker institution, Earlham College. Marianne’s niece gives us an overview of her life here.

In Germany Marianne became a noted journalist. In 1962 she “converted from Judaism to Christianity…, not least because of her experiences with the Quakers in the United States during her emigration. In the final years of her life, she was a committed Christian pacifist who regularly participated in peace demonstrations such as the Easter Marches.”7

Here in 1961, on page 162 of the Journal of Milk & Food Technology, Hyde Park Farm alumnus George Tworoger is listed as a director of the Florida Association of Milk and Food Sanitarians.

Luise Tworoger spent most of her life in Southern Florida. Luise was a teacher and served on the board of Peace Place- A Living Experience.8 Peace Place was a non-profit that fostered the inclusion of human rights and conflict resolution in educational settings.

Luise and her husband George Tworoger, also a Hyde Park participant, owned Expert Dairy Products in Miami. George was a director of the Florida Association of Milk and Food Sanitarians.9

And Even More Hyde Park Alumni

If you would like to learn about other Hyde Park Farm alumni, here is a partial list of the participants.10 Just google their names and out will come their stories.

Lu Alberheim

Hans Bacharach

Rudi Caplan

Rolf Falkenstein

Manfred Gottschalk

Ruth Hadra

Ernst Ludwig Heimann

Ken (Klaus) Herman

Howard Irvin

Herbert Kirchroth

Hermann Kiwi

Trudi Levin

Manfred Lindauer

Walter Mielzinger

Ludwig Rfoshlich

  1. Charles, Joan D. The Russian Colony of Middlesex County…. The Jewish Magazine, April, 2013. [↩]
  2. Ginsberg, Louis. The Jewish Colony at Waterview, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Oct. 1958. pp. 459-462. If you register for a free jstor account you can read this article online at the link under the title in this footnote. [↩]
  3. Home for the Persecuted, The New York Times, August 27, 1908, p. 4 [↩]
  4. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Bondy, To read this wikipedia post in English click on 3 sprachen to the right of Curt Bondy’s name and choose English. [↩] [↩]
  5. Gillette, Robert H. Escape to Virginia, From Nazi Germany to Thalhimer’s Farm. Charleston, S.C. : The History Press, 2015. p. 215. [↩]
  6. Christian Fleck and Albert Muller, Bruno Bettelheim and the Concentration Camps, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences , December, 1998, p. 6. (To see that article which is in English scroll down from the German language title page at the link.) Bondy’s article can be read at this link pp. 453 – 457 [↩]
  7. this is a translation from this German language Wikipedia post. [↩]
  8. See https://thebaronhirschcommunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ConvertTiffToPDF.pdf [↩]
  9. see page 162 at https://www.foodprotection.org/upl/downloads/journal-archive/journal-of-milk-and-food-technology-1961-volume-24-issue-5.pdf [↩]
  10. taken from the Virginia Plan pages 81, 86, 102, 176 and 177. [↩]

Baron Hirsch’s Jewish Farmers Dream

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Where did it come from?

Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, White House Historical Association

Dreams of turning Jewish tradesmen into farmers date back to the mid-eighteenth century and feature some strange bedfellows. Besides Baron Hirsch, these utopian efforts involved Polish patriots, Russian Czars, German Mennonites, and of course, the Zionists. Like Thomas Jefferson, these Europeans and many other eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century thinkers believed that “cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens . . , the most vigorous. . . [and] the most virtuous.”1

17th and 18th Century Jewish dress in Poland

The idea of turning Jews into farmers to make them vigorous and virtuous was first proposed In Eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century when Austria, Germany, and Russia were trying to gobble up Poland. To ward off this national decapitation the Polish government sought to strengthen Polish society.  One concern was the large number of non-assimilated Jews who had settled in Poland since the 12th Century because of the relatively liberal environment that allowed them to prosper and practice their religion. Many of the Jews worked for the nobles, managing estates and selling crops.   

By the late 18th century, half of the world’s Jews, about 1.5 million, lived in Poland. The Polish bourgeoisie considered this large community of Jews to be unwelcome competitors and the general populous put the Jews in the same basket as the nobles, resenting both.  Polish leaders saw these conflicts as one more cause for the weakness of the country. They thought that if Jews would become farmers they would be like everyone else and the conflicts would cease. Plans were drawn up but were never implemented.  And Austria, Germany, and Russia did gobble up Poland. 

The areas of Poland annexed by Russia are shown in mauve, lilac, and gray.

The majority of the Polish Jews, approximately 1 million, lived in the areas of Eastern Poland that were annexed by Russia between 1772 and 1795. (Listen to a discussion on how this annexation affected these Polish Jews.)

By Dim Grits – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

 So when Czar Alexander I rose to the throne in 1801 he faced a dual dilemma. First, how could he populate New Russia and Crimea in southern Russia, lands recently conquered from the Ottomans following the Russo-Turkish Wars? In addition, how could the Czar integrate the one million Jews who had recently come under Russian rule through these partitions of Poland? 

Continue reading →
  1. JEFFERSON, Thomas. Letter to John Jay, Aug. 23, 1785, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (DLC) Jefferson Quotes and Family Letters, Thomas Jefferson, Monticello. [↩]

FLEISCHMANNS

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A HEBREW HAMLET IN THE CATSKILLS

Where did early 20th Century Jewish shopkeepers earn so much that they wintered in Paris’ most elegant hotel? In Fleischmanns, a summer home for wealthy German-American Jews, founded in the Western Catskills, in 1883 by Charles Fleischmann of the yeast company fame.

These wealthy summer residents drew lots of Jewish entrepreneurs, many of Hungarian origin, who set up stores, hotels, and camps to service this affluent community. Beginning in the second decade of the 20th Century Eastern European Jewish farmers, storekeepers, and summer visitors also added to the area’s population.

Did Baron Hirsch assist these farmers or contribute funds for the synagogue the Fleischmanns’ Jewish community built in 1920, Congregation B’nai Israel? The answer will have to wait until I can visit the Baron Hirsch archives in New York sometime this year. But meanwhile here is some history of this community taken from a presentation at Congregation B’nai Israel I made in July 2021 which you can watch here.

How did Fleischmanns become a Jewish village?  It all started with Joseph Seligmann, a Jew from Bavaria. He arrived in the US in 1837 at the age of 18.  By the late 1870s, he was a multi-millionaire, his family having made a fortune clothing the Union army.  Years later they even helped finance the Panama Canal.

In the summer of 1877, Seligmann took his family to Saratoga, NY a very fashionable resort, to stay at the Grand Union Hotel where they had stayed before.  But this time he and his family were turned away because they were “Hebrews”.  As we shall see, it could be said that this act of anti-Semitism was what caused Fleischmann’s founding. 

The Seligmann affair became a major scandal widely reported, including in the NY Times. 1. There was even a song written about it which can be seen in the illustration above. It had a mighty chorus:

“The Hebrews they need not apply; the reason we do not know why; But still they do say, it’s a free country; where the Hebrews they need not apply!“

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  1. New York Times, June 19, 1877, p. 1. [↩]

Life on a Toms River Chicken Farm

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The Good, the Bad and the Worse

By Joyce Zelnick Weiss

This story was kindly shared by Joyce Zelnick Weiss. Another story of Growing up on a Chicken Farm in Toms River, by Joyce’s husband Ben Weiss can be found by clicking here.

Toms River, NJ, near the shore just south of Lakewood, 80 miles from Brooklyn

How did a little girl from the big city end up on a chicken farm in the middle of New Jersey?


I will try to tell you my story of living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. In the 1940s Toms River was much further from Brooklyn than it is now. Transportation was not readily available. We would ride on a bus for a few hours while passengers came and went at various stops in New Jersey. For those lucky enough to have a car it was a shorter trip.

BROOKLYN – TOMS RIVER

I was 9 years old when my father, Max, and mother, Bess, decided to move to Toms River. My father was a pharmacist who owned his own store in Brooklyn, N.Y. We lived on the top floor of a two-family house, and Bess’s parents lived downstairs. My parents were immigrants from Ukraine, and it was common to live close to the relatives and friends that one knew from the old country. So my comfort circle of people that I saw all the time were mostly all related to us.

We used to visit my Uncle Philip and Aunt Bertha in Toms River, New Jersey, on their chicken farm which they bought after selling their grocery business in Newark, N.J. Uncle Philip was one of my father’s older brothers, and he was married to Aunt Bertha.

I don’t know how my relatives ended up in Toms River, and I never did find out but, for reasons unknown to me, my parents decided that getting out of the city and moving to the country was a good decision for them and for their children. I don’t recall how long it took for us to pack up and move, but before I knew what was happening, we had moved.

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Micaela Feldman y Etchebéhère, hija de Moisés Ville

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1902-1992

Click here for English

Clicque aqui para português

Del Museo de Moises Ville

Con esta publicación, sobre Micaela Feldman y Etchebéhère, hija de la colonia agrícola judía de Moisés Ville en Argentina, y veterana de la guerra civil española, comienza a hacerse realidad el proyecto de que thebaronhirschcommunity.org sea un blog trilingüe. Nuestro fin es presentar información en los tres idiomas que llegaron ser las lenguas madres de los descendientes de inmigrantes ayudados por el Barón Hirsch: inglés, portugués y español.

Comenzamos nuestro proyecto trilingüe compartiendo este enlace al artículo, Identidad, género, y prácticas anarquistas en las memorias de Micaela Feldman y Etchebéhère de la investigadora en estudios culturales, Cynthia Gabbay. El artículo analiza el campo intelectual de esta autora franco-argentina, hija de inmigrantes ruso-ucranianos, colonos originales de la comunidad agrícola Moisés Ville en la provincia de Santa Fé, Argentina.

Esta comunidad, donde nació Micaela, fue fundada en 1889. Fue el primer intento del barón Hirsch de establecer a los judíos de Europa del Este como agricultores en el Nuevo Mundo. Basado en esa experiencia, el barón Hirsch fundó la Asociación de Colonización Judía (JCA) que financió otros proyectos similares con mil millones de dólares durante los siguientes 75 años.

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On a Clear April Morning Highlights

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Preface and Chapter 1

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 9781644692981-683x1024.jpg

Academic Studies Press

Series: Jewish Latin American Studies June 2020 | 146 pp.

9781644692981 | $22.95 | Paperback

Available used and new HERE

SUMMARY

On a Clear April Morning, by Marcos Iolovitch, is a lyrical and riveting coming of age story set among early twentieth-century settlers brought to an almost unknown Jewish farming experiment in an isolated corner of Brazil. This autobiographical novel is filled with drama, joy, disasters, romance, and humor. It travels from farms where the crops won’t grow to towns where the Yiddish-speaking protagonist falls in love, befriends sons of German immigrants, studies philosophy with the Jesuits, and becomes an important member of Brazil’s literary world. This first English edition includes elucidating historical notes on the origin of Jewish farming communities in the U.S., Canada and South America by the translator, Merrie Blocker, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer.

About the author and translator

Born in a small Ukrainian village, Marcos Iolovitch was raised in southern Brazil among poor Jewish farmers and peddlers. He became a noted poet and essayist and practiced law. A fighter for social justice, he dedicated his autobiographical novel to “all those who suffer and dream of a better world.”

Merrie Blocker is a former U.S. diplomat who served as Cultural Attaché in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the setting for On a Clear April Morning, as well as in Central Asia, Romania and throughout Latin America.

Translator’s Preface

Marcos Iolovitch, author of On a Clear April Morning, was an avid student of the great philosophers. But he believed that to reach “true wisdom” we need to open our windows and observe the “subtle shades of reality that envelope” us. In this autobiographical novel, in which a young man seeks to find a righteous and fulfilling path, we watch this charming and caring protagonist discover his own wisdom through the realities that envelop him, the realities of Jewish immigrants in southern Brazil during the first decades of the twentieth century.

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Baron De Hirsch Agricultural School

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Woodbine, New Jersey, 1894-1917

For detailed information on the Woodbine Agricultural Colony one source is WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AGRICULTURE IN THE JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COLONY IN WOODBINE NEW JERSEY by Stephen A. Diamond

The Agricultural school’s archival records are located at the Center for Jewish History, NY, NY. inquiries@cjh.org. and the Philadelphia Jewish Archives scrc@temple.edu

The following article is by Paul Batesel https://www.lostcolleges.com/baron-de-hirsch-agricultural-school

History

From The Jewish Farmer, published by the Baron Hirsch Fund

Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German financier, created a $2,400,000 fund in 1891 to assist Jewish refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe in achieving economic independence in the United States.  With $37,500 of the fund, the settlers purchased land for the colony of Woodbine in southern New Jersey.  In 1894 the Baron De Hirsch Agricultural School was founded to teach scientific agriculture and to provide young Jewish people with the practical skills to become successful farmers.  It was the first agricultural high school in the nation.

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Merrie Blocker, Creator

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I, Merrie Blocker, am the creator of the baronhirschcommunity.org . Relating and finding stories of Jewish Farmers in the New World, and their descendants worldwide, is the purpose of this site.

I am a retired U.S. foreign service officer. You can find my resume here. My grandfather grew up on a Baron Hirsch- supported chicken farm in northwestern Connecticut, USA. But I only learned that recently when I began to research Baron Hirsch’s support for Jewish farmers throughout the Americas.

I also translated to English the first work to feature the Jewish community in Brazil as subject matter. It is On a Clear April Morning, an autobiographical novel by Marcos Iolovitch. In this novel, he relates growing up as a Ukrainian immigrant to the Quatro Irmãos farming colony in southern Brazil. Quatro Irmãos was one of many colonies supported by Baron Hirsch’s donations.

I hope you will send us your ideas to make this a richer online depository.

Jewish Farming Today

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Baron Hirsch’s Work Lives On

Did you know that today there is a renaissance in Jewish farming? For example,  Jewish farms have been sprouting recently in Upstate New York right near many colonies supported by Baron Hirsch.  Read all about it in this article by Leah Koenig that appeared in TABLET magazine

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/75488/farmville

Or follow news of today’s Jewish farmers around the world through the Jewish Farmer Network.

And for more information on today’s Jewish farmers throughout the United States see this article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jewish farms are booming. Now the farmers want to grow their community.

Featured

The Baron Hirsch Jewish Farmers Community

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Maurice_de_Hirsch_-_Tableau.jpg

This blog was established to collect and tell the stories of the Jewish farmers that Baron Maurice de Hirsch supported in both North and South America and the follow-on stories of their descendants worldwide as well as some other stories of Jewish farmers in the Americas. See our posts on Jewish farmers in Brazil, Canada, the Catskills, Connecticut, and New Jersey and many others – check the menu drop downs under the title image.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the builder of the Vienna-Constantinople Railroad, and his friends, sponsored the settlement of Eastern European Jews in many lands.  They spent the equivalent of $2 billion in today’s dollars, working primarily in North and South America. See more details of this background here

Maurice de Hirsch Vanity Fair July 26, 1890, National Portrait Gallery, London


We present written works and visuals depicting the original immigrants and we relate the achievements of the descendants of these immigrants.  And there are many achievements. Our forebears were courageous and ingenious people as are their grand and great-grandchildren.

We hope you will send us your stories and permission to publish them.  Click here to contact us.   And if you have a particular question about this immigration phenomenon, let us know.  We will research the answer and maybe even write an in depth post or make a post from a story you send us.

MORE ON BARON HIRSCH

For the whole story, read the official history of Baron Hirsch’s  Jewish Colonization Association, An Outstretched Arm.

For information on Baron Hirsch’s work in the United States through the Jewish Agricultural Society see this post by Professor Emeritus of North Carolina State University, Gary Moore.

Here you can find over 50 different books on the life and work of Baron Hirsch.

Also, check out this short summary of Baron Hirsch’s work with Jewish farmers.

Here is a short summary of Baron Hirsch’s life, “A Prince Among Men” written in 1931 upon the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Here is a 1910 report from the U.S. Government on “Hebrews in Agriculture”. including many of Baron Hirsch’s projects.

Click here for a list of the archives worldwide of Baron Hirsch-related documents, including correspondence with individual immigrants.