Garden path 04

From 1933: seeking qualification for emigration

“Finishing time” around 1937. Ilse Buchholz (later Deborah Bakschitzky, back left) emigrated to Palestine in 1939, Trudel Wertheim (later Trudy Galetzka, back right) emigrated to Great Britain in 1939.

Participants in a vocational re-training course in 1933 digging for the construction of sporting grounds next to the girls’ building

Until the ban on emigration in October 1941, the National Socialist regime pressured the Jewish population into exile through social exclusion, deprivation of rights and finally by outright terror. The Jewish Gardening School reacted to this permanent brutalization by offering a diversity of special courses and introducing changes to the curriculum. Elementary school pupils and apprentices were now taught English, modern Hebrew, South-America and Palestine studies. These changes also left their mark on the practical work: the school report for 1936 mentions the cultivation of exotic growths such as palm trees, coffee plants and fig trees in the hothouses.

A glimpse of South America: outdoor geography lesson next to the girls’ building in 1938

Year unknown: view of a hothouse with pot plants, in the foreground a palm tree