“We began movement activity with only a handful of people after the liberation from the concentration camps…” – an album containing 25 photographs mounted on its pages, documenting the return to life of members of the She’erit HaPletah in Austria, through the activities of the Mizrachi movement – from the death camps to the revival of Jewish life in Austrian cities. All the photographs are captioned in handwriting within the album (Hebrew).
On the first page of the album appears a group photograph of the movement’s organizers in Austria – Holocaust survivors who had, until recently, hovered between life and death in the Nazi concentration camps. The caption reads: “We began movement activity with only a handful of people after the liberation from the concentration camps…”. Further along in the album are various photographs documenting: the first gathering of the Torah VeAvodah movement in Bad Gastein, Austria, in April 1946; Bnei Akiva kibbutzim in Braunau and Bad Gastein; a Talmud Torah in Braunau; the Bnei Akiva kibbutz in Bad Gastein preparing for aliyah to Eretz Israel; survivors at work; the Bnei Akiva kibbutz in the Salzburg camp; a group photograph captioned: “Bnei Akiva Kibbutz in the Ebensee camp (a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp) – in front, the former concentration camp, and now the voice of our pioneers is heard.” (Ebensee was a Nazi forced labor camp, considered administratively a subcamp of Mauthausen); the children’s home in Braunau; children dancing; the first council of Mizrachi members after the liberation; and more.
Album size: 31×21 cm. Photographs: 7×14 cm, some smaller. In several pages of the album, captions are present but the original photographs are missing. Overall good condition.
