‘Moving’ ceremony at site of UK training farm for Jewish refugees making aliyah

An oak tree has been planted at the site of a training farm in Essex where Jewish refugees from Europe learned the agricultural skills they then took to Israel.

The Bachad Farm Institute in Thaxted operated from 1944 to 1962 and was run by Arieh Handler, a founder of Bnei Akiva, who died in 2011. He was the last living witness to the signing of the Declaration of the State of Israel.

Planted on 18 September, the native oak was sponsored by Handler’s children, Danny and Gabriel, in honour of their father, who furnished young Jewish men and women with the skills they would use after making aliyah.

“This event was the realisation of a dream,” said Verity Steele, an academic who grew up less than a mile away and who arranged for a new information plaque about Bachad farm for walkers.

“We were treated to first-hand accounts of life on the farm by former Bachad pioneers and family members, which brought its 18-year-long presence in Thaxted to life,” she said. “It was of inestimable value to the refugees from Nazism who sheltered in its various training farms.”

She said it offered “a sense of belonging and purpose, the opportunity to stay connected to religious heritage, and preparation for a future life in Israel… This meant and still means so much to those who trained at Thaxted and to their families and is something Thaxted should be proud of”.

Local historian Bruce Munro described the event as “impressive and moving”, saying: “Many of us knew something of the Holocaust, but little or nothing about the Jewish refugees at Bachad or the role it played in providing a hopeful future for the refugees in Israel.”

Adam Waters of Bnei Akiva UK said it was “symbolic” that the youth movement’s current gap year students were on a kibbutz in Israel learning how to farm while the event at Thaxted took place.

Shlomo Manns, 90, who trained at the farm in the 1950s, said: “It was an amazing and exciting experience to be back and to see again the site where we learnt farming and met up with other chlutzim.”

Michal Barkan, whose father Max arrived on the Kindertransport and became farm manager from 1952-54, said: “Coming here and meeting people who have decided to tell the world about the Jewish history of this place was very moving.”

Debra Barnes of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) said the location of Bachad was “an excellent site to plant one of the last of our 80 Trees for 80 Years, in memory of such an important figure – Arieh Handler”.

The planting initiative is a nationwide campaign to plant oak trees “in honour of people and places that symbolise the enormous contribution made to every walk of British life by refugees who escaped from Nazi Europe”.

AJR chief executive Michael Newman said it was “poignant” that the event took place a day before The Queen’s funeral, because the tree will form part of The Queen’s Green Canopy to mark her Platinum Jubilee in 2022.