‘It Was a Heavy Fall that Year’: On the Question of Kibbutz Drop-Outs

Abstract

The subject of kibbutz drop-outs refers both to the period during which the immigrant was a member of a settlement group, prior to actual settlement, and to dropping out after having spent a certain period of time on a kibbutz. Another question which has to be dealt with is: why was there never a mass movement of Holocaust survivors to the kibbutzim? The United Kibbutz Movement accepted 1,524 immigrants during the period September 1948 to early May 1949, and throughout that year in total 2,767 immigrants joined kibbutzim. Simultaneously, between May 1948 and July 1949, 1,547 immigrants joined the Hashomer Hatza’ir kibbutzim — all these, from a total of some 120,000 immigrants who arrived in the country during 1948. The vast majority of the immigrants who joined kibbutzim were Holocaust survivors.¹ The reluctance on the part of the immigrants to adopt the kibbutz way of life was due to organizational, technical and material reasons. There were also subjective reasons to do with the image of the kibbutzim, which was based on the immigrants’ experiences during the hard days of the Second World War.