Chawerim

Comic series

This series of three graphic stories drawn by Sascha Homer tells the story of the Hachshara movement which enabled young Jews to prepare for their immigration to British-Mandate Palestine since the 1910s. In the first part readers meet Eli and Hilde, who were members of the Jewish Ahrensdorf agricultural community in Brandenburg in the mid-1930s. Together with other Jewish youths and under the guidance of their madrichim, they learned gardening and agricultural skills, as well as community life. The second part, oft he “Chaverim” series (“Friends”), is set at the headquarters of the remaining Jewish organizations in Berlin, in August 1941. The story centers on the decision of those in charge to stay with the young people in Nazi Germany – despite them having the concrete possibility of getting out of Nazi Germany. The third story is set in Kibbutz Buchenwald, founded by survivors of the Shoah, in the period leading up to the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948.