Gross Breesen Photo Exhibit Depicts Little-known Slice of History

WOODBINE – An exhibit of 45 black-and-white photographs at The Sam Azeez Museum of Woodbine Heritage depicts a little-known facet of history; one similar to the reason this borough was established. They are part of the Gross Breesen Exhibit on display at least through Aug. 20, possibly through mid-September, according to Jane Stark, executive director.
Gross Breesen was a 567-acre farm near the German-Poland border where some 150 Jewish teens and young adults learned farming as a way to gain exit papers to leave their homeland when Nazis began to target them in the Holocaust. That aim was similar to that of Baron DeHirsch, who, in the late 1800s, envisioned agriculture as a means to make Eastern European Jews self-sustaining when he founded an agricultural school in Woodbine.
Stark said the exhibit, one of several around the nation, was the brainchild of Steve Strauss, a chief photographer with CBS. He saw an album of photographs of Gross Breesen, and made it his personal project to learn more, find more, then spread the message about what was done there at a crucial time in history.
“One of the reasons we brought this exhibit here was because Woodbine was an agricultural community,” Stark said. “It was a haven for Jews seeking freedom in a different century from different parts of the world. These Jews came from countries where the leaders tried to eliminate them. We also brought it because agriculture is a means of support and survival,” she continued.
“This is a new piece of history. There were between 130 and 150 Jewish young people who were able to be saved from the horrors of the Holocaust,” Stark added.
While it is not the first such exhibit at the Azeez Museum, it has been at least five years since the last one. The museum is affiliated with The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. The Azeez Hall is used as an instructional site, one of several, linked to the college by computers for distance learning and conferences.
“We wanted to create a gallery, and we brought in a consigned exhibit,” Stark noted. She also credited Dr. Paul B. Winkler’s efforts. He is executive director of New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.
Another facet of bringing the exhibit here was to teach children tolerance and respect with the hope of preventing genocide anywhere in the world.
Like many of Woodbine’s settlers, who were merchants and workers, not farmers, the young people who spent time at Gross Breesen were mostly from cities, and knew nothing of farming. However, they learned, through the efforts of Dr. Curt Bondy, who ran the farm in the 1930s, not only how to farm, but Jewish traditions, music, philosophy and more that set many of them on lifelong paths to success in many professions.
Through Bondy’s efforts, many of those young people, shown in the photos at the Azeez Museum, were able to immigrate to safety of foreign countries which needed skilled agricultural workers. None of them made their way to Woodbine, Stark said. One of those “graduates,” who lives in the Cherry Hill area, has been asked to give a lecture on Gross Breesen at the museum later this month, Stark added.
Tastefully arranged in a room of the Anne Azeez Hall by Susan Zipper, a local artist, and Stark, photographs take the viewer back in time to a tenuous time for their subjects. One feels a sense of the community that existed among the young men and women. Many of the images show women working in the fields, with loaves of bread, and even a wedding lead by an accordion player.
According to one of the text boards incorporated with the photographs, “From 1933, when Adolf Hitler first rose to power, until 1938’s Kristallnacht, when the Nazi party ordered the destruction of Jewish property and incarcerated thousands of innocent Jewish men in concentration camps, the escalating oppression experienced by Jews demanded their flight from Germany. This, however, was not an easy task. The world was in the grips of the Great Depression, and few countries were prepared to take on a large number of Jewish refugees from Germany.”
Training, especially in the field of agriculture, was done by centers created by Jewish leadership to give youths, aged 15-25; skills that would help them emigrate.
Gross Breesen was a 567-acre farm, one of the few non-Zionist schools that existed among those training centers. Its first class had 130 students under Bondy’s direction. The students spent long hours seeding, weeding, hoeing and harvesting fields of rye, wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, oats, flax and alfalfa. Men learned skills in animal husbandry and carpentry as well as farming. Women also worked in the fields, but they were responsible for meal preparation, mending clothes, laundry and other household duties.
It was the original hope of many to make Brazil their new home, and there to grow tobacco. Those hopes vanished when Brazil no longer allowed them access.
“To some extent, Gross Breesen was able to achieve its mission,” according to the text. “More than 150 students were helped to emigrate, including 36 men and women who settled in rural Virginia and established a farm donated to them by William B. Thalhimer, a humanitarian and generous Jewish citizen of Richmond. Unfortunately, many did not make it out. In 1941, after five years of operation, the Gestapo liquidated the training center and turned Gross Breesen into a labor camp.”