Private papers of Eva Michaelis-Stern (A440)

Eva Michaelis Stern was the co-founder and director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Kinder und Jugendalijah, the fund-raising arm of Youth Aliyah in Germany, during the 1930s, and director of the Youth Aliyah office in London during the critical years of World War II. From 1933 to 1938 she worked in Nazi Germany under the eyes of the Gestapo, sending thousands of Jewish children to Palestine. As a head of the Youth Aliyah office in London (1938–1945), she helped hundreds of Jewish children escape from German-occupied countries and organized their journey to Palestine. After her retirement from Youth Aliyah, she devoted twenty years to caring for the mentally handicapped in Israel. (Source: Jewish Women's Archive, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/stern-eva-michaelis)