Bethlehem, Galilee
Encyclopedia
Bethlehem of Galilee is a moshav
Moshav
Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...

 in northern Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. Located in the Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...

 near Kiryat Tivon, around 10 kilometres north-west of Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...

 and 30 kilometres east of Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council
Jezreel Valley Regional Council
Jezreel Valley Regional Council is a regional council in northern Israel that encompasses most of the settlements in the Jezreel Valley. It includes 15 kibbutzim, 15 moshavim, 6 communal settlements and two Bedouin villages...

. In 2006, it had a population of 651.

A former Templer
Templers (religious believers)
Templers are members of the Temple Society , a German Protestant sect with roots in the Pietist movement of the Lutheran Church. The Templers were expelled from the church in 1858 because of their millennial beliefs. Their aim was to realize the apocalyptic visions of the prophets of Israel in the...

 colony, it is mentioned in the as the city of the Tribe of Zebulun
Tribe of Zebulun
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Zebulun was one of the Tribes of Israel....

.

Early history

To distinguish the town from the city of Bethlehem
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank of the Jordan River, near Israel and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism...

 near Jerusalem, it was originally known as Bethlehem of Zebulun, whilst the town near Jerusalem was called "Bethlehem of Judea."

The hometown of the judge Ibzan
Ibzan
Ibzan appears in the Bible as one of the Judges of Israel. Very little is said about him, except the following:Many scholars believe that the Bethlehem referred to in the story is the Bethlehem in the territory of the Tribe of Zebulun, rather than the more famous Bethlehem in the Tribe of Judah...

, Bethlehem of Galilee was inhabited by Jews until some time after the destruction of the Second Temple
Second Temple
The Jewish Second Temple was an important shrine which stood on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem between 516 BCE and 70 CE. It replaced the First Temple which was destroyed in 586 BCE, when the Jewish nation was exiled to Babylon...

 in 70 AD. In the Jerusalem Talmud
Jerusalem Talmud
The Jerusalem Talmud, talmud meaning "instruction", "learning", , is a collection of Rabbinic notes on the 2nd-century Mishnah which was compiled in the Land of Israel during the 4th-5th century. The voluminous text is also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud de-Eretz Yisrael...

 it is referred to as Beth Lehem Zoria, as it was part of the kingdom of Tyre at the time. During the Crusades, it was a small Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 town of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Kingdom of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....

, later abandoned.

Due to its proximity to Nazareth, some historians believe that this is the Bethlehem where Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 was born. Aviram Oshri, a senior archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority, supports this claim. Until the late 19th century, ruins of a church and a synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...

 could be seen there, and archeological findings show it was a prosperous city. Some scholars regard Bethlehem of Galilee as one of the birthplaces of Rabbinical Judaism.

Templer colony

In 1906 Templers
Templers (religious believers)
Templers are members of the Temple Society , a German Protestant sect with roots in the Pietist movement of the Lutheran Church. The Templers were expelled from the church in 1858 because of their millennial beliefs. Their aim was to realize the apocalyptic visions of the prophets of Israel in the...

 from the German Colony
German Colony, Haifa
The German Colony was established in Haifa in 1868 by the German Templers. It was the first of several colonies established by the group in the Holy Land...

 in Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

 established a colony in the Galilee, naming it for the ancient city. Most Templers bore German citizenship. In 1932 the Nazi party won the first two members in Palestine, Karl Ruff and Walter Aberle from the Templer colony in Haifa. In the course of the 1930s also Bethlehemites joined the Nazi party, indicating the fading affinity to the Templers' original ideals. Until August 1939 17% of all Gentile Germans in Palestine were enrolled as member of the Nazi party. After the Nazi takeover
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...

 in Germany the new Reich's government streamlined the foreign policy according to Nazi ideals, using especially financial pressure. The Nazi emphasis was to create the image, that Germany and Germanness are equal to Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, thus all non-Nazi attitudes of German culture and identity were discriminated as un-German. All international schools of German language subsidised or fully financed with government funds were subjected to redraw their educational programmes and to solely employ teachers aligned to the Nazi party. The teachers in Bethlehem were financed by the Reich's government, so that also here Nazi teachers took over. In 1933 Templer functionaries and other Gentile Germans living in Palestine appealed at Paul von Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....

 and the Foreign Office not to use Swastika symbols for German institutions, without success. Some German Gentiles from Palestine pleaded the Reich's government to drop its plan to boycott shops of Jewish Germans on April 1, 1933. Later the opposition of Gentile Germans in Palestine acquiesed. A Palestinian branch of the Hitler youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...

 was built up by the help of government subsidies. By 1935 the Nazis had succeeded to streamline the municipal bodies of the settlements of Gentile Germans in Palestine. On August 20, 1939 the German government ordered the Gentile German men for recruitment in the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

. 350 followed the call.

After Germany had started the Second World War all Germans in Palestine turned into Enemy aliens. The British authorities decided to intern most of the enemy aliens. For this purpose four settlements Sarona
Sarona, Palestine
Sarona was a German Templer colony northeast of the city of Jaffa. It was one of the earliest modern villages established in Palestine. Today it is a neighborhood in Tel Aviv, Israel.- History :...

, Bethlehem (Galilee), Waldheim (today's Allonei Abba
Alonei Abba
Alonei Abba is a moshav shitufi, or semi-cooperative village, in northern Israel. It is located in the Lower Galilee near Bethlehem of Galilee and Alonim, in the hills east of Kiryat Tivon. Alonei Abba falls under the jurisdiction of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council...

) and Wilhelma were converted into internment camps. Most enemy aliens living elsewhere in Palestine - comprising Gentile Germans, Hungarians and Italians - were interned in one of the settlements, while the inhabitants of the settlements simply stayed where they were. In summer 1941, 665 German internees, almost all young families with children, were released to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, where they could settle again. Many of the remaining Germans were either too old or too sick, to leave for Australia, while a second group did not want to go there. With the help of the interned Italians and Hungarians the internees could maintain the agricultural production, to feed themselves and supply surplus to the general markets in return for supplies not available within the camps. In December 1941 and in the course of 1942 another 400 German internees, mostly wives and children of men, who had followed the calls for recruitment, were released - via Turkey - to Germany on the purpose of Family reunification
Family reunification
Family reunification is a recognized reason for immigration in many countries. The presence of one or more family members in a certain country, therefore, enables the rest of the family to immigrate to that country as well....

.

In 1945 the Italian and Hungarian internees were released from Bethlehem and the other camps. But the Britons refused to repatriate the remaining German internees to the British zone in Germany, because the British zone was flooded with millions of war refugees and more millions of post-war expellees from Poland, Czechoslovakia etc. Also most of the internees did not want to go to Germany, because there was no chance to gain untilled land in Germany to settle again as farmers. In 1947 the British authorities and Australia agreed to allow the remaining German internees to emigrate to the fifth continent. The end of the Mandate forced to hurry the resettlement, thus all the internees were first transferred to Cyprus, to a camp of simple tents near Famagusta. The internees of Bethlehem could leave the place safely. On April 17, 1948 armed Jewish Palestinians conquered the neighboured internment camp of Waldheim, killing two colonists and severely wounding a woman. By May 14, 1948, when Israel became independent, only about 50 Gentile Germans, mostly elderly and sick persons, were living in the new state. They voluntarily left the country or were successively expelled by the government.

Moshav

On 17 April 1948, the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

 captured the village and it was resettled by Jewish farmers. Much of the original Templer architecture survives, and is similar in style to the homes built by the Templers in other parts of the country, such as Sarona
Sarona, Palestine
Sarona was a German Templer colony northeast of the city of Jaffa. It was one of the earliest modern villages established in Palestine. Today it is a neighborhood in Tel Aviv, Israel.- History :...

 in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

, Wilhelma (today Bnei Atarot
Bnei Atarot
Bnei Atarot is a moshav in central Israel. Located near Yehud, around 15 kilometres east of Tel Aviv, it is situated in fertile plain at the eastern rim of Tel Aviv metropolitan area next to Ben Gurion Airport and falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi'in Regional Council...

) and the German colonies
German Colony of Jerusalem
The German Colony is a neighborhood in Jerusalem, established in the second half of the 19th century by members of the German Temple Society. Today the Moshava, as it is popularly known, is an upscale neighborhood bisected by Emek Refaim Street, an avenue lined with trendy shops, restaurants and...

 of Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

 and Jerusalem.

In recent years, tourism has replaced agriculture as the main economic branch. A dairy, a herb farm, restaurants and country-style accommodation are among the tourist-oriented businesses in the village today.

External links

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