Support the planned
Exhibition of the School
January 27, 2011, Darmstadt

The Jewish Professional School Masada
Darmstadt 1947-48

Please help me to find traces of the School
List of Students - Find your relatives

Attention: - This website is in the first stage of recording information collected. There are numerous errors and you are welcome to comment. You are not allowed to use information on these pages without an explicit written permission. The material is of sole ownership of Lea Dror-Batalion.

This website, written by Lea Dror-Batalion, is devoted to the research and findings about the Jewish Professional School Masada in Darmstadt and the people involved. The school existed for less than a year during 1947-48 for the purpose of educating young Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust, to train and prepare them for the future Aliya to Israel. It was directed by Samuel Milek Batalion.

Rita Rubin (b.Borenstejn), sister of one of the students, said to Lea Dror-Batalion:" It was a most extraordinate deed that your father Samuel Milek Batalion did when he gathered the young DPs that did not see their future and where strawling around looking for a purpose in life. He gave them something to live for, to dream for and he created a future for them."

For as many years I, Lea Dror-Batalion, remember asking my father,
Samuel Milek Batalion: Why did you stay in Germany after the war? I was told that he and my mother really wanted to go to Erez Israel, but ... he stayed behind his students to liquidate the school and to send the machinery to Israel. He was suppose to be reimbursed for the shipping costs but never received the payment and he stayed behind in Germany.

The person that inspired me to do the research is Henning Sietz, an independent journalist. He came across my parents name, while working on one of his publications and this was the beginning of a long virgil to find information about Samuel Batalion and his first wife Sophie Batalion. He revealed an immense wealth of information of which, I, Lea Dror-Batalion, had never been aware off.
As so many of the Second World War survivor's children, I had never ask my father or my mother, or if I did ask, I did not get answers about their life during and before the war.
My daughter Natalie Dror, had the courage to ask questions, while working on a high school paper on her family roots and she spoke to her grandparents and was able to receive some information about their lives.
I know that my father was a good friend of Arno Lustiger since he spoke the eulogy at my fathers funeral. I went to see Arno Lustiger and he received me warmly and remembered me as a red head who was a talented dancer and performed at community events. He told me that he did not remember Samuel from the time he was in the DP Lager Zeilsheim but they became close friends when they were living in Frankfurt. I showed him the pictured of the opening ceremony of the school and the first thing he said: "It is a Betar school". I realized then that most schools where in the DP camps and they were created through ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation and Training) and UNRRA.
This Jewish Professional School, was a Betar School located outside the DP Camps organized by Samuel Milek Batalion, a one man operation.