Picture
Courtesy
ca. 1929, courtesy of Alice Salomon Archiv (Berlin)
Hebrew-Name
סידי ורונסקי (נולדה נויפלד)
Biography
Siddy Wronsky (née Neufeld) was born on 20.7.1883 in Berlin and died 8.12.1947 in Jerusalem. She embodies the strong link between social work in the Yishuv, the profession’s German roots, and Zionist ideas, as she was a major activist in both the German welfare system and in Palestine. Siddy's father was of German descent while her mother came from Eastern Europe. She started her career as a teacher and later studied special education. Since 1908, Siddy administered the German central welfare archive and was a member of the German Union of Welfare Workers and the 'Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland' (Central Welfare Bureau for Jews in Germany, ZWST). She was the chief editor of the leading welfare journal and its German-Jewish counterpart (Deutsche Zeitschrift für Wohlfahrtspflege and Jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik, respectively). She also taught in the social women's school Berlin-Schöneberg of Alice Salomon, chaired the Zionist women’s organization and was active on behalf of East-European Jewish refugees.
When the Nazis took power in 1933, she was dismissed from the archive and immigrated to Palestine intent on promoting social work in the Yishuv. In Jerusalem, she founded the first social work school, chaired the Center for Out-of-Home Care and the Social-Pedagogical Department of the Jewish National Council, and founded the Social Workers Union. Wronsky was intensely active in promoting social legislation and justice and in enhancing the status of the profession, saying that ‘the public entrusts the social service and social workers with its most valuable asset, the person’.
Wronsky believed wholeheartedly that social work was essential for the creation of a national home for Jews in Palestine, as indicated by her essays: The Social Idea in Herzl's Writings (1944), Social Therapy Methods in Eretz Israel (1935) and Social investigation methods on a sociological base (n.d.a). This study relies much on her writings which may be seen as constitutive of contemporary social work, and focuses on two key concepts: social diagnosis and social therapy.
Mother
Thekla (born Kleinmann), born in Poland
Father
Max Moses Neufeld (1850 - 1931), born in Germany
Siblings
Hans Neufeld, London
Ismar Neufeld, South Africa
Hertha Neufeld (14.11.1886 in Berlin - 16.1.1975 in London), a social worker who also immigrated to Palestine
Gisela Neufeld
Lotte Neufeld
Marriage/Children
Married to Eugen Wronsky in Germany. They had no children.
Age at Migration
50
Year of Migration
1933
Chronics
Domiciles
Networks
Archival Materials
ASA, CJA, CZA, DZI
Other Sources
www.digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de