Hanni Ullmann

Born Hanna Risch, on September 10, 1908, in Poznan, at the age of 10, moving to Berlin.

Died on September 28, 2002, in Kfar Saba, Israel.

Berlin:  Training as a kindergarten teacher at the Charlottenburg youth center.

1926-1929, she worked as an intern in the “Ahavah – Jewish Children’s and Youth Homes”. There, she mainly had to do with children of immigrant Eastern Jews from Poland and Russia.

Kiryat Bialik:

• April 9, 1934, arrival of the first Ahavah children from Berlin in the still makeshift home in Neve Sha’anan near Haifa. In the same year, Hanni Ullmann started working again in the “Ahavah”, initially as a housekeeping manager.
• In 1935, movedto into the newly built “Ahavah” children’s and youth home in Kiryat Bialik in Haifa Bay.
• In the following years, the “Ahavah” became one of the most important homes for child and youth Aliyah (the organized emigration of unaccompanied minors from Germany and Eastern Europe). After the war began, up to 270 young refugees lived in the home planned for 120 places.
• In the summer semester of 1953, Hanni Ullmann studied at the curative education seminar in Zurich.
• In 1956, Hanni Ullmann took over the management of the “Ahavah” and founded what was then the first schtoool for the training of nannies in Israel.

Kiryat Gat:

• While working in Kiryat Bialik, Hanni Ullmann came to the conviction that home education in large groups does not meet the children’s psychological and emotional demands. As a consequence, after retiring in 1974, she founded the “Neve Hanna” children’s and youth home, where children from difficult social backgrounds live in family-like groups.

What is special about Hanni Ullmann:

• Hanni Ullmann embodied the Ahavah (love for the child and unconditional commitment for deprived and socially disadvantaged children), which became the eponym for the homes in Berlin and Kiryat Bialik.
• Despite her old age, she worked regularly in the home until her death and made several trips abroad each year to collect donations.
• With “Neve Hanna,” she founded the first family-like home in Israel.
• Commitment to professional teacher training in Israel.
• International understanding between Israel and Germany, between Jews and Arabs.