Dror was established in 1915. It was not a mass movement, but it excelled in Zionistic thought. The spiritual father of this group was Ze'ev Zlickin, who was influenced by the teachings of the movement "Nadorobolchi", the movement that gave rise to revolutionary Socialism in Russia. The first Veida took place in 1918.

The Dror movement developed different chugim according to different ages. The youth (under the age of 20) belonged to the Shichvah "El Hamishmar" for all their lives as members of Dror. They were committed to the movement. Dror educated them and brought them to the movement "Hachalutz Hatzair" and through this movement they came to Eretz Israel and Kibbutz.

With the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and the breakout of the Second World War, these were the youth movements that acted against the Germans in big uprisings, in cities such as Bialistock, Vilna, Warsaw and many other cities throughout Europe. In Warsaw the Jewish fighter’s brigade together with Hechalutz, Dror, Hashomer Hatzair and other youth movements fought together in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943.

Graduates of Dror made Aliyah to Israel, fought as partisans and in the Jewish brigade. The joined groups went to many kibbutzim throughout Israel. This took place both before and after the development of the state of Israel. In the 1940s there was major cooperation in the formation of common garinim by the movements "Hechalutz" and "Habonim". In 1961 Dror was established in England.

The Merger
The movement Ichud Habonim and the movement Dror were active in different countries and each identified with a different stream of the kibbutz movements. In 1952, the segmentation of the "Kibbutz Hameyuchad" movement developed into a new kibbutz movement in Israel, "Ichud Hakibbutzim ve hakvutzot". This movement combined the groups and kibbutzim and separated from the Meyuchad kibbutz movement on an ideological basis. Whole families
were split, and the kibbutzim were divided in two, such as Ein Harod, Givat Chaim, Ashdod Ya'akov and many more. The youth movement for Kibbutz Meyuchad was Dror, and the youth movement from Ichud kibbutzim was Ichud Habonim.

In 1980, the reunification of the two kibbutz movements under one name, the"Takam", decided to combine the different movements under one name, "Habonim Dror". Since then, the movement operates as one body and at each world Veida challenges its way and redefines its activities to suit its ideology in the Diaspora.

Habonim Dror is the largest youth movement of the Jewish youth in the Diaspora. Each country has a national secretariat of its own that works in cooperation with the secretariat of the world movement. Today there are more than 15,000 Habonim Dror Chanichim spread out throughout the nations of the world in the Diaspora:

Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa, Mexico, America, Canada, Zimbabwe, UK, France, Holland, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Ukraine, Russia, Fromer Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Belgium  ◄Back