The Federation of Women Zionists of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1918. It is the British Branch (British WIZO) of the World Women’s International Zionist Organisation (World WIZO).
The Federation’s founder and first President was Rebecca Sieff. Rebecca Sieff (born Marks) spent most of her childhood in Manchester, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a centre for Zionism in Britain. As can be seen from the Annual Report below, she was still the Honorary President in 1962.
Chaim Weizmann (later the first President of Israel) lived in Manchester from 1904 and gathered around him many Zionist supporters including Rebecca, her husband Israel Sieff and members of the Marks family. Women were at this time not encouraged to contribute to the cause any more than joining in the fund raising and supporting activities. In 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, Rebecca and other like-minded women formed the “Ladies Committee” of the English Zionist Federation.
Then, in 1918, Rebecca Sieff, Vera Weizmann, Olga Alman and Romana Goodman, founded the women’s group of the English Zionist Federation as a separate non-party organisation which sought to attract members from all sections of the Jewish community.
In 1920, following Rebecca Sieff’s first visit to Palestine, the Federation of Women Zionists called a conference of women from Europe, the United States and South Africa in London. The resolution was passed to “form the Women’s International Zionist Organisation to promote the welfare of women and children in Palestine and to carry out specific works in the reconstruction of Palestine”. Thus WIZO itself was born.
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