Abstract
In the spring of 1948, with an acute manpower shortage facing the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) in Palestine in advance of the war that would commence following the newly created state of Israel’s declaration of independence on 15 May 1948, a conscription and military taxation programme was initiated in the Jewish displaced persons (DPs) camps in Europe. Between 1948 and 1949, some 22,000 DPs (7800 from Germany alone) were enlisted in the Haganah (Hebrew for ‘The Defence’, a Jewish paramilitary organisation which later became the core of the Israel Defence Force) (and sent to Palestine/Israel from the DP camps in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Cyprus. This vital contribution of manpower from the Holocaust survivors to the war effort in Israel makes the giyus (conscription) campaign a most significant episode in the post-war history of European Jewry.1
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Notes
See Hanna Yablonka, Foreign Brethren: Holocaust Survivors in the State of Israel, 1948–1952 (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1994), p. 82. Yablonka estimates that the 22,000 enlisted DPs comprised perhaps one-third of the Israel Defence Forces’ 60,000 combat soldiers during Israel’s War of Independence. The Haganah was the underground military organisation for self-defence and security established by the Zionist organisation in Palestine in 1920.
The Jewish DPs were a key factor in the deliberations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry of 1946 and the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommendations for the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine. For the larger diplomatic context after the war, see Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
For work on the early organisation of the She’erit Hapletah, see the work of Ze’ev Mankowitz, ‘The Formation of She’erit Hapletah: November 1944–1945’, Yad Vashem Studies, 1990. See also Yehuda Bauer, ‘The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria’, Yad Vashem Studies 8 (1970): 127–57.
Ze’ev Mankowitz, ‘Zionism and She’erit Hapletah’, in Yisrael Gutman and Avrtal Saf, eds, She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990) gives a number of reasons for DP Zionism. Margarete Myers argues that above all the first priority of the DPs was to locate families, followed by the desire to create new ones. See her, ‘Jewish DP’s: Reconstructing Individual and Community in the U.S. Zone of Occupied Germany’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1997, 42: 303–24.
Judith Tydor Baumel, Kibbutz Buchenwald: Survivors and Pioneers (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997)
studies the experience of one kibbutz formed by survivors of Buchenwald, noting that frequently membership in the kibbutz had less to do with a strong Zionist background, but was instead viewed as the most expedient method out of the DP camp. Angelika Konigseder and Julianne Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), provide a valuable analysis of DP life in post-war Germany.
Koppel S. Pinson, ‘Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DPs’, Jewish Social Science, vol. 9, no. 2, April 1947, p. 117.
See most notably in this regard, Yosef Grodzinsky’s work, Homer Enoshi Tov (Israel: Hed Artzi, 1998). A number of works in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, eds, She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, reflect this view including Yoav Gelber, ‘The Meeting Between the Jewish Soldiers from Palestine Serving in the British Army and She’erit Hapletah’, and Anita Shapira, ‘The Yishuv’s Encounter with the Survivors of the Holocaust’.
The work of Zeev Tzahor, ‘Holocaust Survivors as a Political Factor’ (Middle Eastern Studies, 1988, 24 (4): 432–44) reflects this approach.
Although to a lesser degree, the work of Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 (English)) also takes this view of DP Zionism as a Palestinian import. A number of works address the issue of Holocaust survivors as immigrants to Palestine and their role in the creation of the State. The debate between Yechiam Weitz and Hagit Lavsky is also part of this stream: Weitz, ‘Sheelat HaPlitim HaYehudim BaMediniut HaTzionit’ and Lavsky, ‘Sheerit HaPletah veHakamat HaMedinah: Hizdamnut asher Nutzlah’ (Cathedra, 55, 162–74).
See also Dalia Ofer, ‘The Dilemma of Rescue and Redemption: Mass Immigration to Israel in the First Year of Statehood’ (YIVO Annual, 1991, 20: 185–210).
The work of Irit Keynan, ‘Lo Nirga Ha-Ra’av: Nitzulei Ha-Shoah ve-Shlichei Eretz Yisrael: Germania 1945–1948 (Holocaust Survivors and the Emissaries from Eretz-Israel: Germany 1945–1948) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996), also focuses on this relationship but accounts more so for the role of DPs themselves in forming political consciousness.
Yosef Grodzinsky, Good Human Material (Homer Enoshi Tov) (Israel: Hed Artzi, 1998).
See for example Dan Diner, ‘Elements in Becoming a Subject: Jewish DPs in Historical Context’ (Jahrbuch zur Geshichte und Wirkung des Holocaust, 1997: 229–48) who points to the role of diplomatic and political realities in contributing to the collective, nationalist identity on the part of DPs. Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics.
See Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees, 1939–1952: A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1956).
See Ruth Schreiber, ‘The New Organization of the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1952’, Ph.D. Thesis, Tel Aviv University, October 1995, p. 11.
According to one source cited in Engel, Between Liberation and Flight: Holocaust Survivors in Poland and the Struggle for Leadership, 1944–1946 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996 (Hebrew) [p. 42 (fn. 30)] in the first month following liberation in Germany, approximately 13,000 Polish Jews returned to Poland. As noted by the Central Committee of Polish Jews, this number only counted those Jews who had chosen to register with local committees and presumably not all of those who had returned to Poland. See Dos Naye Leben, May 20, 1945 (‘Polish Jews from the West’). The Jewish Labor Bund, founded in 1897 in Vilna, sought to unite all Jewish workers under the banner of socialism. The Bund strongly opposed Zionism and advocated the use of Yiddish as the basis of a secular Jewish national culture.
For more on the early and extensive involvement of American Jewish chaplains in the relief efforts and organisation of DP institutions, see Alexander Grobman, Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of European Jewry, 1944–1948 (1993). Grobman emphasises the work of the young reform rabbi Abraham Klausner, who was instrumental in helping the Central Committee to become organised, as well as in compiling lists of survivors for publication in camps and acting as a vital liaison between the ZK and the Army. The Jewish Brigade was a Jewish military unit, composed mainly of Jews from Palestine, which served in the Second World War in the British Army. At the conclusion of the war, the Brigade was stationed in northeast Italy, where its soldiers first came into contact with survivors of the Holocaust.
See Meir Avizohar, ‘Bikkur Ben-Gurion Be-makhanot Ha’akurim Ve-tefisato Ha-leumit Be-tom Milkhemet Ha’olam Ha-sheniah’ (Ben-Gurion’s visit to the DP Camps and his national outlook in the aftermath of Word War II), in Benjamin Pinkus, ed., Yahadut Mizrach Eiropah Bein Shoah Le-tekuma 1944–1948 (Sde Boker: Ben Gurion University, 1987), p. 260.
See also as described in Kochavi, p. 94 and Judah Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1953), p. 238. Much of this report is based on Ben Gurion Archives, Ben-Gurion’s report of his visit to the DP camps, 11–6–45 diary entry, in Kochavi and Avizohar.
For more, see Rebecca L. Boehling, A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 1996).
For more on the factors leading to Jewish departure from Poland in the Bricha and the nature of post-war Polish Jewish politics, see David Engel, Between Liberation and Flight (Hebrew). On the Kielce pogrom, see Jan Gross, Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2006).
YIVO, Leo Schwarz Papers, Reel 10, #1378, ‘Minutes of a Meeting Held in the Office of the Jewish Adviser on Monday, 15 March 1948’, recorded by Major Abraham S. Hyman, JAGD (English). Also see the description in Yehuda Bauer, Out of the Ashes: The Impact of American Jews on Post-Holocaust European Jewry (Pergamon Press, 1989), p. 262; Grodzinsky, Homer Enoshi Tov, pp. 153–4.
Yehuda Ben-David, The ‘Haganah’ in Europe (Israel: TAG Publishing House, 1995), p. 208.
Emmanuel Sivan, Dor Tashakh: Mitos, Diyukan ve-Zikaron (The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory) (Israel: Ministry of Defence, 1991), p. 78.
Ya’acov Markovizky, Gackelet Lochemet: Giyus Hutz la-Aretz be-Milchemet Ha-’atzmaut, (Fighting Ember: Gachal Forces in the War of Independence) (Israel: Ministry of Defence, 1995), p. 195.
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© 2011 Avinoam J. Patt
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Patt, A.J. (2011). Stateless Citizens of Israel: Jewish Displaced Persons and Zionism in Post-War Germany. In: Reinisch, J., White, E. (eds) The Disentanglement of Populations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297685_8
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