Holocaust Survivors: Resettlement, Memories, Identities 9780857452481

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Holocaust Survivors

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Resettlement, Memories, Identities

Edited by

Dalia Ofer, Françoise S. Ouzan, & Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

Published in 2012 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

©2012 Dalia Ofer, Françoise S. Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holocaust survivors: resettlement, memories, identities / edited by Dalia Ofer, Francoise S. Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-247-4 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-248-1 (ebook) 1. Holocaust survivors--Congresses. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence-Congresses. 3. Jews--History--1945---Congresses. I. Ofer, Dalia. II. Ouzan, Françoise. III. Baumel-Schwartz, Judith Tydor, 1959D804.3.H654 2012 940.53’15142--dc23 2011025038

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

ISBN 978-0-85745-247-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-248-1 (ebook)

For Yisrael Gutman a survivor friend and colleague who taught us how to study the Holocaust and showed us the connection between memory and identity. And in memoriam, David Bankier a friend and colleague.

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables

ix

Preface

x

Introduction. Holocaust Survivors in their Countries of Resettlement: Time, Space, and Identities Dalia Ofer, Françoise S. Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz Chapter 1. She’erit Hapletah—The Surviving Remnant: An Overview Zeev Mankowitz Chapter 2. The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah: Personal and Gendered Identity as Determinants in Rehabilitation, Immigration, and Resettlement Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

1

10

16

Chapter 3. Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Some Vignettes of Jewish Children’s Lives in Early Postwar Poland Joanna B. Michlic

46

Chapter 4. Issues in Religious and Educational Reform in the Jewish Communities of Western Europe after World War II David Weinberg

88

Chapter 5. The Post-Liberation French Administration and the Jews Jean-Marc Dreyfus

113

Chapter 6. Mending the Body, Mending the Soul: Members of Youth Aliyah Take a Look at Themselves and at Others Dalia Ofer

128

viii • Contents

Chapter 7. Holocaust Survivors on Kibbutzim: Resettling Unsettled Memories Micha Balf

166

Chapter 8. Holocaust Survivors in Israel: Time for an Initial Taking of Stock Hannah Yablonka

185

Chapter 9. Rooting the Rootless: The Absorption of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Rural Settlements Ada Schein

208

Chapter 10. New Roots for the Uprooted: Holocaust Survivors as Farmers in America Françoise S. Ouzan

234

Chapter 11. Attitudes of the Jewish Community in Buenos Aires towards Holocaust Survivors, 1945–49 Leo Senkman

259

Chapter 12. Why We Chose Australia Sharon Kangisser Cohen

275

Chapter 13. Jewish Shoah Survivors: Neediness Assessment and Resource Allocation Sergio DellaPergola

294

Bibliography

316

Notes on Contributors

335

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures 13.1. Geographical key to resource allocation

299

13.2. Operationalization of Jewish Shoah survivors

301

13.3. Typology of estimated Jewish Shoah survivors

301

Tables 13.1. Jewish Shoah survivors by type of experience and region of residence, 2003

302

13.2. Demography, health, socioeconomic, and purchase power indices by region of residence of Jewish Shoah survivors, 2003

306

13.3. Jewish population and Jewish Shoah survivors, Total Neediness Index, and Total Resource Allocation by region of residence, 2003

309

PREFACE

This volume comprises selected papers presented at a workshop in the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This workshop emerged from discussions between Françoise Ouzan and Dalia Ofer. Coming from different backgrounds, these historians’ research into the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, and immigration led them to discuss and appreciate the rich and diverse lives survivors came to lead in their adoptive countries. A simple examination of the role survivors played in the life of the Jewish and non-Jewish societies to which they immigrated revealed a wide spectrum of activity and involvement in different fields of the economy, culture, and the arts, as well as in constructing the memory of the Holocaust. While considerable research has already been done on Holocaust survivors in Israel, and while a number of publications have been devoted to the subject of survivors in the United States, very little has been written concerning countries in Europe or South America. A comparative approach to the interplay between survivors and countries—both from a political geographical setting and from a disciplinary perspective—was badly missing. We hope that this volume, a combined effort of scholars from several countries and differing fields of research, will provoke further comparative research and interest in the transnational impact of Holocaust survivors on the countries to which they returned or immigrated. Further, we hope that the subject sheds light on the centrality of the Holocaust in the historical culture of Western societies today. It is our pleasure to be able to thank all those who assisted us in writing and producing this collected volume. First and foremost, we credit our academic homes, which gave us a framework in which to conduct our research: the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Goldstein- Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University, and the Centre de Recherche Fran-

Preface • xi

çais à Jérusalem (CRFJ/CNRS/MAEE), as well as the Israel and Golda Koschitsky Jewish History Department at Bar-Ilan University. The workshop was a joint venture of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem (a joint unit of the French National Center for Scientific Research and the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs), and the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. It was also kindly supported by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS). These same academic institutions also supported this publication, joined by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Jewish History Department at Bar-Ilan University. We would like to extend our thanks to Yohai Goell who edited the English text, and to Alifa Saadya who prepared the manuscript for the publisher. Her wisdom and expertise were of great help. We are grateful to the capable staff of Berghahn Books and to Dr. Marion Berghahn for giving us encouragement to publish the volume and for agreeing to oversee its production. This volume is dedicated to the indefatigable Yisrael Gutman, a resettled survivor who became one of the foremost Holocaust historians in the world and who taught us about the unbreakable bonds between memory and identity, and in memoriam of our friend and colleague David Bankier, who was born to Holocaust survivors in Germany and who became a leading historian of the Holocaust. Dalia Ofer Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz Françoise S. Ouzan Jerusalem, August 2010

Introduction

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN THEIR COUNTRIES OF RESETTLEMENT Time, Space, and Identities

Dalia Ofer, Françoise S. Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz



The theme of this volume was initially chosen for an international workshop, one focused on the political, social, and cultural factors that influenced World War II survivors in their efforts to reconstruct their lives, whether in their countries of origin or in the main countries of resettlement in the aftermath of the war. This approach—comparative in nature—made it possible to examine not only the motivations for postwar migration, but also the specific steps the survivors took towards integration and the ways in which the populations of the various countries of resettlement perceived the newcomers as they strove to re-establish their lives. As the subject is located at the intersection of history, sociology, demography, anthropology, psychology, and literature, a multi-disciplinary approach was also deemed necessary to render a fuller picture of this migration process. Careful use of demographic parameters and conceptual frameworks enabled the participants to deal with diverse subjects within diverse nations: various European countries, the United States, Israel, Argentina, and Australia. The topics in this volume thus reflect both a comparative perspective and this new, multi-faceted methodology and approach. They range from

2 • Ofer, Ouzan, Baumel-Schwartz

the experiences of the survivors during the war years (and the impact these experiences and traumas had on the strategies survivors used in rebuilding their lives) to the tension between expectations and reality, between the survivors’ longing for their native lands and the spaces they recreated as a “living memorial” of their past. Additionally, they cover the landsmanshaftn or other social networks of self-help to which survivors belonged, as well as their determination to rebuild their lives in a new country, in spite of everything. The dynamics of Holocaust survivors’ identities are therefore reflected by a number of factors: early commemorations of the past, the way survivors clung to Yiddish (or the relative speed with which they adopted another language), survivors’ religiosity, and their ideological or political affiliations. The influence of environment on the rebuilding of survivors’ lives also plays a role (for example, whether survivors resettled in rural areas or in cities), as does the role of gender both in survivors’ social networks and in the rehabilitation process. All of these factors round out a multifaceted picture that provides an insight into the state of research on Holocaust survivors. Indeed, until recently this research was mostly centered on survivors’ impact on Zionism, on the establishment of the State of Israel—in other words, on survivors’ immigration as a political act. This volume turns a new page, instead focusing on survivors’ personal lives in the aftermath of World War II and on their specific contributions to the host society. To gain a better understanding of the various topics discussed in this volume and to locate them on the broader map of contemporary Jewish historical processes, let us try to picture each as standing at the crossroads of four paths, which we will label as “temporary,” “permanent,” “liberation,” and “transformation.” The articles deal primarily with Holocaust survivors in their countries of resettlement, but many of them refer to survivors who were first part of the She’erit Hapletah, the surviving remnant of European Jewry who were concentrated in Germany, Austria, and northern Italy between 1945 and 1948. In English this group was known as the DPs, “displaced persons,” and they lacked citizenship, permanent domicile, and an official national identity, although many—if not most—identified strongly with “Jewish” as their national identity and although quite a number were Zionists. One by one, the articles in this book chart how the DPs, in their various manifestations, navigated through the aforementioned crossroads, traveling down various paths in their attempt to reach the door through which they would enter their new lives. The first salient term for understanding the lives of these DPs is temporary. Being a DP was, by definition, a temporary condition, albeit one which at times lingered on psychologically for years after the physical

Introduction • 3

situation of the person in question had changed. The term “displaced”— removed, not necessarily by choice, from one’s original place of domicile and transferred to another site—described not only the physical circumstances of close to 200,000 Jews who had survived the war and who ended up in the territory of the former Third Reich, but for many was also an apt description of their mental state: displaced, out of place, located somewhere they should not be. For most, being physically “displaced” was a temporary condition, one which lasted for no more than five years after the war’s end, and for some even much less. However, the psychological displacement these people underwent often continued for long periods of time after they had reached their countries of origin or resettlement. Some of the articles in this volume describe and analyze the dichotomy which arose between the end of the DPs’ physical displacement and their continued sense of being emotionally, mentally, or psychologically displaced. In some cases in which the DPs plunged into the social, economic, and national fabric of their new country of settlement, it was only years later that they were willing to admit to the length of time that it actually took for their psychological displacement to abate. A number of the articles in this volume concentrate on this temporary period during which the DPs were in transit, the years before their permanent postwar resettlement took place. This leads us to the next term—permanent. Much has been written about the fact that although the Holocaust ended chronologically in 1945, it left permanent scars on those who endured those years of horror. This is connected with another of the salient terms that is the nexus of every article in this volume—survivor. Unlike simply being a displaced person, being a Holocaust survivor was a permanent definition, one that had to do with unchangeable past events rather than a temporary geographical location. Some survivors always considered their having survived to be an integral component of their individual identities. For some, it became the primary component, superseding all others which they had adopted in the past. For others, it became less dominant over the years as they underwent different experiences in their adopted homelands. This is yet another issue which features in some of the articles in this volume. The crossroads at which “temporary” and “permanent” meet are the nexus of how, when, and where the survivors found their postwar identity and internalized their experiences. The crossroads between the other two pathways—liberation and transformation—is the path these survivors all had to follow in order to implement this process. The path to liberation was a long one, and one punctuated by false hopes and countless tears. And yet the period after liberation was not always one of unending joy: the liberated Jews now faced the realities of the postwar world, which

4 • Ofer, Ouzan, Baumel-Schwartz

often meant receiving final confirmation of the loss of their families and everything that they held dear. Some fell into despair. Others quickly realized that their survival depended on their ability to put the past behind them and to think of the future. This was the first step in the “transformation” which they would undergo, which turned them from Jews who were still alive after the war—“DPs”—into “survivors,” and which finally incorporated the component of “survivorship” into a larger definition of their complete postwar identity. A number of articles in this volume deal with this pathway from liberation to transformation and analyze the stages that the survivors went through while traveling along it, on their way to creating their new lives. The above concepts provide an analytical tool for understanding the survivors of the Holocaust. And although they can be also applied to refugee immigration resulting from other tragedies and catastrophes, in order to understand the identity crisis of Holocaust survivors and their efforts to return to life, we must recall the particularity of the Holocaust. The experience of this destruction was not only a traumatic personal memory that followed the survivors, whether they were immigrants or returnees to their own countries. It also embodied a colossal failure of what was believed to be the European political tradition and culture—the liberal concept of “progress” and the positive historical experience of European Jewry after emancipation. To adopt a nihilistic philosophy and to sink into a mood of despair was an all-too conceivable option for survivors of such a catastrophe. It is therefore extremely important to follow the process by which these survivors with their different experiences reconstructed their lives. These issues were played down in the first years after the end of the war, but became more evident a few decades later when the Holocaust became a major component of European historical culture. Four articles follow these processes of reconstruction as they played out in the camps, in Poland, and in western Europe, and each demonstrates a way in which nihilism and despair were defeated despite many crises and difficulties and despite the despair that still held in some measure for the majority of survivors. Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz narrates the stories of Rivka Englard, Rivka Horowitz, and Pearl Mandelker, “camp sister” survivors, from the initial first stage of their liberation through their transitional period in the DP camps to their permanent relocation in Holland, Israel, and the United States. Their odyssey is a stunning example of how a concrete goal—whether religious, ideological, or as simple as devotion to the creation of a family—could be an anchor in a stormy and unsettled reality. Their journey also exemplifies the importance of gender and how it im-

Introduction • 5

pacted the permanent condition of the survivors in their places of settlement. Joanna Michlic narrates the turbulent and confused situation of the Jewish children who were rescued by non-Jews and who were later reclaimed by family members or through Jewish organizations. Their diverse and detailed narratives—drawn from court documents, interviews, journals, and other sources—testify to the complex situation in which children and adolescents found themselves after liberation. Who are we? Who are the relatives that claimed us? And aren’t we the children of the adults who took care of us in the last year? Different children asked these questions, and answered them in different ways. For many, their dual identity was not only an artifact of this transitional period, but also something that would characterize their future lives. They experienced losses more than once in the span of a few years, and the transition, accommodation, and adaptation to a new environment, language, and culture these losses entailed left deep marks on their personalities. David Weinberg reconstructs the efforts Jews in France, Holland, and Belgium made to recreate a Jewish community, one dedicated to Jewish tradition and one committed to ensuring a future for the Jews in this part of Europe. Weinberg demonstrates the enormous difficulties that the fragmented and mournful Jewish communities in these nations faced, as well as the great tension between various segments of these communities. In demonstrating this, he stresses the conflict between the need to establish a normal life in a destroyed environment and the nihilistic approach the Jewish youth, orphaned and lost, took when transitioning from temporary to permanent circumstances within a society that had betrayed them. The negotiations—through the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Zionist organizations, and Israel—between the survivors rebuilding their communities in western Europe and the Jews in the United States also became an important factor in the shaping of a new self-understanding. One should bear in mind that all of this took place while Europe was struggling to rebuild itself after the destruction and to establish a new social-political order in the shadow of widespread collaboration with the Nazis. European countries had to reclaim their liberal and democratic political and social identity. Jean-Marc Dreyfus takes the reader on a tour that follows the Jewish survivors in France—where two-thirds of the nation’s Jews survived—as they redefine their place and status in their country. These Jews were more than tolerant of the difficulties French politicians faced in restoring Jewish economic and social conditions to those of the prewar period. They placed their trust in the good will of the regime when attempting to reconstruct their lives, and thus they were prepared to compromise within economic and social limitations.

6 • Ofer, Ouzan, Baumel-Schwartz

The way survivors handled their memories at different stages in their lives also reflected the approaches they took in returning to their regular routines. Survivors played a major role not only in establishing Europe’s culture after the war and in rebuilding its economy, but also in the way Jews and non-Jews in various countries shaped their postwar identities. In shaping these identities, people revealed their detailed narratives in an uneven process over the years, a process which both motivated their confrontation or engagement with the Holocaust and demonstrated the ongoing dialogue that Europe and the Jews conducted with the events of the Holocaust, its motivations, and its outcomes. Moreover, the energies the survivors displayed in making their personal return to life motivated their broader engagement in the public sphere after the war, and in particular in their efforts to establish a structured memory of the events of the war and the destruction of the Jews. At the same time, and with clear contradiction, their personal narratives demonstrated that in many respects the fundamental nature of Holocaust memory is unstructured and denies closure. Israel/Palestine was the destination that more than fifty percent of the survivors reached during the late 1940s and until the mid-1960s, and a number of articles present the role that survivors played in shaping its destiny. Dalia Ofer discusses two groups of German survivors: those who traveled to Palestine through Youth Aliya—an organization established to bring German youth to Palestine after 1933—before the war, and those who arrived in Palestine afterward. In some respect, members of the first group may be considered refugee immigrants (though many of them would lose their families in the Holocaust in the near future.) Most of the second group were orphans or had lost one parent. Some of them shared the experiences narrated in Michlic’s article. We learn that both groups bore pain and a sense of loss, and that both were eager to integrate into the new environment; they were ready to adopt Zionist values, including the social vision of the kibbutz, which was foreign to their upbringing and difficult to accept. Yet they were also very open to seeing the shortcomings of themselves and the kibbutz members with whom they were engaged, and through their sincerity and candid deliberations they had an impact on their new environment. Micha Balf, who concentrates on the commemoration of the Holocaust in various kibbutzim, expands on the question of kibbutzim and particularly on the social and cultural milieu the refugees established there. Balf demonstrates how survivors became agents of memory in their specific kibbutz and in the kibbutz movement in general, and further demonstrates how the contribution of these mem-

Introduction • 7

ories extended beyond the kibbutz movement and preceded the national commemoration patterns shaped through Yad Vashem. Hannah Yablonka’s article portrays the contribution survivors made to Israel’s cultural, social, and economic life across a broad spectrum of time and space. Their mark was evident in all fields of activity—from the early days of the struggle for independence through the Eichmann trial—and in all spheres of life. These survivors epitomize in their life stories the determination to establish a viable and moral Jewish society, one which took the memory of the destroyed Jewish communities and the knowledge of life before the destruction as fundamental values. Survivors extended their message to all groups in Israeli society and were bound to relate their experiences to the large body of non-European mizrahi youth in the country. Two articles that relate to both Israel and to the United States explore the topic of Jewish farmers and of the demand for agricultural laborers. In both countries agricultural workers were a minority among the survivors, who usually preferred to live in cities and towns. Yet the sincere attempt of some survivors to become farmers—as told by Ada Schein and Françoise S. Ouzan—is quite heroic. Survivors were drawn to agriculture for different reasons; some viewed it as a personal dream, and others found in it a practical and feasible alternative to life in the city. However, one should not forget that the institutions that carried out the absorption of survivors within each country had an interest in spreading out these survivors in order to avoid concentrating them within particular neighborhoods of the big cities. Thus, the idea that agricultural life was good both for a survivor’s rehabilitation complemented the idea that it was good for the country. The experiences of these agricultural workers, related here for the first time in research literature, are telling, and they reflect the rich and diverse ways by which survivors were counting on their strength and potential as well as on the aid of institutions of resettlement. Françoise Ouzan dwells on the efforts of the Jewish Agricultural Society and on the survivors’ willingness to rekindle the flame of Yiddish culture on American soil. This desire to preserve yiddishkeit was also very vivid among those who resettled in Argentina and Mexico. For survivors who reached Argentina in particular—as Leo Senkman informs the reader—the transition stages and the temporary psychological situation continued long after their arrival. These survivors arrived into a community whose members felt at once both stable and unstable. Although the Peronist regime treated the Jewish community fairly, it rejected the immigration of Jewish survivors who had no direct relatives in Argentina, while allowing the immigration of former Nazis and other non-Jewish immigrants. Jews were unsure

8 • Ofer, Ouzan, Baumel-Schwartz

how to react, and sought ways to assist survivors who wanted to join the community. The maneuvering of the Jewish organizations as they used both legal and illegal means to accommodate the survivor immigrants is a fascinating story, one that Senkman’s article tells for the first time. Even more remarkable is the impact survivors had on the identity of the Jewish community in Argentina and on the massive Yiddish literature of memory that community produced and published. As is well known in Jewish tradition, Jews are spread throughout the four corners of the earth, and Holocaust survivors are no exception. Sharon Kangisser Cohen travels with the reader to Australia, a relatively important destination for Jewish survivors. They arrived in two waves at two different locations. The first wave, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, established itself mostly in Melbourne and consisted mainly of Polish Jews. The second wave, following the failure of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, concentrated in Sydney and established an important center of Hungarian Jewish survivors. The story of these survivors in particular sharpens a definitional issue: Should these immigrant Jews be studied as survivors, or as refugees from communism (and thus political immigrants), or as both? Cohen leads the reader into the understanding this group has of itself. Through in-depth and sensitive interviews, she reveals the various layers of this complex identity and its rather sophisticated approach to the concepts of transition and permanence mentioned above, as well as to its notion of being a free or liberated person. Many assume that more than seventy years after the outbreak of WWII, the issue of survivors’ identity in their places of settlement has been entirely resolved. Many survivors are no longer with us and most of those who are still alive were children when the war began. However, Sergio DellaPergola shows how mistaken this assumption is, offering a contemporary definition of Holocaust survivors according to the following criteria: (a) those who were in concentration camps or ghettos, or who were otherwise submitted to slave labor, (b) those who fled such confinement or subsisted illegally, or (c) those Jews who at least for a brief period of time were subject to a regime of duress and/or a limitation of their full civil rights due to their Jewish background, whether by a Nazi occupying power or by a local authority associated with the Nazi endeavor. DellaPergola then demonstrates the distribution of some one million survivors, according to the above definition, throughout different parts of the world, and uses socioeconomic indicators to present a key for decision makers as to how global resources might be, or have been allocated. DellaPergola’s comparative analysis of the countries in which survivors live today demonstrates that the Holocaust still has an active impact on our thinking, our self-understanding, and our culture. It is not yet a historical discus-

Introduction • 9

sion; it is an issue both for contemporary Jewry and for contemporary Western civilization. Humanity has experienced other genocides in the second half of the twentieth century and still confronts acts of genocide today: thus the story of the Holocaust survivors, despite its particularity, should always receive our attention.

1

SHE’ERIT HAPLETAH: THE SURVIVING REMNANT An Overview

Zeev Mankowitz



When Nazi Germany finally surrendered to the Allies in May 1945, some six million European Jews had been put to death. An estimated three million survived, the majority of them in the Soviet Union, which remained out of the reach of the Nazis. Among the survivors—especially those from Eastern Europe—there was a clear predominance of young males. Women, children, the elderly, and the infirm—those who could not be profitably exploited by the Nazis—were conspicuous by their absence. What we seek to clarify, in brief, are the questions and challenges that confronted these survivors in the first phases of their return to life: a life without family, friends, or a place they could call home. What were the urgent questions they needed to address, the issues that demanded a painful reckoning? These widely shared concerns generally included the following: “Farwos?”—why? asked the Yiddish-speaking survivors. To what end was this horrific death sentence imposed on an entire people bereft of any real, worldly power?

She’erit Hapletah: The Surviving Remnant • 11

Did any members of my family, my community, or my friends manage to survive? Why, when so many perished, did I survive? How shall I honor the dead and preserve their memory? Where is my home? Who can I trust? Where shall I build my future? Which of my beliefs—social, political, religious—came through the dark years of testing intact? Which need to be discarded or reformulated? What special responsibilities should I take upon myself with my fellow survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust? These questions, which survivors began to ask as the war was drawing to a close, persisted into liberation and beyond. The varying answers survivors gave spawned new movements, resuscitated prewar loyalties, pushed others away from what had been their guiding commitments, and generated a pulsating public debate that was passionate, incisive, and—in terms of facing up to the implications of the Holocaust—years ahead of Jewish public opinion outside of Europe. This raises an important question: why did the larger Jewish world pay scant attention to the prescient insights and remarkable achievements of She’erit Hapletah—the Surviving Remnant—until nearly thirty years after the Allied victory? One response that we made reference to above was that the survivors—who wrote in Yiddish and other less commonly used European languages—were grappling with issues that only became part of the Jewish public agenda decades later. Additionally, many of the survivors who left Europe during these years were preoccupied with becoming part of a new country and learning its language and culture, giving them little time for publicly revisiting the past. Furthermore, those who had worked with the Surviving Remnant in Europe—the US Army, UNRRA operatives, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee workers, soldiers of the Palestinian Jewish Brigade, emissaries of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and representatives of a wide variety of political movements in Palestine—came to speak for the survivors in the first years after the war. Out of a deep sense of identification—and out of an equal desire to whip up sympathy and support—these spokespeople presented the Surviving Remnant as hapless victims, walking skeletons, who had been ground into dust by the Nazi murder machine. In the process, the vitality, alertness, inner strength, and powers

12 • Zeev Mankowitz

of recovery of the Surviving Remnant disappeared, as did their active contributions on many fronts to the developments that reshaped the Jewish world between 1945 and 1948. For example, it took many years for historians to give us a fuller and more balanced picture of the role played by the 200,000 survivors who braved both the British blockade of Palestine and incarceration in Cyprus until they became able to enter the state of Israel legally in May 1948. Similarly, it took decades before historians came to appreciate the important and even formative contribution that some 100,000 survivors made to Jewish community life in the United States, Canada, Australia, and—in lesser numbers—in the United Kingdom and South America. Furthermore, the complex question of the impact the Holocaust had on the creation of the state of Israel shunted many less prominent historical concerns aside, including a careful analysis of the role played by the Surviving Remnant. Over the last quarter century, however, some important studies have broadened and deepened our understanding of the dramatic events that began in May 1945 and climaxed—although this was far from a foregone conclusion — in May 1948. It was Professor Yehuda Bauer’s pioneering study Flight and Rescue: Brichah1 that provided a new and challenging perspective on the historical role surviving leaders of Jewish resistance movements played in shaping the future of the diminished remnants of East European Jewry that the advancing Red Army began to liberate in the second half of 1944. Fearing that the dangers threatening their people were not yet a thing of the past, the major strategy these surviving leaders adopted was to prepare escape routes that would preferably lead to Palestine or at least to a safe haven in Europe or beyond, somewhere out of harm’s way. Bauer tells the gripping story of the attempts to open routes to Palestine, at first via Romania and later, when that failed, via Bulgaria and Italy in conjunction with the Palestinian Brigade stationed in the area of Tarvisio. When this route was blocked by the British, new Brichah routes were opened via Stettin to Berlin—or, alternatively, via Bratislava and Vienna—that led to the American zone of occupation in Germany. In this fashion, nearly 250,000 survivors and Polish Jewish repatriates from the interior of the Soviet Union managed to cross Europe without money, legal travel documents, or diplomatic protection. Between October 1944 and October 1945, when the first Palestinian emissaries appeared on the scene, this complex operation of guides, bribes, transportation, food, lodging, and medical care was entirely the work of Holocaust survivors: a far cry from the image of dispirited, bent, and helpless figures broken on the wheel of Nazi atrocities.

She’erit Hapletah: The Surviving Remnant • 13

In the wake of Yehuda Bauer’s work, the remarkable history of the Surviving Remnant, which had been all but forgotten, was rediscovered and became a focus of growing interest. On Liberation Day, there were some seven million forced laborers from every corner of Europe gathered in Germany and Austria, including an estimated 200,000 Jewish survivors of death marches, slave labor, and the concentration camp system, many thousands of whom tragically died of typhus, malnutrition, and exhaustion soon after freedom finally came. With Nazi Germany’s defeat, millions of these forced laborers started out on their return home, assisted by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Survivors from France, Belgium, and Holland for the most part returned to their native countries. More tentatively, the survivors from Hungary and Romania set out instead to search for family and to see what had become of their possessions. Most Polish and Lithuanian survivors—who had seen their families destroyed and who feared the reception that awaited them from their erstwhile neighbors—decided to bide their time in occupied Germany. By September 1945, some 40,000 survivors remained in the American zone of occupation, living primarily in large DP camps close to Munich and Frankfurt. In addition, nearly 19,000 survivors were to be found in the British zone of occupied Germany in early 1946, including a concentration of some 10,000 East European survivors in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. With the new interest in She’erit Hapletah, it suddenly became increasingly clear that the surprising surge of survivor initiatives had its roots in clandestine groups within Buchenwald and Dachau-Kaufering that had actively prepared for the coming of liberation. Immediately following the demise of Nazi Germany, we already witness these groups engaged in a flurry of activity that focused on the pressing problems of food, health, shelter, clothing, and the search for family and a safe future. Over the next few months, while protected by the US Army and provided for by UNRRA, these groups rapidly evolved into a network of representative and camp councils, political movements, newspapers, youth groups, children’s homes and schools, vocational training programs, and a wide range of cultural pursuits. Amidst this remarkable effort at self-rehabilitation in the most unpromising of circumstances, we also find the first sustained public attempt to grapple with the implications of the Holocaust. As was the case with the early history of the Brichah, survivors took the lead in building this network, and driven by an abiding antagonism toward everything German, they organized their lives, protested vociferously against Great Britain’s White Paper policy in Palestine, and—with the help of the Joint and the Jewish Agency—learned English and Hebrew, attended vocational training courses, and prepared for the future.

14 • Zeev Mankowitz

Given the proclivity to overstate the debilitating frailty of survivors, especially in the first period of their liberation, we have chosen to highlight the remarkable role they played as subjects of history. But the time has come to complicate the picture somewhat, and we can best do so by considering alternative translations of She’erit Hapletah, the phrase which we have thus far rendered as the “Surviving Remnant.” Two additional options have been suggested, each of which carries its own interpretive charge. We could translate She’erit Hapletah as either the “Saved Remnant” or the “Saving Remnant.” Each tells a different story. The former takes as its starting assumption the fact that it was the Allied victory that made survival possible, and that it was this world historical event—which cost millions of lives—that set the stage for all that followed. Secondly, to be a displaced person was by definition a transient status, one that rendered a person dependent on others for the fulfillment of basic needs. This was especially true where the benefactors were themselves subject to a military chain of command. Against this background, we can better understand the crucial role played by US Army chaplains like Rabbi Abraham Klausner2 and by regular soldiers like Robert L. Hilliard3 and friends, who surreptitiously kept the survivor hospital in St. Ottilien supplied with medicines and vital equipment. Similarly, Palestinian emissaries (shlichim) and Joint workers clad in military uniforms had access to this system of supplies, a privilege denied to civilian DPs dressed in an assortment of castoff clothes and generally lacking a sure command of English. That was the heart of DP dependence: someone else almost always spoke for you. On the other hand, the appellation “Saving Remnant”—which evokes the biblical meaning of She’erit Hapletah as those survivors who bear the promise of future renewal—derives from a long line of surprising achievements that primarily depended on the initiative of survivors themselves: the early creation of the United Zionist Organization of Bavaria, setting up the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria, organizing myriad institutions, committees, theaters, schools, and courses needed by a living community. One small example will have to suffice: the Central Historical Commission that operated out of Munich and that collected and published survivor testimonies, documented what had befallen the Jewish people, and assembled a rich assortment of archival material that eventually served as the initial nucleus of Yad Vashem’s collection. These were the people of the Brichah who crossed Europe, these were the 72,000 boat people who voted with their feet to enter Palestine, and—perhaps most dramatically—these were the ones who joined the ranks of the Israeli Defense Force and provided it with more than one-third of its active

She’erit Hapletah: The Surviving Remnant • 15

fighting forces.4 All this and more is what Leo Schwarz, director of the JDC in Germany in 1946, meant when he called She’erit Hapletah the “Redeemers”—that is to say, the “Saving Remnant.”5 In nuce, in their short but fateful history as a community in transit, the Surviving Remnant lived out the tension between these two poles: unavoidable reliance on others, on the one hand, and on the other, the eagerly sought dream of standing on their own two feet after years of powerlessness and deadly futility.6

Notes 1. Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah (New York: Random House, 1970). 2. Abraham J. Klausner, A Letter to my Children: From the Edge of the Holocaust (San Francisco: Holocaust Center of Northern California, 2002). 3. Robert L. Hilliard, Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997). 4. Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel After the War (London: Macmillan, 1999). 5. Leo Schwarz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Years 1945–1952 (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953). 6. Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

2

THE IDENTITY OF WOMEN IN THE SHE’ERIT HAPLETAH Personal and Gendered Identity as Determinants in Rehabilitation, Immigration, and Resettlement

Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz



Introduction Eretz Yisrael. A land of milk and honey. The Jewish homeland. These were the thoughts which helped “camp sisters” Rivka Englard, Rivka Horowitz, and Pearl Mandelker survive the Holocaust. During their hardest days in Płaszów, Auschwitz, and finally Bergen-Belsen, these young former schoolmates from Poland buoyed each other’s spirits with the thought that after the war, they would make their way together to the Holy Land. Yet, out of the three, only Englard actually ended up immigrating to Palestine, having received one of the few precious legal certificates available to postwar European Jews. In spite of her love of Eretz Yisrael, Horowitz made a conscious decision to remain in liberated Europe in order to revitalize the Beit Ya’akov (Beth Jacob) ultra-Orthodox girls’ school network on that continent. In 1946, she married a Polish survivor and eventually moved to Antwerp, where she still lives today. Mandelker’s longing for a Jewish homeland was replaced by her longing for a husband. Having

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 17

met another survivor in early 1946, she soon married and gave birth to a daughter while still living in Germany. In spite of her desire to move to Palestine, she agreed to make a new life for herself in America, since her husband’s family lived in the United States. The story of these three young women evokes a number of questions on various levels. On the micro level, one might ask: why was Englard the only one of the three young survivors who fulfilled their collective dream of moving to Eretz Yisrael? What made Horowitz choose her gendered religious-cultural identity over her Zionist-political longings? And how did Mandelker end up choosing personal identity over her previous nationalcultural identification, and moving westward instead of eastward? On the macro level, however, it is interesting to probe how these choices were expressed in the larger setting. In what way did the survivors’ postwar personal or gendered identities influence their rehabilitation processes and their decisions regarding immigration? Was there a difference between men and women survivors in this matter? The same holds true for resettlement. What impact, if any, did issues of personal or gendered identity among survivors have on their processes of absorption and assimilation into their new homelands? Historical interest in the history and dynamics of the She’erit Hapletah, the Jewish Displaced Persons of Europe after the Holocaust, and in the mechanism of survivor rehabilitation began close to four decades ago, with many of the studies concentrating on the survivors’ rehabilitation and on their decision to immigrate to various countries of settlement.1 Another group of studies focused on the resettlement of the DPs and charted the process of absorption and assimilation into the social, political, and cultural fabric of their new homelands.2 Few of these studies have examined women in the She’erit Hapletah as a separate category, and even fewer have analyzed the processes of rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement from a gender perspective.3 Indeed, while interest in the topic of the DPs goes back to the immediate postwar period, interest in the topic of women during and after the Holocaust is more recent, having developed primarily during the past twenty years.4 Furthermore, while numerous survivor testimonies refer to personal postwar identity issues that plagued them and their contemporaries for years after the war, little research has been done on the impact of these issues upon processes of rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement. And true to the aforementioned research lacuna regarding gender and the She’erit Hapletah, no studies to date have focused on personal and gendered identity among female survivors as factors that influenced their choices of when to emigrate, where to go, and the degree to which they succeeded in their resettlement.5

18 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

One explanation for this is the nature of Holocaust source material: most of the early—and thus often considered more authentic—survivor testimonies did not refer to topics which at the time were not seen as “Holocaust-mainstream.”6 These included issues of gender, religion, sexuality, and the like, as well as the postwar experiences of survivors. For years the typical survivor memoir, particularly those written by women, ended with a description of the liberation and a final paragraph which read along these lines: “I was liberated by the Russians (or Americans, or English) from X. Two years later we reached Palestine (or Canada, Australia, the United States, etc.)” Consequently, researchers were often faced with a source lacuna that could only be compensated for with additional focused personal interviews and with written documentation, which could be found piecemeal in various archives throughout the world. While some archives, such as the DP collection in the YIVO archive, document the survivors’ experiences in their own voices (or writings), the majority of archival collections dealing with the postwar period focus heavily on official and institutional policy-making, military bureaucracy, economic planning, and the like. Another reason was the development of women’s Holocaust studies. For many years, studies of women and the Holocaust were not considered mainstream research and were frowned upon—and even actively discouraged—by parts of the historical establishment.7 Even after gender studies of the Holocaust became an accepted research topic, at least by some, in the early 1990s, it is only recently that scholars have begun to apply a gendered perspective to survivor experiences during the immediate postwar years.8 As a result, Holocaust scholars examining various aspects of the She’erit Hapletah often find themselves facing a map characterized by large white patches that often outnumber the charted areas. I hope that this study will provide color, depth, and perspective to at least some of those uncharted areas. As part of the ongoing effort to rediscover the unique role played by women in the She’erit Hapletah, I have devoted the following pages to a topic located at a series of crossroads that intersect in numerous locations: survivors, gender, identity, rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement. First, I will focus upon the role of personal and gendered identity in the rehabilitation of women in the She’erit Hapletah during the years following the end of the Second World War (1945–48). Next, I will examine the extent to which these factors acted as determinants in the processes of postwar immigration and resettlement. By doing so, I hope to shed light on some of the mechanisms active after the war among numerous women survivors that enabled both their relatively rapid rehabilitation and their decisions regarding their future.

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 19

These issues are part of a broader topic that in recent years has become the focus of various scholarly studies: the response of women to wartime deprivations and postwar challenges. These topics have been explored by historians and social scientists alike, with a concentration on the processes of post-trauma rehabilitation, forming responses to refugeeism and forced migrations, dissolution and reconstitution of family units, and reconstruction of the physical and emotional self. This examination of the rehabilitation of women in the She’erit Hapletah is joined by studies of women in postwar Japan, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other war-torn locations.9 However, in spite of the topic’s broader implications, there are several differences that we must bear in mind between women Holocaust survivors and the women who are the focus of these other postwar studies. Among them are the geographical scope of each wartime trauma, the Jewish postwar demographic imperative to rebuild families as speedily as possible, and the volatile issue of “homeland.” This final point was expressed through the reluctance and/or inability of many survivors to return to their former homes and through their adoption of the concept of a substitute (perceived and presented as the true, historical, and religious) spiritual and physical homeland: Eretz Yisrael. Therefore, although it is imperative to locate my research topic within the broader studies of postwar women, I have refrained here from undertaking a comparative venture, though I hope to do so elsewhere. Being aware of the importance of exploring an ostensibly historical topic from different research approaches, I have chosen to examine the women of the She’erit Hapletah by adopting a gendered historical methodology, one with interdisciplinary implications. I have, in doing so, taken into account the limitations of such a methodology—the problems of oral documentation, the relativism of testimony, the dichotomy between comparable and incomparable experiences, etc.—and made provisions for a more traditional historical analysis when necessary.

Who Were the She’erit Hapletah? The biblical term She’erit Hapletah,10 which was already in use in Palestine by 1942–43, refers to the Holocaust survivors who filled the DP and refugee camps throughout liberated Germany, Austria, and Italy between 1945 and 1952. The founding groups had been liberated from concentration camps and refused to be repatriated. Their numbers were augmented by Jews who had either been liberated in Poland, or who had experienced the war in the Soviet Union, been repatriated to Poland, and reached Germany via the Brichah movement. I have chosen to deal primarily with

20 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

the years 1945–48, given demographic changes in the She’erit Hapletah following the systematic dissolution of most of the DP camps after the establishment of the State of Israel and the simultaneous easing of immigration regulations to the United States.11 There is a difference of opinion regarding the precise number of survivors who comprised the She’erit Hapletah. The nucleus of this body were some 50,000 concentration camp survivors who were liberated by the Allies in Germany and Austria during April and May 1945. As a result of wartime starvation and continuing epidemics, close to half of these survivors lost their lives within weeks of the liberation. During the months that followed, the survivors were augmented by several thousand Jews who had been liberated in Poland. Later in the year, they were joined by tens of thousands of “asiatics”—eastern European Jews who had spent the war years deep inside the Soviet Union. During the summer of 1947, more than a quarter of a million Jewish DPs could be found in Germany, Austria, and Italy, over two-thirds of whom had spent the war years not under Nazi persecution but deep in Stalin’s bear-like embrace.12 Of the three countries in which the She’erit Hapletah congregated, the largest numbers were found in Germany. By mid-1947 there were 182,000 Jewish survivors in that country, 157,000 of whom were in the American zone, 15,000 in the British zone, and 10,000 in the French zone.13 During the period discussed in this article, the majority of the She’erit Hapletah were located in one of the dozens of DP camps which had been established throughout Germany after the war. Only a few such camps existed in the French zone, while the British limited the survivors to one camp that bore the name of the concentration camp next to which it had been established: Bergen-Belsen. The number of camps which functioned in the American zone during these years is uncertain, as some camps were only in operation for very short periods, including a number of temporary auxiliary DP centers set up to absorb the overflow from larger camps.14 Additionally, several hundred Jewish DPs were lodged in expropriated apartments in major German cities along with the 12,000 German Jewish survivors, and approximately 3,000 survivors could be found on the handful of hakhsharah kibbutzim that were established in liberated Germany.15 In all of these locations, the women of She’erit Hapletah began their rehabilitation, rebuilding both their personal and gender identities in preparation for immigration and resettlement. A look at the demographic breakdown of the She’erit Hapletah can give us some insight into the human framework within which this rehabilitation took place. The composition of the group did not remain static, and its numbers grew continuously until the summer of 1947, from which time they began to diminish slowly as a result of illegal and legal immigra-

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 21

tion to Palestine. The internal composition of the DPs with regard to sex, age, and professional standing fluctuated as well, as did the composition of their ideological, political, and religious affiliations. This was, again, a result of the geographical movement within the group, and particularly the migrations from East to West and from there to Eretz Yisrael. It is an accepted belief that fewer women than men survived the war for numerous reasons, and in fact at the end of 1945 only a third of the DPs in Germany were women, most of them of childbearing age. The compelling desire of many, if not most, of the DPs to create new life after the war as proof of their survival also affected the demographic composition of the She’erit Hapletah. In late 1945, almost no children under the age of five could be found among the DPs, a situation that changed from early 1946 onward with the arrival of the “asiatics” and the toddlers, infants, and newborns they brought with them. In mid-1946, fifteen months after the end of the war, some 4.5 percent of the DPs were infants of up to twelve months of age.16 What does this fact signify in relation to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of women survivors among the She’erit Hapletah during the months after the war’s end? What role did it play in the process of reconstructing their personal and gendered identity, and how might it reflect this process of reconstruction? And in what way did it affect their rehabilitation and choice of venue for immigration? Personal identity and gendered identity are two of the salient terms located at the basis of these questions. Before addressing them, I wish to briefly discuss the meaning of these two terms, as well as their broader implications and the ways in which they applied to the rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement of women in the She’erit Hapletah.

Personal Identity In philosophy, the issue of personal identity concerns the conditions under which a person at one time can be called the same person at another time. The English philosopher John Locke considered personal identity (or the “self”) to be founded on consciousness rather than on the substance of either the soul or the body.17 The original Latin form of this word, consciousness (conscientia), primarily means moral conscience. But building on this, we find that our sense of personal identity and self also includes phenomenal consciousness (experience), access consciousness (our awareness of something in relation to abstract concepts), belief, and self-recognition.18 The conscious self is the unified being which is the source of this consciousness. However, as consciousness can not be

22 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

measured other than as it is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of an individual, I will examine the personal identity of the women in the She’erit Hapletah through the oral and written testimonies that describe their behavior and their choices of that time. Philosophers have proposed a number of criteria for defining the existence and development of a self. Synthesizing several of these systems and placing them in the order in which they emerge within an individual, the first criterion is the continuity of an individual, or body identity,19 the second is a personal awareness of events, or subjectivity,20 and the last is memory—or, more specifically, the long term memory of explicit events.21 Together these three form the self. Looking at these criteria from the perspective of the a destructive process—in our case, the Nazi machinery of annihilation—all three were to be wiped out in destroying the Jew. long term memory and personal awareness of events were to be destroyed by various acts of Nazi policy such as prohibiting the observance of national and religious traditions, forbidding the study of traditional texts, and creating conditions that ultimately negated any type of normal life, first in ghettos and later in camps. Jewish body identity was to be ultimately wiped out by exterminating the body itself. However, before that was achieved, a different kind of body identity—gendered body identity, and particularly women’s body identity—was actively eradicated through a variety of methods in Nazi prisons and in concentration and labor camps. These methods included shaving women’s head and body hair, publicly and physically humiliating them in issues of modesty, and achieving the cessation of menses through starvation, or—as many survivors believed, although never proven—through chemical additions to food. As the gendered identity of women was closely connected with their body identity, much more so than that of men, it required a longer and more complex reconstruction process after the war.

Gendered Identity Sexual difference and gender have always played a vital role in identity construction. An important component of one’s personal identity and self is one’s gendered identity, a construct of socio-cultural differences ascribed to the sexual difference between men and women. Although the term “gendered identity” is relatively new, the concept of a unique identity for women is not. Long before first wave feminist theoreticians spoke of “men’s society” and “women’s society,” there was an understanding of a “feminine self” and a “masculine self.”22 Female gendered identity was

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 23

also connected to issues of power and empowerment, particularly in the wake of deprivation, hardship, and war.23 One of the major promoters of the concept of gendered identity is Judith Butler, who dealt with the difficulty of the binary divide between “women” and “men” that feminism had asserted in the past.24 In her concept, gender is a fluid variable and a performance—what you do—and not necessarily who you are. Although today this concept is connected to “queer theory,” or that which is at odds with the “normal” or dominant theory of the time, it is not necessarily a view on sexuality but on culture and situation. In challenging first and even second wave feminist theoreticians who accepted a connection between identity and essence, Butler proposed a more free-floating concept of gendered identity and self.25 This free-floating concept of gender is often expressed in times of war, a state which shakes up preconceived notions of gendered behavior and identity. Such was the situation encountered by women among the She’erit Hapletah, whose gendered identities had often undergone trauma and even forced dissolution during the war years and now required extensive reconstruction in its wake. How does gendered identity differ from personal identity? Are these two separate concepts, or is one included in the other? Building on the concepts as explained here, gendered identity can be considered either separately from personal identity or as one of its components. If one of the vital factors of personal identity is body identity, then gender must be a part of that factor, being a social construct based on the essence of the male/female body identity division. However, if gender is considered to be an outgrowth of a performance rather than an essence—the concept that is most applicable to the situations being examined in this essay—then it must be considered to be separate from personal identity. As we have seen earlier, personal identity is a combination of corporeal awareness, personal awareness of events, and the long term memory of these explicit events. All of these are factors of essence, but not of performance. According to the second interpretation, gender identity is a performative factor that complements these others factors, creating—or in our case, recreating—a broader and more “holistic” concept of self.

Postwar Rehabilitation and Reconstructed Women’s Identities Having probed the historical background of this study and the significance of the terms being examined, I would like to offer a hypothesis regarding the connection between women Holocaust survivors’ personal and gender identities, the success of their postwar rehabilitation, and ul-

24 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

timately the success of their immigration and resettlement. Research literature regarding immigrants and immigration has long viewed successful immigration and resettlement as the result of a combination of situational and psychological factors: social integration, economic success, adaptability, and the support of family and friends.26 Psychologists dealing with the integrative aspects of immigration note that the immigrant must be able to construct a strong spatial, temporal, and social identity in order to cope with the difficulties of functioning in new and strange surroundings.27 Immigration and resettlement after a war differ from voluntary peacetime immigration in several ways. Although postwar immigration can often be voluntary, the postwar immigrant—having undergone hardship, deprivation, and in our case discrimination, persecution, and attempted physical annihilation, is usually in need of an initial period of rehabilitation—one not always available to survivors—before attempting to immigrate. Successful immigration and resettlement, thought of in both psychological and physiological terms, often depends upon the success of this initial rehabilitation, however short it may be. The three processes of rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement are therefore heavily intertwined. What constitutes a successful rehabilitation? In reviewing the diaries, published memoirs, and testimonies of women survivors, there appears to be a strong connection between a woman’s postwar rehabilitation and the extent to which she succeeded in reconstructing her personal and gender identity after the war. This was particularly important for women whose gender identities—whether defined as essential or as performative factors—had been targeted during the war as part of a process of humiliation or persecution, either deliberately or as a byproduct of general Nazi policy. And as the success of women’s rehabilitation determined their immigration choices and their successful resettlement to a great extent, these, too, were in fact ultimately determined by the degree to which she managed to reconstruct these identities. I therefore propose that a pivotal determinant of the success of women survivors’ immigration and resettlement was the extent to which they managed to reconstruct their gender and personal identities during their period of rehabilitation. How did this process come about? What were the means by which women survivors attempted to piece together their postwar identities during their initial stages of rehabilitation? In what ways did the process that they underwent differ from that which male survivors were undergoing during the same period? In order to answer these questions, I will analyze the process by which the four components of personal and gendered identity, according to their broadest definition, were recomposed during the postwar period. These include the reconstruction of body identity, the

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 25

reconstitution of personal awareness of events, the reproduction of long term memory, and, finally, the restoration of gendered performance.

Reconstruction of Body Identity The physical process of rebuilding the self after liberation through the reconstruction of body identity was more difficult for women than for men. The same processes and conditions which both sexes had undergone and endured—forced public undressing, lack of physical privacy, shaving of hair, dressing in camp uniforms which by the end of the war had often become rags, emaciation, and related physiological processes—took a greater toll on women than on men. Forced public undressing before male camp guards was a humiliation and an affront to women’s modesty. The lack of physical privacy that all camp inmates faced was uncomfortable for men but often more of a trial to women, again for reasons of modesty. All inmates’ hair was shaved, but the process was particularly emotionally painful to women, hair being a distinguishing sign of their femininity. Both sexes suffered from hunger and emaciation, but for women, the loss of hips and breasts altered their appearance and made them look outwardly no different than men, which was also a blow to their feminine self. Additionally, this took a toll on their chances of survival, particularly during selections, when women who had lost their female shape were more likely to be chosen for death. Helen Stern Herman recalled her encounters with Mengele: Every time before the selection came, we used to take some rouge paper and make [my sister Frieda’s] cheeks red . . . because . . . as long as . . . they didn’t like the way your body looks or the way your hair looks, he [Mengele] looked the other way [sending you to death]. I’m not talking no more about the humiliation of standing in front of them naked . . . Eventually, probably, it was part of life. But the fear was unbelievable.28

This may explain why one of the first personal postwar issues mentioned by many female survivors in their writings or testimonies was their physical appearance. While men spoke about their emaciation and their lack of strength in more general terms (“we were skeletons, didn’t look like human beings”),29 women’s memoirs and testimonies often referred pointedly to their not looking like women. Some mentioned a feeling of horror at their total lack of femininity and the disgust that their appearance evoked in the healthy men who liberated them. “We were starving and desiccated,” wrote Hedi Fried in her memoir of liberation from

26 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

Bergen-Belsen. “The British soldiers stared at us in repulsion and pity.”30 Pearl Mandelker described how she left the camp a short time after liberation in order to walk to the nearby town. Suddenly, while in the center of the square, she saw her mother: “She was wearing a shabby blue dress, her haggard face carved with deep wrinkles, the skin draped in folds under her chin. She was so emaciated, so small and forlorn.” Mandelker ran towards her as her mother did the same, both opening their arms to embrace one another. “Suddenly I felt a tremendous blow to my head, warm blood poured from my nose and streamed down my face. I fell to the ground unconscious.”Only upon coming to did she realize that she had been looking at her own reflection in a mirror.31A desire to reconstruct a more feminine body identity usually emerged as soon as the initial need for physical sustenance had been obtained. In most cases this was an inner need to recapture what they saw as normality; as one survivor recalled, “we wanted our hair to grow back as soon as possible in order to begin looking and feeling like girls again.”32 Auschwitz survivor Miriam Goldschmidt describes her horror at waking up in a hospital after liberation and feeling her newly shaved head, done this time for reasons of true sanitation. “So I was now liberated, but without hair. I was shocked and burst into tears . . . the nurses had to give me a sedative.”33 In others, the process was accelerated for the sake of the benefits that having feminine looks could bring. Several months after liberation, Fried described how she found one of the very young girls with whom she had been liberated applying makeup: “She rouged her cheeks, applied lipstick, brushed her hair.” When asked why she was doing this, her answer was to the point: “You know it’s easier to get a Tommy interested if you look pretty. Otherwise they won’t notice me. How else can I get cigarettes?”34 One of the tacit but ever-present fears of many women concentration camp survivors was that of not being able to give birth after years of having no monthly menstrual cycle. Auschwitz survivor Zipporah Goldstein, liberated at age twenty-one, described her feeling, and that of most of her friends who had survived: Almost all the girls in Auschwitz stopped getting their periods when they arrived. Some said that the Germans had put something in the food to make this happen. Others said it was the shock and lack of food. After the war we kept thinking whether our bodies would ever come back to normal and if we could ever have children. For some of us this was our greatest fear after liberation, that the Nazis would end up conquering us this way even if they lost the war.35

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 27

“We were afraid of the special ingredient in black coffee which was used to cause sterility in women,” recalled another young Auschwitz survivor, Dora Lampell Roth, who had lost her husband in the war.36 Even when they began to regain a more feminine look, women survivors were aware of the difference between themselves and their healthier postwar surroundings. Wearing ill-fitting but clean clothes given to her by the Red Cross, Hedi Fried describes herself as “a splinter of womanhood in a short skirt.”37 Pearl Mandelker referred to women’s bones “wrapped in skin.”38 It took months before a great number of the female survivors began to once again feel themselves to be women, a difficulty often compounded by the need for gendered performative behavior not long after liberation. The reconstruction of body identity among women survivors was a longer and more drawn out process than that of men. The physiological changes (waiting for hair to grow out, for curves to re-emerge, and for biological cycles to resume) that were part of the process of reconstituting their personal identity often took many months, as opposed to the weeks necessary for the physical rehabilitation process that occurred among their male counterparts. As many women survivors were also under pressures related to the performance of genderduring this period, this rehabilitation was all the more remarkable. The reconstruction of body identity, a physical process with deep psychological repercussions, was the first step for women survivors in reconstituting a healthy “self,” and a prerequisite for any type of successful rehabilitation.

Reconstituting a Personal Awareness of Events A second component of rebuilding the self during the early postwar period involved the reconstitution of a personal awareness of acute events. This was a part of what sociologist William B. Helmreich calls “assimilating the knowledge that they survived,” one of the necessary traits he lists for a successful rehabilitation and resettlement.39 This form of subjectivity created a dilemma for many survivors both male and female, who were deeply connected to their wartime experiences. On the one hand, without such a process the reconstruction of self could not be complete. But on the other hand, the events that the survivors had undergone were horrifying, and a constant awareness of these events could be a stumbling block to emotional rehabilitation. “Who wanted to think about life,” stated Lauryann Uray Freidman, an Auschwitz survivor from Hungary, “my life had been destroyed.”40 “We didn’t care anymore,” stated another Auschwitz survivor, Pearl Davis, “there wasn’t enough energy to care

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what’s going to happen.”41 Similar sentiments were expressed by male survivors. “I realized after the war you have to be a zombie,” said concentration camp survivor Philip Lederman. “If you start to think . . . you are finished. . . . If you didn’t think, just keep going.”42 This problem was the subject of much discussion among the Jewish rehabilitation professionals who worked with survivors, both young and old, in postwar Europe.43 For many survivors, awareness was also connected with an additional factor—memory and commemoration of the Holocaust—with one leading almost immediately to the other. Rivka Horowitz described how she tried to help one young woman (with whom she had gone through three camps) break through her postwar apathy to begin rebuilding an awareness of her past and present, and thus her future: I would constantly remind her of how we had kept her from killing herself when her son had been taken away in Plaszow. How we dragged her through the death march from Auschwitz by reminding her of her brother in Palestine, and how she should not forget these things and always be aware of them, horrible as they were, as we helped her live for a purpose.44

The longer, more drawn out process of rebuilding body identity among women survivors acted as a constant physical reminder of these events, which made recovering an awareness of the events a longer process than it was for men, but a more natural one.45 There were, however, both male and female survivors who dealt with this awareness by consciously attempting to block all memories of the war years. A few even took concrete steps to erase these memories not only from their conscious awareness, but even from their past history: some surgically removed tattooed concentration camp numbers, denied their past history, or even converted to Christianity.46 But awareness and memory are different, and the attempt by these survivors to deliberately block all conscious awareness of wartime events was in itself testimony to the central role that these events played in their psyches. The survivors who pursued this process rebuilt different and less holistic selves than those survivors who dealt directly with a reconstituted personal awareness of their recent past.

Reproduction of long term Memory The reproduction of long term memory was not only a necessity in reforming the postwar self, but part of a pivotal dictum in the Jewish tradition: “to remember,” or to reconstitute and affirm the memory of significant (“acute”) events. The act of reproducing memory among Holocaust survi-

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 29

vors was in itself a healthy process by virtue of the fact that it attempted to place the horrific events of the past in the realm of memory, rather than to keep them within an ongoing present. By formulating the means first to remember and ultimately to commemorate, survivors could create a legitimate location for these events in their psyche, allowing them to incorporate the events into their being without retaining them as foci for daily life. The result enabled survivors to live in the present and continue into the future, and was another stepping stone in the reformulation of self. While ostensibly taking on a similar form for both male and female survivors, the process of reproducing long term memory often differed between the two sexes, following the forms of public and private remembering and commemoration that had been common in Jewish society before and during the war. For example, at the first anniversary of liberation of the She’erit Hapletah, the public commemorative ceremonies were almost all conducted by men.47 Yet women of the She’erit Hapletah were notably present and active in the creation of memorial projects and historical documentation. Not only were there three women among the eight founding members of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Munich, but women could be found both among the activists of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland and among the authors of communal Memorbuchs.48 How ironic, therefore, that the group which was often a guiding force in the early reformulation of Holocaust memory and commemoration was possibly the least commemorated body within the She’erit Hapletah. This, however, deals with the public remembering and commemoration. In the private sphere, one could often find differences between how the sexes each worked to create the long term memory of the Holocaust. Lawrence Langer discusses the healing virtues of “common memory”: by talking of normalcy amid chaos, atrocity can be mediated and listeners can be reassured that in spite of the ordeal, some human bonds remain inviolable.49 This form of reproducing long term memory seems to be more common among individual women survivors than among men. Male survivors might speak about a friend who helped them at various times, but apart from ideologically connected groups such as the communists or the Orthodox Jews, it was rare to hear men speak about long term mutual assistance among groups (not pairs) of inmates. Women’s memoirs and testimonies, on the other hand, often referred to the mutuality that sustained the mothers and daughters, sisters, and larger female groups who had gone through the Holocaust together. These connections went to form the basis of healthy family bonds in the newly reconstituted female self which would create families in the future. Furthermore, the larger mutual assistance groups, which were more common among women during

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the war than among men, often continued to survive in different forms in the immediate postwar period. This enabled women—some of whom never found any family after the war—to have an existing forum through which they could recreate their memories of the Holocaust.50 While it is impossible to determine whether women survivors had different Holocaust memories than men did, it appears that they had less difficulty coping with several of the forms of memory with which survivors had to contend, each corresponding to a different form of self. Using the template which Lawrence Langer prescribes in his study of Holocaust testimonies, it appears that male survivors ultimately found it possible to make their peace with deep memory (the buried self) and anguished memory (the divided self), but they had difficulty with other forms of memory. It seems to have been easier for women to admit to—and thus cope with—humiliated memory (the besieged self), tainted memory (the impromptu self), and unheroic memory (the diminished self). In spite of her ultra-Orthodox upbringing and lifestyle, Rivka Englard had little difficulty in speaking to members of her hakhsharah kibbutz soon after the war about various memories which would be considered humiliating or unheroic. “It was part of me and could never be wiped out. I knew that something could be learned from it by the younger girls in the group, to help them come to terms with their own experiences and enable them to leave it behind and continue building a life and a future.”51 Speaking metaphorically of her humiliated memories, Isabella Leitner wrote: It crossed the ocean. She and I. Like two good friends. No! Not at all. I don’t like her, but she likes me. She follows me everywhere, refuses to separate from me, even though I hadn’t promised to bring her along. “Look,” I said, “it’s been enough. Stay behind.” I am begging her, “There is a new world out there. I want to see it. I want to live. With you it is not possible. I beg you!”52

Reproducing long term memory of the Holocaust was a necessary evil; without it one could not progress into normal life. But it required a psychological wrench, a change in attitude which allowed survivors to look into the future by at once remembering the past and detaching themselves from it. One method of achieving this was through long term commemoration, such as the historical endeavors mentioned previously. Another was to continue discussing the Holocaust as a past event from which they had emerged into the present, often within the confines of what could be considered a support group (formerly a mutual assistance group) of which they had been part during the war. However this change in attitude was accomplished, accomplishing it was a prerequisite—together with the

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 31

previously discussed awareness of events and reconstruction of body identity—of recreating personal identity, achieving a sense of independent self, and ultimately building a normal life.

Restoration of Gendered Performance A separate but significant process involved in recreating the complete self was the reconstruction of gender identity through the restoration of gendered performance. Differing greatly from body awareness but also dependent upon its redevelopment, this form of identity was rooted in gendered behavior and action. What could be constituted as gendered performance? While difficult to define precisely, one might state that any type of activity that society of the time had represented to itself as male and female fell into this category: for men, physical labor, breadwinning, public sports, and the like; for women, pregnancy, childbearing, and homemaking. For both sexes, gendered performance also involved various types of intimate activities that at times took a violent form. Women survivors often faced their first demand for gendered performance upon liberation by the Red Army. Helen Sendyk writes of the Russian soldiers who sought celebration, wanting a reward for their efforts. “They were drenched in vodka and they were ready for dziewuszki—females. ‘How can you refuse us?’ We begged, we pleaded for them to leave. They would not budge.”53 Felicja Karay, in her study of the Hasag-Leipzig slave labor camp for women, states that immediately after liberation, the women’s emaciated state saved them from rape by the Russian soldiers, but “in time, as the former inmates began to look normal again, rape became a threat for them as well.”54 Lydia Brown describes how, standing at the side of the road immediately after liberation, a Soviet officer asked if she and the girls whom she was with would come to spend the night with them. “What are you talking about?” she said, “We’re all sick and undernourished—don’t even talk about it!”55 Rape by the Soviet army was so common that when a survivor spoke of luck she stated: “I had so many close calls and I survived so many different situations, even not being raped by the Russians.”56 A less violent form of gendered performance immediately after liberation could be seen in the women who went out to gather foodstuffs and create a kitchen in the liberated areas. Cecia Brandstatter recalled: We went to the German storage houses . . . and helped ourselves to whatever we needed. We didn’t have big aspirations and big desires. What did

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we take? I got some yarn, and I made a dress, Frieda got some flour from a German woman who was living across the street from the concentration camp, and she baked something to take along on our trip home.57

While there are testimonies of men gathering provisions, the act of setting up long term kitchen facilities in places where the liberating armies did not provide them was usually left to the women, following the accepted behavior from before the war. Marriage, homemaking, and pregnancy were probably the most common and yet the most complex form of gendered performance among the women survivors of the She’erit Hapletah. The desire not to be alone and to recreate a family as rapidly as possible was both a powerful drive and the primary impetus for marriage among both male and female survivors. This desire in itself—what Atina Grossmann calls “biological revenge”58—was not only gendered behavior, but also an expression of the existence of a reconstituted self. The results were often immediate. As the JDC social worker Sadie Sandler, who worked in the DP camps, wrote, by the summer of 1946 “every third woman is either pregnant or already pushing a baby carriage.”59 But as common as this behavior was, it was complicated by the other psychological work necessary: in cases where marriage or pregnancy occurred before any type of true physical or emotional self had been reconstituted, they could actually be detrimental to the reestablishment of the self. The examples include marriages hastily enacted out of loneliness between unsuitable partners or pregnancy before the mothers had reached the level of physical rehabilitation allowing them to bear children without danger. While at times such gendered behavior facilitated short term normalcy, it ultimately inhibited a survivor’s long-term rehabilitation in cases where the survivor was not physically or emotionally fit for its consequences. “Couples got together for the simplest of reasons,” recalled Ya’akov and Henia Traube, who had married in early 1946 after meeting at a hakhsharah kibbutz set up outside the DP camp of Zeilsheim. “Often it was a case of ‘I am a man, you are a woman, we are both from Krakow and alone, and we both speak Yiddish, let’s get married.’”60 While many of these early and hasty marriages among the She’erit Hapletah were ultimately successful, others were not. Women’s testimonies refer to difficult marriages among unsuitable partners, often occurring when pressure was exerted by men to marry while women, not yet ready for this step, reluctantly concurred, either because they sought protection or felt pressured by their surroundings. Some were saved from such a fate at the last moment. Heidi Fried recalls how she met a middle-aged British sergeant in Lübeck, a widower with a small child, who proposed to her almost immediately. “I almost said yes on the spot, without reflecting that I did not know him, that he

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was much older than I, and that I knew nothing about his background. My hunger for a family, to feel that I belonged, to share my life, was such that I would have done anything to still it.”61 Upon being informed of Fried’s plans, her sister asked if she loved her fiance, and when hearing the answer “of course not” and learning that she only wanted to marry him for a home, cajoled and coerced her to wait for a more suitable marriage candidate. Other women were not so lucky. The results of this gendered behavior that related to marriage, pregnancy, and birth were particularly significant for women. Marriage and conception were undoubtedly acts that required two partners; however, women alone bore the onus of carrying a pregnancy to term and of bearing and caring for the child. Not all of the women survivors who found themselves pregnant were capable of coping with the consequences. Some survivor women who had not regained their strength and health found pregnancy and birth extremely difficult and were barely able to care for their newborn children in the DP camps. Luckily, the JDC and other social services—as well as the mutual assistance groups that continued to operate among DP women—assisted in caring for the infants, allowing them to grow and develop. The mothers, however, were another story. For some, although still physically or psychologically frail when they became pregnant, the emotional aspect of beginning a family immediately was so positive that it actually helped their rehabilitation. For others, though, the opposite was true. Finding themselves both psychological and physically fragile and yet enmeshed in full time childcare with little or no amenities, they had little strength to influence the issues relating to their own and their family’s future. The postwar rehabilitation of the She’erit Hapletah was a long, ongoing, and complex process with numerous psychological and physiological aspects, implications, and ramifications. In addition to the issues already explored, there were a number of variables which are difficult to chart, such as preexisting tendencies and personality traits among survivors that made them better or worse candidates for a speedy rehabilitation. Although the role of chance often seems to be paramount, there were obviously natural tendencies which assisted members of the She’erit Hapletah in reconstructing healthy postwar selves. Similar to the traits which sociologist William Helmreich notes as being common to successful survivors in his study of Holocaust survivors in America, these were flexibility, assertiveness, a general sense of optimism, group consciousness, courage, and tenaciousness, or a tendency to persevere “against all odds.”62 Although they can not be quantified, we can assume that such traits had a bearing on the speed of the rehabilitation process that the survivors underwent.

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Immigration and Resettlement Diaries, interviews, and oral or video testimony of survivors among the She’erit Hapletah point over and over again to the importance of reconstituting a healthy personal and gender identity in completing a successful rehabilitation. But this is only part of the tale. In examining these testimonies as they go further into the postwar period, a pattern begins to emerge. It appears that a successful rehabilitation did not simply result in a reconstituted self, but that the success of the process had bearing upon a number of issues, including the input that these women had regarding their venue of immigration and, most importantly, the success of their resettlement. Few members of the She’erit Hapletah had long term plans to remain in Europe. Of those liberated by Allied forces in Germany and Austria, very few from Poland or the Baltic states chose to return home, except possibly for a short period to see whether any members of their family had remained alive. Those from northern, western, and southern Europe who could be repatriated returned to their homelands soon after liberation. Researchers who have studied the phenomenon of population movement and postwar migration have noted how the major wave of repatriation took place up to and during the summer of 1945. After that time, when the DP camps were established, the majority of residents were central and eastern European Jews who refused to return to their countries of origin and who instead planned to immigrate to Palestine, the United States, Canada, England, Australia, South Africa, or to various South American countries.63 How did the DPs decide on their final destinations? Most researchers of the period agree that although a majority of the DPs expressed Zionist longings, at least according to surveys taken in the DP camps in late 1945 and early 1946,64 survivors most often immigrated to wherever their relatives resided. Palestine was the default destination for survivors with no living relatives, for those whose relatives lived there, or for those with extremely strong Zionist feelings in spite of their having relatives elsewhere. Except in a few special cases, the United States basically opened its doors to refugees and survivors via two stages of changes to its immigration regulations, the first in 1948 and the second in 1952. Those who wished to immigrate to America before those dates but who were unable to obtain visas were allowed to remain in the DP camps, where some were pressured to change their minds and immigrate to Palestine and later to Israel.65 How did the extent of a survivor’s rehabilitation and her success in reconstructing her personal and gender identities affect her venue of immigration? What happened when a couple disagreed on their country of

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destination—for example, when one partner was a Zionist and the other was not? What was the case when one had Zionist leanings but no relatives in Palestine while the other had relatives elsewhere, or when each partner had close relatives in different countries? Pearl Mandelker’s experiences were typical of those women whose rehabilitation had progressed well and who had decided to marry while still in Germany. Describing herself as a “strong woman” who wished to celebrate her survival with a good life, she knew soon after the war that she wanted to leave Germany for only one destination—Palestine. Although her husband’s father and two brothers had emigrated to the United States, she was adamant about moving to Palestine, and she managed to convince her husband that she could never be happy in America. But, having seen her Jewish neighbors in Regensburg murdered by German hooligans in 1947, around the time her daughter was born, Mandelker agreed with her husband that the family had to leave Germany immediately. As they were ineligible for illegal immigration to Palestine (the Aliyah Bet) because of their infant, she agreed to move to America until it would be possible to move to Eretz Yisrael. Although she built a successful life for herself in America, however, Mandelker never gave up her dream of moving to Israel part time, and was able to realize it two and a half decades later. According to her, the decision to move to America was a mutual one. Her husband had initially agreed to move with her to Palestine because of her strong feelings on the matter, in spite of the fact that his relatives were elsewhere.66 Similar stories appear in the memoirs of numerous women survivors who had undergone a successful rehabilitation before marrying and who were equal partners with their husbands in determining their venue of emigration.67 Sara Tennenbaum, also an Auschwitz survivor, was another woman who, in her own words, “had come back to life” after the war, had completed a successful rehabilitation, and was determined to move to Palestine: When the Nazis finished with me I wasn’t a woman, wasn’t a person, was hardly a human being. I was a walking skeleton with almost no hair and looked a hundred years old. But I decided that I wouldn’t let them win. I had no one and nothing left but myself. Slowly I gained weight and started functioning like a woman again if you know what I mean. And then in the DP camp I met a nice young man, he was from a town right near mine and we decided to get married.68

Tennenbaum’s husband had an uncle in Australia who wished to sponsor the couple’s immigration, but Sara refused to consider any country

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other than Eretz Yisrael: “I told Motke that I had enough of living like that, not among our own people, and that I could only live surrounded by Jews. He gave in and we went on Aliyah Bet in 1946.” Tennenbaum and her husband had their first child in 1948 and went on to ultimately own a clothing store in Tel Aviv. Rivka Horowitz’s case also involves Palestine but shows the significance of her gendered identity in her choice of immigration venue. Another case of speedy rehabilitation, Horowitz became extremely involved in the reconstitution of the ultra-Orthodox network of girls’ schools, Beit Ya’akov, in liberated Germany. In 1946 she married Leibel Pinkusewicz, a Polish survivor who was an activist in the equally ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel political movement. Although she had always spoken of aliyah to Eretz Yisrael, Horowitz and her husband made a mutual decision to move to Belgium where they could both continue to be active, he in religious politics and she in ultra-Orthodox girls’ and women’s issues: I was very aware of how important it was to do something for these girls in Europe and knew that I could do it better from there than from Israel. So as much as I wanted to move to Eretz Yisrael which would be good for me [emphasis in the original], I knew as a believing Jewish woman that I had to do something that would be good for those girls.69

Horowitz resettled in Antwerp and for many years made a name for herself as an activist in ultra-Orthodox girls’ education. Malka Zussman’s case epitomizes a different kind of choice, one that didn’t involve Palestine. She, too, according to her own testimony, had undergone a successful and rapid rehabilitation: “I knew that I had to put the war behind me in order to go on living, to remember it and learn from it but not to live it over and over, day after day.” Having spent the war in various labor camps, she married another survivor in the Landsberg DP camp in mid-1946. Both Zussman and her husband had Zionist sympathies, but both also wanted to live close to their relatives, Zussman’s uncle in Argentina and her husband’s family in England. The couple decided together that they would have a better chance in Argentina, as Zussman’s uncle was financially much better off than the relatives in England. Years later, after making successful lives in South America, the couple immigrated to New York, following their own children who had moved there previously.70 Rivka Englard’s case, less typical than the previous ones, shows a different kind of determination regarding immigration venue. A survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Englard seems to have moved rapidly through the stages of reconstructing her personal and gendered identities

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after the war. A strong personality who had been a leader of a group of ten young women who had gone through the camps together, she knew without a doubt that she wanted to move to Palestine after liberation: As soon as I was on my feet I began to be active in the Beit Ya’acov movement in Bergen-Belsen. I moved to an Orthodox kibbutz but I knew that if I got married I might not be able to leave for Palestine. So I decided not to do what so many of my friends were doing [marrying soon after the war] and waited until I reached Eretz Yisrael before looking for a husband.

After her aliyah, Englard was in charge of a beit halutzot (a residence for unmarried working women) in Ramat Gan and ultimately taught in a Beit Ya’akov school in Bnai Brak.71 Here we see five examples of women who had undergone successful rehabilitation, who had a great deal of input into their choice of destination, and who achieved a successful resettlement. A different story emerges from the testimony of Rachel Brenner, who admits to marrying in a DP camp long before she was ready to do so: I was so depressed, so tired all the time, I couldn’t get over the fact that I had lost all my family and thought I had nothing to live for. All my girlfriends were getting married so I did as well. My husband was much older and we really had nothing in common except that we were both survivors. He decided everything for us. I had had enough war and wanted to move to America but he said that we were moving to Eretz Yisrael. I cried and cried but didn’t have the strength to oppose him and so we moved here in 1948. . . . It took me many years to make a life for myself here. I never really learned the language well and only began to speak it with my children when they went to school.72

Hanna Lefkowitz, who found herself with relatives in the United States although she had wanted to move to Palestine, tells a similar story: I got out of the camps all alone, I was broken, sick, and had one girlfriend who had gone through everything with me and watched out for me. She wanted to move to Palestine and told me she would take care of me there. She went on Aliyah Bet and I was supposed to follow. But I got a letter from a cousin in America who said that I had a responsibility to the family to come to them and even though something didn’t seem right I didn’t have the strength to fight. I ended up going to America but it turned out that my family there really wanted a maid. After two years with them I finally pulled myself together and went to work in a factory.73

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While it is rare to find stories that follow this pattern in published Holocaust monographs, they are not at all uncommon in interviews and in audiovisual documentation. There one can find numerous accounts of young women survivors who were pressed to marry or to make decisions regarding their immigration before they had completed their own rehabilitation and had the strength to do so responsibly.74

Discussion The circumscribed framework of this study does not enable me to quote additional survivor testimonies at length, making it all the more important to note that those that appear here were chosen as representative samples from a large corpus of documentation dealing with women survivors from the She’erit Hapletah. Time and again the testimonies in this corpus point to a repeating pattern: a successful initial postwar rehabilitation that incorporated a reconstruction of their personal and gendered selves gave women a better chance of having input into their personal future and succeeding in their ultimate resettlement. Conversely, those women who did not have enough time to reconstitute their personal and gender identities before being forced to act in a performatively gendered sense often entered into less fulfilling marriages, had less input into choosing their immigration destination, and encountered major difficulties in resettlement. The existence of this pattern, in itself ostensibly logical, raises several questions, some of which were touched on earlier in this study. Where does the impact of preexisting personality traits enter into the equation described here (rebuilding personal identity + gender identity = successfully reconstructed postwar self => better rehabilitation => greater immigration input + successful resettlement)? Further, it is obvious that what one survivor considers a “successful resettlement” was not necessarily seen as such by another. In view of the fact that this study primarily uses subjective first-person accounts and testimonies as its major source materials, and—even bearing in mind that this is a qualified and not a quantified study—how can one qualify and compare subjective survivor evaluations? Finally, there exists the issue of gender. While these testimonies focus on women’s experiences, were there not male survivors who found themselves in states of incomplete rehabilitation while being forced into making similar decisions? Was there actually a difference between men and women in this matter, or was the “survivor rehabilitation pattern” essentially gender blind?

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The role of preexisting personality traits, both in survival and in resettlement of Holocaust survivors, has been discussed at length in various studies of survivors’ postwar lives such as those of Helmreich and Yablonka.75 As stated earlier, among those traits that may have assisted individuals in surviving the war and leading positive lives afterwards were flexibility, assertiveness, optimism, intelligence, and courage. It is likely that the same traits may have also afforded them a more rapid rehabilitation or, in our case, a more successful reconstitution of personal and gendered selves. One can therefore see their role in the aforementioned equation as catalytic. The existence of such traits naturally demands attention and recognition as subjective factors, but ones which may have altered the pace of the process of reconstituting a self, but neither the existence nor the necessity of this process as a part of survivor rehabilitation. Consequently, by their nature they do not disturb or alter the equation proposed in this study. This leads me to the issue of subjectivity. Aware of the limitations of even an admittedly involved researcher’s judgment regarding what can be considered “successful,” I have accepted the survivors’ own evaluation regarding this relative term, rather than trying to use objective criteria to qualify the study. If a survivor considered her rehabilitation to be “rapid” and her resettlement to have been “successful,” I did not question that judgment. True, for one woman successful resettlement may have involved social acceptance, while for another it meant true economic success and not just financial stability. For a third, having healthy and well-adjusted children was enough to make her judge her resettlement as having been “successful.” Dora Zaidenweber, quoted in Helmreich, stated her feelings succinctly: “I’ve certainly been grateful for every day that was granted to me, and I still am.”76 (Again, this may be connected to preexisting personality traits.) My decision not to set up any objective criteria for these matters stemmed from my attitude toward my subjects. For me, the women whose testimonies I was using were just that: subjects, not objects, who had opinions and judgments of their own that were of equal worth. This attitude allowed me to research while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism. Our final question deals with the issue of male versus female survivor rehabilitation and resettlement. Understandingly, both men and women who survived the Holocaust faced a long process of physical and emotional rehabilitation. Here, however, I have shown how certain issues— particularly those having to do with the reconstitution of body identity and gendered identity—were often longer and more difficult processes for women than for men. Consequently, the chances that women survivors would have to face the demand for gendered performance before they

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were physically ready was usually much greater than it was for men. Furthermore, although there were naturally male survivors who had to make immigration choices before they had completed a full rehabilitation, they were usually less encumbered by social pressure to marry before they were ready, and—unlike women—were never encumbered by certain performative gender issues such as pregnancy or child rearing. Finally, we should bear in mind that as a rule, the full physical and emotional rehabilitation of men was often more rapid less influenced by social and biological determinants than women’s rehabilitation. In conclusion, what can we learn from these testimonies about the ways in which the rehabilitation of identity relates to the success of resettlement? Even if we are reluctant to draw any sweeping conclusions based on the repetitive patterns found in survivor testimonies and writings, there appears to be a strong connection between a successful reconstitution of a personal and gendered self and successful rehabilitation, immigration, and resettlement. And even if the initial prerequisite for a more rapid rehabilitation process was a conglomerate of particular personality traits, this was not a “make or break” condition that existed immutably from birth or childhood. As studies have shown, such traits can be learned later in life as a response to events or as a mechanism for development and survival.77 Human beings not only influenced by their environment but equally maintain a lifelong capacity for change and growth. This fact, along with an inborn sense of hope, were perhaps the major factors that allowed survivors—both men and women—to rebuild their personal and gender identities after the war, to immigrate to and resettle in a new homeland, and to lift themselves out of the ashes of the Holocaust in order to build new lives.

Notes 1. Among these studies: Koppel S. Pinson, “Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DP’s,” Jewish Social Studies 9 (April 1947): 101–26; Leo Schwartz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Years 1945–1952 (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953); Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah (New York: Random House, 1970); idem, Out of the Ashes (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989); Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, eds., She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990); Judith Tydor Baumel, “The Politics of Religious Rehabilitation in the DP Camps,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 6 (1990): 57–79; idem, “Prayer Books and Felt Hats: The Spiritual Life of the She’erit Ha-pletah” [in Hebrew], Yalkut Moreshet 48 (April 1990): 55–68; idem, Kibbutz Buchenwald (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied

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2.

3.

4.

5.

Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Yosef Grodzinsky, Good Human Material [in Hebrew] (Or Yehuda: Hed Artzi, 1998); Haim Genizi, The Adviser on Jewish Affairs to the American Army and the Displaced Persons, 1945–1949 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Moreshet and Sifriyat Ha-poalim, 1987); Julia Schulze Wessel, Zwischen Selbstorganisation und Stigmatisierung: Die Lebenswirklichkeit jüdischer Displaced Persons und die neue Gestalt des Antisemitismus in der deutschen Nachkriegsgessellschaft (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1998); Angelika Koenigseder and Juliane Wetzel, Lebensmut im Wartesaal (Frankfurt a.M: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1994). Regarding the different terms used to denote Jewish survivors of the Holocaust (survivors, She’erit Hapletah, displaced persons, etc.), see Dalia Ofer, “From Survivors to New Immigrants: She’erit Hapletah and Aliyah,” in She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, edited by Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 304–8. I have used the terms She’erit Hapletah and DP interchangeably to describe the survivors living in liberated Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily in DP camps, during the period covered by this essay. See also Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War (New York: New York University Press, 1999); William B. Helmreich, Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). Regarding women in the She’erit Hapletah, see my studies: “Kibbutz Buchenwald and Kibbutz Hafetz Hayyim—Two Experiments in the Rehabilitation of Jewish Survivors in Germany,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 2 (1995): 231–49; “DP’s, Mothers, and Pioneers: Women in the She’erit Hapletah,” Jewish History 11, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 99–110. Other studies dealing with women include: Atina Grossmann, “Trauma, Memory, and Motherhood: Germans and Jewish Displaced Persons in Nazi Germany 1945–1949,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 38 (1998): 215–41; idem, “Victims, Villains, and Survivors: Gendered Perceptions and Self-perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons in Occupied Postwar Germany,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (2002): 291–318; Margarete L. Myers, “Jewish Displaced Persons: Reconstructing Individual and Community in the US Zone of Occupied Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 42 (1997): 303–24; Margarete Myers Feinstein, “Jewish Women Survivors in the Displaced Persons Camps of Occupied Germany: Transmitters of the Past, Caretakers of the Present, and Builders of the Future,” Shofar 24, no. 4 (2006): 67–89. Judith Tydor Baumel, “Women’s Agency and Survival Strategies during the Holocaust,” Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 3 (1999): 329–47; Carol Rittner and John Roth, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York: Paragon House, 1993); Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998); Judith Tydor Baumel, Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1998); Esther Fuch, ed., Women and the Holocaust: Narrative and Representation (Studies in the Shoah 23, Lanham: University Presses of America, 1999); Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). There have, however, been several studies and compilations of testimony dealing with women refugees from the Holocaust. See Andreas Lixi-Purcell, Women of Exile: German-Jewish Autobiographies since 1933 (New York, Westport, and London: Greenwood, 1988); Sibylle Quack, ed., Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period (Publications of the German Historical Institute, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

42 • Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

6. Regarding the issues of authenticity, validity, and Holocaust testimony, see Christopher Browning, Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). 7. Regarding this issue, see my article “‘Can Two Walk Together if They Do Not Agree?’ Reflections on the Compatibility between Holocaust Studies and Women’s Studies,” Women: A Cultural Review 13, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 195–206. 8. There has, until recently, been something of a debate regarding the legitimacy of gender and the Holocaust as an academic discipline. See Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Auschwitz and the Professors,” Commentary 105 (1998): 42–46; idem, “Controversy— Holocaust Studies: Gabriel Schoenfeld and Critics,” Commentary 107 (1998): 14– 25. 9. Mary C. Brinton, Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Elizabeth D. Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make: Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Karen Gottschang Turner, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999); Helen May, Minding Children, Managing Men: Conflict and Compromise in the Lives of Postwar Pakeha Women (Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books, 1992); Marion Faber and Alexandra Stiglmayer, Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Swanee Hunt, This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); Olga Oliker, Russia’s Chechen Wars 1994–2000: Lessons from the Urban Combat (Santa Monica: Rand, 2001); Eleanore O. Hofstetter, Women in Global Migration 1945–-2000 (Westport: Greenwood: 2001). 10. Ezra 9:14; 1 Chron. 4:34. 11. Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors, appendices regarding immigration laws. 12. Yisrael Gutman, “She’erit Hapletah: The Problems, Some Elucidation,” in She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, edited by Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 509–30. Some 73 percent of the She’erit Hapletah were of Polish extraction, 11 percent were Romanian, 5 percent were Hungarian, 4 percent were Czechoslovakian, 3.7 percent were German, and 1.1 percent were Lithuanian. See Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, 4. 13. Michael Brenner, “Displaced Persons,” in The Holocaust Encyclopedia, ed. Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 152. 14. Regarding daily life in the DP camps, see Koppel S. Pinson, “Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DPs,” Jewish Social Studies 9 (April 1947): 101–26; Francesca M. Wilson, Aftermath: France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, 1945 and 1946 (Middlesex: Penguin, 1947); Brenner, “Displaced Persons,” 152. 15. The hakhsharah (pl. hakhsharot) was a communal training farm intended to prepare pioneers for life on a kibbutz in Palestine/Israel. Of the 130,000 survivors found in the American zone in late 1946, 73 percent lived in DP camps and 27 percent were found in other areas. See Gutman, She’erit Hapletah, 519. 16. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 18–19. Additional testimony to the population explosion of the DPs is found in the report of Dr. Haim Hoffman-Yahil, who headed the Eretz Yisrael Delegation to the She’erit Hapletah between 1945 and 1949. See Haim Yahil, “The Eretz Yisrael Delegation to She’erit Hapletah” [in Hebrew], Yalkut Moreshet 30 (November 1980): 31. 17. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 335. This work was originally published in 1689.

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 43

18. See Bernard J. Baars, In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 19. Sydney Shoemaker, Self-knowledge and Self-identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 22–25. 20. John G. Taylor, The Race for Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 270. 21. John Perry, “The Problem of Personal Identity,” in Personal Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 14–15. 22. Sara Ahmed, Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 23. Kathy Davis, Monique Leijenaar, and Jantine Oldersma, eds., The Gender of Power, (London: Sage, 1991); Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 24. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 25. Judith Evans, Feminist Theory Today: An Introduction to Second-wave Feminism (London: Sage, 1995). 26. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); Anthony OliverSmith, Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: The Problems and Responses of Dislocated People (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982); Steven Vertovec, ed., Migration and Social Cohesion (Cheltenham: E. Elgar Pub., 1999). 27. Leon and Rebeca Grinberg, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 130–32. 28. Joseph J. Preil, ed., Holocaust Testimonies: European Survivors and American Liberators in New Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 236. 29. Reuven Cassel, Salvation from Day to Day: The Life Story of Baruch (Bernard) Merzel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: privately printed, 2002), 138. 30. Hedi Fried, The Road to Auschwitz: Fragments of a Life, ed. and trans. Michael Meyer (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 161. 31. Pearl Benisch, To Vanquish the Dragon (Jerusalem and New York: Feldheim, 1991), 410. 32. Leah Freimann, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Petah Tikvah, 12 September 1989. 33. Ilana Rosen, In Auschwitz We Blew the Shofar: Carpatho-Russian Jews Remember the Holocaust [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University, 2004), 299. 34. Fried, Road to Auschwitz, 165. 35. Zipporah Goldstein, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Petah Tikvah, 22 August 1988. 36. Preil, ed., Holocaust Testimonies, 106. 37. Fried, Road to Auschwitz, 182. 38. Benisch, To Vanquish the Dragon, 405. 39. Helmreich, Against All Odds, 272–73. 40. Preil, ed., Holocaust Testimonies, 205. 41. Ibid., 227. 42. Ibid., 82. 43. Jacques Bloch, Problèmes de l’orientation professionelle des enfants juifs victimes de la guerre (Geneva: Union OSE, 1947); Wilson, Aftermath.

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44. Author’s correspondence with Rivka Horowitz Pinkusewicz, 3 January 1988. 45. Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella (New York: Crowell, 1978). 46. Rudolph Tessler, Letter to My Children: From Romania to America via Auschwitz (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1999). 47. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 192–225. 48. Shmuel Krakowsky, “Memorial Projects and Memorial Institutions Initiated by She’erit Hapletah,” in She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, edited by Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 388–98; Baumel, Double Jeopardy, 245. 49. Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 9. 50. Regarding women’s mutual assistance groups, see Judith Tydor Baumel, “Social Interaction among Jewish Women in Crisis: A Case Study,” Gender and History 7, no. 1 (1995): 64–84. 51. Rivka Englard Hoffman, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Bnai Brak, 25 October 1984. 52. Leitner, Fragments of Isabella, 89–90. 53. Helen Sendyk, New Dawn: The Triumph of Life after the Holocaust (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 2. 54. Felicja Karay, Hasag-Leipzig Slave Labour Camp for Women: The Struggle for Survival Told by the Women and Their Poetry (London and Portland, Ore.: Vallentine Mitchell, 2002), 225–26. 55. Sylvia Rothschild, ed., Voices from the Holocaust (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1981), 284. 56. Testimony of Hannah Sara Rigler, in Brana Gurewitsch, ed., Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Woman Who Survived the Holocaust (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 161. 57. Testimony of Cecia Brandstatter, in ibid., 216. 58. Grossmann, “Trauma, Memory, and Motherhood,” 232. 59. Sadie Sandler, JDC Report, Spring 1946, She’erit Hapletah Collection F296 (old numbers), YIVO Archives, New York. 60. Ya’akov and Henia Traube, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwatz, Bnai Brak, 5 February 1987. 61. Fried, Road to Auschwitz, 175. 62. Helmreich, Against All Odds, 267–68. 63. See, for example, Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees: A Study in Forced Population Movement 1945–1952 (Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1956); Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors, appendices. 64. Aviva Halamish, The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine (Syracuse and London: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 3–4, 275. Regarding the historical debate over the She’erit Hapletah’s Zionist inclinations, see the two articles in the colloquium “From Holocaust to Rebirth”: Yechiam Weitz, “The DP Question in Zionist Policy”; Hagit Lavsky, “The Survivors of the Holocaust and the Establishment of the State: An Opportunity that Succeeded” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 55 (March 1990): 162–81. 65. Grodzinsky, Good Human Material, 136–37; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors, 252; Judith Tydor Baumel, Kibbutz Buchenwald: Survivors and Pioneers (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 105. 66. Benisch, To Vanquish the Dragon, 435–36.

The Identity of Women in the She’erit Hapletah • 45

67. See, for example, Cesia Brandstatter, Miriam Rosenthal, Helen Foxman, and Aida Brybord, all testimonies cited in Gurewitsch, ed., Mothers, Sisters, Resisters; the story of EL who wanted to move to New York, while her husband wanted to move to Israel (the couple moved to New York), cited in Preil, ed., Holocaust Testimonies, 76. 68. Sara Tennenbaum Rosenberg, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Tel Aviv, 17 September 1995. 69. Author’s correspondence with Rivka Horowitz Pinkusewicz, 3 January 1988. 70. Malka Zussman Gross, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, New York, 22 June 1988. 71. Rivka Englard Hoffman, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Bnai Brak, 25 October 1984. 72. Rachel Brenner, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Kfar Saba, 15 September 2004. 73. Hanna Lefkowitz, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, New York, 16 June 1988. 74. See, for example, the story of PG in Preil, ed. Holocaust Testimonies, 234; IB, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Ramat Gan, 24 October 2006; AG, interview by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, New York, 22 June 1988. 75. Helmreich, Against All Odds, 267–76; Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, 3–17. 76. Helmreich, Against All Odds, 258. 77. See, for example, Jerome Kagan, The Nature of the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

3

REBUILDING SHATTERED LIVES Some Vignettes of Jewish Children’s Lives in Early Postwar Poland

Joanna B. Michlic



Introduction In her early postwar letter to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC, JDC, or the Joint), Aliza Greens, a resident of Tel Aviv, expressed a compelling desire to adopt her only surviving relative from Poland, the daughter of her murdered brother. “This niece of mine is the only survivor of my family in Poland and I shall spare no effort in bringing her here to live with me.”1 In the letter, Aliza Greens also demonstrated a deep understanding of the situation of her young niece, who had survived the war by passing as a Christian Polish child. She was aware that wartime experiences had deeply affected her niece, and she showed sensitivity regardin the young girl’s confused and fragile sense of identity as she emerged from the war: I wish to emphasize that this matter should be dealt with with the utmost care, because the girl is used to viewing Judaism as a misfortune and as a danger, as a result of being exposed to much violence and murder. Her sensibility in this respect may cause her shock, especially if force is used to

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bring her back to the Jewish faith. Please consider her state of mind and treat her individually.2

Aliza Greens also exhibited an awareness of the complex psychological and social relationship between her niece and the Christian Polish rescuers, the couple Zofia and Stanisław Boczkowski, who had already obtained the status of the girl’s adoptive parents.3 She recognized the rescuers’ strong emotional attachment to her niece. She also acknowledged the rescuers’ dedication and determination to save the Jewish girl regardless of the dangers that they had faced during the war. Nevertheless, Aliza sought advice and tangible help from Jewish organizations about how to persuade the Boczkowski couple to give her niece up. “I must point out that Mrs Boczkowski actually adopted the girl and even put her own life in danger refusing to hand her over to the authorities when rumor spread that the child was of Jewish origin. She treated the girl as her own daughter.”4 Aliza’s letter encapsulates the postwar conundrums surrounding surviving Jewish children. These conundrums deeply influenced their future both as individuals and as members of an ethnic, social, and cultural community. The memories of dramatic developments during the war and the early postwar period came to constitute a fixed element of the children’s individual identity as it came to be expressed in later years, as one of the children, Sara Avinum, reflected: “So many things that I felt, thought, said and did near the end of the war changed over the years. . . . But all these feelings, acts and dilemmas from then are mine now.”5 The children’s early postwar fate was determined by a play of multifaceted factors. Among these were the impact of the war and the Holocaust on their identities, their location in the early postwar period, and the existence of at least one surviving biological parent. Contact with other relatives in Poland and abroad (or the lack of it) and the children’s relationship with the Christian Polish rescuers who became their guardians, as well as the rescuers’ extended families, also belong to this set of crucial aspects that determined the trajectory of their future lives. All these factors interacted and played out in the children’s lives in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Each of the children had his or her own special life story that consisted of a unique universe of experiences, interactions, reactions, and beliefs. Yet at the same time, certain patterns in the children’s relations with the adult world in the early postwar period can be delineated, allowing us to conceptualize the macrohistory of Jewish childhood in that period. Some of the early postwar stories point to the children as appendages and pawns of adult decisions about them, whereas others point to the children as attempting to make, or making, their own

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decisions about their lives, rather than being purely passive recipients of adult values and expectations. All the stories attest to the great vulnerability of children in the adult world not only during the wartime era, but also during the early postwar period.

The Approaches of Parents, Other Jewish Relatives, and Jewish Organizations to the Jewish Children Four social agents were involved in the process of forging new lives for these children: the children themselves, their remaining biological relatives both in Poland and abroad, their Christian Polish rescuers, and the members of the re-established Jewish organizations. Each of these groups approached and experienced the problem of the present and future of the rescued Jewish children in a distinct way. For the surviving Jewish parents, the reunion with their children meant the recovery of the most precious family members, as well as the continuity of family life and of life itself. The surviving parents’ determination to be reunited with their children manifested itself in a search for the child, which in many cases was a protracted and nerve-wracking process that involved identifying his or her early postwar location, traveling to unsafe areas, and garnering funds to pay the rescuer for safekeeping and saving their child. Given the wartime upheavals that frequently led to the relocation of the children from the original shelters in which their parents or acquaintances had placed them, the parents were sometimes forced to search for their children in unfamiliar Catholic and state orphanages, as well as making inquiries in individual Christian Polish homes. They also searched for their children in the Jewish children’s homes that began to mushroom in 1945 in different parts of Poland. Emerging from hiding on the Aryan side or from the death and concentration camps, the parents often did not have any documents to prove that they were the children’s biological parents, nor did they necessarily know the final Aryan name their child had acquired. Some of them could identify their children by a birthmark or other particular bodily characteristics.6 This generally served as sufficient proof that the particular person is the biological parent of the child in question. For parents already living abroad in the West, the search for the surviving child involved costly bureaucratic procedures such as proving parenthood and obtaining funds and visas for the child to get him or her out of Poland. Connections with influential members of Jewish organizations in Poland mattered greatly in such cases, allowing for a faster reunion of par-

Rebuilding Shattered Lives • 49

ents and children. Aviva Blumberg, born on 17 November 1931, recalls that Chaim Finkelstein, her father, a prewar journalist for the important Yiddish language Zionist daily Haynt (Today), first arranged a visa for her to Sweden so that he could later bring her to the United States, where he worked for the World Jewish Congress in New York.7 It was common knowledge at the time that it was easier to get visas to Sweden or to Australia than to the United States. In her interview, Aviva acknowledged that she received exceptionally preferential treatment as the child of a member of the prewar Jewish political and cultural elite: She was smuggled out of Poland some time in September 1945 on a Swedish plane with a group of trade representatives, thanks to the assistance of her father’s childhood friend Adolf A. Berman, a left-wing Zionist who was the director of the Federation of Associations for the Care of Orphans (CENTOS) in wartime Warsaw. After the war, Chaim Finkelstein bombarded Adolf Berman (1906–78) with telegrams asking about the whereabouts of his daughter. When Berman learned that Aviva was in the Jewish Children’s Home in Otwock, he arranged for her to travel abroad through his brother Jakub Berman (1901–84), a powerful Communist leader at that time.8 While waiting for an American visa in Sweden, Aviva lived in the house of the Polish ambassador to Sweden, and later stayed for a short while with a Jewish family in Stockholm. In November 1945, she left Sweden on the Norwegian ship Oslo for New York, where her father awaited her. The first encounter between her and her father was dramatic; they had not seen each other since 1939. Aviva recognized her father, whereas he could not recognize his daughter, who had turned into a teenager over the course of the war. As Aviva recalls, she at first called him Mr. because in the course of five years she had become unaccustomed to saying “papa.”9 In exceptional cases of extended long-term physical separation of children from their parents during the war, parents—especially fathers—and children remained physically and emotionally estranged from one another after the war. For example, Leo Arnfeld, born in Warsaw on 22 August 1939, recalls the total absence of a strong bond between him and his father after the war. Leo’s father, a pharmacist, was drafted into the Polish army at the outbreak of the war when Leo was less than two weeks old. The father escaped in 1941 from Nazi-occupied Vilnius in Lithuania, and subsequently survived the war in China. Leo met him for the first time after the war in 1948, during a soccer match in Munich. Leo’s first reaction to the news that his father was visiting him was that of disbelief: “I thought that they made up a story about him. . . . I did not want to meet him because they took me out of a soccer game. . . . ‘I do not have a father,’ I screamed.”10

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At that time, Leo already lived with his aunt Regina, his father’s sister, and her second husband. This aunt Regina, who lost her first husband and a child during the war, had remarried in Munich, a city that became one of the major centers for Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in the early postwar period in Germany.11 Regina knew Leo’s whereabouts and kept an eye on him during the war while she herself was living as a Christian Polish woman on the Aryan side. After the war, she took upon herself the role of Leo’s guardian after she had reclaimed the boy from the Polish Christian rescuer Irena, who Leo was strongly attached to and whom he treated as if she was his biological mother. During their temporary stay in Germany, Regina and her new husband both acted as if they were Leo’s parents. They raised him, while his biological father, who did not remarry after the war, remained—as Leo admits—a distant figure, and one who did not play a significant role in his postwar childhood.12 One could argue that the fact that Leo remained with his married aunt instead of living with his widowed father after their reunion suggests that at the time it was more socially acceptable within the Jewish community for a child to be brought up by a female member of the family than by a male. This might be in accordance with the traditional eastern European Jewish family model that developed in the modern period. According to this model, the realm of the father (tateh) was considered to be spiritual and intellectual, whereas the virtues of the mother (mameh) were her constancy, sacrifice, love, and care for the child. Children and household were not considered a man’s business.13 In the case of Aviva Blumberg, her father brought her up after their reunion in the United States. However, the relationship between them, as she states, was not easy. Contrasting expectations— (such as the father’s desire that his daughter marry quickly and her desire to earn a higher degree), his ineptitude in dealing with a young female teenager who had problems in adjusting to a new environment, and his guilt about leaving behind him in wartime Poland a wife and a second daughter who had perished all had an impact on their relationship. The father remarried only when Aviva left home in 1955 as an independent young adult with a college degree in her hands.14 For other Jewish relatives, who might not have been familiar with the child of a murdered relative, taking care of such a child meant following the traditional Jewish obligation to honor the dead family members and thus fulfill a family obligation. In traditional Judaism, the informal adoption of the child of a deceased relative was a common practice, while the informal adoption of an orphaned stranger was considered a great mitzvah (good deed).15

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For those couples that had lost their own children during the war and whose age and wartime experiences precluded having their own offspring after the war, the child of perished relatives also represented the instant opportunity to regain and recreate a family of their own. Many such “recreated” families were very successful and happy from the point of view of the child, whereas others were less happy because of the tensions between the child and his or her new adoptive parents. These tensions were rooted in different expectations and in different social and cultural backgrounds, as well as in emotionally harmful comparisons these parents/relatives made between their perished biological children and their newly adopted children. In such comparisons, the perished children always seemed “better” than the adopted ones.16 As a rule, the surviving relatives in Poland went a long way to recover the young members of their families, including protracted court cases and—as a last resort—taking the child secretly and by force from former rescuers who had refused to surrender him or her. These events are poignantly recollected in children’s memoirs and testimonies. For example, in her memoir, Sara Avinum, born in 1936 in Poland, recalls how her grandfather discovered that she was the only living member of her immediate family after the war. The Christian Polish family with whom she had lived for more than five years refused to surrender her to him. After a protracted court case, the grandfather took Sara from them by force and brought her with him to Palestine/Israel.17 On occasion, due to the confusion caused by a lack of documents and the wartime separation, two different surviving parents identified the same child as theirs and claimed their rights over her/him. In such cases heartbreaking disputes were conducted in the courts. Both parties brought witnesses—both Jews and Christian Poles, especially former rescuers—who confirmed the story of the party that brought them to court. In these cases, the official recovery of a child by one surviving parent meant a traumatic loss of a child for the other parent. One illustration of such a traumatic case is the “custody war” over an eight-year-old girl, Marysia Jedlin ´ ska (Marysia Jarząbek, Dunia Grynberg) between Dawid Jarząbek and Usher (Asher, Adam) Powązek. The battle between the two men over the girl began in 1947 and the court proceedings took place on 4 May 1948, in Łódz´ . Usher Powązek returned from the Mauthausen concentration camp to Poland in the summer of 1945, whereas, according to the court documentation, Dawid Jarząbek returned to Poland in 1947. Immediately upon their return, both fathers began to search for their families and learned that their wives had been killed. They were both convinced that Marysia was their closest surviving kin because of her familiar bodily characteristics and because of the statements of eyewitnesses, indi-

52 • Joanna B. Michlic

vidual rescuers, and representatives of Catholic institutions in which the girl was hidden during the war. Usher Powązek was the first who found Marysia in 1946, and he was granted custody over the girl in 1948. The same year he had already remarried Mrs. Grynberg, a survivor like himself who had one surviving son Henryk, a future well-known writer. Marysia, who was at that time known as Dziunia Grynberg, was placed in 1946 in the Jewish Children’s Home in Helenówek, near Łódz´, where she was later joined by her stepbrother Henryk. 18 In some cases, relatives abroad were not interested in adopting the children of their deceased family members, while in others different relatives applied for custody of the same child. Applying for adoption was a lengthy bureaucratic process, involving endless communications with various branches of the AJJDC and official authorities who represented the relatives’ country of residence. Providing detailed information about one’s material status and employment and proving that one was a true biological relative were the standard procedures that all who sought custody had to undergo. Furthermore, the bureaucratic procedures involved arranging, in due time, a passport, visa, and the necessary health forms for a child by Jewish organizations based in Poland. The relatives could only hope that the latter would proceed without any delays and complications. Not only was the adoption highly time-consuming and bureaucratic, but it was also intensely emotional. Therefore, those relatives who had learned that another family member obtained or would be obtaining custody instead of them were often deeply disappointed. The adoptive drama over Avigdor Baranowicz (Baranowitz, wartime name: Wiktor [Witus´] Baranowiecki) illustrates one such case. There were three separate parties who wished to adopt ten-year-old Wiktor: uncle David (Dawid, Dave) Zalesin ´ ski (Zalisinski), a resident, in 1947, of Kibbutz Evron near Naharia, Palestine; Mrs. Sophie Rooby of Paris; and Mrs. Frieda Zwerner of New York. Zalesin´ ski, who was the brother of Wiktor’s murdered mother Mina Baranowicz (née Zalesin´ ska), obtained custody over Wiktor because he was the closest kin and because the boy personally chose him. In a letter, written in Kibbutz Evron on 6 April 1947, to Mrs. Ostrowska, a prewar family friend who worked for the Warsaw branch of the AJJDC, Zalesin ´ ski explained why he should be viewed as the most suitable guardian.19 He was not only the closest family member who knew the child before his departure from Poland in June 1939, but was also a professional educator of youth in Palestine. Therefore, he promised to provide Wiktor with the best education and to be both a friend and a mentor to him. At the same time, Zalesin´ ski spoke cordially about the desires of the other two relatives to adopt the boy.

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On 9 April 1947, the Jerusalem-based Office for the Middle East and Balkans of AJJDC wrote to the AJJDC’s Warsaw Office: Mr. Zalisinski [Zalesin ´ ski] now requests us to inform you that he will be happy to bring Wiktor Baranowicz to Palestine and will do everything to obtain for him the necessary immigration papers. In the meantime, he authorized Mr. Yecheskiel Avni to take the child into his custody. Mr. Avni will take care of the child until such time when he can proceed to Palestine.20

The official reactions of the two other relatives to the news that Zalesin ´ ski was granted permanent custody ranged from disappointment to uneasy acceptance. Mrs. Zwerner, who was a sister of Wiktor’s maternal grandmother, issued a statement channeled to the AJJDC in Warsaw via Ann S. Petluck, Director of Migration in the Department of United Service for New Americans: On 3 June 1947 we submitted an affidavit prepared by Mr. Issac Zwerner of 90 Elliot Avenue, Yonkers 5, N.Y. for Victor. Mrs. Frieda Zwerner now advises us that she is no longer interested in bringing Victor to the USA and requested that all further immigration procedures be stopped, as her nephew in Palestine is very anxious to have this boy with him. Incidentally, Mrs. Zwerner is quite happy at the turn of events, as she is very ill and has to undergo an operation.21

Mrs. Sophie Rooby, who was a relative through marriage on Wiktor’s father’s side, sounded much more emotional than Mrs. Zwerner. In her letter of 6 July 1947, directly addressed to Mr. Zalesin´ ski, she not only expressed her pain at learning that she would not be the adoptive parent, but also questioned Zalesin ´ ski’s ability as a man to take care of the boy, though she did so tactfully. Mrs. Rooby did not know that Zalesin´ ski was married. As far as our dear Victor’s case is concerned, before I go any further in my explanation, I want to assure you that I am only interested in the happiness and welfare of this darling child. As you may know, I lost my dear husband a year ago, and this boy is the only survivor of my late husband’s family. So, when I heard that this child is alive, I was overcome with joy, that I might have a chance to get him over here and keep him as my son. When I heard he is alive, through the Joint [AJJDC]…they did not tell me that Victor has an uncle living in Palestine, so now I realize you have more

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rights being a closer relative. If you think that you can give happiness and comfort to the child in raising him,… I will not stay in your way. I am only concerned about the happiness of Victor. If I do want him, it is not because of egoism, but because of the future of the child.

You did not mention if you [are] married or single, and how you will manage bringing him up, so please think it over, and decide what you want to do, and how I can help.22

Jewish organizations’ approaches to children For the newly reestablished Jewish organizations in Poland (and elsewhere), the recovery of all surviving Jewish children from gentile homes was understood as a primary national duty and a sacred mission. They called the search for Jewish youngsters “the redemption of children,” a term that held a special meaning for the adult survivors. At that time Jewish political and cultural elites from the entire ideological spectrum perceived Jewish children as the “physical and spiritual body” through which the Jewish community might be “reborn” after the devastating destruction. That expectation was commonly expressed during that period not only by Polish Jews but also among other remaining Jewish communities in Europe.23 Thus, like the parents and other surviving Jewish relatives of the children, the members of the Jewish organizations were determined to recover the children by various legal means, from cooperation and negotiation with the former rescuer to questioning in court his or her rights to retain the child. They carefully evaluated the possibility of recovering the children in each case. Some cases were perceived as more hopeful, whereas others as difficult, if not hopeless.

Three main Jewish organizations that represented different ideological stances on Jewish life in the post-Holocaust era were involved in the recovery of Jewish children: the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKZ˙P), the Jewish Religious Council (Kongregacja) headed by Dawid Kahane (1903–98), the chief rabbi of the Polish Armed Forces between 1945 and 1948, and the Zionist Coordination (Koordynacja).24 Not only were these organizations engaged in the recovery of children, but they were also responsible for reuniting Jewish children with their families in Poland and abroad and, in the case of orphans, for finding them new families and homes. Each of these organizations had established a separate network of children’s homes, as well as, in the case of the Zionist Coordination,

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an extended network of children’s kibbutzim operated by Zionist youth organizations such as Hashomer Hatzair and Dror. The Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKZ˙P), located at 60 Sienna Street in Warsaw, constituted the early postwar chief institution of Polish Jewry.25 It was the Jewish umbrella organization that encompassed all the different ideological and political groups (except for the Jewish Revisionists.) The CKZ˙P enjoyed a special standing regarding care for Jewish children because the Polish state authorities recognized it as the main legitimate representative of the postwar Polish Jewish community. According to article 3, section 4 of its statutes, signed by the president of Warsaw on 29 May 1946, one of CKZ˙P’s major rights and responsibilities was to take care of Jewish children, particularly orphans in nurseries and in children’s homes.26 The CKZ˙P was empowered to appoint guardians from among its ranks to look after orphans until judges appointed more permanent caretakers. On occasion, the CKZ˙P was also engaged in challenging disputes and delicate negotiations over the fate of children, disputes that considered the children both as individuals and as members of an ethnic and cultural community. Such disputes often erupted between parents, many of whom had already separated or who had undergone the process of divorce, and who had been deeply affected by the war and the Holocaust. A good illustration of the CKZ˙P’s involvement in such a dispute is its letter of 28 March 1947, to the regional Grodzki Court of first instance in Otwock requesting to verify the legal custody of Marek Dulin´ ski, the son of Marian and Albina Dulin ´ ska of No. 4 Mała Street in the Warsaw suburb of Praga. According to the letter, Marian Dulin´ ski had brought his son to the Jewish Children’s Home in S´wider on 30 January 1947. After two months, Albina Dulin ´ ska, the mother, visited the Children’s Home in S´wider and requested that her son be returned to her. She said that her estranged husband, who she was divorcing, had brought her son to S´wider to hide him from her. She also insisted that she was a Christian and that the father of the child was a Christian. The CKZ˙P decided to continue to care for the boy in the S´wider Children’s Home until legal custody over him had been determined.27 Another delicate case handled by the CKZ˙P was that of Janusz (Idek) Rabinowicz, born on September 16, 1947. Idek’s mother, Krystyna P., requested that the CKZ˙P admit her son to a Jewish children’s home because she did not have sufficient financial resources to look after him or provide him with a good education. She also asked the CKZ˙P to search for Idek’s father, Borys Rabinowicz, with whom she had lost contact. She stressed that she would not interfere with the upbringing and education of her son in the children’s home and that she would be willing to have another

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individual be appointed as her son’s guardian. This case raises many questions about this woman’s personal drama, and specifically about the reasons that led her to contemplate giving up motherhood.28 International Jewish organizations and individuals from abroad were also involved in the recovery of Jewish children. The AJJDC, with its various offices in Poland, Palestine, and the United States, played a central role in the recovery of the children and in their reunion with families. Its main office in Warsaw, located at 18 Chocimska St., dealt with all correspondence pertaining to children that was coming from abroad and from various parts of Poland. Józef Gitler-Barski was the secretary general of the AJJDC in Poland and a key figure in that body’s Children’s Search Committee. In their efforts to transfer the Jewish children out of the country, the international institutions cooperated with the Jewish organizations that had already been established in Poland. For example, in an undated letter, the Central Bureau of Youth Aliyah of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, located at 38/11 Poznan ´ ska Street in Warsaw, informed the CKZ˙P that it possessed two hundred entry visas to France for Polish Jewish children and Polish Jewish educators. The letter delineated the organizational travel details and accommodation in France for Jewish children from one to seventeen years of age. The Jewish children’s centers in France, as well as those in Germany and Switzerland, were viewed as important transitional zones for the children on their way to Palestine/Israel. The letter also emphasized the need to prepare all the necessary paperwork, to carry out children’s medical examinations, and to arrange for a proper supply of children’s clothes to meet the official requirements for immigration. It urged the CKZ˙P to quickly submit detailed information about how many children in its care could be ready to take advantage of the available entry visas to France and to immigrate via the Youth Aliyah channel.29

Christian Polish Rescuers’ Approaches to the Rescued Children Christian Polish rescuers (opiekunowie) exhibited a wide range of attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish children who were still under their care after the war. Some of the rescuers who showed a strong emotional attachment to the child in their care were, nonetheless, willing to return him or her to the surviving biological parent or to other biological relatives. However, this was not always the case. And on the whole, instances of refusal to return the child occurred in cases in which the rescuers knew that one of the biological parents was alive, as well as in cases in which the rescuers were aware that both were dead.

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Some, like the Boczkowski couple, came to view the rescued child as a natural member of their family who should remain with them forever. They wished to be officially recognized as the adoptive parents because they had saved the child and invested much emotion and many of their material means in her or him. This was a rather typical reaction. Many cases of “battles” over children were discussed in the reports and correspondence of the section of the AJJDC active in early postwar Poland. For example, in a letter dated 2 December 1947, Józef Gitler-Barski—himself a Holocaust survivor from Poland—stated that rescuers did not generally agree to return the rescued children to Jewish organizations and that their recovery was marred by many difficulties.30 Official documents issued by the Ministry of Education, the main controlling body over all children’s institutions and organizations in the Polish state, also confirmed that not only private individuals but also state-run orphanages were involved in similar “battles over the children.” According to the directives of 2 July 1946, issued by the Ministry of Education, state orphanages tended on occasion not to register the information about a child’s Jewish identity. Jewish children who were placed in these orphanages were registered only under their Polish (Christian) names and as Catholics, making it extremely difficult for their relatives and Jewish organizations to trace them. The Ministry of Education considered these practices unacceptable and prohibited them. As a ministerial directive put it: The ministry wishes to inform that it is unacceptable to change the children’s religion even if the child himself/herself requests this change. Jewish children located in state orphanages need to be treated properly. The Jewish child has the right to its ethnicity and religion on equal terms with the Polish child. It is also unacceptable to change the names of Jewish children into Polish [spolszczenie] . . . . In the records, both Jewish and Polish names of the children must be registered.31

In attempting to obstruct and stop the search for children, some former rescuers were inclined to relocate with a child and change their address. In doing this, they engaged in the process of “erasing traces of the child’s existence.” Other members of the rescuers’ families sometimes collaborated with them by refusing to disclose their whereabouts and addresses. This is, for example, documented in the CKZ˙P letter of 19 June 1947, to the prosecutor of the district court in Wrocław. In that letter, the CKZ˙P requested judicial intervention to assist Deborah April, the mother of Pola April, to reunite with her daughter. Pola April was born on 13 March 1940, in the hamlet of Pustkowie in the Dębice district. After the war, the

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mother found out that her daughter was in the care of Józef Gębarski, but Gębarski moved with the child before Deborah could reclaim her from him. Gębarski’s father, who Deborah April also traced, refused to disclose his son’s new address to her.32 In other complicated cases, the rescuers would agree to return the child only to one specified member of its Jewish family and not to another one. Looking at such cases, it is not always clear if the rescuers genuinely meant to return the child to a particular child’s relative because they knew and trusted him or her, or if they raised such a demand to obstruct the return of the child to its relatives. In making the surrender of the child conditional, some of them might have hoped that the relatives from abroad might give up on reclaiming the child altogether due to complicated and protracted legal procedures. The case of Władysław and Helena Grzegorczyks, the rescuers of Liwsza (Lifsze, Lifshe) Fuchsberg, is illustrative of such an unclear and murky motivation, and unpredictable twists. Liwsza Fuchsberg was born on 8 September 1942, in Borysław, near Drohobycz in the Lviv province. Before they perished, Abraham and Estera Fuchsberg decided to save their newly born daughter. On 23 November they gave Lifshe to the childless Grzegorczyk (Hrzegorczyk, in the Ukrainian pronunciation) couple for safekeeping (przechowanie). Soon afterward, the Grzegorczyks baptized the girl in a Roman Catholic Church in Borysław and named her Zdzisława Katarzyna Grzegorczyk, presenting the baby girl as their own child. Thanks to their efforts, she survived the war. After the war, like many other Christian Polish and Polish Jewish repatriates from the former prewar eastern Polish territories, the Grzegorczyk family were repatriated to southwestern Poland and settled in Nowa Ruda, in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship.33 Helena (Ida) Fuchsberg, an aunt of Lifshe, who was a nurse working for the Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population, (TOZ), settled in nearby Wałbrzych in Lower Silesia. She approached the Grzegorczyks to reclaim her niece. Mr. Grzegorczyk refused to return the girl to her, stating that he would only agree to return Lifshe to Mina Fuchsberg, Lifshe’s older sister, born in 1931, who had also been sheltered by him during the war and who had already moved to Palestine.34 On 5 May 1948, the district court of first instance in Nowa Ruda granted the Grzegorczyks legal custody over Lifshe. The Grzegorczyks won the case because the witness Olga Peri, the Polish head of the Social Welfare Office in Nowa Ruda, advised the court that they should be appointed the official guardians of Lifshe. Nevertheless, after a few setbacks Helena Fuchsberg won the appeal to grant her custody over her niece on 13 October 1948, in the district court in Kłodzko.35 Helena Fuchsberg was represented by the lawyer Jerzy Korolewicz, who argued that, in the face

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of death, the Fuchsberg couple gave their daughter to the Grzegorczyks for safekeeping (przechowanie) for a limited time, and not for permanent upbringing (wychowanie). The appellants also presented statements of surviving Jewish witnesses who stated that the Fuchsberg couple hoped that if they would not survive, a family member would take care of their baby daughter after the war.36 In spite of winning the appeal in October 1948, Helena Fuchsberg was not reunited with her niece. She never saw her before or during the court proceedings, and shortly afterwards she left for Israel. The author’s telephone interview of 6 August 2011, with Mina Fuchsberg, today Shulamit Aloni and a resident of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, Israel sheds light on the intriguing development. According to Aloni, shortly after the court appeal of October 1948, the Grzegorczyks hid Lifshe, so she would not be taken away from them. They managed to generate moral support from some of the sixteen other Jewish survivors they had sheltered during the war. Aloni also assisted the Grzegorczyks in their battle over Lifshe, though by then she had been already fighting for some time in the Israeli War of Independence. The extremely tough political and economic conditions in her new homeland changed Aloni’s mind regarding Lifshe’s future. She thought her younger sister would be better off by staying with the Grzegorczyks than coming as a child to live in Israel, a country ridden by a bloody war. She therefore sent a statement through a local notary to Poland expressing her wish that Lifshe would remain with the Grzegorczyks, who had been dedicated rescuers and had treated her and Lifshe during and after the war as though they were their own biological daughters. In a telephone interview of 23 July 2011, Lifshe Fuchsberg, now Catherine Ravet of Paris, France, confirms that the Grzegorczyk couple adopted her when she was seven years old. She left them only as a young adult to study music in France in the 1960s. She married there in 1968. Ravet was very emotionally attached to her adoptive parents, who both passed away in the first half of the 1980s. After the war, Ravet and Aloni maintained close contact through correspondence, but have had hardly any contact with their three biological surviving paternal aunts or their families. In some instances, the Christian guardians reacted with intense hostility and a total lack of understanding of the wartime drama of a Jewish parent who had been forced to separate from his or her child in order so that the child would have a better chance to survive. That happened to Rachela Igenfeldowa, née Feferkuchen, from Warsaw, who in 1941 managed to visit her parents in Branwia, in the Lublin area, where she gave birth to her daughter Ita-Łaja the same year. During the final liquidation of the ghettos in the Lublin region in August, September, and October 1942, the mother and the baby girl went into hiding in the forest with

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other Jewish fugitives.37 However, towards the end of the year, Rachela decided to leave the child with a local Christian Pole because of the severely cold weather and the lack of food. She left the girl in front of the house of a peasant acquaintance of hers, Jan Fac, from the small hamlet of Wolka. Rachela attached to the baby a note that the girl was Christian and that her name was Leonka. Leonka ended up living with the family of a wealthy peasant, Józef Pycz from the village of Rataj. After the Russians entered the Lublin area in the second half of 1944, Rachela, along with three other Jewish fugitives and policemen, went to Pycz to reclaim the girl. Pycz stated that he loved the girl and had no intention to give her up. Furthermore, according to witnesses, he suggested that she was a bad mother because she had abandoned her child. Later, he threatened Rachela, saying that he would kill her if she continued to try to recover the girl. He also claimed that she mistook the girl for hers because her description of the child’s bodily features was not accurate. Under such circumstances, Igenfeld sought legal assistance, but her lawyers advised her that her case was very difficult if not futile from a legal point of view. After the Kielce pogrom of 4 July 1946, Rachela left Poland with her newly wedded husband and under the new family name Igenfeld-Besserman. Her first destination on the way to Canada was a picturesque Mittenwald in Upper Bavaria, Germany where she continued to look for ways to be reunited with her daughter. From there in January 1947, she wrote another emotional letter to the Jewish Community in Lublin, urging the local Jewish leaders to act quickly on her behalf and redeem her child.38 In August 1947, she even turned to Pope Pius XII (1876–1958), pleading for his intervention on her behalf. She titled her letter to the Pope a “petition of a desperate mother for help to recover her child that she was forced to abandon under extreme conditions.” When after the pogrom in Kielce many Jews had to flee Poland, my husband and I also had to flee and are now living in Germany, in the American Zone. But I shall never renounce my child. In my desperation I am turning to Your Holiness, the Holy Father, and am begging You to kindly help me in my great distress so that I may be able to regain my child from the farmer Pyc, for I had abandoned the child only because of extreme difficulties in order to prevent her starvation. Only your Holiness can, through the organization of the Catholic Church in Poland, assist me with the surrender of the child by the farmer Pyc.39

After her immigration to Canada, Igenfeld-Besserman also sought help from the local Canadian Jewish organizations. On 16 February 1948, H. M. Caiserman, General Secretary, of the Central Region, Canadian Jew-

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ish Congress in Toronto wrote to Mr. William Bein at the AJJDC branch in Warsaw, asking for the latest update in Igenfeld-Besserman’s case. By then some of the dates and other information regarding Rachela’s wartime story got mixed up and were stated incorrectly. One can infer that this occurred as a result of the passage of time, emotional state of Rachela and her and her Canadian interviewer’s abilities to communicate in the same language. “My dear Mr. Bein: A desperate mother visits our office daily asking that we help her liberate her child whom she left on 12 August 1941 [incorrect date; should be 12 November 1941] at Joseph Pyc, a farmer of Ratay-Gemeinde Kawezyn [Rataj], district Krasnik, near Lublin. The child was eighteenth months old [incorrect age should be sixteenth months old] when the mother left her, and the child has on its body certain birth marks….. I understand that the matter was in court and that the decision was against returning the child to her. I really do not know exactly what can be done to give hope to this desperate mother, but felt that in writing to you, you might be able to indicate to us if anything could still be done so that the mother gets back her child.”40

In a sea of diverse correspondence pertaining to Rachela’s case, the last document from the spring of 1949 informs us that the matter was not yet resolved and that at that time the girl was still with Pycz.41 Thus, Rachela’s desperate efforts of almost five years to regain her child were in vain. They were only reunited in the 1950s.42 The letters of former rescuer Leokadia Jeromirska to Yoram Kotzer shed additional light on the issue of rescuers’ reluctance to surrender a child to its male relatives. Jeromirska, a compassionate childless working class woman, saved a Jewish girl whom she called Bogusia in October 1942 in Białołęka, a neighborhood on the outskirts of north Warsaw. Bogusia—the future Shifra Kotzer—and Jerominska formed a strong emotional bond, and the girl stayed with her until her father contacted Jeromirska in the early postwar period. In a letter of 21 February 1966, to Yoram Kotzer, Bogusia/Shifra’s husband, Jerominska admits that at first she hesitated to surrender her beloved Bogusia to a male stranger, even though he was Bogusia’s biological father. She argued that in contrast to women, men exhibit egoistical postures, preventing them from being suitable at providing an upbringing for children. Therefore, it would be better for Bogusia if a woman raised her.43 This gender-based position reveals that a belief in the traditional family model in which the female was perceived as a nurturer and provider for the child’s quotidian needs while the male remained a rather distant figure, one not involved in a child’s daily care,

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has to be considered as one of the factors in some cases of the rescuers’ unwillingness to return the children to their male relatives.44 Some rescuers sought contact with the children’s relatives abroad and with Jewish organizations in order to receive financial assistance to cover the medical and educational costs of rearing the child. Thanks to such communications, the Jewish organizations learned about the existence of child survivors. These rescuers either lost much of their wealth as a result of the war or were already poor at its outset. They usually expected to be treated as guardians who should be assisted in rearing the child by Jewish relatives and Jewish organizations, whereas the relatives and the organizations held a totally different point of view. These latter parties were mainly concerned with the wellbeing of the child in the rescuers’ care, as well as with the opportunity to recover the child and transfer him or her to relatives or to an adoptive Jewish family. On the whole, in this category of rescuers, prolonged negotiations were conducted between the rescuers and Jewish relatives and organizations, frequently involving high expenses and costly bureaucratic court proceedings. This is not to say that the Jewish relatives and the Jewish organizations did not recognize the dedication of such rescuers and their rescue efforts. The AJJDC, Va’ad Ha-hatzalah, the World Jewish Congress, Rescue Children, Inc., and other international organizations were the principal Jewish institutions that provided funds for financial compensation for all kinds of rescuers in Poland and in other countries. A special Committee to Assist Poles (Komitet Pomocy Polakom) was also established within the CKZ˙P and the AJJDC. Rescuers who were motivated by a moral obligation to return the child to the child’s remaining biological family or to a Jewish community behaved in a totally different manner from the above-mentioned group. Immediately after the war, on their own initiative, they informed the newly reconstituted local Polish Jewish organizations that a Jewish child was in their care. Many among this group did so in spite of their strong emotional attachment to the child. Many of these rescuers were also severely poor, and therefore asked the Jewish organizations for assistance in raising the child for as long as he or she remained in their care. For example, Alina Kolak informed the Voivodish Jewish Committee in Warsaw that she had looked after Krystyna Frochman, born in 1940, since she found her in Leczno, in the Lublin region, at the beginning of 1943. Kolak knew that Krystyna’s mother and older sister were killed and that her father never returned from the transit camp in Trawniki. In the early postwar years, Kolak lived with the rescued girl in a one-room basement apartment in Warsaw (suterena) that was occupied by six other members of her family: her husband, their three biological children, the husband’s elderly mother, and Kolak’s sister. Due to these difficult conditions, Kolak requested

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assistance for the girl. Starting in March 1945, the Jewish Committee regularly provided Krystyna with clothes, food, and financial assistance in the amount of 2000 zlotys a month. In 1947, she was enrolled in the first grade of a primary school under the auspices of the Jewish Committee in Warsaw.45 As a rule, such rescuers prepared the child emotionally for his or her new life. They provided solid support and encouragement throughout the preparations for the child’s departure. These rescuers remained in touch with the children via letters after they had left them for Jewish children’s homes in Poland and abroad. The exchange of letters continued after the children had already reached their new homeland, Palestine (Eretz Israel). Similar communications were also conducted between some of the children and the group of rescuers who at first were reluctant to give them up. All of these communications continued with varying frequency until the new political climate of the late 1960s and the anti-Zionist purge of 1968 in Poland, when officials imposed a freeze on such personal contacts. In addition, there was a minute group of rescuers comprised of single childless women who were never separated from the children whom they had rescued. Instead, with the support and assistance of local and international Jewish organizations that deemed these women to be the most suitable guardians of the children, they went abroad with their charges as a family unit. Former housekeeper Karolina Sapetowa—born in 1897 into a peasant family in the small village of Witanowice near Kraków—is a good illustration of such a case. She was a nanny to Sala (Salomea) and Salomon Hochheiser. Sala was born in January 1932 and Samuel (Salomon) in May 1933, and Sapetowa had looked after them from the time they were born. She continued to be their nanny during the war prior to the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, in which the Hochheiser family was confined. Sapetowa herself rescued the two children from the ghetto during its liquidation in the middle of March 1943.46 She saved them in dramatic circumstances in her home in the village of Witanowice: At a certain point, her neighbors began to threaten that they would denounce her to the Germans if she did not stop her rescue activities and then demanded that Sapetowa herself kill the two children. Nonetheless, thanks to her wits, perseverance, and strong character, she was able to protect the children until the end of the war.47 After the war she became their sole guardian. Róz˙a Bauminger, who interviewed Sapetowa in 1945, noted her total dedication to and concern for the future of the two orphans. In a note attached to Sapetowa’s testimony, Bauminger states that Sapetowa was a widow and did not wish to remarry a Pole because she believed that he would treat the Jewish children badly.48 The note also states that she would be willing to leave with them for Palestine, if that would be con-

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sidered beneficial to the children. She later indeed departed Poland with the children and settled down with Salomea Hochheiser in Denmark, where later in life she looked after Salomea’s children.49 On 7 May 1995, Karolina Sapetowa was awarded the status of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.50

The Children’s Outlook on Their Lives Children were the most affected and vulnerable social group in the turbulent early postwar period; developments during this time determined not only their immediate present life but also their future, both in the long and short term. For many who were well looked after and loved by their Christian Polish rescuers, the appearance of a forgotten or unknown relative meant a traumatic and frightening disruption of what they regarded, at the time, as their solid familial life and happy childhood. Therefore, it took them some time to adjust to the idea of leaving the familiar and stable environment in which they had lived for two, three, or in some cases even five years. A reluctance to leave rescuers is exhibited in many children’s testimonies. For example, in his the testimony of 3 April 1948, Jurek Adin, born in Warsaw on 22 June 1933, speaks of his preference for staying in Poland in close contact with his private tutor from the pre1939 period, the Polish woman who saved his life on many occasions during the war. He preferred remaining with her to reuniting with unknown members of his Jewish family who lived in the United States: I stayed there until 1945, when my tutor came and took me with her to Roszalin. Again I felt so good. My family was found in the United States. They asked my tutor many times to place me in a Jewish orphanage. I am supposed to leave for the United States, but I would rather stay in Poland.51

The testimony of Barbara Blecher, born on 13 August 1931, reveals a similar personal drama. Before the war, her family lived in Lviv (Lwów), where her father was a merchant. During the war, she lost her parents and three older sisters, but a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Bocian, saved her. In the aftermath of the liquidation of the Lviv ghetto, Mrs. Bocian brought her to Warsaw, where she stayed with the Bocian family. During the Warsaw Uprising of August 1, 1944, she was separated from her foster family.52 When the war came to an end, Barbara was reunited with the Bocian family. She wished to remain with them forever. However, she finally reconciled herself to the idea that she would depart for Palestine. According

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to the report, based on an interview conducted with Barbara in the Jewish orphanage: She did not wish to leave Mr and Mrs Bocian and enroll in the Jewish children’s home. She was convinced that they were her family and she wished to remain with them. However, the relationship between her and Mrs and Mr Bocian did not work out in the end. They did not have the means to provide her with an education. Therefore, as of this time, the girl has decided to leave for Palestine.53

The youngest children, those who were born on the eve of or during the war, were the most shocked by the visits of strangers who came to claim them; in these children’s eyes, they had neither had any other family nor any ethnic, social, and cultural background other than that of their Christian Polish rescuers. Like some of the older children, they did not have any memories of their biological parents or of the main facets of Jewish identity. Thus they not only had to adjust to their new Jewish guardians, but also had to adjust to and adopt a Jewish identity that to them was a totally new and foreign terrain. Moreover, both some younger and older children had to unlearn viewing Jewishness in pejorative or in purely negative terms. Children had acquired strong anti-Jewish feelings and attitudes as a result of internalizing the various anti-Jewish stereotypes disseminated in the Polish Christian environment in which they grew up during the war. For example, nine-year-old Ludwik Jerzycki recalled—in an interview conducted on 27 September 1947, in the Jewish Children’s Home in Chorzów—that he, the first time he had come to the Home, had refused to enter the place: “I cried, I did not want to return to the Jews, because they were saying that the Jews kill children. I was so afraid. But I found out that things are different here. I feel so content. I am not being beaten up. I learn and go to school.”54 The Coordinated Commission for Jewish Children (Komisja koordynacyjna dla spraw dzieci z˙ydowskich), based at 17 Zawadzka St, Apartment 20 in Łódzz´, reported many such cases, some of which persisted until the late 1940s. For example, in the letter of 24 June 1948, to the AJJDC, the Commission related the case of a girl, Sonia Zorgier, with whom the Commission had been in touch for a year. According to the letter, Sonia exhibited strong anti-Jewish feelings and an ardent Catholic faith. She continually refused to return to the Jewish environment (powrót do Z˙ydów). Still, the Commission underscored that they had managed to convince the girl that during the next summer vacation, she should visit her old guardian, Antony Sztangret, in Łódz´. The Commission expressed

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hope that Sztangret and his flatmate, Dr. Wilbach, would succeed in instilling trust in Sonia and that she would then be willing to join one of the Jewish children’s homes.55 Still, there were some Jewish children who were eager to leave their former rescuers, even for the company of an unknown relative or a total stranger who represented a Jewish organization. This group was made up of children who had been physically or mentally abused by their former rescuers and guardians and who were eager to experience a better life and to regain their sense of childhood in the care of newly encountered unfamiliar adults. In an interview conducted on 2 February 1947, in the Jewish orphanage in Kraków, Maria Straucher, born in Bochnia on 4 May 1938, describes how happy she was to be reunited with her mother’s sister, who found her in her rescuer’s home. What emerges from her testimony is that her rescuers treated her more like a servant, one made to carry out various heavy tasks unsuitable for a child, rather than as a child who needed to be looked after. Furthermore, the rescuer, Tadeusz Połowiec, was a violent man. He physically abused his own baby as well as Maria, who was also exposed to antisemitic verbal abuse in his house. Her testimony, which reveals a drastic case of abuse, lacks any expression of sorrow over leaving her rescuers: Mr Połowiec appeared again and placed me with one young woman who had just given birth to a child. I washed nappies, cleaned the house, and brought water from the cellar. I worked very hard. All the neighbors knew how hard I worked and could not understand how I coped with all that work and the constant beatings. My rescuer, Mr Połowiec, married this woman. They very often beat me up. When he was angry, he even used to beat the little eight-month-old baby. Once the mother had to call for the doctor to assist with the baby’s wound caused by Mr Połowiec. Once in anger he kicked me so hard that I fell over and broke a bone in my face. I lost consciousness and they threw cold water over me. After a while, when I finally woke up, Mr Połowiec ordered me to clean the floor. I liked the baby very, very much. They constantly called me “Z˙ydowica” [a negative term for a Jewish woman], but I did not know what this meant—no one explained it to me. Połowiec never called me by my first name, but only “you little beetle” (ty bąku). He never cuddled me. The first time I was cuddled and kissed was by my auntie whom I now call my mother. She found me at Połowiec’s house and came to visit me. She kissed me and began to cry. I did not know why she cried so much. She told me that she was my real aunt. The day she visited me I worked as usual and did not stop for a moment. Only in the evening, I slept with auntie, who spent the night with us. My aunt explained to me that she was the sister of my mother and that

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she finally found me after a long search in Bochnia. She promised to take me away to Kraków. I was not afraid of anything and immediately agreed to go with her. My rescuer asked me if I was going to file a complaint against him. Later they took me to a judge who asked me if I wanted to go with my aunt. I went with my aunt to Kraków where she placed me in this Jewish orphanage. I have been here for the entire month since October. I call my aunt my mother and feel so happy here.56

Conversely, some orphaned children who had survived the war mostly thanks to their wits and determination did not wish to be dependent on any adults after the war. Their wartime experiences made them prone to distrust any adults, non-Jewish and Jewish alike. They actively sought the best niche for themselves by searching for their relatives abroad or by admitting themselves into Jewish orphanages and joining Jewish youth organizations. The search for relatives abroad, a search in which these children placed many hopes and expectations, did not always result in promising happy family reunions.57 Deeply disappointed and heartbroken when they did not find any relatives, these children tried to find comfort among themselves with other children who, like them, did not have any relatives to turn to. The orphans supported and relied on each other and, not infrequently, made decisions together concerning their future lives.

The Courts, the Parents, and Other Jewish Relatives In the process of recovering Jewish children, newly established Jewish organizations, parents, and relatives cooperated with the state judicial institutions in Poland. The Family Law determined the most suitable party to care for a child and gave the courts authority to determine the right to custody, foster care, and official adoption. The CKZ˙P regarded the process of regulating the future care of the rescued Jewish children—who were cared for by strangers, distant relatives, state orphanages, and in children’s homes—as one of the most urgent social issues for the postwar Polish Jewish community. A document dated 20 September 1946, issued by the CKZ˙P, presents a set of guidelines and directives pertaining to the fate of those children.58 Section II, titled “The rights of biological parents to the children who are looked after by a third party,” contains information indicating how complicated, in practice, the process of recovering of a child was. It states that one or both parents have the right to demand instant custody over their found child. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 26 of the Polish Family Law, parents may seek assistance in their search from state institutions such as prosecutors, militia (police), and

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municipalities. The parents were also entitled to assistance from these institutions and from security forces when the current caretaker refused to surrender the child. The Grodzki courts that had executive judicial power over orphaned children in Poland granted relatives the right to apply for custody over a child who remained in the care of a third party. In the cases where the biological parents were missing or deceased, other relatives of the child were entitled to request that the Grodzki courts appoint them as the rightful guardians of the child. Although it was legally and socially accepted that relatives took priority over a stranger in determining a child’s custody, nevertheless the transfer of custody from an officially recognized guardian, a former rescuer of the child, either to the child’s relative or to Jewish organizations was not a speedy and simple process from a judicial point of view. In order to release the officially recognized caretaker from custody of the child, the Grodzki courts demanded evidence showing that the current guardian might be categorized as unsuitable to care for a child because of his or her criminal record, lack of financial means, or abusive attitudes towards and negative treatment of the child. Thus, the CKZ˙P stressed that a display of antisemitic attitudes towards the child, alcoholism, immoral behavior, criminality, and negative treatment of the child should be considered as sufficient evidence to request a change of custody. Correspondence of Jewish parents and other relatives and their lawyers with the CKZ˙P suggests that many questioned the judgment of some Christian Polish judges and lacked trust in the Christian Polish witnesses. They suspected that some judges and witnesses might favor, or might be forced to favor, the Polish party—the former rescuers—in the court battle over children. The atmosphere of hostility towards the remaining Jewish survivors as they tried to rebuild their lives in the towns and villages from which they came, as well as the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms that swept Poland in the early postwar period, no doubt had an impact on Jewish children, on the court proceedings concerning the recovery of Jewish children, and on Polish Jewish perceptions, both in the country and abroad, of courts and of the attitudes of ethnic Polish society towards the remnants of Polish Jewry.59 Under such circumstances, ethnic tensions between Poles and Jews and ethnic attachments and loyalties had some negative impact on the recovery of the rescued children and on the court proceedings. Some Jewish relatives were convinced that in provincial towns that were strongholds of traditional Polish Catholicism, their appeals to courts might even cause trouble for the remnants of the local Jewish communities. This made them uncertain or even fearful of proceeding with legal appeals in provincial

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towns, and they preferred these cases to be transferred to courts located in large cities such as Warsaw or Łódz´. For example, such apprehension is expressed in the letter of Abram-Wolf Gewercman, a resident of Tel Aviv, in his letter of 5 December 1947, to the CKZ˙P. Gewercman learned about his sister’s surviving daughter Sabina (Zosia) Szczekacz from her rescuer Zygmunt Strzelczyk. After the war, Strzelczyk contacted Gewercman to request financial assistance for Sabina’s upbringing. The Grodzki court in Częstochowa, where Strzelczyk lived with Sabina, appointed him the official guardian of the girl. In 1946, Strzelczyk was apparently willing to surrender the child to Gewercman on the condition that one of Sabina’s relatives, not a stranger, would fetch her directly from him.60 However, by 1947, according to Gewercman, Strzelczyk demanded a huge remuneration from him for surrendering Sabina. By then Gewercman had learned that Sabina was being raised in a strictly Christian environment without any access to Jewish traditions, and he decided to seek legal custody over the girl himself. However, he was afraid of filing an appeal in the Grodzki court in Częstochowa, a town famous for its national shrine to the Virgin Mary. In the letter, he requested that the CKZ˙P should ask the judicial authorities for permission to appeal for the child’s custody in a Grodzki court in Warsaw. Gewercman claimed that in Częstochowa some of the witnesses might feel uncomfortable about making statements supporting a Jewish man’s seeking custody over his niece, and that his case, if made public, might in fact harm the local Jewish community remaining in Częstochowa.61 Yet in many cases it was the intricate dynamics between the individual Christian Polish rescuers and Jewish children on the one hand and between the children, the remaining relatives, and the members of Jewish organizations on the other that seemed to constitute a decisive factor in the court rulings. Thus highly charged emotions, both positive and negative, the strong primordial desire to have a child, and ethnic and social prejudices loomed heavily over these children’s lives. Some children emerged from this period with happy memories of finding their relatives while simultaneously maintaining some contact with their former rescuers, who were kind to them and who treated them as if they were their own children. Others experienced the early postwar years as a period of enduring uncertainties, interruptions, and upheavals leading to major life changes. This was a time during which they had to shed the ethnic and cultural Christian Polish identity acquired and adopted during the war, and in which they gradually had to relearn their Jewish identity or discover it anew. This process was intertwined with another challenging and complex socio-psychological one: naturally loosening or being forced to give up the precious human bonds formed during the war, as

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well as at the same time forming—often uneasily—new family and social networks. A group of children—who had either totally forgotten or who had never been aware of their Jewish identity because of their age, and who their former rescuers continued to raise as Christian Poles—were to learn about their destroyed childhood, their original ethnic and cultural identities, and their biological families only in mature adulthood, in the 1980s and 1990s.

Case Histories The rest of this article will be devoted to tracing the varied trajectories of the children’s lives and the complexities of their relationships with adults in the early postwar period, particularly their relationships with their former rescuers. These cases are related as they are reflected in the dry court proceedings and official documents of the Central Committee of Polish Jews and the Department of Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, as well as through the eyes of children. The surrender of a child by a Polish Christian: the case of Etka On 28 December 1946, Judge A. Dokowska of the Grodzki court of first instance in Łódz´, Department for Adolescents, decided to grant custody over eight-year-old Etka Rejtbod (wartime name: Teresa Ewa Zamarowna) to Abram (Abraham) Kagan, the Director of the Department for Children Care of the Committee of Polish Jews in Łódz´.62 Concern for the girl’s present situation and her future were the main factors in the court’s appointment of Kagan as her guardian. Until this court ruling, Waleria Januszewska, a sixty-year-old Christian Polish woman, took care of Etka. Januszewska was Etka’s wartime rescuer who was assisted in her rescue activities by her family. Janina Zamarowa, one of her three grownup daughters, prepared a false birth certificate in her name for Etka, so during the war the girl could live “above the surface” as a Christian Polish child. In 1946, Januszewska had been Etka’s caretaker for a total of six years and wished to become her permanent guardian, an adoptive mother. However, Januszewska’s daughters, who had their own families by then, did not share their mother’s dreams and desires of new motherhood. The married daughter Krajanowa, who lived with her mother and who was expecting her own child, decided of her own accord that the Committee of Polish Jews should now take care of Etka. She signed a document of voluntary surrender of Etka on behalf of her mother, who was a poorly educated woman and who could not write or read. She also advised her

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mother to respect the agreement between them and the Committee of Polish Jews in Łódz´ and not to run away with the girl, as the mother had planned to do after she learned about the imminent separation from Etka. No doubt her own interests motivated the daughter to force her mother to give up Etka. Under difficult financial circumstances, she most likely expected that her mother should take care of her soon to be born baby rather than a strange girl. The judge, in ruling in favor of appointing the Committee of Polish Jews in Łódz´ as Etka’s guardian, took into account the wishes and decision of Januszewska’s adult daughters, the difficult material situation of Januszewska herself and her entire family, her age, and her inability to work. At the same time, the judge recognized that in order to maintain Etka’s emotional equilibrium, she should remain in touch with her wartime rescuer while in the care of her new guardian, Abram Kagan and the Committee of Polish Jews in Łódz´. Because of the close emotional bond between Januszewska and Etka, and because of Januszewska’s unconditional dedication to the girl during and after the war, the judge appointed Januszewska as an additional guardian (opiekunka przydana) who had the right to supervise and intervene in the new guardians’ care of Etka. This appointment can be seen as a token of the court’s appreciation of Januszewska’s rescue activities and of her care for the girl. It most likely contributed to a less painful transfer of Etka to the new guardian and thus to a less painful passage to a new life and to relearning her Jewish identity. However, there is a dearth of evidence about Abram Kagan’s attitude towards Januszewska and about the cooperation—or the lack thereof—between the Committee of Polish Jews branch in Łódz´ and Januszewska, once Etka was transferred to her new guardians. Did a childless Jewish couple subsequently adopt her? Did the Jewish organization manage to find and establish contact with her relatives abroad? Did she immigrate with a group of Jewish orphans to Palestine/Israel? These are the questions that call for further investigation. A hopeless case of the recovery of a child: the unnamed girl There are, however, fragmentary records of cooperation between the Committee of Polish Jews and Christian Polish rescuers, even in the cases considered hopeless from the point of view of the Jewish organizations involved in the recovery of the children. The case between Stanisław and Urszula Kras´niewski and the Committee of Polish Jews branch in Radomsko and the Committee of the Jews of Radomsko in the United States (Radomskie Ziomkostwo, Radomsker Landsmanschaft) represents a good illustration of cooperation under the latter circumstances.63 In December

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1946, the Committee of the Jews of Radomsko in the United States approached the AJJDC branch in Warsaw to investigate two matters: the case of the unnamed girl, living with Kras´niewskis, and the case of a boy known by the surname Winciarki, who was in the care of Mrs. Maria Chutkiewicz of Radomsko. Chutkiewicz herself contacted the Committee of the Jews of Radomsko in the United States and requested assistance in raising the boy. At first, the Committee expected that the AJJDC in Warsaw would swiftly arrange to take these two children out of the two respective private homes of their former rescuers and transfer them to a Jewish children’s home. But, in time, the Committee realized that the two cases could not be solved instantly.64 Between 10–12 October 1942, during the liquidation of the Radomsko ghetto located in Łódz´ province in central Poland, the childless Kras´niewski couple saved a one-month-old baby girl whose parents most likely shared the fate of the majority of the ten thousand Radomsko Jews, who were all transported to the death camp in Treblinka. During the war, Stanisław Kras´niewski held an important position in the Radomsko Municipality as director of the Transport Section. In October 1942, he was ordered to deliver horse-drawn carts to the Germans in the ghetto for the transportation of the Jews. When he arrived at the ghetto during its liquidation, he came across a tiny baby girl and took pity on her. Given the extremely dangerous conditions, he first decided to hide her in a ditch before smuggling her to his home later that night. According to his letter of 19 August 1947, to the Radomsker Landsmanschaft in the United States, he indeed recovered the little baby girl from the ditch in which he had hidden her earlier that same day.65 She was almost naked; during his absence, someone had stolen the clothes in which she had been dressed. Kras´niewski successfully smuggled the girl to his home and subsequently he and his wife took care of her throughout the entire war. The couple considered the girl to be their own child, and therefore they did not wish to be separated from her after the war. Not unlike the CKZ˙P, the Kras´niewski couple aspired to provide her with the best education; they were themselves educated and aware that the child was intelligent and intellectually gifted. They were also attentive to the girl’s other needs and to her fragile health. They wished to obtain the best medical treatment that they could find at the time in Poland for her. Because of the financial hardships after the war, Stanisław Kras´niewski wrote to the Radomsko Jewish Committee in the United States, requesting funds to assist him in covering costs for immediate medical treatments and food expenses for the girl. The Committee obliged and sent Kras´niewski food and certain sums of money through the AJJDC.

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Representatives of the Radomsker Landsmanschaft contacted the newly reestablished branch of the Committee of Polish Jews in Radomsko to establish the veracity of Kras´niewski’s account. Jakub Fiszman, the chairman of the Committee of Polish Jews in Radomsko, issued a brief report about the condition of the girl in the care of the Kras´niewskis.66 He acknowledged the love and dedication that the Kras´niewski couple bestowed upon the girl, as well as their wartime rescue efforts. He also confirmed Stanisław Kras´niewski’s account of his rescue efforts and supported his request for funds to assist him in the upbringing of the girl. The Committee of Polish Jews in Radomsko seemed to accept that, for the time being, any attempt to recover the girl from the Kras´niewskis was unfeasible, given their love and dedication, their education and social status, and the absence of immediate family survivors of the girl. Thus, it seems that the Committee’s adopted strategy was to cooperate with and support the Kras´niewskis in the girl’s rearing while awaiting a more suitable opportunity to recover her. This position, one can assume, allowed the Committee to remain in contact with the girl, who was precious to the Jews in Radomsko and in the United States as one of the very few survivors of the Radomsko Jewish community. This cooperation, no doubt, was also conducive to creating a stable emotional and solid material base for the girl in the early postwar period. However, it remains unknown if the Committee’s long-term goal of the recovery of the girl bore fruit, or if the Committee decided that the girl should remain with the Kras´niewskis as their adoptive child. There is also a dearth of evidence about if and when the Kras´niewski couple informed the girl about her complicated family history and about the mournful circumstances in which she came to their home and became their adopted daughter.67 Revealing hidden family secrets to adolescent Jewish children by their Polish adoptive parents: the case of Anna Darmont-Laxander Some rescuers who obtained the status of adoptive parents felt compelled to disclose to the children the deeply hidden secret about their origins and their biological parents. However, these rescuers did not necessarily wish to be separated from the adopted children once the secret was revealed. This being the case, the revelation of the child’s Jewish past appeared to be treated as a piece of information solely concerned with his or her past rather than the present and the future. Such family secrets were revealed at special moments in the families’ personal histories, chiefly during religious and social celebrations.

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In her letter of 22 July 1994, addressed to the Righteous Among the Nations section at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Anna Zeissel (Anna Gizela Darmont-Laxander), a resident of Rybnik in southern Poland, recalls that on 18 May 1952, her adoptive father Walenty Laxander gave her his brief memoir in which he revealed for the first time the secrets of her personal history.68 On that day, Anna celebrated an important Christian ceremony: she underwent the Catholic rite of First Holy Communion. Until then she had not been aware that Walenty (Waldemar) Laxander was not her biological father and that she came from a different ethnic and religious background. Not only did Laxander present Anna with his brief memoir; he also gave her a very special gift: a farewell letter from Anna’s biological father Szymon Ginsberg written in a small labor camp in Czystyłów, near Tarnopol (Ternopil) in western Galicia. The letter, dated 4 May 1943, was addressed to the engineer Laxander, whom Ginsberg knew well from the prewar period. Ginsberg expresses his regret that he could not meet with Laxander again, thanks him for everything that he did for him and his wife, and praises him as a noble human being, filled with goodness.69 Ginsberg and Zofia Distelfeld, Anna’s biological mother, perished on July 2, 1943. Anna, who was born on 17 April 1943, as Gizela Ginsberg, was smuggled out of the camp by Laxander the day after her birth. On the Aryan side, she was given the name Anna Zofia Darmont and was baptized, like many other children, in order to secure her survival. Soon after this, the Germans arrested Laxander for his attempt to smuggle Anna’s parents out of the camp and sent him to prison for two years. Nevertheless, before his imprisonment he managed to place Gizela (Anna) in a nearby Christian orphanage.70 Once released from prison, Laxander brought Gizela to his home and in 1947 adopted her. Thus her name became Anna Darmont-Laxander. Studying Laxander’s brief memoir/statement, one can detect the reasons why he decided to disclose her origin to nine-year-old Anna and to present her with her biological father’s farewell letter addressed to him. Strong Catholic faith, the importance of the Catholic rite of Holy Communion, and respect for Anna’s biological parents, motivated him to do so: During such a festive day I give you the farewell letter of your father. Let this letter, a gift of great love bestowed upon you by your parents, be a reminder of God’s mercy. Let the letter lift your spirits during the challenging days of your life and let it be a reminder of the love of one’s neighbor.71

What is also clear from his statement is that in 1952, Laxander had no doubt that it was God who intervened and made the rescue of Anna

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possible, and that it was not his intention to conceal from Anna information about her deceased biological parents; on the contrary, he wanted to make sure that she knew about them at a preadolescent age. One can infer from Anna’s letter of 1994 that she considered Laxander to be a dedicated and religious parent. However, there are many aspects of Anna’s personal postwar history that remain concealed or unclear. In Laxander’s file, deposited in the department of Righteous Among the Nations of Yad Vashem, is a copy of a second letter from Szymon Ginsberg, dated 4 June 1943. Ginsberg addressed it to his relatives living in Haifa, Palestine. Without disclosing Laxander’s name, in order to protect him and his daughter, Ginsberg tells his family in Palestine that a Polish engineer whom he calls an “angel in a human body” had saved his newborn baby girl, and he hopes that his relatives will establish contact with his daughter’s benefactor after the war. At the time of writing this moving letter—his last will—Ginsberg was fully aware that he and his wife were doomed to die like the rest of their families in Poland. He most likely knew by then that the Jews of the Tarnopol region were being shipped to the Bełz˙ec death camp. Ginsberg realized that he would never see his baby daughter again and his last wish was that his relatives in Haifa would adopt her after the war: I beg you, as a man who has already crossed into the next world, I beg you from the depth of my parents’ heart and my own heart that you will carry out a search for my infant girl and that you will provide her with everything that I could not: that you will become her parents. I know that you will do that. I regret, and it pains me, that this is inevitable. The world is so large, there is so much space on earth, but there is no place for us. Our tragedy is even greater because we know that the world will be transformed and that the beastly hydra will be killed. However we will perish before that.72

It is unclear when Anna Darmont-Laxander learned about this second letter, written by her biological father, and what impact it had on her and on Laxander. From another letter deposited in the collection of the CKZ˙P one learns, as Laxander declares, that out of a moral obligation, he contacted Ginsberg’s family in Haifa in the early postwar period. But we do not know if and when the family in Haifa responded, nor do we know their position regarding Anna’s upbringing.73 These unknown and seemingly minute details of Anna’s personal story were no doubt crucial in determining her postwar life.

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Early postwar reunion with relatives in Poland and family in Palestine, and continuing good relations with rescuers: the case of Tamara Tamara Friedman’s story demonstrates that close contacts between the children’s relatives and rescuers were conducive to the relatively smooth process of reuniting the children with their relatives in Poland and abroad in the early postwar period. It also provides evidence that the cordial relations between the children’s relatives and the rescuers, forged during and immediately after the war, were sustained once the children left Poland. Tamara (Marta) Frydman (Friedman), a five-year-old girl born in Lubartów, a small town in the Lublin Voivodeship in southeastern Poland, was hidden by Apolonia and Jan Charezin ´ ski (Harezinski) in their apartment in Warsaw.74 She was not the first member of her family hidden by the Charezin ´ ski couple. Her uncle Nathan Nurenberg, an acquaintance of Jan Charezin ´ ski from the prewar period, was the first Jewish fugitive to whom the couple extended a helping hand. Jan Charezin ´ ski also arranged false identity documents and two additional shelters for Nurenberg’s sister Mrs. Frydman (Friedman) and her daughter, known as Marta. The mother, pretending to be a housekeeper, was sent to the Roszkowski family in the village of Kazimierowka, near Warsaw, while Marta was taken to a shelter in Warsaw’s Z˙oliborz suburb. When Mrs. Frydman’s shelter was uncovered (spalona, “burnt”) and Marta’s mother and the Roszkowski family were arrested, Marta’s rescuer from Z˙oliborz returned the girl to the Charezin ´ skis’, most likely out of fear. Thus she survived the war in hiding at the Charezin ´ skis’ apartment and remained with them until some time in 1946. Early in 1946, an uncle of Marta (Tamara), who survived the war in the expanses of the Soviet Union, found out that Marta was alive and in the care of the Charezin ´ skis. Writing them on 19 May 1946, he expressed his gratitude to the Charezin ´ ski couple for protecting Tamara and for being such dedicated rescuers who acted as if they were the girl’s parents. In the same letter, he informed them of the existence of Tamara’s aunt Rachel in Palestine and that the aunt was anxiously awaiting to be united with her niece. He also kindly asked the Charezin ´ skis for reports on Tamara’s wellbeing and expressed hope that he could correspond with them and meet them in person in order to compensate them for the exceptional care they bestowed upon his niece.75 Nurenberg, who Charezin ´ ski helped during the war, was the family member to whom the couple returned Tamara some time in 1946 upon his return from forced labor in Germany. Soon after, Nurenberg and Tamara left Warsaw for Łódz´, the “capital of the rebirth” and the main center of

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Jewish life in early postwar Poland.76 Tamara and her uncle lived there temporarily before they immigrated to Palestine. The brief statement of Apolonia Charezin ´ ska of 2 April 1985, various undated correspondence, and the letter from Tamara and her aunt to Mrs. Charezin ´ ska dated 21 June 1965, all attest that they remained in warm and long-lasting contact.77 In her letters, written in the 1960s in Polish, Tamara, already a wife and a mother, informs Charezin ´ ska about the main events in her adult family life and in her profession. She tells her about the small gifts that she and her aunt Rachela had sent as a token of their appreciation. The official freezing of Polish-Israeli diplomatic relations during the anti-Zionist purge of 1968 interrupted this correspondence.78 Nonetheless, contact was renewed in the 1980s, though Tamara by then had forgotten—as she herself admits—how to express her thoughts in Polish. Tamara ends the undated letter written in the 1980s in simple English in a manner similar to her previous letters to Charezin ´ ska. She wishes Mrs. Charezin ´ ska much health and a “good time.” She also adds wishes for an easy winter in Poland and for all good things to Poland.79 Recovery of children by Jewish Organizations and maintenance of family-like relations with the rescuers: the case of Avigdor Baranowicz The case of Avigdor Baranowicz (Baranowitz, wartime name: Wiktor [Witus´] Baranowiecki) attests to civilized agreements between the representatives of Jewish organizations and the formal and informal Christian Polish guardians, in spite of the preliminary hesitancy and resistance on the part of the guardians to surrender the child. It also reveals the nature of close emotional bonds between the children and their wartime rescuers and attests to the maintenance of such ties long after the war. On 16 October 1944, Wiktor Baranowiecki was taken to the office of the General Care Council (Rada Główna Opiekun ´ cza, RGO) branch in Grójec, a small town in the Masovian Voivodeship, forty kilometers from Warsaw.80 He was a refugee, like the rest of the Warsaw civilian population that the Germans drove out of the capital in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising of 1 August 1944. Hanna Baran´ska, a young Polish woman employed by the Grójec Municipality, realized that Wiktor was Jewish. She immediately issued him a RGO registration card, confirming that he was a six-and-a-half-year-old Christian Polish boy living permanently in Warsaw at 12 S´niadeckich Street.81 Thus she saved his life. That same day she took him to her parents’ house, where he remained for the next two years, until 16 October 1946. The parents Władysława and Jan Baran ´ ski, their three adult children Hanna, Stefania, and Zbyszek, and grandmother Zofia Delez˙ynska all participated in sheltering Wiktor until

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the war was over.82 They always made sure that his hair was very short because they knew that his black curly locks could make the neighbors suspect that he was Jewish. Wiktor was accepted and treated in the Baran ´ ski family as if he was the couple’s fourth and youngest child. In October 1946, after negotiations with the representative of the Zionist Coordination organization, he was transferred to the Jewish Children’s Home in Zabrze at 10 Karłowicza Street. The letters he wrote from this children’s home reveal how the boy related to the Baran ´ ski family and to the new structure and lifestyle introduced in this Jewish institution. Wiktor was apparently content in the home, where he learned Polish and Hebrew and met other children with whom he shared similar wartime experiences. He seemed happy and excited about departing Poland for Palestine via France. At the same time, he greatly missed the Baran ´ ski family and requested that they write him letters to the Children’s Home in Zabrze so that he would not feel different from other children, who regularly received correspondence from their relatives and other individuals. This demonstrates how important it was for the children to maintain warm contact with any individuals whom they could treat as their family in the early postwar period, and equally demonstrates how vulnerable and isolated the children who did not have such contacts were. They were perceived as different from and not equal to those who could boast about their contacts with adults, whether those adults were relatives or those who could appear as relatives. The letter of October 20, 1946, most likely the first he wrote to the Baran ´ skis with the help of an older girl after leaving their home in Grójec, reads: Dear mummy, I am happy. I am in the Children’s Home in Zabrze, near Katowice. How does papa feel? Did he travel to Zakopane? What is Zbyszek doing? Does granny still work? Here I have one very good friend named Fredek. He, like myself, lived with one Polish lady. Fredek misses her a lot and I miss you a lot and therefore we are happy to be together. We will soon be leaving for France and I will write to you from there. I ask you to reply to my letters. All other children receive letters. And only I do not receive letters and am very sorry about that. I kiss all of you many times. Wiktor B.83

As a young adult, Wiktor continued to treat the Baran´ski family as his own, though he had been reunited with his uncle in Israel. Thus, it appears that he perceived himself as belonging to two separate families:

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the first, the remnants of his biological Jewish family, and the second, the Christian Polish Baran ´ ski family. In a letter posted on June 6, 1960, Wiktor, now a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gave vent to sentiments similar to his earlier letter of October 20, 1946. He expressed his love for the Baran´skis and wrote of his longing for a word from them and the hope that they would soon write to him. Dear mummy and dear Stefa [Stefania], I do not understand why I have not received a reply to my [last] two letters. Perhaps you might have moved to Warsaw? I want so badly to communicate with you and to receive news about what has been happening in the family. How is life? And how do mummy and granny feel? I feel so powerless in the face of the insurmountable distance that keeps us apart. . . . Still I trust that my letter will reach you and you will reply to it quickly.84

The children’s cases delineated in this chapter reveal not only how wearying and complicated the process of recovery of Jewish children by relatives and Jewish organizations could be, but also the complexities of children’s relations with both Jewish and non-Jewish adults in early postwar Poland. They show that starting life anew was a turbulent process, filled with enthusiasm, naiveté, trust, and hope on the one hand, and with fear, uncertainty, and emotional upheaval on the other. War and the Holocaust destroyed the children’s families and thus their childhood. Those children who had found secure and loving shelter amongst the rescuers during the war found it difficult in the early postwar years, to leave that safe world and forge new bonds with forgotten or unknown relatives, as well as with strangers representing Jewish organizations that intended to create a new life for them in unfamiliar locations. Some remained in that safe world with the rescuers who became their adoptive parents, and only as adults did they fully grasp what had happened to them and come to terms with their complex dual identities and painful dual family past. Others were fortunate to be quickly reunited with loving biological family members while simultaneously maintaining warm family-like relations with their former rescuers. This, however, for a number of social and psychological reasons, was not always possible. All the cases attest to the great vulnerability of children in the adult world not only during the wartime era, but also during the early postwar period.

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Notes 1. Aliza Greens to the American Joint Distribution Committee, Tel Aviv branch. Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/55, Archives of Z˙ydowski Instytut Historyczny (Z˙IH) (hereafter, Aliza Greens’s letter). 2. Ibid. 3. In 1966, the couple Stanisław and Zofia Boczkowski were awarded the status of “Righteous Among the Nations” (Hasidei umot ha-olam) by Yad Vashem. See http:// www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/vwall.html. 4. Aliza Greens’s letter. 5. Sara Avinum’s statement, email to author, 12 December 2006. Sara Avinum is a child survivor from Poland. On the history of the evolution of the individual and group-identity of Holocaust child survivors, presented from a psychologist’s point of view, see Eva Fogelman and Helene Bass-Wichelhaus, “The Role of Group Experience in the Healing Process of Massive Childhood Holocaust Trauma,” Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 31–48. 6. In an interview conducted on 19 June 1996, Leo Arnfeld recalls that his mother’s sister, the aunt Ewa, identified her son Marek by a birthmark on his stomach. Marek, born in 1940, had been hidden in a Catholic orphanage during the war. The boy and Leo were placed in 1946 in the same Jewish Children’s Home in Otwock. See the interview with Leo Arnfeld, no. 15731, tape 3, Shoah Foundation Archives, University of Southern California (USC) (hereafter, interview with Leo Arnfeld). 7. On Chaim Finkelstein’s journalistic activities in Haynt and about the daily, see Chaim Finkelstein, Haynt: A Jewish Newspaper 1908–1939 [in Yiddish] (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Peretz Press, 1978). 8. On the brothers Adolf Abraham and Jakub Berman, see the intellectual biography, Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism 1918–1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Adolf A. Berman is the author of a political history of Warsaw’s Jewry during the war, In the Place that Fate Destined for Me: With the Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1942 [in Hebrew] (Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta’ot: Beit Lohame Ha-geta’ot and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1977). For an in-depth interview with Jakub Berman regarding his Communist past, see Teresa Toran´ska, Them: Stalin’s Polish Puppets (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), translated from the 2nd ed. of the original Polish version: Oni (London: Aneks 1985). 9. Interview with Aviva Blumberg, 20 January 1995, no. 587, tape 4, Shoah Foundation, USC. 10. Interview with Leo Arnfeld, tape 3. 11. On Jewish Displaced Persons in early postwar Germany, see Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 12. See interview with Leo Arnfeld, tapes 3 and 4. 13. For general information about the Jewish family model in eastern Europe and in the West, see Benjamin Schlesinger, Jewish Family Issues: A Resource Guide (New York: Garland, 1987). On the eastern European family pattern and the role of the father in the premodern period, see Gershon David Hundert, “Jewish Children and Childhood in Early Modern East Central Europe,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory, ed. David Kraemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 81–94. 14. Aviva Blumberg, interview by Joanna B. Michlic, New York, 29 May 2009.

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15. Adoption is a new judicial concept and institution in Judaism. The Israeli Adoption of Children Act was only passed in 1960, but the Talmud states: “Whoever raises an orphan in his house is considered as if he had given birth to the child.” On the issue of adoption in Jewish law, see, for example, Michael Gold, “Adoption: A New Problem for Jewish Law,” Judaism 36, no. 4 (Fall 1987): 443–50; Melech Schachter, “Various Aspects of Adoption,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 4 (1982): 93–115. 16. See, for example, the interview with Barbara Gesundheit (prewar family name: Tasma) conducted on 29 October 1996, no. 21539, the Shoah Foundation Archives, USC. 17. See Sara Avinum, Rising from the Abyss: An Adult’s Struggle with her Trauma as a Child in the Holocaust (Hod Ha-sharon: Astrology Publishing House, 2005), translated from the original Hebrew version. 18. Henryk Grynberg published the court protocols and his own adult position on Marysia’s story in Ciąg dalszy (Warsaw: S´wiat Ksiąz˙ki, 2008), 9–38. In the early postwar period, Marysia was afraid to be identified as Jewish and, as a young adult, she decided on her own accord to remain in Poland. I would like to thank Henryk Grynberg for providing me with detailed information about Marysia’s early postwar experiences. 19. David Zalesin ´ ski to Mrs. Ostrowska, 6 April 1947, file no. 350/424, 79–80. Zalesin ´ ski expressed similar sentiments in his letter to Józef Gitler Barski, secretary general of the AJJDC in Poland, 22 February 1947, file no. 350/424, 83. Both documents are in Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, Archives of Z˙IH. 20. AJJDC, Office for the Middle East and Balkans in Jerusalem to AJJDC in Warsaw, 9 April 1947, Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/424, 76, Archives of Z˙IH. 21. Ann S. Petluck, director of migration in the Department of United Service for New Americans to the AJJDC in Warsaw, 10 July 1947, Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/424, 51. 22. Sophie Rooby to David Zalesin´ski, 6 July 1947, Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/424, 52, Archives of Z˙IH. 23. For an expressive example of the way in which rescued children were thought of as a collective through which French Jewry—both those who had perished and those who had survived—might continue living, see the 53 minute film, We Live Again (Nous Continuons), produced by the Central Committee for Child Welfare of the Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid, 1946. 24. On the search for Jewish children by Jewish organizations, Emunah Nachmany-Gafny, Dividing Hearts: The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust Years (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009); Nachum Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Hidden Jewish Children in Poland (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009), especially chapter 9 on the recovery of Jewish children by the Zionist Coordination and chapter 10 on the recovery of children from monasteries and private Polish homes. Both Nachmany-Gafny’s and Bogner’s monographs were translated from the original Hebrew editions. Polish historian Ewa Kurek’s work on the rescue operation of Jewish children also discusses the involvement of Jewish organizations. Unfortunately, Kurek’s short chapter 8, devoted to the discussion of this problem, contains a rather biased perspective colored by anti-Jewish prejudices rooted in the belief system of the early postwar period (i.e., the belief in “Jewish sale” of children.) Furthermore, Kurek’s basic assumptions lack nuance and are questionable from historical and moral points of view. She implies that on the whole, the rescued children would have been “better off” had they remained in Polish families and

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convents rather than go through a traumatic change in their lives in the early postwar period. She seems to blame Jewish organizations and Jewish individuals for the traumatic changes and upheavals in the children’s lives in the early postwar period, rather than taking into account that the war and the genocidal conditions that led to the destruction of Jewish families during the war were the main causes of the upheavals of that period. See Ewa Kurek, Dzieci z˙ydowskie w klasztorach. Udział z˙enskich zgromadzen ´ zakonnych w akcji ratowania dzieci z˙ydowskich w Polsce w latach 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Clio, 2001), 99–108. 25. On the activities of the Central Committee of Polish Jews in Poland (CKZ˙P), see Lucjan Dobroszycki, Survivors of the Holocaust in Poland: A Portrait Based on Jewish Community Records 1944–1947 (Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); August Grabski, Działalnos´´c komunistów ws´ród Z˙ydów w Polsce (1944–1949) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2004). See also the special issue of Polin 20 (2007) under the title of Making Holocaust Memory, especially the introduction by Gabriel N. Finder: 3–54; Gabriel N. Finder and Judith R. Cohen, “Memento Mori: Photographs from the Grave,” ibid.: 53–73; Natalia Aleksiun, “The Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland 1944–1947,” ibid.: 74–97. 26. See the statutes of the CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/2, 1, Archives of Z˙IH. The CKZ˙P frequently referred to article 3, section 4 of its statutes in correspondence with Polish courts. See, for example, the Appeal of the Central Committee of Polish Jews, Legal Department, May 17, 1949, signed by Jakub Wulf [Wolf], Director of the Legal Department. The appeal was addressed to the Grodzki Court in Staszów, a small town in S´więtokrzyskie Voivodeship. It requested that the court reexamine and overrule the decision about granting custody over Sura Hautman vel Hottman, born on April 20, 1939, to Jan Czerny, the girl’s former Christian Polish rescuer. It requested that the court grant custody over the girl to Hanna Erlich, a white collar employee of the Educational Department of CKZ˙P. This custody was to be temporary until Bashe (Bashia) Weisblatt of London, Sura’s aunt, could produce all the required documents that would permit her to reclaim the child (i.e., proof that she was a Polish citizen and a relative of Sura’s.) See file no. 303/XVI/239, Archives of Z˙IH. 27. CKZ˙P to the regional Grodzki Court in Otwock, March 28, 1947, signed by Julian (Joel) Łazebnik, General Secretary of CKZ˙P and Ludwik Gutmacher, Director of the Legal Department of CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/240, Archives of Z˙IH. 28. See the undated request of Krystyna P. to the Educational Department of the CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/235, 4, Archives of Z˙IH. 29. Undated letter of the Central Bureau of Youth Aliyah of the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the CKZ˙P, signed by Akiba Lewin ´ ski. Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/1881, Archives of Z˙IH. 30. Letter of AJJDC in Poland to the New York Office of AJJDC, signed by Józef GitlerBarski, December 2, 1947, Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/1889, Archives of Z˙IH. For information about the life of Józef Gitler-Barski, see his wartime autobiography, Przez˙ycia i wspomnienia z lat okupacji (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolin ´ skich, 1986). 31. Directive signed by Z. Niemcowa, Head of the Department in the Ministry of Education, July 2, 1946, Collection CKZ˙P, file no. 303/09/70 Archives of Z˙IH. 32. CKZ˙P to the prosecutor of the District Court in Wrocław, June 19, 1947, signed by Julian Łazebnik, General Secretary and Ludwik Gutmacher, Director of the Legal Department, Collection CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/243, Archives of Z˙IH.

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33. On the history of the Jewish community in Lower Silesia in the early postwar period, see Boz˙ena Szaynok, Ludnos´c´ z˙ydowska na Dolnym Slas´ku (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2000). 34. Letter of the Komisja Koordynacyjna do spraw dzieci ˙zydowskich w Polsce (Coordinated Committee in Charge of Matters concerning Jewish Children in Poland), October 8, 1947, signed by Keilowa, Collection postwar AJJDC, 1945–9, file no. 350/169, Archives of Z˙IH. 35. Decision of the District Court in Kłodzko, Civil Department I, 13 October 1948, file no. 3694, 50–51, Archives of Beit Lohamei Ha-geta’ot. 36. Appeal of Helena Fuchsberg, represented by the lawyer Jerzy Korolewicz, to the District Court in Kłodzko, 12 June 1948, file no. 3694, 47-49, Archives of Beit Lohamei Ha-geta’ot. 37. On the history of the ghettos in the Lublin region, see, for example, Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements, 1934–1944 (Frankfurt aM: P. Lang, 1993); Dariusz Libionka, ed., Akcja Reinhardt. Zagłada Z˙ydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Warsaw: IPN, 2004), especially articles by Robert Kuwałek, Janina Kiełbon ´ , and Dieter Pohl. 38. [i] Handwritten letter of Rachela Igenfeld-Besserman to the Jewish Committee in Lublin, 1 January 1947, Mittenwald. Collection Postwar AJJCD, 1945–9, file no. 350/ 395, 112, Z˙IH. 39. [ii] Letter of Rachela Igenfeld-Besserman to His Holiness Pope Pius XII, Rome, 15 August 1947, Mittenwald, Collection Postwar AJJCD, 1945–9, file no. 350/ 395, 78-80, Z˙IH. 40. [iii] Letter of H.M. Caiserman of the Canadian Jewish Congress in Toronto to Mr. William Bein , AJJDC, Warsaw Branch, Poland, 16 February 1948, Toronto. Collection Postwar AJJCD, 1945–9, file no. 350/ 395, 77, Z˙IH. 41. [iv] See the file of Rachela Igenfeld, Collection CKZP, Legal Department file no. 303/XVI/236, Archives of Z˙IH. In her Dividing Hearts, Emunah Nachmanny Gafny published some documents pertaining to Igenfeld-Besserman’s case. But the author of this chapter discovered new documents from the Z˙IH archives, previously unpublished. This shows that material regarding the postwar saga of Polish Jewish child survivors is scattered in many archival collections, and one cannot grasp the full story without garnering all of them. 42. See the file of Rachela Igenfeld, Collection CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/ XVI/236, Archives of Z˙IH. 43. Leokadia Jeromirska to Yoram Kotzer, February 21, 1966, in the published collection of Jeromirska’s letters written in early 1966, Leokadia Jeromirska, “Bogusia: The Childhood Story of Shifra Kotzer during the Holocaust: A Collection of Letters” [in Hebrew], Yalkut Moreshet 5, no. 7 (July 1967): 29. 44. Evidence indicates that some Christian Polish and Jewish women both seemed to share the opinion at that time that single Jewish men were unsuitable guardians for children. 45. Letter of the Legal Department of the Voivodish Jewish Committee of Warsaw, signed by Gelblim and Rozenberg, to the Educational Department of the Voivodish Jewish Committee of Warsaw, 25 April 1947, Collection CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/ XVI/238, Archives of Z˙IH. 46. On the Jewish community in wartime Kraków, see, for example, the important memoir, Miriam Peleg-Marian ´ ska and Mordecai Peleg, Witnesses: Life in Occupied Krakow

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(London: Routledge, 1991) (originally published in Hebrew); Aleksander Bieberstein, Zagłada Z˙ydów w Krakowie (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie 1985). On recent commemorations of the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, see the brief article “Holocaust Survivors March from Kraków Ghetto to Mark Sixty-Five Years since Liquidation” [in Hebrew], Ha’aretz, March 16, 2008; accessed June 2, 2008) http:// www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/964780.html 47. Testimony of Karolina (Karola) Sapetowa (Sapeta), 1945, Kraków, Collection CKZ˙P, Testimonies, file no. 301/579, 3 pages, Archives of Z˙IH (hereafter: testimony of Sapetowa), originally published in Maria Hochberg-Marian ´ ska and Noe Grüss, eds., Dzieci z˙ydowskie oskarz˙ają (Kraków: Z˙ydowska Komisja Historyczna w Krakowie, 1946). See the English translation of the testimony in Maria Hochberg-Marian ´ ska and Noe Grüss, eds., The Children Accuse (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), 277–79. 48. Testimony of Sapetowa, 3. 49. Letter of Henryk Polanitzer (a relative of Sala [Salomea] and Samuel [Salomon] Hochheiser), 5 January 1993 [in Hebrew], file no. 6396, the Archives of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. Polanitzer established contact with Sapetowa and the children immediately after the war. His description of what Salomea and Samuel Hochheiser underwent during the war is partially based on Sapetowa’s narrative. 50. See the Certificate of Righteous Among the Nations awarded to Karolina Sapeta on 7 May 1995, file no. 6396, the Archives of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 51. Testimony of Jurek Adin, Collection CKZ˙P, Testimonies, file no. 301/3695, Archives of Z˙IH. 52. On the Warsaw Uprising, see the classic historical study by Jan M. Ciechanowski, The Warsaw Rising of 1944, 2nd ed. (London: Cambridge University Press, 2009); see also Norman Davis, Rising ‘44: The Battle for Warsaw (New York: Viking, 2004), which is an impressive volume, but not one free of errors and unsatisfactory discussions, including the subject of Polish–Jewish relations during World War II. Ciechanowski, who is a former soldier of the Uprising, is one of its most adamant critics; see his most recent interview, “Powstanie nie powinno było wybuchnąc´,” Gazeta Wyborcza, July 30, 2009, http:// wyborcza.pl/1,75515,6878163,Ciechanowski__Powstanie_nie_powinno_bylo_wybuchnac.html?utm_source=Nlt&utm_medium=Nlt&utm_campaign=961608?utm_ source=RSS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=5095994 (accessed August 5, 2009). 53. Report about Barbara Blecher, “Historia Dziecka” (The History of the Child), Collection CKZ˙P, Wydział Os´wiaty, file no. 303/09/188, Archives of Z˙IH. 54. Statement of Ludwik Jerzycki, interviewed by Janina Sobol-Masłowska, 27 September 1947, Collection CKZ˙P, Testimonies, file no. 301/2755, 1, Archives of Z˙IH. 55. Coordinated Commission for Jewish Children to AJJDC, 24 June 1948, Collection postwar AJJDC, file no. 350/2369, Archives of Z˙IH. 56. Testimony of Maria Straucher, signed by the interviewer, Janina Sobol-Masłowska, Collection CKZ˙P, Testimonies, file no. 301/3292, Archives of Z˙IH. 57. For a good example of such disappointment, see the interview conducted on October 22, 1995, with Jerry Shane (Jankiel Cieszyn ´ ski), file 7860, tape 4, The Shoah Foundation Archives, USC. In the early postwar period, Jankiel wrote letters to a person who bore his family name, Cieszys´ski. Jankiel assumed that this Mr. Cieszys´ski, living in Chicago, was his uncle. It turned out that the Mr. Cieszys´ski to whom the boy addressed his letters was not related to him at all. After a long period of silence, Jankiel received a letter written by Mr. Cieszys´ski’s employer, informing him that the person to whom he wrote was neither his relative nor Jewish.

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58. CKZ˙P to the Committee of Polish Jews, Warsaw branch, located at 44 Targowa St., Warsaw, 20 September 1946, Collection CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/ 235, Archives of Z˙IH. Marek Bitter, vice-chairman, and M. Zonszajn, a member of the Executive Council of the Committee, signed the document. 59. On the atmosphere of fear and anti-Jewish pogroms of the early postwar period, see Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006). 60. Strzelczyk’s willingness to surrender Sabina to one of the girl’s relatives is reported in a statement dated 3 July 1946, issued by the District Jewish Committee of Częstochowa, and submitted to the CKZ˙P in Warsaw, signed by J. Ajzenberg and L. Brenner. In the statement the Strzelczyks are evaluated as decent individuals who have been taking very good care of Sabina and as a family that possesses the material means to bring up a child. See Collection CKZ˙P, Legal Department, file no. 303/ XVI/241, 1, Archives of Z˙IH. 61. Abram-Wolf Gewercman to CKZ˙P, Legal Department, 5 December 1947, file no. 303/ XVI/241, 7–8, Archives of Z˙IH. In Sabina Szczekacz’s file there is also another letter, dated 12 January 1947, to the CKZ˙P, issued by the attorneys Szymon Rogozin´ ski and Anatol Wertheim of Łódz´. In this letter, the issue of Strzelczyk’s request for high remuneration was already mentioned: The attorneys’ firm informed the CKZ˙P that they were not planning to take any legal action against Strzelczyk until Gewercman submitted evidence that Strzelczyk had indeed demanded a high price for surrendering Sabina. See Szymon Rogozin´ ski and Anatol Wertheim to CKZ˙P, Department of Care over Children, January 12, 1947, file no. 303/XVI/241, 2, Archives of Z˙IH. 62. The report of 13 January 1947 on the court ruling of 28 December 1946, in the custody case over Etka Teresa Rejtbord (Teresa Ewa Zamarowa). The report was prepared for Jan Grynberg, the lawyer representing the Committee of Polish Jews, Łódz´ Branch. See, file no. 3694, Archives of Beit Lohamei Ha-geta’ot. According to Henryk Grynberg, Abraham Kagan, a member of the left-wing Poalei Tziyon (Poale Zion) Zionist movement, was a dedicated educator, passionate about children. He often visited the Jewish Children’s Home in Helenówek, near Łódz´, and spoke to children in eloquent Yiddish. He immigrated with his wife and daughter to Israel. 63. Report on the Jewish girl in the care of the Kras´niewskis, 2 April 1948, Collection postwar AJJDC, file no. 350/1354, Archives of Z˙IH. 64. See the letter of Solomon Tarshansky of the Landsmanschaftn Department at AJJDC in New York to AJJDC in Warsaw, 10 December 1946, Collection postwar AJJDC, file no. 350/402, 79, Archives of Z˙IH. 65. Stanisław Kras´niewski to the Radomsker Landsmanschaft in the United States, 19 August 1947, file no. 350/1354, Archives of Z˙IH. In his letter, he mistakenly gives the approximate date when he had rescued the girl during the liquidation of the ghetto as mid-October 1943 instead of the actual date, October 1942. 66. The veracity of Kras´niewski’s statements is confirmed in a short note appended to a letter dated 22 August 1947, written and signed by Jakub Fiszman, Collection postwar AJJDC, file no. 350/1354, Archives of Z˙IH. 67. As of 30 October 2008, the Kras´niewskis are not on the list of the Righteous Among the Nations; see http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/vwall.html 68. Anna Zeissel wrote the letter to provide evidence in support for awarding Walenty Laxander the title of Righteous Among the Nations; see the file of Waldemar (Walenty) Laxander, file no. M31/7211, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations,

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Yad Vashem. Laxander was awarded this title posthumously in 1996; see http://www1. yadvashem.org/righteous_new/vwall.html 69. Szymon Ginsberg to Waldemar (Walenty) Laxander, 4 May 1943, file no. M31/7211, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 70. A slightly different version of Laxander’s rescue mission of Anna is cited in Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), 46. Gilbert bases his description of Laxander’s rescue operation on the article by Mordecai Paldiel, “A Last Letter and a Precious ‘Bundle,’” Yad Vashem Quarterly Magazine 26 (Spring 2002). 71. File no. M31/7211, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 72. Szymon Ginsberg to his relatives in Haifa, 4 June 1943, file no. M31/7211, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 73. Walenty Laxander to the Legal Department of the CKZ˙P, 2 February 1948. In the letter, Laxander mainly described the legal dispute over the ownership of a piano that Laxander had purchased for Anna. The former wife of a Polish man from whom Laxander had purchased the piano claimed that the purchase was illegal and demanded the return of the piano. In the same letter, Laxander only briefly mentioned Anna’s family in Haifa in the context of a communication over Anna’s future: the appointment of Anna’s official guardian. Still, from the CKZ˙P correspondence of 21 October [1947?] with Laxander, we learn that the CKZ˙P had urged him to file a claim to be appointed as Anna’s official guardian in order to resolve the protracted dispute over the ownership of the piano. This suggests that the CKZ˙P viewed Laxander as a suitable candidate for Anna’s guardian. See CKZ˙P to Walenty Laxander [misspelled as Lazander], 21 October [1947?], signed by Julian Łazebnik and Ludwik Gutmacher, Legal Department, file no. 303/XVI/237, Archives of Z˙IH. 74. See the file of Jan and Apolonia Charezin´ ski, file no. M31/5281, the Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. Apolonia and Jan Charezin´ ski were declared Righteous Among the Nations in 1992. See http://www1.yadvashem.org/ righteous_new/vwall.html. 75. Tamara’s uncle [signature illegible], Łódz´, to Jan and Apolonia Charezin´ ski, 19 May 1946, file no. M31/5281, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 76. [v] Shimon Redlich, Life In Transit. Jews In Postwar Lodz, 1945-1950. (Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2010) 77. File no. M31/5281, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 78. On the history of the anti-Zionist purge, see, for example, Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967–1968 (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2000); Jerzy Eisler, Marzec 1968: Geneza, Przebieg, Konsekwencje (Warsaw: Pan ´ stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1991); idem, Polski Rok 1968 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2006). 79. Tamara Friedman to Apolonia Charezin ´ ski, 19 December [1980?], file no. M31/5281, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 80. On the history of the General Care Council (RGO) during the war, see Bogdan Kroll, Rada Główna Opiekun ´ cza (Warsaw: PWN, 1985). For the best monograph in English about political and social organizations and the fabric of Polish society in the Generalgouvernement during the Nazi occupation, see Jan T. Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939–1944 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 81. Copy of a RGO registration card in the name of Wiktor Baranowiecki, issued by Hanna Baran ´ ska. See the file of the rescuers Władysława and Jan Baran ´ ski and their

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children Stefania, Hanna, and Zbigniew, file no. M31/7081, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 82. See statement by Stefania Łyszczyn ´ ska (maiden name: Baran´ ska), 6 October 1995; interview with Wiktor Baranowicz (Baranowitz) [in Hebrew], June 4, 1996, both in file no. M31/7081, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 83. Wiktor Baranowicz to the Baran´ ski family, 20 Oct. 1946. A second, undated letter, also written in the Children’s Home in Zabrze, contains a similar message; for both, see file no. M31/7081, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem. 84. Wiktor Baranowicz to the Baran ´ skis, posted on 6 June 1960 from Jerusalem, Israel, file no. M31/7081, Archives of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem.

4

ISSUES IN RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF WESTERN EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II David Weinberg



The issue of religious and educational reform was one of the most significant challenges that western European Jewish communities faced after 1945 in their efforts to recover from the devastating effects of the Holocaust. It first emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the Jews of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in particular increasingly turned their attention from physical relief to long-term reconstruction and growth. The war had not only led to the massive loss of Jewish life in these communities; it had also severely weakened their spiritual and intellectual foundations, thereby endangering their future survival. Old age homes, orphanages, sanataria, and vacation homes were essential for the physical survival and health of western European Jewry, the director of the Conference on Material Claims against Germany, Saul Kagan, remarked at a meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee’s country directors in 1954. Jewish institutions would become little more than “archaeological exhibits,” he concluded, unless the communities took steps to ensure that the values of Jewry were preserved and lived on.1 There were four major obstacles to the restoration of their religious and educational life that the communities of western Europe confronted in the first two decades after the war. The first was the reestablishment

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of institutions of learning and prayer, the centers for the collective expression and transmission of Jewish identity to the communities’ younger generations. Second, there was the need to recruit and train a core of new rabbis and professional educators to replace those who had perished in the Holocaust. Third, communities had to reach out to the thousands of men, women, and children who had lived through the war with little or no connection to synagogues or schools, and who after the war evinced little interest in—and at times even hostility toward—participating in formal Jewish life. Finally, community leaders had to devise a way to overcome the serious ideological and cultural divisions that had plagued their communities in the 1920s and 1930s and that continued to define educational and religious activity in the postwar era. In each case, the tragic events of the Holocaust forced the Jews of France, Belgium, and Holland to rethink their prewar policies and programs and to create new perspectives and strategies to ensure their future in a changing postwar European and Jewish environment. Survivors returned to their communities in western Europe to find their synagogues and schools in ruins. During the invasion and subsequent occupation of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, German troops had razed or severely damaged buildings that belonged to the Jewish community. In some cases, they had converted them into storehouses and barns. Many of the most famous houses of worship in western Europe, including the historic Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam and the Synagogue of Van den Nestlei in Antwerp, had been plundered, desecrated, or destroyed. During the bitter winters of the war, Nazi occupiers and local residents had stolen sacred and secular texts from libraries to use for fuel. As Jewish leaders in France, Belgium, and Holland made plans to rebuild and repair their synagogues, they soon realized that the topography of religious life had been radically altered as a result of the Holocaust. Shteblach, or prayer halls, that had been frequented by thousands of eastern European immigrants in Paris and Brussels in the 1920s and 1930s now struggled to find a quorum for daily prayers among the few congregants who had survived. In cities such as Amsterdam, neighborhoods that had been teeming with Jewish life before the war were now almost completely devoid of Jewish residents. Historic synagogues built in city centers in the nineteenth century were deserted during the week and came alive only briefly on holidays and Saturdays, when former residents of prewar Jewish quarters traveled from their new homes in other parts of the city to attend services. In Amsterdam, eighty percent of the historic Sephardic Jewish community had been murdered, leaving its famous Spanish-Portuguese synagogue little more than a tourist attraction for visitors from abroad. At the same time, eastern European and German refugees fleeing to western

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Europe in the late 1940s (as well as the small but steady trickle of North African Jews emigrating to France in the 1950s) demanded the right to establish their own places of worship. As with other aspects of postwar reconstruction, the lack of funds meant that communities struggled to meet their religious needs. In the first months after liberation, the more devastated communities in Holland and Belgium often relied upon the British Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Committee (later Council), or the CRREC, for aid. The CRREC’s mobile synagogues, which were modeled after the Friends’ Ambulance Units in World War I, were a familiar sight among the ruins of cities and in DP (“displaced persons”) camps.2 In larger cities such as Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam, established religious organizations in western Europe— including the French and Belgian Central Consistories and the Nederlands Israelietisch Kerkgenootshap (NIK)—sought out other financial sources for synagogue reconstruction. The JDC, which generally avoided getting involved in religious matters, provided small nonrenewable grants for the repair and maintenance of synagogues.3 A few communities in Belgium and in the Netherlands were able to benefit from state subsidies and taxes for the maintenance of religious institutions, though they failed to secure support for their physical upkeep. Both the French Consistory and the NIK could also count on the support of a few wealthy benefactors who had survived the war, as well as that of elements within the Orthodox community in the United States and Great Britain. But the general lack of funds meant that in the end, decisions over whether and where to erect synagogues were made on an ad hoc basis through the initiative of local members. In the meantime, communities faced a far more serious problem: the loss of religious leadership. Like much of the rest of the continent, western Europe had seen its rabbinical and educational elite decimated by the war. Of the sixty rabbis who were members of the Central Consistory, the major religious body in France, in 1939, twenty-three had been deported to death camps and two had been shot. Four other nonaffiliated rabbis and twenty-five “ministres officiants” had also been murdered. As late as 1955, it was estimated that there was only one rabbi for every five to six thousand Jews living in the country. In the Netherlands, only three of the twelve prewar consistorial rabbis (“Operrabbijnen”) survived the war. By the mid-1950s, there were still only four clergymen serving a population of over 25,000. In Belgium during the same period, there were two formally ordained rabbis—one in Brussels and one in Antwerp.4 The task of replacing the murdered religious leaders in France, Belgium, and Holland proved to be overwhelming. The shortage of qualified clergy was so critical that in several cities, community leaders were

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forced to reappoint surviving rabbis and religious educators who had been tainted by their involvement in wartime community councils organized by the Nazis.5 American and British chaplains filled in from time to time, but their stay on the European continent was relatively short, and most of their attention was focused on ministering to their fellow countrymen stationed there. Several pulpit rabbis in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam were forced to take on additional responsibilities, acting as “circuit-riders” who traveled around the country to serve the needs of Jews in smaller cities and in rural areas. In Holland and especially in Belgium, a nation with a large numbers of eastern European immigrants and refugees, communities called upon Polish and Romanian refugee rabbis and scholars to assume pastoral duties. From its inception, this arrangement was beset by problems. Ignorant of the local language and culture and unfamiliar with rabbinic responsibilities in Western countries, the refugees were generally unable to provide counseling to either alienated or assimilated Jews, and they balked at establishing contact with non-Orthodox Jewish and Christian clergy. Many saw themselves as temporary residents in western Europe in transit to America or Palestine, and they refused to accept “orders” from those they regarded as “unlearned” French, Dutch, and Belgian religious authorities. Local officials often feared that traditional rabbis would be rejected by their constituents and that they were weakening efforts to revive communal religious activity.6 The few rabbis who ministered to congregations faced largely empty pews. Two months after the end of the war, religious leaders had been delighted to see thousands of Jews celebrating the first peacetime Rosh Hashanah in six years at the surviving synagogues of Brussels, Antwerp, Paris, and Amsterdam. By 1946, dozens of synagogues had reopened throughout France, Belgium, and Holland, including twenty-five in Paris alone. Yet this religious enthusiasm proved to be short-lived. By 1947, synagogue attendance and membership had dipped below prewar levels. With hindsight, it seems clear men and women’s decision to attend services in the first years after liberation had less to do with religious observance than with the desire to mingle with other Jews. More perceptive observers could not help but notice that the decline in congregational affiliation and participation was only one indication of a signal change in the nature of Jewish commitment in the postwar period, a commitment which increasingly rested on collective concerns rather than on personal ideology and belief. Religious institutions in Belgium, Holland, and France moved quickly to counter the decline in attendance by modifying rituals and activities to make them more attractive and relevant. In the major cities, syna-

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gogues conducted youth and family services and introduced more prayers in the vernacular. In place of calls for devotion to God and country, rabbis increasingly used their sermons to preach what the British community newspaper the Jewish Chronicle called “living Judaism,” the application of traditional beliefs to contemporary issues and problems.7 In some cases, religious leaders instituted informal Bible sessions and study circles and encouraged their congregants to learn together. Orthodox rabbis sought to find ways to ease the readmission of converted Jews back into the community. They also attempted to tackle the difficult halakhic questions raised by the war, including the fate of “hidden” children and the status of agunot, i.e., women who, because their husbands had been lost in the war with no knowledge of their whereabouts, were forbidden by Jewish law to remarry. Rabbis saw hopeful signs in the increasing number of bar mitzvahs, as young men who had had not been able to celebrate their coming to adulthood in the Jewish community now were called to the Torah. Administrators of the community often took the place of parents who had been deported.8 By the early 1950s, young women were also demanding the right to participate in the ceremony. As in the United States, bar and bat mitzvahs were becoming major religious and social events. Nevertheless, the vast majority of young men—and young women—did not participate in the ritual. In Paris in the mid-1950s, for example, it was estimated that only a quarter of eligible Jewish boys were being prepared for their bar mitzvah.9 The decline in religious commitment gave new life to Liberal Judaism in western Europe. After the war, the movement had gained members as a result of the arrival of German refugees. It also attracted hundreds of survivors who could no longer accept the tenets of religious orthodoxy, but who were searching for ways to express their religious identity. Liberal rabbis made serious efforts to increase their activity in Holland and France, where fledgling Liberal synagogues had existed before the war. Simplified and abbreviated services were conducted on Sundays in the local language. In its effort to carry on the spirit of Wissenschaft in Europe, the movement, through its international organization, the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), took a strong interest in programs to revive Jewish learning on the continent and participated in several panEuropean educational conferences held in the 1950s. It also sponsored a series of youth conferences that emphasized the possibility of engaging in religious activity outside a traditional framework.10 The growth of Reform congregations was actively opposed by Orthodox-dominated communal religious organizations throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, for example, at the strong urging of the Kerkgenootsc-

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hap, the central religious organization in Holland, local Jewish leaders refused to grant the World Union money to support the Liberal community in Amsterdam. In Brussels, the local religious establishment greeted the arrival of a Reform rabbi from France who spoke fluent Hebrew, kept the dietary laws, and taught the Talmud in Hebrew with amazement and deep suspicion.11 Despite their strong opposition to the Liberal movement, Orthodox Jewish leaders in western Europe were influenced by the work of Reform rabbis. Faced with declining religious observance and the absence of qualified religious leadership, leaders of established congregations moved to develop a more “open” clergy, one alive both to Jewish and European influences and one which would follow the model of what the British journalist Maurice Carr described as the “bicultural Central European type of Jew.”12 In contrast to the yeshiva of old, rabbinical training would now combine the study of Talmud with pastoral skills. In addition to the study of traditional texts, rabbis would learn counseling techniques, engage in outreach to disaffected elements in the community, and cultivate relations with the Christian community and with government officials. The establishment of the Jewish state also meant that rabbis would be expected to read and speak modern Hebrew.13 The new approach to rabbinical training could not be implemented easily, however. There were only two functioning rabbinical seminaries in western Europe after the war. Jews’ College in London did provide a few rabbis to the continent, but language and cultural issues associated with the perceived differences between British Jewry and the rest of European Jews proved to be a major obstacle.14 The Collegio Rabbinico Italiano in Turin was pledged to preparing rabbis in the Sephardic rite throughout the Mediterranean region, but despite continued support from both the Joint and the Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation and the seminary’s move to Rome in 1956, it attracted few students outside of Italy. The Ecole Rabbinique in Paris, which had been disbanded in 1943 and then revived soon after liberation in 1944, had somewhat greater success. In the decade after the war, it managed to place its graduates in communities in Switzerland, Belgium, and North Africa. Despite this, the seminary’s enrollment never extended beyond French-speaking students, and the school struggled to remain open. Efforts to pool the resources of the two seminaries in Rome and Paris by having each school concentrate on a separate field of Jewish learning occasioned little interest and support.15 Western European Jewish communities were also confronted with the task of training a new corps of Jewish teachers. Up until World War II, general Jewish religious education in France, Belgium, and Holland had

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been largely limited to the training of young boys for their bar mitzvahs. Poorly paid or not paid at all, teachers had little incentive to innovate. In Talmud Torahs or supplementary schools established by the Belgian and French Consistories, rabbis-in-training who did not have congregational responsibilities taught the rudiments of Jewish belief and practice one afternoon a week after public school. School administrators generally paid little or no attention to the issue of teacher training or to curricular development.16 Faced with a critical shortage of trained teachers in the first months after the war, the Joint and local relief agencies had initially called upon yeshiva students and graduates to teach their makeshift classes in weakened communities. Hiring traditional Jewish rabbinical students and rabbis presented serious problems and challenges in western Europe, however. In Belgium and Holland, the fact that yeshivas were unaccredited by the state meant that instructors from traditional rabbinic seminaries did not receive support from the government, which normally paid the salaries of teachers both in day schools and in supplementary courses in religion. Teachers hired from other countries often had difficulty securing work permits.17 There were also problems with course content: Yeshiva-trained instructors insisted on restricting their teaching to ritual and prayer, and had little interest in or knowledge of Hebrew, Zionism, and general Jewish culture and history. School administrators expressed concern that while traditional methods of rote learning and memorization of sacred texts might be appropriate for younger children, they would be of little value in educating older children, who were less impressionable and who had more worldly interests.18 The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 opened up new possibilities for teacher recruitment and training. The importing of Israeli-educated instructors to the continent, which had begun soon after the war, was now regularized and strengthened. The employment of teachers from the Jewish state had two significant advantages. Not only were they well trained, but they also brought with them a vision of a Jewish future that local educators were convinced would excite young boys and girls. The study of Hebrew, as one participant in a Zionist meeting held in Paris in September 1947 commented, was not merely a matter of learning a language, but of “instilling [youth with] a spirit of the Land of Israel.”19 The implementation of the program also eased the financial burden placed on local communities caused by the shift in the JDC’s priorities from Europe to Palestine, and later Israel. In 1949, the JDC brought over eleven teachers from Israel to fill posts in France, Belgium, and Greece. The Joint also arranged to send twenty teachers from France and Italy for training in

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Israel.20 In the same year, the Jewish Agency established a Department for Education and Culture in the Diaspora. A conference held in Paris in November 1950 under the auspices of the Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency outlined the major responsibilities of Israeli educators in western Europe. Teachers would be sent to Jewish day schools in major communities not only to educate students but also to train local instructors. Hebrew literature and textbooks would be made readily available to the schools, while local teachers would be urged to visit and to learn in Israel. Parents would also be encouraged to send their children to Israel as part of their Jewish education. The Jewish Agency would provide monies for the various programs and materials. No provision was made for using Israeli educators in Talmud Torahs, however.21 Communal leaders and educators publicly welcomed assistance from Israel, but behind closed doors, they expressed suspicions concerning the motives and abilities of the visiting teachers. Many feared that students would be induced to make aliyah, i.e., to emigrate to Israel, especially given the Jewish Agency’s insistence that prospective teachers in European schools come to Israel to study. Others argued that the curriculum and teaching strategies introduced by the Jewish Agency in the late 1940s— which included a heavy emphasis on vocational training and on the need to undo the debilitating effects of prolonged idleness—were more appropriate for the DPs who were settling in Israel than for the Jews who had chosen to remain in Europe.22 Jewish educators in western Europe also wondered whether Israeli-trained instructors could prepare students adequately for the challenge of living in a Christian milieu. Community leaders in Scandinavian countries questioned whether teachers sent by the Jewish Agency could learn their language. Local teachers balked when told that they would have to learn spoken and written Hebrew in order to keep their positions. Behind all of these concerns lay a deep suspicion that Israel was attempting to supplant the Diaspora, and Europe in particular, as the center of Jewish cultural life. Few educators in France, Belgium, and Holland could deny that the continent could no longer sustain continued Jewish consciousness and growth on its own. Yet the Jewish Agency’s talk of the need to “restructure” Jewish consciousness from privileging martyrdom and suffering to a deeper knowledge of Jewish culture rankled them, suggesting that the European experience was psychologically harmful to Jewish youth. As long as Jews chose to remain on the continent, local educators maintained, teachers were obligated to present both Judaism and European culture in the most positive light. All agreed that it would be best to establish teacher-training programs in Europe itself.23

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Yet few individuals living in western Europe were interested in pursuing Jewish education as a career, much less in devoting the time to learn how to teach. A large number of applicants to educational seminars established by the Joint and the Jewish Agency were rejected because the applicants refused to commit themselves to serving in classrooms after they completed the courses, or because they were considered too old. Officials also denied admission to eastern European refugees who lacked local language skills, and to applicants from North Africa whose level of basic education was considered too low. Women, who might have provided an important component of the teaching corps, were discouraged from participating in the programs.24 The fate of a teacher training seminary established in France in 1946 demonstrates the difficult challenges facing European Jewish educators in the postwar era. Originally attended by thirty prospective teachers and led by two yishuv-educated instructors, the program called for a ten-month period of training, followed by a commitment on the part of graduates to serve in Jewish institutions in France for two years. Despite significant financial inducements, many attendees dropped out after only a few months. Others graduated and promptly left for the Land of Israel. Plans to involve the Jewish communities of Switzerland, Belgium, and North Africa failed because of a lack of interest and the absence of funds. Judah Shapiro, the director of the Jewish Culture Education and Religion Department of the JDC, described the seminar—as well as a fledgling teacher-training school established by Beth Jacob, an Orthodox congregation in Paris—as “amateur attempts” more comparable to a good secondary school than to a teachers seminary. In the end, the French experiment was replaced by a more modest program of short-term seminars led by local rabbis.25 Along with teacher training programs came plans for the development of a new Jewish pedagogy. The work of the French Jewish educator Isaac Pougatch was especially significant. During the 1930s, Pougatch had been involved in the upbringing—and later, under Nazi occupation, the rescue—of Jewish children. He was also active in efforts by the Eclaireurs israélites (Jewish Boy Scouts) to bring youth together from different backgrounds and orientations to create a new and more dynamic form of Jewish commitment. Soon after liberation, Pougatch founded a teacher training school in Plessis-Trévisse, a suburb east of Paris, to minister to the needs of orphans. He was firmly convinced that traditional methods of Jewish pedagogy, with their emphasis on rote memorization and the mastery of traditional texts, were of little use in addressing the intellectual and emotional needs of the post-Holocaust generation. An amalgam of Pougatch’s own experiences growing up in a left-wing eastern European

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Jewish milieu and as a scout leader in France, his “crash course” program consisted of a series of informal learning sessions—led by young volunteers or “mentors” and stretching over six or seven months—that stressed collective living and experiential learning within an intensively Jewish environment. Pougatch also encouraged parents to attend sessions periodically to learn more about their Jewish heritage. Joint officials were so impressed with Pougatch’s work that in 1951, they allowed him to take over a full floor of their offices in Paris to develop a resource center for teachers. The center’s portable van filled with books, records, and films traveled to schools throughout Paris and the French countryside. During its seven-year history, the center managed to attract educators from all of the major communal organizations, both religious and secular.26 While relatively successful in the greater Paris metropolitan area, Pougatch’s technique could not easily be applied to smaller communities that lacked a cadre of committed young men and women to serve as “mentors.” Even where a group of eager participants could be found, few were willing to commit themselves to a career in Jewish education. Pougatch’s insistence that he make most of the administrative decisions himself alienated several of his coworkers and severely hampered the experiment. The program was also adversely affected by the Joint’s gradual withdrawal of support from western Europe in the late 1940s. The problem of devising a new pedagogy was compounded by the complex and varied nature of the postwar student population. An understaffed faculty had to service a diverse body of students that included healthy and sick children, youth who needed remedial education, and both native-born and newly arrived immigrants. Schools could no longer merely supplement family and home experiences, as they had done in the past, since both of these had been largely absent during the war. Instead, schools were now called upon to assume primary responsibility for the development of a student’s Jewish identity and the inculcation of Jewish values. Additionally, in many cases children were the only breadwinners in their families and could not go back to school either full-time or at all.27 Though Pougatch’s program would eventually be disbanded because of a lack of funds, his basic approach to education continued to shape Jewish pedagogy in western Europe into the 1950s and 1960s. Educators insisted on the need to incorporate both religious and secular components of Jewish learning and to underscore the centrality of community in Jewish consciousness. Spurred by memories of the resistance during the Holocaust, by the involvement of educators from Palestine and later Israel, and by the commitment to build a Jewish future on the continent, educators placed a special emphasis on discipline, collective unity, and

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Jewish self-assertiveness and pride, while clearly maintaining a commitment to European values. While individual curricula abounded, educators on the continent struggled to find common ground. Deep divisions over the nature and purpose of Jewish education between the observant and nonobservant, moderates and political activists, and Zionists and those committed to remaining in the Diaspora made the development of a unified curriculum across western Europe—and in many cases within individual communities—a pipe dream. As emboldened young political militants and Jewish nationalists gained new visibility in France, Belgium, and Holland (as a result of the role of Communists in the wartime resistance to Nazism and of the fight for a Jewish homeland, respectively), they established supplementary schools to attract young survivors. In preparing youth for future struggles, whether in Europe or in Palestine, both groups incorporated into their curricula pedagogical approaches that emphasized the importance of physical labor, discipline, and the collective will in educating children. The Jewish content of the various movements remained limited and highly tendentious, however. In the highly charged atmosphere of postwar western Europe, Communists, Zionists, and Bundists each employed the teaching of Jewish history and culture to inculcate their different visions of the Jewish future. Zionist educators in France, Belgium, and Holland highlighted heroic figures in the Jewish past and the all-pervasive nature of antisemitism to pursue their goal of mass aliyah. In contrast, left-wing militants stressed what they regarded as the central lesson of the Holocaust: the need for Jews to ally themselves with “progressive” forces in their own societies in the struggle against fascism.28 The result—Pougatch sadly concluded in a book written in 1955—was that European Jewish parents continued to live in the past when vibrant and self-confident communities comprised of educated and committed members could easily accommodate a variety of approaches and perspectives on Jewish life. Their children, however, lived in the uncertain present, where ignorance and apathy threatened the fate of Jewish communities and where sterile internal debates over religion and politics led Jewish youths to despise Judaism and to search elsewhere for answers.29 The obstacles facing the western European Jewish educators who sought to create a broad educational strategy and an integrated curriculum were evident in the failure of the United Jewish Educational and Cultural Organisation, or UJECO. The organization had its origins in a conference on “Spiritual Reconstruction” that took place in Paris in September 1946, and expectations for it remained high at UJECO’s constituent conference, held in October 1947 in London. The central theme was the defiant mood of postwar European Judaism in the face of many

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challenges, with a special focus on its desire to ensure its future. Soon afterward, the organization introduced a wide-ranging series of educational materials that attempted to synthesize religious, Zionist, and “progressive” approaches to Jewish culture. This included the distribution of information on Palestine, prayer books, and tractates of the Talmud, as well as the publication of manuals in both French and Yiddish for three popular courses on Hebrew, contemporary Judaism, and Jewish history. Despite the flurry of activity and its broad perspective, UJECO was hindered from the start by the not-so-hidden agenda of its founders. Strongly influenced by the views of the American Jewish Committee, a vocal opponent of Zionism and a long-standing rival of the JDC, UJECO sought to counter what it regarded as the “emigrationist” agenda of both the Jewish Agency and the Joint. It also wished to stanch the growth of Communist influence, especially among the communities of Belgium and France. At organization meetings, Orthodox and secular representatives sparred with each other. Though many European community leaders were appreciative of UJECO’s assertive stand in favor of a continued Jewish presence in Europe, they were resentful of what they regarded as the attempts by the AJC to involve European Jewry in its own internecine ideological and political quarrels. From its inception, UJECO was plagued by a critical shortage of funds. The organization had hoped to receive seed money and administrative support from the Joint Distribution Committee. The JDC was skeptical of the capabilities of UJECO’s makeshift staff, however, and would only commit itself to providing what it described as “a modest amount.” As the Joint’s Director of Educational and Cultural Department, a clearly exasperated Judah Shapiro commented privately in 1949 to a colleague that the organization’s leadership “have done nothing of importance, are doing nothing at all now, and are spending such funds as they obtained for calling Executive Committee meetings.”30 Despite its strong statements of support, the American Jewish Committee itself actually offered only minimal financial support for UJECO’s programs. UJECO’s most promising and innovative project was its teacher training seminars. Keenly aware of the challenges posed by both the shortage of qualified teachers and the restlessness of postwar Jewish youth, the formulators of the seminars were intent on breaking down the hierarchical relationship between teachers and students in the traditional classroom. Modeled after the Lehrhaus established in Berlin in 1920, the program called for teachers and students to read a common text and share ideas in an open discussion. The first seminar was established in Basle, Switzerland in August 1947 amidst great enthusiasm, and plans were immediately announced for additional seminars in Brussels, Bucharest, Paris, and

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London. Supporters also hoped to attract students by initiating a program for the granting of “Diplomas of Proficiency in the Hebrew Language and Literature” by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after the successful completion of tests held in local centers throughout Europe. In the end, however, UJECO’s much ballyhooed seminar in Basle suffered the same fate as other teacher training seminars. In its first and only year of operation, it attracted only thirteen students, and the other planned seminars never actually took place. Nor could enough teachers be found who were willing to experiment with the new approach. The project collapsed in late 1948, after managing only to distribute a few thousand textbooks and wall maps of Palestine to local schools. By the beginning of 1949, UJECO had all but ceased to exist. In the end, its “one size fits all” approach to Jewish education failed to adequately address the vastly different conditions of European Jews and each community’s desire to jealously guard its own autonomy. Nor could the organization overcome ideological and religious factionalism. UJECO’s major contribution was to raise the issue of the need to develop and coordinate educational and cultural programs throughout western Europe and Great Britain at a time when both international Jewish organizations and European communities were still thinking largely in terms of material relief.31 Despite—or maybe because of—the plethora of educational programs in each community, Jewish schools and courses in western Europe failed to attract students in the immediate postwar period. In 1950, for example, it was estimated that of forty thousand eligible students in France, no more than four thousand received a Jewish education of any sort. The situation was even more critical in smaller communities, which lacked funds, educational materials in the local language, and trained personnel. In Switzerland, for example, barely one-sixth of the three thousand eligible children were enrolled in Jewish courses. Even in Antwerp, which boasted two large day schools and a network of supplementary courses after the war, only half of the community’s youth received a Jewish education. Throughout Europe, there were few learning opportunities for adults or for children past bar or bat mitzvah age.32 The 1950s would see a new push for cultural, educational, and religious programming as a result of the infusion of reparations monies distributed by the Conference on Material Claims against Germany. Though European representatives at Claims Conference meetings continually complained that they had received far less than they deserved, in fact the Jews of Europe benefited significantly from reparations payments. In the years between 1953 and 1960, the Claims Conference funded 150 schools, 107 community and youth centers, 65 religious institutions, 56 homes for the

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aged, 41 children’s homes and kindergartens, 17 summer camps, and 12 medical institutions, almost all in Great Britain and western Europe. The early history of Claims Conference funding for cultural and educational work on the Continent was marked by difficulties and misunderstandings. A major source of tension arose from the views of the New York-based Jewish historian Salo Baron, who dominated the early discussions of cultural reconstruction on the continent. As head of the agency known as Jewish Cultural Reconstruction immediately after the war, he had been primarily responsible for distributing old books, Torah scrolls, artworks, sculpture, and ritual objects that had been looted by the Nazis and subsequently recovered by the American troops. In contrast to the perspectives of other Jewish officials in the United States who stressed the importance of revitalizing Jewish spiritual and intellectual life on the continent wherever possible,33 Baron defined cultural work in Europe as primarily a matter of research and scholarship on what he clearly saw as a destroyed civilization, and expressed only marginal interest in supporting local communities. As chairman of the Claims Conference’s European Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs, he argued that the Holocaust had transformed the Jews of Europe into subjects of historical study, interesting and quaint curiosities of an age gone by. European leaders were clearly angered by Baron’s presumptuousness and elitism. Denouncing his dismissive attitude toward European Jewish revival, they insisted that continental communities were not doomed. In contrast to Baron’s emphasis upon scholarly research, they stressed the importance of primary education. Cultural revival, they maintained, could only come about through the training of knowledgeable and committed Jewish youth.34 The situation improved significantly in 1954 with the appointment of Judah Shapiro as the new educational director of the Claims Conference. Shapiro had gained local European community support in his earlier capacity as head of the Joint’s Department of Educational and Cultural Reconstruction. In his new position, Shapiro wasted little time in attacking the Conference for disregarding the concerns of local communities. European Jews, he wrote approvingly in a memo addressed to the Conference’s executive committee in March 1954, saw the German funds as money “due the Nazi-ravaged communities,” and “as a matter of right and not as philanthropy.” From its inception the Conference had refused to recognize that there has been an “awakening” of European Jewry.35 Shapiro proposed that the committee work side by side with local community leadership to prepare a statement of specific requirements, with the final formulation to be considered by a European committee designated by the Conference and presented to the executive committee. At his urging,

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the JDC gradually allowed local communities, with the assistance of individual JDC country directors, to assume responsibility for the cultural, religious, and educational activity funded by these payments. Shapiro was particularly concerned with changing the policy of the Claims Executive Committee on educational funding. The Committee had originally balked at the idea of providing financial assistance for local schools, fearing that the effort would reinforce communal dependence on outside funds. It was also clearly annoyed by the numerous requests for support from institutions in countries that had not been directly affected by Nazi oppression. In the face of strong criticism from European educators in countries with large eastern European refugee populations like England and Belgium, Shapiro convinced the Committee to agree to support schools in countries invaded by the Nazis or in communities where more than half of their members were victims of the Holocaust. Under Shapiro’s tutelage, the Joint began to slowly reshape Jewish educational policies in western Europe. Drawing on the writings of the American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey, it attempted to steer local teachers away from the traditional European emphasis on course content and “great ideas” in order to devote more attention to the psychological, social, and intellectual needs of the individual student. American advisors to the Joint stressed the importance of early childhood education and pressed for the establishment of Jewish kindergartens and nurseries throughout western Europe. They also urged parents to become involved in Jewish learning and helped to establish parents’ committees at various day schools in France and Belgium.36 One of the Joint’s major proposals called for the creation of Jewish high schools that would compete with state-sponsored secondary education. Twenty such schools existed in Europe in the late 1950s. A few schools tried to integrate secular and Jewish education and to prepare Jewish students for entrance into the highly competitive European university system, both with notable success. At the Ecole Aquiba, which opened in Strasbourg, France, in 1948, students recited the poetry of the Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik and performed scenes from Molière’s plays. Despite their cachet, however, Jewish high schools did not succeed in attracting upwardly mobile parents and their children, who preferred to send their sons to general private schools that prepared students for entry into colleges and universities.37 With the aid of funds from the Claims Conference, the JDC also introduced informal Jewish learning methods, including the use of audiovisual materials, correspondence courses with printed materials and texts, evening adult and youth educational programs, traveling lecture series, and summer camps. It also pressed for increased opportunities for young

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Jewish men and women to study abroad, especially in Israel. In countries with small and widely distributed Jewish populations, Jewish educators used Claims Conference money to hire itinerant teachers to visit far-flung communities. Even with a fresh injection of reparations money and expertise, however, the results of the JDC’s educational programming in western Europe remained meager in the 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the number of children attending primary Jewish religious and supplementary schools had increased to only 16 percent.38 Intense efforts to reach out to unaffiliated families through programs funded with Central Claims monies had only limited success. Smaller communities continued to suffer from a lack of teachers and funds. Most families seemed to be satisfied with a cursory religious education for their sons, one which generally began only at age ten or so to prepare them for bar mitzvah. Nor was there much interest in providing formal Hebrew training to girls. No wonder that the director general of JDC Europe Charles Jordan reported in 1958 that educational work in Europe was slow and tedious.39 Debates and discussions concerning the state of Jewish education and religious practice in western Europe in the 1950s were part of a larger discourse about the decline in Jewish communal affiliation and individual commitment. Many Jews who returned from camps or who emerged from hiding in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were burdened by what one observer called “the Marrano complex”: the fear of publicly associating with the Jewish community.40 Parents refused to circumcise their sons because they did not want them to be identifiable as Jewish. A few went so far as to convert their children to spare them from antisemitic attack. The postwar period also saw a significant increase in name changes in the three countries.41 Even for Jews who did not openly deny their Jewish identity, a report issued by the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations in 1955 commented succinctly that the years spent in hiding or in camps during the war meant that many returning survivors had “simply lost the habit.”42 Community leaders in western Europe were especially concerned with the attitudes and behavior of young Jewish men and women. Survivor youth were said to have become cynical and hard as a result of the war, the insecurities brought on by the Cold War, and the fear of nuclear conflagration in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Jewish educators in France, Belgium, and Holland talked openly about the antisocial behavior of Jewish “juvenile delinquents” and the plight of “feral children.” As Aryeh Tartakower wrote in an article in early 1945, a young person who has seen the passive indifference of the surrounding population, as well as in many cases its active participation in terror and murder, might well conclude

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that “all humanity is corrupt and foul.”43 Officials at the American Jewish Committee and their supporters in England and on the continent were especially fearful that rootless survivor youths could easily fall victim to what the officials described as the “anti-democratic ideals” of philosophies like existentialism, as well as to “the temptations of Communism.”44 Religious leaders detected a similar youthful rebelliousness in the tendency of adolescents to desert the melodies of the synagogue for swing music and jazz. Leaders of established Jewish organizations debated whether these estranged Jewish youths endangered the survival of the community by refusing to socialize with one another and to marry. A report presented to the Joint in 1953 warned that unless something was done to integrate the younger generation, “one can envision a period, close at hand, in which all Jewish efforts, in whatever sphere, will have lost all possibility to survive.”45 A central theme in community discussions was the notion of alienation. Amidst the many competing institutions, individual Jews were said to be consumed by an abiding sense of loneliness. The lack of common purpose—a writer commented in an article published in La Revue juive de Genève in 1947—meant that each person felt “out of place; each Jew goes through life as a solitary soul.”46 If communities could not easily overcome the profound lack of direction and purpose that existed among postwar European Jews, as well as the seductive pull of the larger society, western European community leaders maintained, they might at least try to create a neutral and attractive environment where individuals of different backgrounds and orientations—or of little background or commitment— could meet to interact in a Jewish milieu. The desire to establish a new meeting place for alienated Jews gave birth to the Jewish Community Center (JCC) movement. Modeled after the American JCC and the social centers in western Europe that Catholic and Protestant churches had created, the JCC movement’s purpose was to break down the differences in socioeconomic status, ideology, religious faith, gender, age, and cultural heritage that existed within each community. The Jewish community center was envisioned primarily as an educational institution, one that would inculcate youth who had grown up during the war with the rudiments of Jewish history and culture, a regular regimen of physical exercise and hygiene, and fundamental social skills. Strongly influenced by the perspective of Isaac Pougatch, its goal was to create a friendly and warm environment that would reinforce the notion of Judaism as a communal way of life rather than merely a belief system. Instead of formal classes, the centers would emphasize so-called “peripheral” activities that had become central in the lives of young men and women in the postwar era, including sports, cinema clubs, and danc-

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es. As Pougatch, who himself had been an early proponent of a community center in Paris, remarked, “The young person will be led to consider the center in its entirety—from its movie theater to its library, from its gymnasium to its course offerings—as a profound unity, in which Judaism constitutes the central element.”47 The idea of a community center on the continent was first raised in 1945 among members of British-run Jewish Relief Units (JRU) in Italy and the Netherlands. They were convinced that a Jewish community center would steer young people away from “their lives of paupery and petty black market transactions” by offering them a wholesome place to congregate and opportunities for housing and employment. JRU volunteers also felt that a community center would provide a secure environment where survivor youth, many of whom had lost their entire families, could meet and share their concerns and hopes.48 In 1946, members of the JRU unit in Amsterdam managed to establish a community center comprised of an assembly hall, a library, and a reading room. Six year later, the JDC requested a $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to build a center in Paris. French Jewish leaders also envisioned constructing centers in smaller communities whose only formal Jewish institution was often the sparsely attended local consistorial synagogue. The need for additional centers became more pressing with the influx of hundreds of thousands of Jews from North Africa beginning in the mid-1950s. Community leaders created a master plan that would begin in 1955 to establish centers throughout the country. In the same year, the majority of French requests for German material claims money and two-thirds of the JDC and Central Claims allocations were earmarked for establishing community centers. Eventually, centers would be built throughout France, first in Paris, then in Belfort, Roanne, Lens, Metz, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseilles, Nancy, and Strasbourg. The community center concept soon spread to other countries. The idea was especially popular in Belgium, where there was a noticeable gap between rich and poor, and where there was little contact between the large population of refugees and the established community. By 1957, 70 percent of JDC funds for capital investments in Europe were allocated to community and youth centers.49 For its part, the American YMHA movement fostered the development of centers in smaller European communities where religious affiliation was generally weak and lacking in leadership: Oslo and Trondheim in Norway, Bossum and The Hague in Holland, and Liège in Belgium.50 Though the community centers did help to develop a modicum of communal unity, they generally could not override the deep-seated divisions among western European Jews. In Paris, for example, community

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leaders had actually planned to create three separate centers: one apiece for the French, eastern European immigrant, and Sephardic communities. The problem was solved when it was finally agreed to establish programs for each of the constituencies within one center. In Brussels, Zionist groups—who had developed their own network of youth groups—considered the local community center as “enemy territory” and actively worked to prevent their members from participating in its activities.51 In some cases, JCC activities were co-opted by political and religious youth groups, a development that went against the original intentions of the organizers of the community center movement. The Joint also had difficulty finding skilled individuals who could deal with the legal, technical, and financial challenges associated with the construction of centers. Rising construction and equipment costs and the chronic shortage of skilled builders were also serious impediments. Increasingly, the JCC activity in western Europe was limited to the largest communities, and centers in cities like Paris and Brussels only managed to survive by becoming broadbased cultural centers that were geared as much to adults as to young men and women. The checkered experience of Jewish community centers in western Europe in the 1950s demonstrated how difficult it was to transform a specialized American Jewish institution—one of many social service organizations in a community that provided it with significant financial support—into an all-purpose agency with limited funds and lukewarm community support. In a larger sense, this difficulty reflected the fact that despite the decline in religious affiliation and observance, the Jewish identity of the majority of those who remained in western Europe did not mesh easily with the openly ethnic perspective that was emerging across the Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century. Educators in western Europe in the early and mid-1950s also attempted to reconnect alienated youth with Jewish life through programs associated with the State of Israel. Young men and women were urged to participate in Independence Day celebrations, to learn Hebrew and Israeli folk dances, and to write to pen pals in Israel. Community organizations organized trips to the Jewish state and arranged for student exchange programs. As with the importing of Israeli educators, the hope was that Israel-oriented programming would infuse young men and women with a commitment to Jewish collective survival. The fact that some of the best and brightest of Jewish youth would eventually make aliyah in the 1960s, especially after the Six-Day War, demonstrated the tensions and contradictions in the heavily pro-Zionist orientation of western European Jewish education in the 1950s and 1960s.

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The development of the Jewish community center movement and the increasing importance of Zionism in Jewish education and culture in the 1950s pointed to the significant changes that were occurring in western European Jewish life after World War II. Traditional indices of Jewish identity that rested on religious belief and practice were slowly being challenged by new forms of Jewish commitment that were based both on continued integration into the larger society and on identification with Jewish culture and with the Jewish State. At the same time, the increasingly voluntaristic and pluralistic nature of Jewish communal life—and the notable decline in communal involvement—raised serious doubts about the efficacy of established patterns of Jewish thought and behavior. Many of the proposals offered by religious leaders and educators in France, Belgium, and Holland proved unsuccessful, suggesting that the three communities could not easily overcome the legacy of the prewar period and of their recent tragic past. Yet, though deeply scarred by World War II, Jewish communities in France, Belgium, and Holland by the mid1950s were already showing important signs of recovery. In devising innovative plans and programs to ensure their children’s future—some of which, after a rocky start in the first two decades after the war, would eventually bear fruit in the late 1960s and 1970s—the Jews of France, Belgium, and Holland were signaling their readiness to rejoin other Diaspora communities in the West in their ongoing efforts to maintain Jewish identity and commitment in an open society.

Notes 1. “Proceedings of the JDC Country Directors Conference,” June 1954, 293, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), CC19007. 2. For further information on the CRREC’s mobile synagogues program, see the documents in the Hartley Library of the University of Southampton (SH), MS183/374/3; and Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld to Michael Creagh of the Voluntary Secretary Liaison Unit of UNRRA, October 8, 1945, SH, MS183/374/1. 3. For a summary of the Joint’s support of religious activities and institutions in 1949– 50, see the letter to Solomon Tarshansky, Joint’s Committee on Cultural-Religious Affairs to H. M. Caiserman, General Secretary of the Canadian Jewish Congress, July 27, 1950, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives, New York (JDC-NY), 45/54 #1239. 4. Roger Berg, “La Pratique du Judaïsme en France,” Yod 21 (1985): 83; Cynthia Brasz, “Na de tweede wereldoorlog: van kerkgenootschap naar culturele minderheid,” in Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland, edited by J. C. H. Blom, R. B. Fuks-Mansfeld, and I. Schöffer (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 1995), 360; Report on “Religion, Education and Culture in Western Europe,” prepared for CCJO meeting in London, June 1955, 2, SH, MS147/AJ86; “Possibilités de cooperation entre les communautés juives—Domaine religieux, culturel et educatif,” issued jointly by the Alliance israé-

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lite universelle, the American Jewish Committee, and the Anglo-Jewish Association, 15, in the American Jewish Archives (AJA), MS361 B68. 5. See, for example, Daniel Dratwa, “Genocide and its Memories: A Preliminary Study on How Belgian Jewry Coped with the Results of the Holocaust,” in Belgium and the Holocaust: Jews—Belgians—Germans, ed. Dan Michman (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1998), 531; and the discussion of the Rotterdam community in the reports from Laura Margolis, the JDC representative in Holland, YIVO Archives (YIVO), RG347.7.41– 46, Box 34, “Holland Reports 46–47, 49–50” Folder. 6. See, for example, the memo by Eric Lunzer of the Jewish Relief Unit in Holland to M. Stephany of the Central British Fund concerning the Fund’s decision to send two Aguda rabbis to Holland, May 31, 1946, Archives of the Central British Fund (CBF), File 75. The Dutch Jewish community eventually rejected the appointments, and the rabbis were withdrawn (memo from Lunzer to Stephany, July 8, 1946, CBF File 75). 7. Cited in David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 214. 8. See, for example, the discussion of the Brussels Jewish community in W. Bok, “Vie juive et communauté: Une esquisse de leur histoire au vingtième siècle,” in La Grande Synagogue de Bruxelles (Bruxelles: Communauté israélite de Bruxelles, 1978), 167. 9. Report on “Religion, Education and Culture in Western Europe”, 3. 10. See, for example, the report on the conference held in September 1950 found in Synagogue Review 25, no. 2 (Oct. 1950): 49. 11. On Amsterdam, see the memo concerning the Netherlands from Erica Lunzer of the Jewish Relief Unit based in Holland to Leonard Cohen of the Central British Fund, January 17, 1946, in CBF 75. On Brussels, see “Beyn yehudei brissel,” Ha-Tzofeh, March 27, 1953, Central Zionist Archives (CZA) S5 10.491. 12. Report on “Jewish Spiritual Life in Europe after the ‘Churban,’” London Conference of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations (CCJO), June 1955, dated Apri; 21, 1955, YIVO RG347.7.41–46, Box 73, “International Organizations European Conference Background Papers and Reports 55, 46” Folder. 13. See, for example, the comments by Roger Berg in his Histoire du rabbinat français (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1992), 109. A survey conducted by the French consistorial journal Journal des communautés in April 1950 asked various individuals in the community to comment on what they expected of a rabbi. The respondents generally agreed that he should be a scholar, a humanist, a teacher, an advisor to youth, and a “missionary” who would strive to bring back Jews into the fold. See Journal des communautés, August 11, 1950: 2; Henri Schilli, “Rabbin, métier de chef,” Journal des communautés (August 24, 1951): 2. 14. A small Sephardic rabbinical college and teachers’ training seminary opened in London in 1952, but could not survive. A rabbinical seminary functioned for over a century in Amsterdam until 1943, when the Nazis shut it down. Almost its entire student body of sixty was arrested and killed. 15. There were numerous attempts to create other rabbinical seminaries throughout the 1950s. In 1955, a rabbi in Copenhagen initiated an effort to create a new school on the continent, but it quickly failed after European religious leaders could not agree on its location, language of instruction, or curriculum. In the following year, an attempt to found a yeshiva in Jerusalem to train rabbis for the Diaspora ran into strong opposition from ultra-Orthodox elements in Israel who opposed its “modern” approach to Judaism and from supporters of the French and Italian seminaries. A Liberal rabbinical college known as the International Institute of Hebraic Studies was also established with great fanfare in Paris in the early 1950s. By 1961, however, it

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had managed to graduate only four students, and folded soon afterwards. See “Possibilités de cooperation entre les communautés juives—Domaine religieux, culturel et educatif,” 16, an undated report in AJA, MS361 B68; Report of the Executive in Report of the Twelfth International Conference of WUPJ, held July 6–13, 1961, in London, 42, SH MS285 A1979/190. 16. For a full accounting of the educational situation in Europe in 1946, see “Tentative Report on the Present Jewish Educational Situation in Europe,” prepared by the Research Department of the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, September 6, 1946, AJA, MS361 E10/6. 17. This was the case in Belgium, for example, where several local communities unsuccessfully tried to recruit teachers from Switzerland and France. See Catherine Massange, Bâtir le lendemain: L’Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre et le Service Social Juif de 1944 à nos jours (Bruxelles: Didier Devillez, 2002), 73. 18. Report on State of Jewish Education in France, prepared by Dr. Avi Zohar in Geneva for members of the Executive Committee for the Study of Problems of Publicity (Taamula) and Zionist Education of the Jewish Agency, February 8, 1950, CZA C2/12. See also Massange, Bâtir le lendemain, 72. 19. Sam Segel at a meeting of the European Office of the Organization Department of the Jewish Agency, September 28, 1947, 10; CZA S5 141/I 10.131. 20. Printed Report of the Executive Committee of the JDC, May 17, 1949, JDC-NY 45–54 #1239. 21. Barnett Litvinoff, “Great Britain,” American Jewish Yearbook 53 (1953): 273. 22. Ze’ev Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 136–37. See also the comments by Isaac Pougatch, Se ressaisir ou disparaître (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1955), 86. 23. See, for example, the comments by Rabbi Léon Ashkenazi in the minutes of the Conference on Jewish Education held in Paris in October 1956, 68, CAHJP CC19006b. 24. Many of these issues were raised in Moshe Zertal, European Bureau of the Jewish Agency to Yoheved Zusman, Department of Organization of the central office in Israel [in Hebrew], 29 May 29, 1958, CZA S5 147/1 11.155. 25. For information on the French seminars, see Samuel René Kapel, Au lendemain de la Shoa: temoignage sur la renaissance du Judaîsme de France et d’Afrique du Nord, 1945–1954 (Jerusalem: S. R. Kapel, 1991), 32–34; and memo from Shapiro to Saul Tarshansky, of the JDC’s Committee on Cultural-Religious Affairs in New York, February 21, 1950, JDC-NY 45–54 #1239. 26. For further information, see Israel Pougatch, A l’écoute de son people: un éducateur raconte (Paris: Albin Michel, 1980), 287–321; idem, Se ressaisir ou disparaître, 49. See also the Centre’s annual report for 1952 CZA S5 10.504. The Centre was closed in 1958 after its responsibilities were taken over by the Fonds social juif unifié (FSJU), the federation of Jewish agencies in France. 27. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 136–37; Federica Barozzi, “L’uscita degli ebrei di Roma dalla clandestinità,” in Il ritorno alla vita: vicende e diritti degli ebrei in Italia dopo la seconda Guerra mondiale, Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (Milan: Giuntina, 1998), 38. 28. A typical curriculum strongly influenced by Zionist concerns and addressed to both native-born and immigrant children was the one devised by the Association des israélites victimes de la guerre (AIVG) in Belgium in 1946. Among the subjects taught were Jewish history (with focus on Jewish heroes of the past in particular), the place of Jews in European society (which focused on the sociology of the Jews and in

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particular on the importance of community and of national identity), Hebrew grammar and literature, Yiddish, and the flora and fauna of Palestine. See Katy Hazan, Les orphelins de la Shoah: les maisons de l’espoir (1944–1960) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000), 166; Massange, Bâtir le lendemain, 71. Communist classes, camps, and clubs borrowed liberally from the writings of Anton Makarenko, a prominent Russian educator after the Revolution, who attempted to apply Marxist teachings concerning the importance of the collectivity and the need to create a “new man” to the classroom, as well as the writings of Henri Wallon, a French psychologist who employed a dialectical approach to the study of child development. See especially Hazan, Les orphelins de la Shoah, 130, 140, 144, 333–35. 29. Pougatch, Se ressaisir ou disparaître, 32. 30. Note from Judah Shapiro to M[elvin] Goldstein, Assistant Secretary of the JDC, January 25, 1949, Archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Jerusalem (JDC-J), Geneva 1/14B, Folder 61 (C-41.008). 31. For an assessment of the failure of UJECO, see the minutes of the organization’s Executive, November 29, 1948, SH MS137 AJ37/15/31. See also the comments by the director of the Department of Educational Reconstruction of the Conference on Material Claims against Germany, Judah Shapiro, at a meeting of European Jewish educators in 1956, in Report on the final session of Conference on Jewish Education, 85, JDC-NY 45–54 #1257; and the memo from Barnett Janner, Chairman of UJECO, to the Joint Distribution Committee, January 11, 1950, YIVO RG 347.7.2, FAD2, Box 3, “Europe Jewish Communities UJECO Folder.” The struggle over UJECO would not be the last time that international organizations would compete with one another in the 1950s over the fate of Jewish education in Europe. In 1956, there were two competing conferences for Jewish teachers held on the Continent, one organized by the Joint, the other through the combined efforts of the Alliance israélite universelle, the Anglo-Jewish Association, and the American Jewish Committee. In the meantime, the Fonds social juif unifié had attempted to organize its own conference. The tortured negotiations to reach a compromise among the competing organizations failed, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of all of the participants. See especially the comments by Julien Weill in the minutes of the meeting of the executive committee of the Alliance, October 23, 1956, the Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU). 32. For a full list of the educational programs and institutions in each European community in the first years after the war, see the report prepared by the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Research Department, September 6, 1946, AJA MS 361 E10/6. See also Elizabeth E. Eppler, “Jewish Education in Europe, 1933–1960,” in The Institute Anniversary Album (1941–1961) (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1962), 208–36; and the report in Yedies, the Yiddish-language paper issued by the European Bureau of the Zionist Federation in Europe, 13 (September 14, 1949): 5–8. 33. See, for example, the comments of Aryeh Tartakower in his article, “Problems in Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in Europe,” Journal of Educational Sociology 18, no. 5 (Special issue on “The Jew in the Postwar World”) (January 1945): 271–77. Tartakower served as director of relief and rehabilitation for the World Jewish Congress and deputy director of its Institute of Jewish Affairs. 34. See, for example, the discussion at the meeting of the European Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs of the [Claims] Conference, February 14, 1954, CAHJP CC15003.

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35. Memo from Judah Shapiro to Members of Executive Committee of the JDC, March 17, 1954, CAHJP CC15003. 36. For information on the JDC’s attitudes toward childhood education, see the “Report on Cultural and Educational Activity,” prepared for the Joint, dated April 1953, JDC-NY 45/54 #357. 37. Nathan Wolff, as cited in the minutes of the Conference on Jewish Education, October 1956, 26, CAHJP CC19006b. 38. Carr, “Jewish Spiritual Life”, 6. 39. Notes from a meeting held in the AJDC offices in Geneva, August 26, 1958, JDCNY 45/54 #1254. 40. “Report on Jews of France in 1945,” CZA C2/1927. 41. For the motivations behind conversions in France, see the comments by the writer Arnold Mandel, cited in Simon Schwarzfuchs, “Les Consistoires: la reconstruction dans l’immédiat après-guerre (1945–1949),” Le Monde juif, no. 158 (Sept.–Dec. 1996): 99. For information on name changing in France, see L’Unité 3, no. 15 (April 26, 1946), 21; for Belgium, see “Une lettre de Bruxelles,” La Revue juive de Genève 9, nos. 4–5 (June–July 1946), 206. 42. Report on “Religion, Education and Culture in Western Europe”, 2. 43. Tartakower, “Problems in Jewish Cultural Reconstruction”, 272. 44. Memo by an unnamed author (? Zachariah Shuster) on “The Community Program,” stamped as received by the American Jewish Committee on July 11, 1958, YIVO FAD-2, Box 2, “Community Program Europe 42-62” Folder. See also the report by Tartakower to the WJC after a trip through Europe in November–December 1955, SH IF16 MS237 1/336. On the danger of juvenile delinquency among Jewish youth, see, for example, the application for funds to aid in the creation of a Jewish Community Center in Brussels presented to the Conference on Material Claims against Germany by the Centrale d’oeuvres sociales juives, October 1, 1953, AJA, MS361 H58/15. 45. Report on “Cultural and Educational Activity in France, 1953,” prepared for the JDC, April 1953, JDC-NY 45/54 #357. 46. Josué Jehouda, “Le remède définitif,” La Revue juive de Genève” 10, no. 91 (Mar. 1947): 66. 47. Pougatch, Se ressaisir ou disparaître, 81. 48. Charles Zarback, “Report on Conditions in Jewish Ghetto,” Mar. 1945, CBF File 124; Erica Lunzer, “Report on Activities of Jewish Relief Unit in Amsterdam from August 1945–April 1946,” CBF File 75. 49. Report for the Year 1957 of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, CAHJP, CC 19001b, 30. 50. Maud S. Mandel, “Philanthropy or Cultural Imperialism? The Impact of American Jewish Aid in Post-Holocaust France,” Jewish Social Studies 9, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 80, 82–83; Roger Berg, “‘La Pratique du Judaïsme’ en France,” Yod 21(1985): 91; Louis Kraft, “Report on Jewish Center Developments in Europe, June 1955, from the World Federation of YMHA’s and Jewish Community Centers,” statement made at the London Conference of Jewish Organizations, YIVO RG347.7.41–46, FAD 41– 46, Box 70. 51. Minutes of the meeting of the FSJU, November 14, 1960, JDC-NY 45-54 #357.

5

THE POST-LIBERATION FRENCH ADMINISTRATION AND THE JEWS Jean-Marc Dreyfus



On 13 September 1944, more than two weeks after the liberation of Paris, the partners and associates of the small Paris bank, Cahin, wrote a letter to the Banque de France, the French central bank. In the letter, they asserted that the authority and the signatory power of the provisional administrator, Albert Bouvier—appointed in March 1941 by the general commissioner for Jewish affairs (Commissariat général aux questions juives) to liquidate or sell the bank—should be suspended.1 France had been liberated, the Vichy regime had collapsed, and Marshal Pétain was being kept in a castle in Germany; therefore, the bank’s partners believed that all the antisemitic ordinances and laws, whether German or French, were now invalid and that they now had free access to their bank accounts, including the one in the Banque de France.2 On 29 September, the general secretary of the Banque de France replied to the brothers Cahin that no instructions had yet been received from any authorities, including the Ministry of Finances, to suspend the powers of provisional administrators; for the time being, only the administrator could activate the account. At least one other small Jewish bank, de Castro, faced a similar rebuff, leading Monsieur de Castro to come to the office of the Banque de France to protest in person.3

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During these months of September, October, and November 1944, when the majority of French territory had already been liberated from German rule, the Jews who had survived in France were confronted with such problems concerning their properties, since some of the ordinances of despoilment had not yet been lifted. These facts contradicted the 9 August 1944 ordinance promulgated by General de Gaulle’s provisional French government, which annulled all the laws and acts of the Vichy regime. This included, of course, the hundreds of texts against Jews and Jewish-owned properties. Tal Bruttmann presents other examples of similar problems in his book Au bureau des affaires juives. For example, in Grenoble, in the department of Isère, Jews were condemned by courts for their infraction of the antisemitic legislation.4 Though the legal procedure had begun before the Liberation, administrative inertia meant that these procedures were not stopped in summer 1944, as if the French administration were proceeding legally—and even eagerly—to implement the antisemitic measures and to persecute the Jews. Bruttmann gives the extreme example of a Jew sentenced in October 1944 who had been arrested by the gendarmerie in May 1944 and who was found guilty of staying illegally in Villard-deLans. He was fined 200 francs. On reading Bruttmann’s chapter, one can get the impression that such procedures were common after the Liberation, but he does not provide any figures. The Ministry of Justice never formally decreed an end to court procedures relating to the antisemitic laws over and above the ordinance promulgated on 9 August. Thus, Jews had to personally apply for the cancellation of any procedures being carried out against them. These examples are striking, and could lead to the conclusion that the reinstatement of Jewish rights was not a priority of either General de Gaulle’s cabinet or of the restored administrations in France after the Liberation.5 The main French law dealing with restitution was passed by the provisional Assembly (Parliament) on 21 April 1945, eight months after the liberation of Paris, which ostensibly indicated that the fate of Jews was not a priority in postwar France. This paper will try to argue the opposite, to show that a general policy of “reintegration” of Jews into the republic was conducted immediately after the Liberation, and that this policy was mostly successful.

Condition of the Jews at the Time of France’s Liberation The condition of the Jews in liberated France seemed to be paradoxical, especially if compared with their situation in the Reich and in eastern

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Europe. First of all, the number of Jews who survived was much higher in France than in other European nations. Of the 330,000 Jews who lived in France in July 1940, almost 76,000 had been deported in seventy-nine convoys. A few thousand had died in French internment camps or were exterminated on French soil. Only 2,500 Jews returned from deportation.6 In other words, 75 percent of the Jews who lived in France at the beginning of the Occupation had survived on French territory. Many families were scattered in different shelters or places of refuge, great numbers were in hiding, and many lived more or less clandestinely in small villages throughout French territory. But some Jews remained in their apartments, subject to numerous acts of discrimination, and these were cautious not to show themselves too much in the open. A handful of Jews even kept their jobs officially until the very end of the Occupation.7 The number of Jews able to leave French territory during the Occupation for the United States, Spain, or Switzerland is not precisely known. What is certain is that many important Jewish institutions continued to function throughout the entire period, as did the Central Consistory8 and many Jewish communities. The Union générale des Israélites de France (UGIF), though a very controversial body,9 enabled some Jewish organizations to survive under its cover, such as the Jewish scouting movement—the Eclaireurs Israélites de France—whose leadership joined the ranks of the armed Resistance in great numbers.10 And more importantly, the Jews, even when in hiding, were never separated from the general French population, a consequence of 150 years of integration, assimilation, and a liberal regime.11 Another striking point is that many Jews fought in the Resistance, whether in Jewish organizations or as individuals in non-Jewish movements. Many Jews also served in the military units of Free France. As far as Jewish property is concerned, the circumstances were also somewhere in the middle of those in other countries. The policy of confiscation, which began as early as September 1940, was implemented almost entirely by the French administration and targeted Jewish-owned firms.12 All the firms, even the most modest ones, were rapidly submitted to provisional administration, followed by forced sale or liquidation. For various reasons, however, the confiscation in most of cases did not come to and end and remained in a standstill: many firms were not entirely liquidated by August 25, 1944, the date of the liberation of Paris. In addition, for many firms that had been officially sold to an “Aryan,” the sales were not properly registered by the various authorities in charge, which meant that the former Jewish owner remained in legal possession of the company, albeit not at its head.13 The major part of the money gained from such despoilment remained in blocked accounts in France.

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True, a one-billion-franc levy had been paid by the UGIF to the German Occupation authorities, and had disappeared from the accounts, but the rest was blocked at the Caisse des dépots et consignations, a major national financial institution. Three billion francs entered the accounts of the Caisse des dépots, and two billion were still there at the liberation of the country.14 Stocks belonging to Jews valued at 7 billion francs had been blocked. Of these, stocks valued at 2 billion francs had been sold, mostly on the stock exchange.15 Generally speaking, while the Jews of France were deprived of the use of their assets, most of those remained on French soil. This relatively favorable situation was due to the complicated factors of the very circumstances of despoilment in France—French-German rivalry in the looting, a French policy of “presence” that preferred to see the Aryanization implemented by the French administrations themselves, and the absence of a final French decision on the destination of the assets, as the Vichy government never intended to protect Jewish owners, but at the same time feared German penetration of France’s economy. As an involuntary result, this led to an easier restitution process than in other comparable countries, such as Belgium or the Netherlands.16

The Attitude of the Resistance and Free France toward the Jews The French Resistance’s attitude toward Jews was not unequivocal. Some of its movements even adopted the antisemitic views of French society and maintained that there was no place in liberated France for foreign Jews.17 The first Resistance fighters (of whom there were very few until the end of 1942) did not protest the antisemitic measures of Vichy. Protestations against the massive roundups of 1942, though, were numerous.18 The fate of France’s Jews was not a priority for the Resistance, even if some help would be tendered to the Jewish cause by certain networks and fighters. In the plans that were proposed for the time after Liberation, the Jews were not specifically mentioned. Within the Comité général d’études (General Committee for Studies), a body of nine members in charge of making proposals for reforms in France, the fate of Jews was not even mentioned.19 There were no general plans for the reintegration of Jews into French society. In the effort made to produce a unique political and social program for the Resistance fighters, no reference was made to the Jews. In the several programmatic manifestos, the Jews are not named, although these manifestos do state that the reinstatement of the French Republic would restore to every citizen his or her full rights. The programmatic declaration of July 1943 contains the following statement: “The total destruction of the fascist dictatorships, of the spirit and

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propaganda that move them, the merciless punishment of their crimes and spoliations, [these] are the primary conditions of peace.”20 The final version of the program, adopted by the Conseil national de la Résistance on March 15, 1944, refers to the return of democracy, freedom of conscience, respect for human beings, and the “absolute equality of citizens before the law.”21 This sentence probably alluded to the statute of Jews, but its authors evidently did not want to single them out from the rest of the victims, especially the Resistance fighters, some of whom had also seen their properties confiscated.22 While sentiments among the French immigrant community in New York were not very favorable to foreign Jews, who were considered unwelcome in postwar France,23 General de Gaulle himself had made clear from the very beginning of the Occupation in letters he wrote to the World Jewish Congress that the victory of Great Britain and Free France would mean the withdrawal of all antisemitic measures.24 Already in August 1940, Charles de Gaulle wrote, in a famous letter to Albert Cohen, the well-known author and at that time representative of the World Jewish Congress, that all the antisemitic measures that would be adopted in France would be suppressed as soon as the country was free again. This was very clearly reiterated in a letter from de Gaulle to Rabbi Stephen Wise, the president of the American Jewish Congress, for the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation in France. But if de Gaulle had clear views on this question when he was surrounded by Jews (René Cassin, Raymond Aron, and others), the changing political situation and the prevalent antisemitism among many of the French, as well as in some Free France circles in London, led to a more cautious public policy and a certain discretion on Jewish issues.25 No favorable development in the condition of Jews in Algeria and Morocco after the landing of the Anglo-American troops on November 8, 1942, was evident. The antisemitic legislation in those territories was maintained, even if the Aryanization policy (which differed from the one implemented in France) was stopped, if not withdrawn. Only after Charles de Gaulle took over authority from General Giraud in October 1943 were the antisemitic laws finally suppressed.26 When France was liberated, there were no programs to benefit the Jews, only a clear will to restore the Republic on a new basis. Considering the history of the French Republic, so thoroughly identified by its inclusion of Jews (and Freemasons), it appears logical that the restoration of the Republic would mean the restoration of full Jewish rights.27 It should be noted that this idea was considered valid mostly for French Jews, and much less for foreign Jews. However, the opening of the concentration camps and the massive diffusion of images of these in France not only changed the people’s view on Jews—and on German atrocities in general—over-

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night, but also made it impossible to differentiate between deportees that held French citizenship and foreign deportees.28 It became impossible for the Ministry of Deported and War Victims, headed by Henry Frenay, to draw a line between the different categories of survivors of the camps. All deportees who had been sent to camps from France and had survived were repatriated in the same difficult manner.

Restitution Policy The policy of returning confiscated Jewish property is an interesting case study because it has been researched in detail by numerous historians and by an official commission, the Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France. The commission published twelve detailed reports on this question, from which it is obvious that no program for the restitution of property had been prepared, neither by the Provisional Assembly of Algiers nor by the Resistance cells within the various ministries. Though some legislation had been drafted, the full situation was not known in detail outside France, and the complexity of the procedures was only barely assessed whenever the fate of Jews was (rarely) discussed. Just as the fate of Jews was seen as only a minor component of the global aim of the period—total victory over the German Reich and its allies—the reinstallation of Jewish rights was seen as only a minor point in the restoration of the Republic. Another concern was to avoid too much disorder, rioting, and looting. For the persons who comprised the political leadership in Algiers, the continuity of the state was a priority, but so was a strict purge of those who had been overly committed to the Vichy regime. This explains the relative cautiousness of the measures adopted in favor of the Jews. Another contradiction lay in the fact that for the London-based French Republic in exile, as embodied in de Gaulle, the Vichy period was no more than a digression and should not be taken into account when considering the continuity of the Republic. Therefore, the 9 August ordinance that annulled all the laws and legislation enacted by Vichy could be seen as sufficient. This was nevertheless an illusion, a juridical one, created by the legal advisor of de Gaulle in London, René Cassin.29 The truth of the matter is that the provisional government could not simply get rid of the laws of Vichy, a regime that had notably enacted much legislation and created new administrative bodies; the provisional government had to face a new social and political situation. Though the new French government wanted to return to the situation prior to June

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1940, it had to sort through the legislation enacted since then and decide which laws should be maintained. The looted properties had to remain under some sort of control— whether this was a provisional administrator or a dedicated and capable French administration—before they could be returned to their owners. Nonetheless, the first measure was taken relatively rapidly on 28 August, only three days after the liberation of Paris. Emmanuel Mönick, a director in the Ministry of Finances who headed the ministry’s Liberation Committee, signed a note ordering that the blocked personal accounts that belonged to Jews should be unfrozen.30 In the disorder following the liberation of Paris, it took two days for this directive to be transmitted to the various unions of bankers and brokers. But, as can be seen from the opening paragraph of this article, the Jewish firms remained under provisional administration. The situation was different in some French provinces, where the commissaries of government appointed by de Gaulle, which were granted effective power in the provinces, adopted radical measures of restitution.31 Some of these cases of restitution were carried out quite violently, when young armed Jewish Resistance fighters came to town and simply chased the new dwellers out of their parents’ flats. Furthermore, at the end of August, instructions were issued to the Domains Administration to stop selling Jewish stocks, as it had been doing on a regular monthly basis since September 1941. On 22 September, 1944, the director of the Domains Administration wrote to various credit institutions and banks to inform them that he was no longer in charge of Jewish-owned stocks. The building of the infamous Commissariat général aux questions juives (General Office for Jewish Affairs) was sealed off, in order to preserve the dossiers. The Commissariat was suppressed and put under supervision of the Direction du Blocus, a newly created entity within the Ministry of Finances in charge of freezing German properties, avoiding any economic contact with Germany, and also returning properties that had been confiscated.32 The next step was to put and end to the provisional administration of assets. An ordinance was promulgated on 14 November that nullified any act of confiscation.33 It then organized the transfer of firms and flats under provisional administration back to their legal owners. However, this transfer was to be done in an organized and legal manner, including the requirement that the provisional administration render a final account. The ordinance also envisaged the possibility of appointing another administrator by the civil court, in case the legal owner could not manifest himself. But the major step was to be the ordinance on restitution that voided the sale of properties and defined the responsibility (and eventual punishment) of the different actors in the confiscation process. To that

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purpose, a new department was created within the Ministry of Finances, the Service des restitutions (Office for Restitutions). As noted above, this ordinance was promulgated only on 21 April 1945, which appears to be very late, eight months after the liberation of Paris.34 This major ordinance, which was applied in many cases of despoilment and restitution, was much awaited by the Jewish families who had survived in France. Why was its promulgation delayed so long? Was there a disinterest within the new ruling power in France in the fate of Jewish properties? Actually, many explanations can be given, the first being quite simple: there were already too many plans for dealing with confiscated Jewish assets. At least three had been written in Algiers by different Free France institutions. Another was drafted by the newly created Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), an umbrella organization set up clandestinely in Grenoble in 1944 to unify the organizations of French and foreign Jews.35 Apparently the secretary general of the government who had been charged with preparing the ordinance took the time to produce a text that would not present the same loopholes and problems as did the former text on restitution for North Africa that had been adopted in November 1943.36 The April 1945 ordinance proved to be quite efficient and favorable to the Jewish owners. Nevertheless, the various taxes levied on Jewish firms and the cost of the provisional administration were not to be reimbursed according to the ordinance, but any past sale of Jewish property could be nullified immediately by an emergency interim ruling (“en référé”), one that was to be a definitive decision. The Jewish owner could then benefit from the rapidity of this definitive decision. The major problems in the wording of the various legislative texts had been overcome by René Cassin, who was by then the vice-president of the State Council.37 There were many problematic decisions, and it is true that many buyers of Jewish firms and properties were not prepared to return what they considered to be a legitimate purchase. The literature details problematic cases and the reluctance of buyers,38 but overall, rights were returned to Jews in almost all cases of claims.39 The only major problem concerned the stocks sold on the Paris stock exchange; in these cases, the buyers could argue that they had not known the origin of the stocks and could refuse to return them. As the money paid for the purchases had remained in blocked accounts, Jewish owners were left with the price paid for the sales. The final step in restitution policy was taken only in June 1948. An article of the General Finance Law granted monetary compensation for any despoilment, including the salaries paid to provisional administrators of Jewish firms and the German levy of one billion francs. Reimbursement was effectively carried out, although in much devalued francs. French

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Jews, then, could benefit from a global restitution and compensation policy that proved to be quite efficient, although not perfect. The high level of restitution and compensation in France must be also understood in the general context of a community that had not been entirely destroyed. There were survivors and orphans to claim their properties. This process occurred in relative discretion from the French press and media, from parliament, and from the French administration.40 The lack of zeal within the French administration was balanced by the energy and dedication of the head of the Service des Restitutions, Prof. Emile Terroine. The French courts also applied the April ordinance with care and dedication, deciding on a restitution that favored the Jews. This judicial aspect of the restitution process should not be underestimated. Reading through the archives, one encounters very little opposition from within the administration to the policy of restitution, at least after the ordinances had been promulgated, in strong contrast to what was happening in the German Federal Republic.41 In fact, the French administration implemented the restitution regulation in the same manner that it had implemented the Vichy antisemitic laws, with the difference that Jews could now play the normal game of a democracy, with this or that family putting pressure on the state, mostly through lawsuits. The issues of slow implementation and of the difficulties in the restitution process were raised a few times, albeit briefly, in the National Assembly. It is noteworthy that a communist member of the Assembly denounced the problem and the slow pace at which property was returned and compensation made to Jewish victims. Generally speaking, the French ordinances on restitution were more favorable than those in other countries, as all buyers of Jewish valuables and properties were considered as having been “in bad faith.” The buyers had to prove that they had not bought these properties while the owners were “under duress”, which was of course almost impossible.

Change of Names Additional measures were adopted for the reintegration of the Jews into the French nation. One, for example, was the suppression of any discriminatory mention in the administrative dossier. Once allowed to return to their previous positions, the Jewish civil servants who were expelled in Fall 1944 saw their administrative dossier purged of any mention of their Jewishness. Such discriminatory documents were destroyed upon the implementation of an ordinance of 1948. Another interesting measure dealt with the permission for Jews to change their names. In the post–World War II period in France, many

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people, especially Jews, changed their family names. While this seems a somewhat marginal element, it should be kept in mind that changing one’s name is almost impossible under French law (contrary to the situation in the United States, for example). A person living in France can change his or her officially registered name only in very specific cases, for example if the name is too common (i.e., one can not distinguish one family from another) or when it is defamatory or insulting. It is also permitted to change one’s name in reward for services rendered to the French state (for example, investment banker and philanthropist David Weill officially became David David-Weill, etc.). In 1945, a special ordinance granted permission to change family names, for a limited period of time, to members of the Resistance and—as was especially stated—to Jews who wanted to integrate into the French nation by ridding themselves of their “Jewish sounding” names. This led to a wave of name changes. The irony is that the decree issued for this purpose, which eased this procedure for a limited period of time, was promulgated specifically so that a “Jewish sounding” name could be changed to one sounding more French. Some Jews had to prove to the administration in charge of this process (a division within the Ministry of Justice) that their name was really Jewish.42

The Statute of the Deportee It is known now that the martyrdom of French Jews was not specifically acknowledged by the new government and the reestablished Republic.43 The fate of the Jews was considered to be part of the national martyrdom and heroism, as embodied both in the Free France forces and in the Resistance fighters who had been deported to concentration camps. This is not to say that the fate of the Jews was denied, but within the context of the immediate postwar circumstances, it was impossible to see its specificity. It is even uncertain that the Jews themselves had wished to be singled out within the French nation, and one has to be careful of any anachronism. In any event, this construction of memory—in fact of two memories at this time, a Gaullist one and a Communist one, each with specific sites and rituals—did not give proper recognition to the uniqueness of the Holocaust.44 It proved, however, to be more inclusive of Jews than the constructions of memory developed at that same time in Belgium and in the Netherlands.45 In the immediate postwar years, the Jewish communities in France placed plaques in their synagogues that commemorated the murdered members. They bore the inscription: “Morts pour la France” (Fallen for France), which was the normal epitaph for fallen soldiers. The situation evolved quite rapidly after 1946: Representatives from the high-

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est levels of the French administration and government were present at the commemoration ceremonies organized by the Jewish communities.46 The formal link between the government of the restored Republic and the organized Jewish community was reconstituted within the ordinary framework of a secular state. This does not mean, however, that the general public was clearly conscious, in these immediate postwar years, of the specificity of the genocide. The press itself found it difficult to differentiate between the different categories of deportees.47 The Statute of the Deportee was unanimously passed by the National Assembly on 6 August 1948. This statute has since been severely criticized, but one has to take into account that the vote was taken following long and intense debates and that it was submitted to numerous changes and reforms almost immediately after having been voted into law.48 The question was whether to have one statute, identical for each and every deportee, or if the Resistance fighters should be granted a special one. Finally, the law decided that there should be two main categories of victims, one for the Resistance fighters (or their families) and one for all the other deportees (among them Jews, hostages, etc.) Resistance fighters were granted significantly higher pensions and better medical benefits.49 The law provoked a controversy, and the idea of a “equalizing” the statutes was raised almost immediately. It took years of debate for this to be voted on, which finally happened only in 1970, after the death of General de Gaulle. But in negotiations with the German Federal Republic, begun in 1956, for reparations to the French victims of National Socialism, the French negotiators did not differentiate between Jews and Resistance fighters.50

Conclusion One could have wished that the government of the French Republic had issued a solemn declaration about the martyrdom of Jews and their necessary reintegration into the French nation. From a contemporary point of view, with the Holocaust playing such a central role in our representation of twentieth-century mass violence, a public declaration by General de Gaulle on the Jewish catastrophe would have represented an historic move. This did not happen, primarily because of the chronology of the liberation and of the exposure of the annihilation of European Jewry. More than sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz and of the other concentration and death camps, one can easily be tempted to judge the way the Holocaust was assessed in the immediate postwar years as if we would have

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behaved differently and as if we would have known better.51 It is true that it took many years for the French authorities to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering during World War II and to admit the responsibility of the French state and administration.52 In testimonies given many years after the war, leaders of the French Jewish community expressed their regret that such an announcement was not made in 1945.53 But it is likely that this is a reconstruction of memory that has been fused by contemporary controversies. The same holds true for the status of women and foreigners, who were not granted the recognition they should have won in the Resistance, though the Communist Party did much to include them in its national self-definition.54 However, no documents prove that it was the wish of the Jews in France—either of individuals or of their leadership in 1944 or 1945—to be singled out. The French Government, and soon the Fourth Republic, promulgated numerous measures—very often not publicized—to suppress any traces of the antisemitic legislation in order to restore “Republican legality” (légalité républicaine). Though it took a few months for some of these measures to be announced, they were proof of a real wish to fulfill the promise of the Liberation and to restore the Jews to their full rights. The wish of French Jews was to forget their specific status and become once again citizens like all others. That of foreign Jews was to continue their integration into the French nation, an integration that had often begun before the war and that was sped up by their participation in the Resistance. Generally speaking, the measures adopted in 1944 and 1945 proved to be efficient, or at least as efficient as public policy could be in a troubled time and in an impoverished country. The French legalism that had made implementing the antisemitic measures of Vichy and the German occupiers so efficient had a positive effect after the war.55 The role of the courts in this economic and political process still needs to be evaluated, but no doubt it has been important. The French republics have enhanced their legitimacy by fully integrating the Jews into the nation as individuals, and the process of restitution and compensation should also be understood in the perspective of a longer time span. As most of the opponents of the Republic had been opponents of the Jews and of their integration and full emancipation, it was more than normal that the restoration of the Republic should go hand in hand with the reintegration of Jews into the French nation. Very few Jews left France in the immediate postwar years, and as early as 1945 France had once again become a destination of immigration for Jews from eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The period of the Occupation and the betrayal of Jews by the French state between 1940 and 1944, nonetheless, did have delayed consequences, and ones which appeared in full strength after 1967.

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Notes 1. See Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances: Aryanisation et restitution des banques en France 1940–1953 (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 283. 2. On the Vichy government in exile in Germany, see Henry Rousso, Un château en Allemagne: La France de Pétain en exil, Sigmaringen 1944–1945 (Paris: Ramsay, 1980). 3. National Archives, Paris, AJ38 5238, file “Banque de Castro.” 4. Tal Bruttmann, Au bureau des affaires juives. L’administration française et l’application de la législation antisémite (1940–1944) (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 192–95. 5. On the general process of “republican legality,” see Fondation Charles de Gaulle, Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, Association française des constitutionnalistes, Le rétablissement de la légalité républicaine 1944: actes du colloque, 6–7–8 octobre 1994 (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1996). 6. For these figures, see Serge Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la deportation des Juifs en France 1940–1944 (Paris: Association Les Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1993), 1125ff. 7. For one specific example, see Caisse des dépots et consignations, Mission des travaux historiques, Groupe d’étude spoliation restitution, La spoliation antisémite sous l’Occupation: consignations et restitutions, rapport définitif (Paris: Caisse des dépôts et consignations, 2001), 78. 8. Simon Schwarzfuchs, Aux prises avec Vichy: Histoire politique des Juifs de France 1940– 1944 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1998). 9. Michel Laffitte, Un engrenage fatal: L’UGIF face aux réalités de la Shoah, 1941–1944 (Paris: Liana Levi, 2003). 10. On Jewish armed resistance in France, see David Diamant, La Résistance juive, entre la gloire et la tragédie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993); Lucien Lazare, La Résistance juive en France: un combat pour la survie (Paris: Nadir Repères, 2001). 11. Renée Poznanski, Etre juif en France pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale (Paris: Hachette, 1994), 840. 12. For a comprehensive description of the despoilment of Jews in occupied France, see Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances. 13. Antoine Prost, et al., Aryanisation économique et restitutions, 2 vols. (Paris: Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, La documentation Française, 2000). 14. Caisse des dépôts et consignations, La spoliation antisémite, 86. 15. Claire Andrieu, et al., La spoliation financière, 2 vols. (Paris: Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, La documentation Française, 2000), 40–46. 16. For a comparison of the confiscation process in the three western European countries, see Jean-Marc Dreyfus, “The Looting of Jewish Property in Occupied Western Europe: A Comparative Study of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands,” in Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe, ed. Martin Dean, Constantin Goschler, and Philip Ther (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 47–59. 17. For the example of the Combat movement founded and commanded by Henri Frenay, see Robert Belot, Henri Frenay, de la Résistance à l’Europe (Paris: Le Seuil, 2003). 18. Pierre Laborie, “Juifs (la Résistance et les),” in Dictionnaire historique de la Résistance, ed. François Marcot et al. (Paris: Robert Laffont, Bouquins, 2006), 895–97. 19. Diane de Bellescize, Les neuf sages de la Résistance: Le Comité Général d’Etudes dans la clandestinité (Paris: Plon, 1979). 20. For the text, see Claire Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance: Des idées dans la guerre, foreword by René Rémond (Paris: les éditions de l’Erudit, 1984), 141.

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21. Ibid., 173. 22. For a recent evaluation of the Resistance vis-à-vis the Jews, see Renée Poznanski, Propagandes et persecutions: La Résistance et le problème juif 1940–1944 (Paris: Fayard, 2008). 23. Patrick Weil, “The Return of the Jews in the Nationality or in the Territory of France (1943–1973),” in The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after World War II, edited by David Bankier (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 58–71. 24. See Claire Andrieu, “Antisémitisme,” in Dictionnaire de Gaulle, ed. Claire Andrieu, Philippe Braud, and Guillaume Piketty (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006), 1210. The correspondence between the Free France commitee and the World Jewish Congress is quite extensive; see Archives diplomatique, Paris, Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Seconde Guerre mondiale, dossier 207. 25. Poznanski, Propagandes et persécutions, 98–146. 26. The World Jewish Congress had been also active in asking for the removal of antisemitic laws and ordinances in North Africa. 27. Among numerous works on this issue, see Pierre Birnbaum, Anti-Semitism in France: A Political History, from Léon Blum to the Present, trans. Miriam Kochan (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). 28. On France facing the images of the camps, see Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci and Edouard Lynch, eds., La Libération des camps et le retour des déportés: L’histoire en souffrance (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1995). 29. On René Cassin, see Marc Agi, René Cassin, 1887–1976 (Paris: Perrin, 1998). 30. Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances, 281. 31. Prost et al., Aryanisation économique et restitutions, 154. 32. Philippe Verheyde, Les mauvais comptes de Vichy: L’aryanisation des entreprises juives, Terre d’histoire (Paris: Perrin, 1999), 382–83. 33. Journal Officiel de la République Française, November 15, 1944. All the legal texts are published in Claire Andrieu et al, eds., La persécution des Juifs de France 1940– 1944 et le rétablissement de la légalité républicaine: recueil des textes officiels 1940–1999 (Paris: Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, La documentation Française, 2000). 34. Journal Officiel de la République Française, April 23, 1945. 35. For a recent study on the CRIF’s first years, see: Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac, Le CRIF. De la Résistance juive à la tentation du lobby. De 1943 à nos jours (Paris : Robert Laffont, 2011). 36. Gérard Lyon-Caen, “Les spoliations” (Ph.D. diss., University of Paris, Faculty of Law, 1945). 37. Claire Andrieu, “Zweierlei Entschädigungspolitik in Frankreich: Restitution und Reparation,” in Raub und Restitution: Arisierung’ und Rückerstattung des jüdischen Eigentums in Europa, ed. Constantin Goschler and Philipp Ther (Frankfurt aM.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003), 108–33, esp. 128. 38. See, for example, Verheyde, Les mauvais comptes de Vichy, 385–86; Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances, 307–13. 39. For a detailed appraisal of the restitution policy, see Andrieu, “Zweierlei Entschädigungspolitik in Frankreich,” 108–33. 40. Andrieu et al., La spoliation financière, 101–3. 41. A striking example of a reluctant administration can be found in the Caisse des dépots (Deposit and Consignment Office). A note from the legal department, commenting on the text of the proposed ordinance on restitution, stated: “The state of

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the opinion towards the Jews can and will probably change in the future. Who can say that one day, the Caisse des dépôts will not be reproached for having so easily accepted the demands considered today as fair, but that may be judged as excessive ones after a moment of reflection. From another point of view, it is certain that if we said now very clearly to the Ministry of Finances that we consider this ordinance as shameful and that, under these conditions, we will never accept friendly agreements but that, to the contrary, we systematically go to appeal and even to ‘cassation,’ we would then have an effective way of applying pressure in order to obtain that the text should be amended to make it more acceptable.” Caisse des dépôts et consignations, La spoliation antisémite, 134. 42. On all this, see Nicole Lapierre, Changer de nom (Paris: Stock, 1995), 130–64. 43. See Annette Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide, entre la mémoire et l’oubli (Paris: Plon, 1992). 44. For this construction of memories through mass demonstrations and monuments as early as Fall 1944, see Gérard Namer, La commémoration en France 1944–1982 (Paris: Papyrus, 1982). The book deals mainly with the year 1945. 45. Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 251–58. 46. The commemorative plaque in the main Synagogue de la Victoire in Paris was unveiled in 1949 in the presence of President of the Republic Vincent Auriol. 47. Didier Epelbaum, Pas un mot, pas une ligne? 1944–1994, des camps de la mort au génocide rwandais (Paris: Stock, 2005). 48. On this vote, see Wieviorka, Déportation et génocide, 223–35. 49. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Ami si tu tombes . . . : Les déportés résistants des camps au souvenir 1945–2005 (Paris: Perrin, 2005), 80–82. 50. Claudia Moisel,”Pragmatischer Formelkompromiss: Das deutsch-französische Globalabkommen von 1960,” in Grenzen der Wiedergutmachung: Die Entschädigung für NS-Verfolgte in West- und Osteuropa 1945–2000, ed. Hans Günter Hockerts, Claudia Moisel, and Tobias Winstel (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2006), 242–84. 51. On this problem of anachronistic judgement, see Eric Conan and Henry Rousso, Vichy: An Ever-Present Past, trans. and annotated Nathan Bracher, foreword by Robert O. Paxton (Hanover and London: Dartmouth College, University Press of New England, 1998), x–xi. 52. This took place in 1995, after years of debates and controversy. See ibid., 16–45. 53. See, for example, Maurice Szafran, Les Juifs dans la politique française: De 1945 à nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), 30–31. 54. Karen H. Adler, Jews and Gender in Liberation France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 55. Later, after Liberation, the Finaly Affair emerged. It is often remembered that the two orphans were kidnapped and sent to Spain with the help of members of the Catholic Church, but one should not forget that as soon as the surviving family claimed the return of the two boys, the French court ordered that they should be sent to Israel. In this complicated story, it was not the French state’s responsibility, as the kidnapping had been committed against the court decision. For a recent detailed description of the entire episode, see Catherine Poujol, Les enfants cachés: l’affaire Finaly (Paris: Berg International, 2007).

6

MENDING THE BODY, MENDING THE SOUL Dalia Ofer



This chapter will present a study of two groups of adolescents who immigrated to Palestine1 prior to the establishment of Israel. The first group arrived in the 1930s; the second group in the years after the Second World War. They all came through the efforts of the organization known as Youth Aliyah. The focus of this chapter will be the relationship between the external and the internal transformations undergone by these youths upon their arrival in the new country. The external transformations, referred to as tikkun ha-guf (literally, the “repair of the body”), included aspects such as dress and speech. The internal transformations, referred to as tikkun ha-ishiyut (literally, the “repair of the character”) were in the sphere of attitude and personality. Some of the issues to be addressed are: the adolescents’ self-awareness of the changes that were taking place within them, their perception of the messages they were receiving from the society into which they were being absorbed, and the elements of the “repair” which had to occur for the adolescents to be successfully absorbed into their new culture. Part of this effort will be an attempt to visualize the new country through the eyes of the adolescents and to understand their thoughts about the society in which they lived. Two issues which should first be addressed are the use of the term tikkun and the role of Youth Aliyah. In Jewish tradition, tikkun has many implications. In one of the most common usages it relates to the desire

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to improve the world (tikkun olam) with hopes for the onset of the Messianic Age of peace and brotherhood among all humankind. In the process of the secularization of traditional values which occurred as part of the Zionist movement, the concept of tikkun olam became part of reality, as opposed to simply a spiritual concept. The Zionist pioneers strove to build a national independent society which would be characterized by egalitarianism and justice. In the philosophies of such great Zionist thinkers as Ahad Ha’am, Aharon David Gordon, and Haim Yosef Brenner, the tikkun of the individual Jew and of Jewish society were necessary steps for the tikkun of the nation as a whole.2 One fact that should be borne in mind is that the adolescents were absorbed in kibbutzim, the collective farms in which Zionist ideals were realized. In the kibbutzim, the work ethic—getting the job done—required the inner and outer “repair,” the physical ability to work, and the proper mental attitude. The concept of the tikkun of the body is very important in modern Jewish thought, and especially in Zionism. In the course of its development, Zionism internalized the antisemitic criticism of the physical condition of the Jews and their reluctance to engage in manual labor.3 This is evident in Max Nordau’s speech to the Zionist Congress of 1889. Even though his focus was on sports rather than work, the subject of labor was addressed in his later speeches.4 Shmuel Almog, in his essay “From ‘Muscle Judaism’ to the ‘Religion of Work,’” explains that in Zionist tradition the enhancement of the physique symbolized opposition to the enhancement of the spirit through the study of Torah (Jewish law), something which traditionally had represented the highest Jewish value in the galut. The term galut—literally, exile—refers to all lands where Jews resided that were outside the Holy Land, and is also known as the Diaspora.5 Almog also explained how the members of the Second Aliyah (1904–14, the second wave of Zionist immigration to Palestine) advanced further the concept of a more muscular Judaism, going beyond sports to work. He quoted Sarah Malkin, one of the pioneers of the Second Aliyah, who said: “Every person has to work and get results; one must not be a parasite. And in Palestine, it is especially important to engage in agriculture.”6 An exploration of the subject of the Jewish physique in other Zionist philosophical traditions, such as the Revisionist Movement, yields similar attitudes. The physical appearance of the Jews was an area ripe for reform—to sculpt the body, to stand tall and walk with pride, and to change attitudes towards beauty. The new immigrants were sorely lacking in all of these areas, and in order to gain acceptance into society they had to demonstrate improvement.

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As noted, the second issue to be addressed here is the role of Youth Aliyah. The concept of Youth Aliyah was originally conceived in 1932 by Rechah Freier, a rabbi’s wife and social activist in Germany. Under the leadership of Henrietta Szold, Youth Aliyah became not only an established organization, but also a full-fledged social movement after the Nazi rise to power.7 From its inception, Youth Aliyah was intended to be a social institution with specific educational goals and societal views, one that aimed to further the fulfillment of the Zionist cause: the settlement of Palestine.8 In addition, it carried out the most extensive rescue and rehabilitation operations, bringing more than 30,000 young people to Palestine and Israel between 1936 and 1950.9 The kibbutz movement was transformed into the primary agent for the absorption of these youth into Israeli society. More than 80 percent of these immigrants were absorbed in the kibbutzim. As soon as the youth arrived on the shores of the Land of Israel, arrangements were made for them to live on various kibbutzim where they were allotted separate living facilities. A routine was established for them so that their days were divided between work and study. In this way, they were able to contribute to their living expenses. They had counselors from Youth Aliyah and the kibbutz who were responsible for their education and social integration. It should be noted that it was the intention of all involved—the kibbutz members, the counselors, and the heads of Youth Aliyah—that at the end of a two-year training period, these young people would remain active members of the kibbutz movement, either by joining existing kibbutzim or by helping to establish new ones. The youth who immigrated under the auspices of Youth Aliyah were regularly monitored to see whether they were adapting well to their new lives. It was clear that in order to successfully settle in their new country, they had to undergo the transformations referred to above. They had become affiliated with a movement whose agenda was to change its members in very specific ways. Not only did they have to adjust to new surroundings, but they also had to adjust to new ideologies. Other changes on the agenda included the way the immigrants spoke and dressed, as well as their body language. In effect, they had to shed every last trace of the galut. As mentioned above, these changes were expected of the youth, for they had affiliated themselves with a movement that outlined a certain social and national identity that was required of those who joined it.10 In this article, the discussion will focus on the teenagers who immigrated under the auspices of Youth Aliyah during two different historical periods, but will be limited only to those absorbed into the local culture through the kibbutz movement. The first group began to arrive when Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, and they continued to arrive until the

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outbreak of the Second World War. It was during those years that Youth Aliyah was established. The second group arrived in the postwar period and continued up to the first years of the State of Israel. Both groups were comprised of young adults from various European countries. It should be noted that the earlier group consisted mainly of youth from Germany and Austria, while the latter was more varied, with representation from Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany. The ones in the first group were mainly from established, middle-class homes whose parents had stayed behind, many intending to immigrate later. These youth witnessed the Nazi rise to power and the first discriminatory policies against the Jews. The impact of those events on these adolescents depended on the exposure they had to Nazi violence. Those who left their native country for Palestine early on were affected less than those who departed later. All the youngsters in this first group came to Palestine in an organized and orderly fashion through various institutions in Germany and in Palestine. They were all examined thoroughly prior to being accepted by Youth Aliyah. Upon their arrival, many were sent to kibbutzim, where there were few or no youngster their age and where most of the staff was younger than their parents. Most of the young people—if not all—experienced a palpable drop in their standard of living in terms of housing, food, education, etc. In contrast, most of the children in the second group had lived through extremely difficult experiences during the Holocaust. Most had lost at least one parent, if not both; indeed, many were the sole survivors of their families. They, too, came to Youth Aliyah from many different institutions, including the orphanages and refugee centers established by Jewish survivors. They were children whose spirits were hardened and who spoke of death and suffering with a sense of apathy, as if such events were routine parts of their lives.11 While some adolescence in the second group came from their homes after being reunited with their parents following the war, these could not be compared to the stable homes of the children in the first group. Separation from their parents and the experiences they underwent during the years of hiding and flight alienated the children from their surviving parent(s). This alienation created feelings to which it was difficult to adjust.12 Generally speaking, these were broken families. Poverty and shortages were rampant during the war; frustration and mourning dominated individual households and the entire Jewish community.13 Many struggled with severe identity crises, especially those who had been hidden by Christian families or in monasteries during the war and who had needed to assume identities other than their own in order to survive. This struggle took priority over any concerns these children had about immi-

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grating to another country and was at the core of their attempts to survive the Holocaust, as well as the social and familial breakdowns that came with it.14 On their way to Palestine/Israel (often through illegal immigration), many of the adolescents joined youth movements, but not because of the movements’ ideologies. These were places where they could feel a sense of belonging, and for many the camaraderie served as a substitute for destroyed families. While there were some who had belonged to a movement prior to their aliyah (and who thus knew what it meant to be part of a group or team), the movements back in Europe had been primarily organized around social and ideological activities rather than around physical labor. Even those who had belonged to the same group already in Europe were faced with challenges, as the members of these groups were seldom able to stay together when the assignments to various kibbutzim were made.15 Although these two groups differed in many ways, they shared the feeling of being strangers in a new land, a feeling which created intense psychological tension. The fact that they were physically different from those already there was immediately evident in their appearance, clothes, and body language. These differences were the source of unrest and inner turmoil. Adjusting to the new life was not simple. The kibbutz movement was not a static entity. It went through many changes as the population of the country increased and as the movement itself experienced growth. In the 1940s and 1950s, the kibbutz members who were involved in absorbing new immigrant youth into their kibbutzim had also been members of the movements during their youth, and they, too, had lost families and friends during the destruction of European Jewry. The discussion of the youths who immigrated with Youth Aliyah is engaging and dynamic not just from the perspective of the youths themselves, but also from the perspective of those who were responsible for their integration into the new society.

Sources The primary sources for this study are youth group bulletins and other publications, which were originally produced on manual typewriters and then mimeographed for distribution.16 These were usually published periodically every half-year, year, or two years, dating from the establishment of the group. Presumably these bulletins were edited by the counselors, as the youths did not yet have a good command of the Hebrew language. They were used to conversing in Hebrew, but did not write frequently.

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The articles seem to have been written in simple Hebrew. As those who wrote these articles knew that the counselors and kibbutz members would be reading the bulletins, there was some self-censorship. Nonetheless, the publications presented criticism of the movements, the counselors, and the kibbutz, and they addressed many of the difficult issues faced by the immigrants. The young people seemed sincerely grateful and had faith in those responsible for their integration into kibbutz society, despite the fact that there were areas in which they recognized failures. Cynicism was not apparent, although there were hints of irony. It is possible that language limitations did not allow them to engage in linguistic subtleties. For this article, sources coinciding with the period under review were selected. An effort was made to make the voices of the youth heard. Had it been possible, a greater number of the youngster’s personal diaries and letters would have been used here, as these would have been better sources for transmitting their thoughts and feelings than the bulletins that were slated for public distribution. Whenever possible, the few letters and diaries available were included. Undoubtedly the strength of these materials lies in their integrity; as a result, the criticism displayed a sense of conviction, which allowed for great significance to be attributed to their perspective. As noted, the question of the relationship between tikkun ha-ishiyut and tikkun ha-guf will be the common thread that weaves through the various topics addressed here. The elements that make up the composition of the tikkun may differ from one group to the next due to personal experience. For those who came in the 1930s, a successful tikkun must take into consideration their experiences under Nazi rule. They were definitely scarred by the Nazi propaganda, and they had internalized much of it (as seen earlier in the discussion of Zionist philosophies.) Many of those who immigrated had very low self-esteem. In the words of Yehudah: We came unconsciously influenced by fascist education. . . . Jewish youth that had been educated for five years under Hitler’s regime in German schools often came to the following logical conclusion: “All the people see me as a substandard human being; it cannot be that there is no basis to what they say. There has to be some truth in this.” Such thinking brings the individual to an almost complete mental breakdown. This was the state of mind that many of our friends were in at the time when they made aliyah. The first task . . .was to transform us into free people, to restore our proper self-esteem.17

The role of the youth movements and the kibbutzim was to precipitate a major change in such internalization.

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The youngsters who came following the war understood the war and their experiences during the Holocaust to be the primary molders of their personalities. So writes one such anonymous youth in Kfar Szold: Simply said, it would seem that our lives were not so different from those of other children around the world. We work, study, play, and laugh.... Why is it that it only seems that way? We can answer that only if . . . we look at things from their earliest stages of development. To be able to see things clearly, it is not enough just to know the present. If we look into the past, we see a cloudy and strange scene: little children running around confused; tears well up in their eyes. [They are orphaned,] with no father or mother, and all around them are the horrors of war. It was the destiny of each and every one of these children to live in such a cruel and inhuman age, an age in which “love one another” was rooted out of the heart and all that was left was the rhetoric “we are still young.” Amidst all the suffering and the lack of basic life requirements, we felt the shadow and the yoke of Judaism. The currents pull at us unconscious children: the ghetto with madness everywhere. We await our fate—only a few of us are left. The sacrifices have been great—parents and siblings have already gone into the fire. We are a group that was saved from the conflagration, and all of us carry these images and feelings in our hearts. Memories of terrible things bind us to the past, memories that [also] fortify and give us strength.18

These words are evidence of the difficulties experienced by these young people in attempting to eradicate the traumas they experienced. They bore a heavy yoke of loss and feared that identifying with Judaism threatened to turn them into victims once again. These adolescents struggled with their burdens, trying to get some bearing on who and what they were, while members of the kibbutzim and their counselors attempted to put them to work. These senior members of the kibbutzim were people who represented Israeli values in which, as noted, tikkun ha-ishiyut was connected to the performance of physical labor along with the internalization of the ideological values of daily life.

Observing the Land and Those that Dwell Therein Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? . . . Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? (Num. 13:19–20)

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And what happened during the first days since we arrived here? I remember well the first days as we stood on the threshold. Everything was new and strange, different; Land, Kibbutz, Community, Language, Work!19

The feelings of alienation that the youth felt can be sensed in the above quote. Exploring in greater detail the feelings aroused in them as they became more familiar with the country, it will become all the more apparent how strange and different everything appeared to the newcomers. One of the factors that impacted the youngster’s perspective on their new country was the time it took them to arrive from their native lands. Travel time differed from group to group. Prior to the outbreak of the war, young people immigrated in an organized fashion, having received entry permits. They were put through an examination and selection process both in their homeland and in Palestine. Very often, the applicants had to spend an extended period of time before leaving for their new homeland. The trip itself took a week and sometimes longer. After all of this, they were finally greeted by the sight of Mount Carmel and Haifa with its port. In contrast, those who came during the war or following it had a much more difficult time, and the trip often took weeks. Many of the children had no exit visas, nor did they have entry permits. However, once the State of Israel was established in 1948, it was again easier to undertake the trip, even if often the youth had to stay in camps where they were prepared for their aliyah, as before the war. The youth arrived throughout the year, so the season in which they immigrated was a factor in their first impressions of their new country. Particularly significant was the color of the landscape: some sources tell of arriving in a “green land” or a “yellow and gray land,” and there is a hesitation to describe the country as either beautiful or ugly. Aryeh Blumenfeld wrote: “When we came, the fields were already harvested and the whole countryside lacked refreshing colors. It was all monochrome and gray. But after a while, the first rains started suddenly.”20 In a letter to her parents in Germany, Channah Aschwega wrote: Just before morning, the land became visible. Dawn broke; a dazzling sunrise after which we could see the beach. I was a bit disappointed at first— only mountains with no vegetation. By the way, already at 2:00 AM we saw the lighthouses of Haifa; other than that, nothing. After I packed my bag, I went back to sleep, because despite all my excitement I just couldn’t hold out any longer. When I awoke again, we could see the distant shores of Jaffa and Tel Aviv.21

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Channah exhibited restraint in her description. The fact that she was able to go to sleep right before the arrival of the ship in port may point to a certain level of disappointment.22 In these quoted passages, one can see that the general absence of green in the natural landscape intensified the writers’ feeling of being aliens. The new language they heard all around them made the people at the port of Haifa appear to them strangers indeed. Looking at Haifa from the port, the city seemed threatening and did not live up to their expectations. This is how one boy or girl from Germany, who arrived just prior to the outbreak of the war, expressed it: “We were disappointed when we came to Haifa. We saw the Arabs, barefooted and filthy, and we couldn’t take it. The sun was burning, something that we were not used to. It is so dirty here. We thought, ‘Is this our homeland?’ Some wanted to go back right away.”23 While there are remarks in the writings of these young people that point to a European pompousness as they surveyed the Middle East and its population, there are numerous other articles which express the overwhelming emotions felt upon making aliyah and seeing Mt. Carmel for the first time. Some include descriptions of the emotions felt at hearing “Ha-tikvah” (the Zionist anthem, later to be the national anthem of the State of Israel) rising from the ship as they faced the shore, a symbolic act of accepting a new status and “citizenship.” There are others among the survivors of the Holocaust who speak of the initial contact with the new land as an emergence into light and happiness. The panorama that greeted them was distinctly Jewish, and this realization caused great amazement. So wrote Yisrael K., an immigrant who arrived via the detention camps in Cyprus in 1947: I left the camp in Cyprus with great happiness. I arrived in [Palestine]. We were still in the port and I could already see the Palestinian Jews waiting impatiently. . . . The first Jews that I met in Haifa made a great impression on me. Throughout the length of the trip, I gazed upon these Jews and upon the scenery that passed me by until my arrival at Atlit. I came to Atlit and there were Jewish police officers! Jewish food! Everything was Jewish! No one can understand how I felt, what joy I had.24

The scene that unfolded before his eyes transformed his initial contact into a soothing moment, one that provided balance and comfort. One can certainly see in this moment a “homecoming” to the Promised Land, the ideological homeland. This is also true of the following piece by Yisrael Kopelowitz, who described how especially excited he was when he arrived in the country as

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an illegal immigrant brought to shore in boats that were rowed by young Palestinian Jews, activists in the Mosad Le-aliyah (Organization for Immigration): I chose this way and I stuck with it. My admiration for the Jew in Palestine reached its high point when I saw these young men, coming from who knows where and popping out as if from the rocks and from the waves off the coast of this remote homeland. As I drew near this land after so many obstacles, here they were, standing half-naked in the ocean, joyously risking their lives to carry their brethren on their shoulders from the boat to the beach, to the land that they yearned for—Palestine. . . . Darkness and silence prevailed all around and breaking through both were the sounds of joy and encouragement. I didn’t know where I was. I felt the hands of brothers stretched out to us in love. This feeling stayed with me from the moment that my foot stepped on the soil of my homeland. Here I felt myself among brothers, free and equal among equals. I did realize that I still had a lot of training to go through until I would be like these solid men. I said to myself, “What I wouldn’t do if I could only be like them.”25

Here the portrait of the young Palestinian Jews is heroic and the description carries a mythological quality. Whether Kopelowitz was one of these “illegal” immigrants or whether he embellished his story with others that he heard at the Kibbutz or in the youth groups, his account reflects the stories that were being told and sheds light on the cultural climate of the period.26 Other children, too, provided first impressions of Haifa in positive terms. Especially so was the May Day parade of 1946, which greatly impressed a young man named Aharon who had arrived that same year: “Workers and youth are demonstrating with red flags and are expressing their freedom.”27 The parade filled him with a sense of confidence. In another description of Haifa, Binyamin wrote: “I have seen Haifa, heartwarming in its beauty.”28 Descriptions by youngsters who arrived in Tel Aviv expressed admiration as well. In a publication marking the first anniversary of their aliyah, children described the day of their arrival in the county, May 15, 1948, the first Independence Day in Tel Aviv. They noted how the city streets, full of Jews parading freely, impressed them, and they noted how those Jews greeted them happily and with smiles. Peninah’s description of her first day in the homeland follows: And when we drove through the streets of Tel Aviv thousands greeted us with applause and smiles on their lips. People came out of the houses and

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showered us with oranges and other fruit. This is how we passed through the streets of Tel Aviv and we were moved by the welcome.29

In the same bulletin, Rina, too, described her first day in the new homeland. In her vivid description of the warm welcome they received when they disembarked in Tel Aviv, she related: My surprise was great because there were Jews everywhere and every type of practical work was being done by them. The photographers take pictures of us; the friends that arrived a while ago quickly served us our first meal in the country. When the time came to go our separate ways, some went to relatives, the pioneers joined up with their groups, and the rest boarded buses to go to the Immigrants House. . . . Little by little, Tel Aviv receded into the distance and was then completely out of sight, while the view passed before us as in a parade. How beautiful! I did not imagine Palestine to be like this. . . . Finally we arrived at the Immigrants House, where one got the impression that we were still in exile.30

It is clear from the description that what they saw at the Immigrants House was very different from Tel Aviv. Why was this so? Rina did not explain. However, the positive remarks she made about Tel Aviv, that “there were Jews everywhere and every type of practical work was being done by them,” pointed to values that she had internalized either from being in a youth group prior to making aliyah or from the time that she spent at the kibbutz. The sense of galut was reflected in other bulletins as well, often in the way the immigrants appeared: their clothes, speech, posture, and of course, their behavior. In Rina’s account, as in other similar ones, the second phase of her initial contact with the new country came when she had a chance to view the countryside as she traveled to the Immigrants House. In the various articles that are available one can sometimes read of the strong negative impression made by the dry, yellow terrain. At other times, as in the case of Rina, what she saw only increased the pleasant surprise she experienced—this was not the land as it was imagined at all! Binyamin, whose remarks about Haifa were cited earlier, described in an article titled “The Land as Imagined and in Reality” a spirited account of what he had envisioned the land to be prior to his arrival—a dry, desolate wasteland, where all was arid, with no water, Arab houses all yellow and beige and Jews living in poverty, “their houses poor and dilapidated, and the immigrants who came from the Galut must live in tents like the Bedouin. The songs and dances are all like those of the Arabs.” However, upon his arrival, Binyamin’s heart skipped a beat. He saw proper streets and houses with red roofs surrounded by green gardens. Most importantly:

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“We stroll outside without fear. On the roads, young men and women walk with their heads held high as befits soldiers and citizens. Everything is Hebrew all around, even the sky and the sun.”31 So far, the youthful immigrants’ descriptions of the people of Israel, as well as their thoughts about their new environment, have been presented. But what did the immigrants think of themselves, especially in relation to the Jews already living in Israel? Reuven characterized his bizarre feeling when arriving at the Immigrants House in Haifa. He had a strong negative reaction to the people, the language they spoke, and the clothes they wore. It was so intense that he wanted to leave right away and go to a kibbutz.32 The sense of foreignness and negative reactions were stronger when immigrants from Islamic countries were thrown into the mix. When these two worlds collided, the Europeans began to exhibit some pompous behavior. They looked down upon these people as being “primitive.” For the Europeans, these people appeared shallow and undisciplined, and they seemed to fit in rather well with the new Israeli scene. In contrast to the alienation that the immigrants felt in the immigrant centers, they were in complete admiration of those at the kibbutz. Binyamin’s comment about the “young men and women [who] walk with their heads held high as befits soldiers and citizens” was presented above. The typical kibbutz member, tanned and tall, dressed simply and in clean clothes, talked to the point and was proud and admired. This appearance was all a part of the freedom and sense of emancipation that those who lived in Israel enjoyed. Yitzhak A., originally from Germany, wrote the following after spending half a year on a kibbutz: “When I got off the ship onto the dinghy, I saw for the first time a Palestinian settler, a sailor who guided the boat with a sure hand; a handsome strapping lad, tanned by the sun and the wind.”33 The children on the kibbutz were similarly portrayed, although criticism of their behavior and personality will be discussed later. Accounts exuding admiration are more prevalent in the writings of the young people who survived the war than in those who came prior to it. But in both cases, one can clearly discern the derision they felt for their own appearance in comparison to that of local Jews. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? (Num. 13:18) A fact worthy of attention is that the young people who immigrated in the 1930s not only faced an unwelcoming terrain, but they were also frightened by the Arabs who worked at the port. The Arab was seen as

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the ultimate “other” in a number of ways—by his outward appearance, by the primitive nature of his life, and because the immigrants considered him to be the enemy. In addition to cultural differences, prejudices, and stereotypes, there were encounters with Arabs during the 1930s and in later years which were significant occurrences for those who arrived during these years and who witnessed the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–39.34 Yohanan, who came to study at the Titz Vocational School in Yagur,35 wrote about the Arabs he saw at the port: When we arrived at the port we looked at the creatures who were dressed in rags and were dancing at the seashore. “Who are these?” we asked. “Arabs,” was the answer that we were given. Arabs?! A dread fell upon me. We needed to wait and the minutes felt like hours until we received permission to leave the ship. Customs! Again Arabs, but this time from an upper class. After we passed through customs I saw for the first time—a “sabra” chaver [comrade] with glasses, a blue shirt, and a gray hat whose name was Dudu.36

One can sense the prejudice echoing in the words of Yohanan. The Arab clerks, seemingly of an upper class, who assisted him at the port did not lessen the threat he felt. He was not able to relax until the appearance of the tzabar (the proper masculine form for the term sabra used above), even though his appearance was atypical; he was not young with flowing hair and short pants like the mythological image of “Srulik,” the native-born Jew/sabra. Yohanan still identified him as a chaver (in the kibbutz sense of comrade/member), one who wore a blue shirt (the typical shirt worn by members of the kibbutz movements) and who answered to the quintessential Hebrew name of Dudu. Even after the immigrants had been in the country for some time, they continued to describe the Arab as an absolute “other,” as can be seen in the bulletins. In one of the bulletins, from the group of Youth Aliyah in Yagur, a young lad named Menahem Fingeritz related a trip to Usafiyeh (a Druze village; members of the group did not differentiate between Druze and Arabs) in which he compared the village and its inhabitants to Kibbutz Yagur: We surveyed the houses in Usafiyeh and entered one of them, the home of an Arab police officer. There was evidence that the house was inhabited by humans—there were photos and it was clean. However, other houses were dirty, and in the streets there was manure, garbage, and mud. The guide asked one of the Arabs to tell the story of Usafiyeh. He said, “Usafiyeh has existed for thousands of years, and there is not much to say.” I thought to

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myself, Usafiyeh exists for thousands of years and Yagur only 24; how does Usafiyeh look and how does Yagur look?37

Yehudah emphasized a different view of the Arabs. In an article about farm work, he elaborated on the great difference between primitive Arab agriculture, which made no use of machinery, and Jewish agriculture, which operated in an efficient, organized, and mechanized manner. There was more than a small measure of disdain and haughtiness in his words: “And so I was able, through the work of my own hands, to see the great differences between the work of the Jews and that of the Arabs. Two separate worlds despite their proximity.”38 He also projected the arrogance seen earlier. Contact with the land and a comparison of the way the two groups (Jews and Arabs) worked reinforced concepts and stereotypes that he already held. There were also more complex views of the Arabs. Shulamith Bardiak described her encounter with an armed Arab. She was working in a vineyard with a member of the kibbutz when suddenly a person appeared, running toward them. When he came closer they saw that he was holding a rifle. Her companion went up to the stranger. The Arab explained that he was hunting rabbits. Shulamith wrote: I was now able to look carefully at the stranger. He was wearing a leather cap on his head, a short jacket, strange pants, and tall boots. On his back was a strange rucksack. . . . It is hard for me to explain the impression the encounter with the armed Arab, shortly before the riots [of 1936–39] broke out, made on me. I was proven to be wrong and my fear was for naught since I later saw this same Arab outside the fence during hunting season.39

Hanan Scheinberg exhibited a different view of the Arabs. He wrote of the time that he crossed paths with some Arabs while on a hike in the Galilee. He described them riding their horses, plowing their fields with a horse-drawn plow, and reaping with a scythe. His description seems romantic and positive and he even mentioned that he was reminded of German farmers he had seen when on summer vacation with his parents back in Germany.40 Here one should note what Haim told about one night when he was on guard duty with a member of the kibbutz and was frightened. Thoughts about the general condition of the Jewish people filled his mind. He reminisced about a time back in Poland when he was beaten by gang members and how he was afraid to fight back. His father comforted him and said that they would soon immigrate to Palestine and that there everything would be different and better. How great was his disappointment when he

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realized that here, too, Jews were getting hurt! He raised some seemingly heretical questions: “Is Palestine just another link in the chain of galut? Is our settling ourselves here a curse to someone else?” His conclusion in relation to the first question was unequivocal, and that in turn influenced his behavior and his physical stance: Here, I do not take blows lying down; I need to defend myself and face my enemy with valor. We have broken the tradition of the ages and we now go out to defend ourselves and live and die honorably. This thought gives me courage and I stride forward with greater strength.41

Haim spoke in extremes, the difference between them being as great as that between a lowly worm and a great warrior. We hear the contrast between running away, on the one hand, and defending himself and taking a courageous stand, on the other, between being tempted to surrender and putting up a fight, between crying out of embarrassment and pain and being brave, between fleeing for home and stepping forward with valor. The change in his attitude stemmed from the change in his awareness; he drew strength from the new environment that filled him with a heroic spirit. All of this may sound gallant. However, his rhetoric no doubt reflected what everyone was saying around him at the time. His newly found words and brave attitude influenced both his inner thoughts and his outer manner. Haim’s response to the second question was hesitant and even evasive. He asked: “Can we not explain to the Arabs why we are moving here?” There is no doubt that he evinced a naïveté and a lack of understanding while empathizing with the Arabs and their perspective.

The Kibbutz and Kibbutz Life Study of the immigrants’ first contact with the kibbutz is an extensive topic that incorporates many subtopics bound together by the central themes of tikkun ha-ishiyut and tikkun ha-guf. Descriptions of the youths’ arrival at the kibbutz always began with the welcome they received and with their impressions of the people and the landscape—the buildings, trees, etc. They then went on to describe work, both in terms of its difficulty and importance. They included comments about social life and about their relations with the kibbutz members. Finally, this section concludes with an assessment of the values upon which kibbutz society was established, and whether those who lived there acted according to those values.

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Arrival, first impressions, and reception The following appears in the record book of the youth group at Ein Harod: 16 August 1938, the day we immigrated. . . . It is the afternoon of the 17th of August and we are traveling in buses toward Ein Harod. . . . We pass the gate and enter the grounds. We pass by shacks and assorted buildings, without a clue as to what they are for. We enter a large building which they call the dining hall. They serve us food, and many people are standing around, young and old, staring at us while we eat. A strange welcome. . . . Everything is new and it is challenging to find the way from the house to the dining hall. In the evening we sit on the great lawn and sing. How beautiful are the nights in Palestine!42

In this passage, the sense of being strangers was unmistakable in the way the group was stared at as if something was wrong, and in the fact that it was “challenging to find the way from the house to the dining hall.” Another publication (from Gevat) stated, “They didn’t even say hello.”43 Equally evident was the effort that these young people made to find a comforting element in the awkward and unpleasant situation; they did see that things were beautiful and they referred to the beautiful nights in Palestine. For Tereza, arriving at Afikim after the war, the first encounter with the kibbutz—as well the weeks and months that followed—were very difficult. She could not find solace in anything: Two years have already passed since our arrival in Afikim, a world strange to us and to our spirit. I did not expect things to be this way. Our very first day, the day upon which we arrived, was a weekday and all were out working. With everybody out, I felt like I was in a ghost town. I was hot and tired. The entire feel of the place is still so strange and I feel like I do not belong.44

From that difficult period, Tereza also remembered how the children of the kibbutz made fun of her accent when she spoke Hebrew, and of this she also wrote with pain and bitterness. The youth’s arrival in the kibbutz was described in other articles as well. Those who were Holocaust survivors described themselves as “tired and beaten down,” in need of complete rehabilitation. Peninah B., of Kibbutz Alonim, wrote under the heading “The Society and the Kibbutz”:

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We came to Alonim on the 16th of March dressed in rags. It was cold outside. When we entered the dining hall for the first time, the people inside looked upon us as neglected children. That was in great contrast with the concern shown to us by our counselors.45

In this excerpt, the rags, the cold, the stares of the people, and the sense of being seen as a neglected child actually reveal more about Peninah’s self-perception than about the setting. She continued to describe her lack of self-confidence in those first days at the kibbutz, implying that the kibbutz members had not intended for her and the others to become significant members in the future. The youngsters soon began to speak some Hebrew and thus everyone understood each other better, and they developed a daily routine that gave a sense of familiarity. It was then that signs of disrespect toward the kibbutz members began to manifest themselves. She said: “I am not justifying what we did, but this was brought on by the attitude that the kibbutzniks (members of a kibbutz) showed us. In my opinion, they demanded too much for us—to eat at 6 o’clock, not to make too much noise late at night in the clubhouse, etc. These rules gave rise to anger and tension between us and the kibbutzniks.”46 At first, the youngsters accepted whatever was asked of them without objection. But as their self-confidence increased, they became bolder and even defiant. They also became more critical, creating strained relationships and resulting in displays of insolence. A case in point relates to the use of the Hebrew language, to be discussed below. Alter, of Ashdot Ya’akov, described how the children needed to rid themselves of the “characteristics of the galut,” behavior that was still ingrained in them when they arrived in the country: “The torturous path has ended and once again we need to deal with things that are new. We have started to rid ourselves of traits of the exile, but it is not easy to do it all at once. We hope that time and willpower will be on our side.”47 When Alter spoke of the children ridding themselves of galut traits, he described this as a physical act. Does that mean that these traits had visible manifestations? And were the young adults self-conscious of these physical manifestations? An answer to this question can be found in the bulletin of the Romanian youth group in Givat Brenner. The anonymous author stated that after being on the kibbutz for two years, he joined a group of Israeli-born youth as they went out to greet new immigrants at the shore. He described the party that was held with the new immigrants and how he felt there: Instead of giving the refugees a taste of the local atmosphere, there hung over [the party] a definite galut air, something that we were not used to

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and we found difficult to tolerate. The immigrants, though, did enjoy the party, and that of course was the main purpose. It was then that we realized how far we had come from our own lives back in the galut and how much of the local culture we had absorbed during our two years here. We didn’t just distance ourselves from our life in the Diaspora in terms of the songs [we sang] but also in the way that we walked, in the way that we looked, etc. We walked taller, straighter, and with much more pride than these new immigrants. We were very happy about this development that we only now began to realize, and it surprised us.48

From this passage, we learn how distancing themselves from their former countries caused changes in both spirit and substance, in body and soul. It was only upon meeting the new immigrants that those who had been in the country for two years began to realize how much they themselves had changed since their arrival in the Land of Israel. When realizing this, the writer expressed astonishment and joy. Generally, the first impressions of the kibbutz were not encouraging. The forced departure from home, life under the Nazi regime, the long journeys together with many strangers, and the stress that stemmed from their expectations made these young people feel tired and spent, unable to accomplish difficult assignments. The kibbutz, instead of providing warmth and a sense of family—of which the youth had been deprived— demanded that they would undergo a significant change in habits and learn to work. In a publication marking a year in Ein Harod, under the heading “What Did Ein Harod Give Us?” Geulah wrote: In this place, as a natural result of what it was, a person had to undergo certain significant changes, both internal and external. . . . It was here that I acquired my first inkling of the Hebrew language. . . . It was here on the farm that I started doing some real physical work. . . . I learned . . . about Hebrew life and socialism. . . . I do not identify with those who said they feel at home here. . . . I do not feel that way. We do not feel like people at home. . . . I felt good only because they took care of us. I did not get close to anyone here. Why, for example, do most of the immigrants [amongst those who have already been in the country for a while] still live apart and make no effort to fit in? In sum, I am grateful that Ein Harod was a first refuge for us in the best sense of the word.49

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With courage and honesty, Geulah spoke of the changes that were required of her both inwardly and outwardly. Indeed, these changes took place as a result of the language that she was taught, the required physical work, and the ideology of the kibbutz. She also criticized her experiences on the kibbutz in an intelligent and complex manner. She discussed things that were good as well as those that were more difficult. She talked about what she was taught, but also about the things that her elders failed to teach her. Nor was her presentation simplistic; she admitted that it was hard, that her group had suffered, that they had nostalgic feelings, but that now all was better. As far as Geulah was concerned, the kibbutz, although it was supposed to serve as a foster home, did not succeed in becoming one primarily because the people there did not give it their best efforts. Nonetheless, it did help provide the basic necessities when they needed a shelter. The above discussion presented the children’s views of themselves, what they thought of their new environment, and how they perceived that others saw them. But what did those others look like to the children? Here we are in Dorot, getting off the bus and going into the dining hall. In front of us we see a furnished hall with tables and benches. Our attention is drawn to some “workers” who are already seated. They are drinking something out of a kettle, without touching it with their mouth. They are dressed in work clothes and they are talking amongst themselves. They must have just returned from a job. “Are they very tired?” we asked ourselves. We can read everything from the expressions on their faces. . . . Endless thoughts run through our minds. Where have they brought us? Will we ever get our lives in order? All of what we were told prior to our aliyah no longer seems satisfactory, because now . . . we are facing reality.50

What did the workers’ faces tell them? Just that they were tired, or maybe even something more than that? Was seeing the workers a positive image, or did it remind them of forced labor back in Nazi Europe? The above passage expressed a level of existential fear. Had the faces of the workers and the furnishings of the dining hall, the gate of the kibbutz and the fence surrounding the grounds, brought back memories of a fearful place—possibly a camp—which they would rather not have remembered?51 There were other reactions, such as Yosef L., from Afikim, he saw in the wrinkled faces and gray hair of the kibbutz members the incredible effort that must have been required to establish the kibbutz and to set up its various operations. His own difficult experiences in his first few months in the country—the climate, the summer heat, the cold and mud of the

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winter—enabled him to appreciate what these people must have gone through: We learned to recognize how in such a short time and under such difficult conditions these people were able to create the great abundance of what there is here. We learned to read the history of this land in the faces of the kibbutzniks, from the wrinkled brows and the graying hair.52

Following the initial immigration Yosef L. and his friend were preoccupied with their own difficulties of adjusting to the work, the language, and the complicated relationships with peers ultimately deprived them from understanding what was really going on around them. They concentrated to enhance the connection between an individual’s psychological and physical efforts and his or her outward appearance. Labor: body and soul The main topic discussed in the bulletins and other writings of the teenagers was the subject of work. The nature of the job that each individual was assigned did not matter, whether it was physical labor, agricultural work, or learning a trade. The very idea of performing work was bound to a wider philosophical and ideological network. Given the importance of work in their new environment, there were some youth who, because of their particular background and life experiences, tended to recoil from the idea of performing manual labor. Manual labor was central to the formation of the “new Jew,” as were the social and economic transformations that Zionism intended to implement. It was an essential part of the broader Zionist national vision. However, getting used to work—and more importantly, seeing it as an ideal— was difficult for both old and young.53 Many of the youngster in Youth Aliyah had gone through ideological education programs in preparation for aliyah so that they would learn to appreciate the ideal of work. In the years following the war, this became the central issue in the organizations that prepared groups of adolescents for immigration through Youth Aliyah.54 Manual labor was supposed to bring about a change in spirit and personality, as well as in physical appearance. The following quote from Simhah about the physique of the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, soldiers whom he personally had met in liberated Europe, was characteristic of the way that the survivors imagined how Jews in Palestine looked: “I will never forget my encounter with Jewish soldiers from Palestine in uniform, native Jewish Palestinians: healthy, hearty in spirit, and ready to help any Jew who needed it.”55

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Contrasted with the picture of health and strength of the individual Jew in Palestine/Israel was the pathetic figure of the young lad from the galut. The counselors wished to impress upon their young charges the strides they were making in becoming like the youths who had already been integrated into the country. That the image of what the youths had looked like in the Diaspora was perceived negatively can be seen in the words of the youths themselves. From a bulletin from Tel Yosef: “The gentle, delicate youth changed his outward appearance. He became tanned, more mature, and stronger, went to work and learned the language—he became a local!”56 In an even more straightforward and biting manner, Shlomo, apparently one of the counselors in Kevutzat Kinneret, wrote: I will start with the changes that occurred in your outer appearance. Instead of pale faces and scab covered bodies, which distinguished you from the local population to such an extent that even the children nicknamed you “white Germans,” your faces are now tanned and your step is confident.57

One can appreciate the linguistic style used in writing about work. For example, Gita wrote in an article entitlted “First Steps—Work”: “The ringing of the bell [calling us to work] sounded to me like a wondrous symphony, the work clothes seemed to me like the clothes that the priest wore in the Temple, and I held on to the tools as if they were sacred objects.”58 Throughout the article, Gita expressed her emotions and described her uplifted spirit in active, first-person language which lent a rhythmic quality to her words. In this article, work and redemption were inextricably linked, and thus illustrated tikkun. This was not the only passage which embodied echoed a sense of redemption: “The road to labor is an uphill climb. Step by step, path by path, we make it to the summit of the mountain. Every immigrant walks his own path. We have already passed the first thorns, the rough vegetation at the foot of the mountain, and have started to climb.”59 Eventually, many of the adolescents understood that work was important, practically as well as ideologically. “In the first days we did not pay sufficient attention to work.”60 However, many of the youth, despite all the instruction they received, retained negative attitudes towards manual labor, especially agricultural work. There were many reasons for this, most connected to the particular background and family history of each child. Those adolescents who came prior to the war were from middleclass homes where the thought of doing manual labor was not part of their mindset. They had come to Palestine to learn a trade, something

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they would be able to use once their absorption process was completed; their parents wanted them to accomplish this even before they left home. Farming was not considered to be a profession; carpentry, metalwork, construction, electrical work, painting, etc. were deemed suitable jobs. The adolescents who came to Palestine following the war and who were survivors of the Holocaust had an even more complex attitude towards work. Many had been forced to work for the Nazis or for the families that hid them. Because they were forced to work in order to survive, they learned how to seem to be working to save themselves from beatings, while at the same time expending the minimal amount of energy necessary in order to conserve their strength: First of all, regarding work. All through the years in the concentration camp we lived by the same rule—work as much as one must so as not to get beaten, but at the same time try not to be productive. I succeeded in toeing this line my entire time in the camps. I was never caught. In the kibbutz I needed to learn how to really work. To make this switch in my mind was very difficult, and it took an incredible amount of effort to convince myself to do it—to consider work as the highest value. This was incredibly difficult and the kibbutz members did not help all that much since they could not understand this situation.61

The memories that haunted the youth must have been, in large part, the driving force behind their aversion to manual labor, especially if they perceived it as something being forced upon them, as did Tzipporah S. from Beit Ha-shittah. Miriam, from Dror group in Yagur aslo, recounts bitterly how she has always been forced to work for strangers or for those she hated.62 Though many of the children Holocaust survivors had psychological difficulties with regard to work, they realized the importance of learning a trade. Many were uncertain about remaining on the kibbutz, and they wanted training that would enable them to live in an urban environment. Tensions flared at times, as there were few positions available in the trades on the kibbutz. The majority of help needed there was in agricultural work. Additionally, the kibbutz members hoped that the youth would stay on the kibbutz or help to establish new settlements.63 The bulletins reflect the central role the issue of work played in the lives of the youth. The difficulties of adapting to work were described and evaluated from many angles; much of the writing was dedicated to its physical demands. They also discussed how they looked and how they felt during and after work. In addition, they analyzed the impact of the process of adapting to work, the effect it had on their self-perception, and the changes it brought about in their body language.

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Yitzhak A., originally from Germany, remarked at the conclusion of a year of training: “I came to Givat Ha-shloshah. . . . there were incredible heat waves making it even harder for me to work. But now I work like a sabra.”64 Shimon wrote to his friends back in France who intended to come on aliyah, describing his first day at work and the awesome challenge that he had to face. He wanted to prepare them so that they would not be taken by surprise: We needed to dig a hole for the irrigation system. After one hour my whole body ached. My face was covered with sweat. My hands were full of scabs. I was very happy to go to eat. In the afternoon the sun was even hotter. We suffered. When the work day was done, I went straight to bed without eating dinner. That’s how tired I was.65

Yitzhak A. related to his first days of work with animal feed with a touch of humor. In the beginning, he was reminded of German farmers and harvesters he had seen as a child. He believed that his work experiences would be as pleasant as he assumed theirs had been for them. However, “after a number of hours I realized that I have a back and that it was created to ache. I have hands that are commanded to break out in all kinds of red marks, and I suffered from this for a while.”66 In the end, both Shimon and Yitzhak noted that in time things became more pleasant and less difficult. In addition to the physical difficulty of the work, further challenges stemmed from the stereotypes in the minds of the young people regarding what proper work was for a man or a woman. Others were concerned about the impact certain types of labor would have on the female body. Edna related that she feared that working in the garden would cause her to have a hunchback, when she was advised to crawl on the ground. She summarized: “In a word, the attitude towards work was horrendous.”67 Considering issues of gender, it would seem that performing manual labor was the antithesis of tikkun. Working had the potential to distort the female body. In an extensive article on “Problems of Work,” Shoshanah of Tel Yosef explained the gender-oriented attitude toward work: “In Germany girls go to a university or work in child care, but we never saw a girl doing road work, something seen here.”68 That is why, she explained, the girls who had emigrated from Germany would specifically ask to work with children or in other services, unlike the children of the kibbutz or those from Poland. Shlomo from the same group emphasized in his manuscript, “Binding in the Orchard,” what he realized when he was asked to do some work which seemed to be more appropriate for women:

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I always looked at the girls who were working in the orchard binding the branches, but I never did it myself. One day, however, a member of the kibbutz, the manager of the orchard, came to me and suggested that I learn how to do it. . . . I realized that it required concentration, patience, and practice. Even though it was considered women’s work, I was very glad to have learned it.69

Shlomo represented a typical middle class German attitude that differentiated between men’s and women’s work. However, to all intents and purposes, his willingness to try this new task marked the beginning of a change in attitude. The following remark by Shoshanah sums up the topic of work, both the difficulties encountered with it and the youngsters’ aversion towards it. She spoke of the busy seasons on the kibbutz and the days when all hands were “drafted” to work entire days in order to get the work done (generally the youth group members worked for four hours and studied for four hours.) A draft caused some discontent among the youth. Shoshanna said: “We feel these days as workers, not even “half-human.”70 The expression, “half-human,” refers to the half day that they spent studying. If one recalls the descriptions of the workers both during the May Day parade in Haifa and on the kibbutz, as well as the ideal image of the worker as one who is whole in body and soul, then Shoshanah’s remark was significant; it indicated that she had not absorbed the ideal of labor. In a bulletin produced by the same group from Tel Yosef (this one published on the occasion of their second anniversary with Youth Aliyah), Shoshanah Sh. wrote in an essay titled “On Work”: “We can summarize our accomplishments over the course of the past two years in very positive terms with no reservations: Most of us have become workers.”71 According to this quote, many of the changes that needed to take place in these young people had indeed occurred. They had acquired a straight posture, tightened muscles, tanned bodies and faces—in general, they looked like the sabra they were so eager to emulate. Hebrew Language, Song, and Dance “Once we acquired a common language, many of the walls between us came tumbling down.”72 The three topics to be discussed in this section were chosen in order to show the correlation between them, because each could be easily discerned and readily observed amongst the youth as they went through the processes of cultural absorption and adaptation. Speaking Hebrew signaled a change in identity and behavior and can be considered a part of

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tikkun ha-ishiyut. It was important to study singing and dancing because they played a central role in the perspectives of the adolescents themselves. Singing the songs and dancing the dances, especially the hora, were presented in the writings of the youth as crucial ritual ceremonies that all had to learn and to continue to participate in regularly if they wished to be inducted into the group. Whether or not a youth could speak Hebrew was easily identifiable; accents, stuttering, difficulties in pronouncing certain words, and even shyness all attested to how well one could speak. Deficiency in the language only enforced the message—a message delivered both to the person and to those around him or her—that he or she was a newcomer, different, an outsider. Both in Zionist thought and deed, acquiring a working knowledge of Hebrew was nothing short of a mitzvah (religious commandment) of great significance, especially in the Youth Aliyah. Studying and speaking the language was very difficult for the children. Both the kibbutz and Youth Aliyah required the children to begin speaking and living their lives in Hebrew, and this presented obstacles that lasted throughout the entire two years of training. Learning the language was a slow process, too slow for the taste of those responsible for the children. Even when they started to use Hebrew in public, they continued to speak their native languages in private communication. The shift to Hebrew was even more difficult for those in homogeneous language groups, something which was more common for those who arrived in the 1930s. In the bulletins there were clues that hinted at the moment in each young immigrant’s experience when Hebrew stopped being just a way of speaking with those in charge and became a means of expressing oneself in all situations. Eliezer was a counselor with Youth Group B, Noham—a pioneer group established in the Displaced Persons camps in Europe—in Kibbutz Dorot in 1946. His introduction to a bulletin published half a year after his immigration to Palestine revealed a little about the attitude of the counselors, and to some degree that of the children as well: This bulletin is your first attempt to express the thoughts in your heart in Hebrew, half a year after your arrival. It is perfect neither in form nor in content, but after all, only half a year has passed. Not everyone is fluent in Hebrew yet, certainly not in the fine points of the language.73

The young people understood the demand to speak Hebrew that kibbutz society and the counselors made upon them, and they consented because they, too, realized the difficulties that resulted from the lack of a common language. While some of the flyers displayed in the classrooms

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and recreation centers were in Hebrew, it is revealing that many were still in the youngsters’ mother tongues. The articles the children wrote and published periodically in the bulletins were the result of tremendous effort on their part (even if the counselors helped with the editing). In these articles, the children complained that the counselors had no patience for them and that others made fun of them, either by mimicking their mother tongues or by mocking their accents in Hebrew. They further resented that the counselors spoke in their native tongues amongst themselves, which created an evident double standard. Ilana, too, expressed frustration at not knowing the language, although she had already spent one year in the training program at Lapid. She had yearned to come to the Holy Land, yet this was how she described her first impressions of the country: “Immigrant houses, tents, and life itself is dark and lacks light.” The “bright star” for her was the kibbutz. Nonetheless, she went on to describe the first few months: “None of us knows Hebrew. We answer every question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without understanding what was being asked.”74 With this example, it becomes easy to imagine a scene in which a youngster is working and one of the kibbutz members tells him what to do. The youngster does not understand, but nods his head anyway. Did the kibbutz member realize that he was confused or was he oblivious? On the other hand, there was a feeling of discomfort amongst the kibbutz members because much of the work was either not done at all or done improperly. In another anonymous article from Kibbutz Gevat, the author noted that his first impression of the kibbutz people was very disappointing, and that there was no way of communicating with them while on the job. The author pointed out that the kibbutz members did try to instruct them in the work, but that the results were poor. Ilana pointed out that it took over a year for relationship between the children and the kibbutz members to improve. In another unsigned article, the writer claimed that the children finally realized that “they want to teach us the job and Hebrew, to love work, the language, and the light.”75 In this passage, “light” is a key word. Was it a metaphor or was it literally light (i.e., the light of the sun) that was cruelly bright for European eyes? There is no doubt that in the first quote, from Ilana, she used the word “light” metaphorically, but what did it mean in the passage just cited? It may have been an example of ambiguity caused by a limited grasp of the Hebrew language combined with the minimal vocabulary base available to the writer. There was still much work left before the Hebrew language would become a means of self-expression. At the end of the article, Ilana was optimistic: “We have made a lot of progress and the counselors have

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taught us a lot. We now know accounting, engineering, physical fitness, history, nature, writing and reading Hebrew, Bible, and more.”76 The impudence some children showed toward their counselors (see Peninah’s remarks, quoted earlier) represented a more advanced linguistic stage. Speaking Hebrew gave them self-confidence and a way to express themselves. The children demonstrated their newly acquired skills by using disdainful language. Perhaps this was their way of leveling criticism against the excessive use of Hebrew to the point where their personal autonomy was infringed upon. Alternatively, this may have been their way of gaining some control and raising their relative position in the social structure. Peninah’s attitude toward this impudence was negative. An essay by Yehudah Wallenberg entitled “In the Pasture” is an excellent example of the point in time when “Hebrew as a language to study” became “Hebrew as a language in which to communicate.” In his essay, Wallenberg wrote about the time he helped lead the flocks out to pasture. While they were watering the flocks in the marshes, an accident happened and the shepherds realized that they could not rescue the flock on their own. They asked Yehudah to run to the kibbutz to summon help. Yehudah protested, saying that he would not be able to communicate with them in Hebrew. “He said, ‘Tell them in German!’; I went to the person in charge and I told him the whole story in Hebrew. I did not want to look as if I am a newcomer to the country.”77 The story had a happy ending, and people were sent to help rescue the flock. In this incident, language was not just a means of communication, but also a means of identification; because Yehudah did not want to be seen as a “new immigrant,” he forced himself to adopt a new identity by speaking Hebrew. Shlomo, one of the counselors at Kvutzat Kinneret, described all the difficulties on the way to acquiring the language as a means of personal expression: No longer do we have to hear your German speech at every step of the way—we cannot say that it is gone completely; would that we could arrive at that moment! But that, in great measure, is up to you. In any event, you no longer have the “deer in the headlights” look about you when someone approaches you in Hebrew. But it’s too little, too little.78

With much honesty, Tzipporah S. recounted the group’s efforts to speak only in Hebrew: After five months we had our gathering at which we decided that our group would have certain values and among other things speak only in Hebrew. . . . After this gathering we tried to live up to the resolutions that we had

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made but we just could not do it. We were not used to speaking to each other in Hebrew and we did not know how to pronounce the words correctly. It just didn’t work.79

One girl from the youth group at Beit Ha-shittah, whose name is unknown, wrote a piece entitled “How We Decided to Speak Hebrew.” She described the lack of communication between the children of the group. There was no common language because the children had come from many different countries; only inside the classroom did they operate under the directive of “Hebrew only.” Each subgroup continued to speak its native language. This further prevented Hebrew from serving as a common denominator and magnified the differences that already separated the children. All attempts to speak only Hebrew failed. “The counselors explained to us that it was incomprehensible that we continued to speak in our native languages after being in the country for so long! We should feel obligated to learn Hebrew since we [considered ourselves] Zionist[s]!” In short, the writer attributed many of the problems that plagued the group to the fact that they did not speak Hebrew. Despite their continuous efforts to converse only in Hebrew, it did not become the primary language, “sometimes because of forgetfulness and at times because of stubbornness.”80 The need to learn the new language and the challenges it presented were common to all the youngsters and indeed to most immigrants. There were other social and ideological pressures to deal with in addition to the language problem, none of which made for an easy life. These difficulties caused the children to cling to different elements in their past as a kind of metaphorical “security blanket.” So many of them, despite their eagerness to become a part of the realization of the Zionist “dream,” found it hard to give up the native language that had been not only a part of their childhood but also, in many instances, the last remnant of their former selves. The decision to change one’s personal identity, especially in connection with the language spoken, undoubtedly involved intense personal struggle and ambivalent feelings. Of all the transformations that were required of the children, the one that was presumably most upsetting was having to adopt a Hebrew name. The majority of the information regarding name changes did not come from the bulletins, but rather from memoirs written by the adolescents in later years. Clearly, the idea of having to take on a Hebrew name was a sensitive subject. It could be that the children had become used to their new names by the time they wrote the bulletins. It is also possible that because the counselors edited the bulletins, the children chose the “battles they wanted to fight” and did not make this subject a critical issue.

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The following excerpt from one child’s account describing a trip to Kibbutz Ginnosar together with a counselor and three others whom he did not know is indicative of the difficulties encountered in juggling various languages: The first one is tall and broad-shouldered with huge locks of hair. The second is medium height, thin, with an athletic build. The third is short and fat. The athletic one, named Gershon, was the only one who would respond to me in Yiddish. We were four young men speaking three languages between us and had great difficulty understanding each other. The counselor helped us change the names of the other two from [the very difficult] Polish names to [much simpler] Hebrew ones—Yoram and Meir.81

This was typical of the language issues that characterized groups of young Holocaust survivors. The descriptions were not stereotypical. While Hebrew was supposed to be the common denominator among the children, actually achieving this goal was no simple matter. Aside from the very conspicuous question of whether or not one was speaking Hebrew, other factors that indicated one’s affiliation and participation in the larger group were the singing of Zionist-oriented songs and dancing. The article “A Year in the Country,” regarding the first days on the kibbutz, highlighted the second night’s dancing of the hora: “Finally we arrived at Gevat. The people are standing in front of the dining hall and watching us. They don’t even say hello. On the second night we danced the hora, a sort of odd gypsy dance.82 One should bear in mind that labeling anything “gypsy” was not considered complimentary. A different view of the hora was included in a letter Channah Aschwega wrote to her parents in Germany, in which she described a wedding on the kibbutz. She reported on the festivities in positive terms. Part of the evening was devoted to readings from selected works of literature and improvised performances reflecting life on the kibbutz. She concluded: The main thing happened at the end: the wonderful hora. We danced for maybe two hours. From time to time we may have taken a break. After that, some people danced the polka. That is a dance for two people and if you do it well, it looks absolutely fabulous.83

In an unsigned article, a girl from the Lapid group in Kibbutz Hahotrim also related to dancing the hora as an expression of excitement, a demonstration of solidarity, and a sign of the formation of group identity. She told of a visit to an immigrant transit camp in 1952. Throughout the description she looked down on the people of the camp, albeit with a sin-

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cere desire to help. Even so, there was great confusion as to how to help and if helping was even possible. One solution was to dance the hora: Our group is in the transit camp. We want to help. The hora is captivating and we dance without end. The blue shirts and emblem are our pride. All around us are numerous immigrants—on some of their faces are signs of derision, but those close to our age stared at us with jealous, sad eyes. We exchange thoughts and tell them about the kibbutz, about hikes, and about our social life. There is a feeling that these are our friends and that we need to save them. A sense of obligation overtakes us all. To bring the youth out of the darkness into the light, that they should know that it is their right to live like all free people. We want to show them our strength that stems from the group life [that we live]. We want to awaken in them an interest in being creative and a faith that a better world [is possible].84

Similarly, Avivah wrote about the first day on Kibbutz Kabri. A pleasant reception was held for them. They did not understand the speeches because of the language, but the party was very nice. “We sang, we danced, and we were in high spirits. We were only sorry that we were not familiar with the folk dances that we liked so much. In the days that followed, we asked Ayah and she taught us all of them—now, there is hardly a dance that we do not know.”85 Dancing was not the only cultural expression that bound people together. Singing was also important. In “The Weekly Program” found in the Borokhov bulletin, various cultural events and classes were listed, with music accounting for a sizable portion of the program, although there were complaints about the general interest in listening almost exclusively to jazz. However, of interest is the following note about the study of Hebrew songs: On Wednesday, Ernest eagerly teaches us songs about the country, and he does it very well. We have made a lot of progress. We should emphasize that a young person just cannot mingle in social circles without knowing the songs. We all need to sing and to participate in the singing in the evenings.86

One can gain a more complete understanding of the immigrants by combining the various elements that the kibbutzim employed, including the use of the Hebrew language as well as Zionist-oriented songs and dances, in order successfully integrate the young immigrants into Israeli society. Focusing on these elements throws a beam of light on what the newcomers shared with the kibbutz members and blurs that which divided them. While the process of learning Hebrew was complex and dif-

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ficult, no such difficulty was encountered when learning the dances and the songs.

Concluding Thoughts: Was the Tikkun Successful? Now that the writings, letters, and memoirs of the youthful immigrants have been explored, in what way can one determine how successful they were in achieving their “missions” to accomplish tikkun ha-guf and tikkun ha-ishiyut? It would be helpful to redefine the concepts in light of the examined materials. Tikkun ha-guf had much to do with the way the youth looked—their clothes, their body language, the self-confidence they projected, and their confidence in their social and nationalist goals as reflected in their posture and walk. How did physical appearance project confidence in relation to an ideology and to Zionist goals? It was through those identifiable markers of the Israeli—tanned face, work clothes, color of pants, body language exuding pride, and a sure step. When these characteristics are compared and contrasted with those of the immigrants, it becomes clear just how different the two groups were. The immigrants had to transform themselves by adopting the look of the sabra. What did tikkun ha-ishiyut entail? It required refocusing the individual away from his or her own interests to those of the society, a full realization of the need to change one’s way of life, to learn to value manual labor, to transform Jewish culture and the Hebrew language into a living tradition, and to adapt to a social existence in which the feeling of mutual responsibility received the highest priority. The quoted materials revealed a significant connection between the two tikkuns. An interdependence existed between them, even though tikkun ha-guf was achieved faster and was more visible than tikkun ha-ishiyut. At first glance, it would seem that tikkun ha-ishiyut was not sufficiently discussed. The truth is that tikkun ha-ishiyut lay in those elements that were not particularly visible, but the influence of which was felt—the practice of converse in Hebrew and the attitude towards work. As Ernst noted in his essay, “Stages of Work”: “The person aspires for satisfaction in work, otherwise he is not a worker but a machine.”87 Only by realizing the close connection between the two tikkuns can one understand the full meaning of both. Two conflicting characteristics became evident in the way that the young newcomers expressed themselves. On the one hand, there was an innocence about them. They were willing to meet all the requirements in order to undergo tikkun successfully. On the other hand, they were critical. They were not embarrassed or troubled by their appearance or by how

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they thought and spoke. They knew that they were different and that there was much to accomplish before they would be completely acculturated. They did offer a measure of apology to explain their behavior. They did not speak Hebrew, but only because they could not speak it well enough. They were weak as a result of their lack of work experience or because of what they had suffered during the Holocaust. For those who came after the Holocaust, the threadbare clothes they wore pointed to what they had endured, and that was not a source of shame. They were not embarrassed when they were referred to as “neglected children” upon their arrival. And one can understand their excitement over the sheets, beds and bedspreads, underwear, and pajamas with which they were supplied. There was a significant amount of self-criticism in the writings of these children, and so a considerable portion of their pages was devoted to social problems: difficulties arising from a cooperative lifestyle, the concessions that needed to be made to enable opening a joint bank account, and the common clothes depot. They told of how hard it was to become accustomed to the work because of the physical demands, the monotony, and the knowledge that they were not learning a profession. They pointed out flaws in the vision and the philosophy that guided them, the inequality that existed among people, the relationships between the kibbutz members and themselves, and the social solidarity that was not always self-evident. After a year at Kibbutz Yagur, Aharon wrote: It was hard for us to get used to normal life. How many years did it take for us to get used to arriving at a place just to wait for the day that we would have to leave, to get closer to our goal, and now here we are! It’s hard to believe that we need to stay here and build our lives. In my dreams this was a holy matter, but in the real world it is not like that. When it comes to normal life, you start to see the small things that you did not notice before. We hoped that here we would fix everything that was wrong in the galut. Our life there [on the kibbutz] was socialist in the fullest sense of the word, and yet during our first days on Yagur we were struck with minor details that were the antithesis of our education. These were really minor matters, but they were important. And to me it was unbelievable. We hoped that here our life would be much better. And every so often we make discoveries. For example, the children on the kibbutz, one has a watch and the other does not, one has a bicycle and the other does not. How this affects the children I do not know, but this affected us terribly. Our faith was somewhat undermined.88

The children set down their impressions of the surrounding environment. They were often upbeat and, in general, proud of their successes.

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In the final tally, the children in both the prewar and postwar immigrant groups acknowledged and internalized what the kibbutz and Youth Aliyah expected of them without completely giving up their personal autonomy. In this spirit, Zeev Sternhell, an immigrant who arrived in 1947, and today a most respectful professor emeritus of the Hebrew University, expressed himself on a TV show broadcast on Channel One in 1999: There was nothing to lose. The world that was, was already gone anyway. We wanted to be accepted by the Jewish and Israeli societies. We wanted to be a part of it quickly so that we could leave behind any signs from “there” in order to be “here” in every way.89

While the change in clothing was one of the easiest for the youth to make, its impact on how they felt about themselves was tremendous. Clothes instantly changed the way that they were perceived by all. The children did not express any nihilism despite the complete and utter destruction of the world in which they were raised and the eradication of all that they had come to know while growing up. Some among them were confused and speechless; at first, they had nothing to say. But even they eventually “found their tongues” and began to live again. Many good things can be said about the youth movements and Youth Aliyah that succeeded in educating the children and imbuing them with values that persisted in spite of the Holocaust. Concepts such as aliyah, Holy Land, and the kibbutz planted hope in the hearts of many, provided them with a future they could look forward to, and allowed them to dream of beginning life anew and of finding a homeland, even though they retained certain nostalgic feelings for their former lives—the colors, scents, and languages. Shmuel wrote in a letter to a friend in the galut: I cannot describe my feelings here. Every now and then I am overwhelmed with feelings of nostalgia, and not nostalgia for just anything but for specific things. for example, we are getting ready for a play, “Motl the Son of Pessy the Cantor,” and you certainly remember the rehearsals for the play, “Hanukkah Gelt,” which we would rehearse nightly. I could tell you that at certain times, I relive those moments again—I hear, I smell, and I feel as if those days are back. So it is my friend—a person misses his birthplace and his childhood.90

There were obstacles at every turn, but the only question in the minds of the children was which way to go. There was no doubt that they had to press on; there was no going back. The process was gradual, but in the end they succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams.91

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Notes 1. Palestine will be used to designate that country prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In Hebrew: Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel). 2. Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995). 3. Shmuel Almog, “Judaism as a Disease” [in Hebrew], Yahadut Zemanenu 6 (1990): 3–23. 4. Max Nordau, Zionist Writings, vol. 1: Speeches and Articles, 1897–1900 [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hasifriyya Hazionit, 1956), 117. 5. Shmuel Almog, “From ‘Muscle Judaism’ to a ‘Religion of Work’” [in Hebrew] Hazionut 9 (1984): 137–46. 6. Ibid., 143. 7. Raphael Gat, “Youth Aliya, 1933–1946” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 37 (Sept. 1985): 149–76. 8. Chanoch Rinott, Youth Builds Its Home: Youth Aliyah as an Educational Movement (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1953). 9. From its inception, Youth Aliyah brought to Palestine 30,353 youths and children. Between May 1934–September 1939, 5,012; during the war years, 9,342; from the end of the war until 1950, 15,999. See Yisrael Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 4 vols. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: Macmillan, 1990), 4:940. 10. Oz Almog, The Sabra: A Portrait [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1997), 148–52. 11. Yisrael Kopelowitz, “How I Came to This Land” [in Hebrew] Benetiv Ha-hit’arut [newspaper for the immigrant youth group in Kibbutz Givat Ha-shloshah], no. 1 (August 8, 1946): n.p., Yad Tabenkin Archive (YTA), 2–18/ 10/ 5. 12. Excluded from this generalization are those who came to Youth Aliyah from Bulgaria. 13. Nachum Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Hidden Jewish Children in Poland (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009), 257–72; Shlomo Bar-Gil, Looking for a Home, Finding a Homeland: Youth Aliyah in the Education and Rehabilitation of Holocaust Survivors, 1945–1955 [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1999), 127–32. 14. Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers, 298; Sarah Avinon, Letters, Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot Archive. In 2004, Avinon translated the letters she wrote to her adoptive parents into Hebrew and deposited them in the archive. This is a translation from the Hebrew. In the prologue to the letters she wrote: “I immigrated to this country in 1950. In those years I lived in Kibbutz Kefar Menahem, first in the “Amir” group and then in “Yis’or.” In the summer of ‘53 I was sent to the “Kedarim” course for three months in Givat Havivah and after that I left to become active in Ha-shomer Ha-tzair in Tel Aviv.” 15. Bar-Gil, Looking for a Home, 116–26. 16. All are in Hebrew; this will not be noted in the references. 17. Yehudah R., “Thoughts for a Last Talk,” Ayn Harod Bulletin (1939): [no page numbers], Ayn Harod, 1934–1957, YTA, 2–18/13/6. 18. “A Year since the Group Was Formed,” Our Group [Kfar Szold] (1951): 16, YTA 2–18/11/6. 19. Meyer, “Toward the Second Year,” in Links: Anniversary of the Bulgarian Aliyah 1947 (Kibbutz Gevat, [1947]): n.p., Gevat 1935–56, YTA 2–18/10/6. 20. Aryeh Blumenfeld, “In Our Surroundings” Nitzanim [Tel Yosef] (1936): 29, Tel Yosef 1934–46, YTA 2–18/13/5.

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21. Letters 1–11, Channah Aschwega, 1934–38, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), A564/7; the letters were translated from German. 22. In archives and in a number of publications, one can find quite a few letters that the youth wrote to their parents back in Germany and Austria. The letters testify to the difficult struggle, longing, and often disappointment. However, at the end of many letters one can find sentences that soothe and calm, signs of an effort to prevent the parents from worrying. As the years went by and the parents’ conditions worsened, the youth took particular care to decrease their complaints and paint a more pleasant picture. One must also take into consideration the youths’ own adaptation and improved frame of mind. In oral testimonies, many admitted to this. 23. “A Year in the Country,” in One Year of Youth Aliyah 1935–1936 (Gevat, June 1936): n.p., Gevat 1935–36, YTA 2–18/10/6. 24. Yisrael K., “My Departure from Poland and Arrival at the Kibbutz,” Bamoledet [Genosar] (Oct. 1947): 2–3, Genosar, Gesher, Dafnah, YTA 2–18/11/3. 25. Kopelowitz, “How I Came to This Land.”. 26. Yitzhak Sadeh, “My Sister on the Shore” [in Hebrew], in The Book of the Palmah, vol. 1, edited by Zerubavel Gil’ad and Matti Megged (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1957), 725–26; originally written in 1945. 27. Aharon, “As the Year Draws to an End,” Alei Deror [bulletin of Deror Youth Group in Yagur] (1947): 1, Yagur, YTA 2–18/11/5. 28. Binyamin, “The Land as Imagined and in Reality,” Hed Ha-no’ar: Yarhon Ha-No’ar Ha-Borokhovi Ha-oleh [Heftzibah] (1947): 6–7, Heftzibah, YTA 2–18/11/4. 29. Peninah, “Day One in the Homeland,” Hed Ha-no’ar: Yarhon Ha-No’ar Ha-Borokhovi Ha-oleh [Heftzibah] (1949): 6, Heftzibah, YTA 2–18/11/4. 30. Rina, “Day One in the Homeland,” ibid.: 6. 31. Binyamin, “The Land as Imagined.”. 32. Reuven, “Ginnosar Receives Youth,” in Homeland: Half a Year in the Country and in Ginnosar (Ginnosar, 1947), 6, Ginnosar, Gesher, Dafnah, YTA 2–18/11/3. 33. Yitzhak A., “My Immigration to Eretz Israel,” in Half a Year of the Second Group (Givat Ha-shloshah, 1939), n.p., Givat Ha-shloshah, YTA 2–18/10/5. 34. I stress this matter, because the subject was not an issue for the immigrants who came in the 1950s. After the War of Independence, the number of Arabs on Israeli soil greatly decreased: 180,000 Arabs were left of the approximately 800,000 who had lived in Mandate Palestine. Those who were left were practically unseen in the Israeli milieu, as they were isolated in their villages and were subject to military curfews and restrictions that limited their mobility. 35. The Titz Vocational School was established in Kibbutz Yagur in 1937. It was named after Dr. Ludwig Titz, who had been persecuted by the Nazis and who was found dead in his house following his release from jail. Located near Haifa’s industrial zone, it allowed those who arrived with Youth Aliyah from Germany to learn a profession. Henrietta Szold was a member of the board. The school operated for thirteen years and was closed down due to lack of resources. For more information, see http://www. kibbutz.org.il/itonut/shonot/050825_titz.htm. 36. Yohanan P., “From the Ship to Yagur,” in First Fruits (Yagur: Ludwig Titz Vocational School, 1937), 1–2, Yagur, YTA 2–18/11/5. Published on August 8, 1937 to mark half a year since his aliyah. “Sabra” is a term used to denote a person born in Palestine/Israel. 37. Menahem Fingeritz, “The Outing,” Alei Deror [bulletin of Deror Youth Group in Yagur] (1947): 11, Yagur, YTA 2–18/11/5.

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38. Yehudah Sh., “In the Field,” in First Anniversary of the Youth Group (Tel Yosef, 1937), 15, Tel Yosef 1934–36, YTA 2–18/13/5. 39. Shulamith Bardiak, “In the Vineyard,” in Nitzanim: Half a Year in the Homeland (Tel Yosef, 1937), 8, Tel Yosef 1934–46, YTA 2–18/13/5. 40. Hanan Scheinberg, “A Trip to the Galilee,” in ibid., 28–29. 41. Haim, “A Night on Guard Duty,” in Summing Up Two Years [of the Youth Group from Germany, 1936–38] (Tel Yosef, 1938), 27, Tel Yosef 1934–46, YTA 2–18/13/5. 42. Record book of the youth group at Ein Harod, entry for August 16, 1938, Ein Harod, YTA 2–18/13/6. 43. “One Year in the Land,” in One Year of Youth Aliyah 1935–1936 (Gevat, June 1936), n.p., Gevat 1935–36, YTA 2–18/10/6. 44. Tereza, “Two Years on the Kibbutz,” in In the Homeland (Afikim, 1947), n.p., Afikim, YTA 2–18/9/4. 45. Peninah B., “Our Way,” in The Final Journal of Youth Group D (Alonim, 1951), n.p., Alonim, YTA 2–18/9/2. 46. Ibid. 47. Alter, “The Tortuous Path to the Homeland,” in Pamphlet to Mark the Conclusion of a Year of the Immigrant Youth Group (Ashdot Ya’akov, 1947), n.p., Ashdot Ya’akov, YTA 2–18/9/8. 48. Cyprus Diary (Givat Brenner: Youth Group E [Romanian], 1947), n.p., Givat Brenner, YTA 2–18/10/4. 49. Geulah, “What Did Ein Harod Give Us?” in First Year of the Youth Group (Ein Harod, 1939), n.p., Ein Harod, YTA 2–18/13/6. 50. Tzipporah, “First Days in Dorot,” Ba-negev [Journal of youth group B, Dorot] 1 (1947): 1, Dorot, YTA 2–18/11/13. 51. Concerning the difficult comparison of the kibbutz to the concentration camp, Shlomo Bar-Gil writes: “What caused these comparisons were the images that were brought on by the barbed-wire fence around the kibbutz, the gate to the kibbutz, and the security measures that were required in the 30s and 40s. For them, these were images that reminded them of more difficult times that they would have preferred to repress.” Bar-Gil, Looking for a Home, 141. 52. Yosef L., “At Year’s End,” in Bulletin of the Immigrant Youth Group in Afikim (1944): n.p., Afikim, YTA 2–18/9/4. 53. The literature that deals with the kibbutz discusses this topic at length. A typical passage can be found in Muki Tzur, Ta’ir Zevulun, and Hanina Porat, eds., Here on the Face of the Earth (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Sifriat Ha-poalim, 1981), 264, under the heading “Weariness Conquers the Holiness of the Work”: “Many times I thought and asked myself while working—what is it that I am feeling? I could not arouse in myself those feelings of joy and gladness that I hoped would be in me while working. And I fully recognize that to be considered a man in the fullest sense of the word in our times, the times of manure and filth, one must work the land, and not just for sustenance but as a service of God. So what did I feel? I felt just . . . weariness. How do I explain this vision? It seems to me that I did not accustom all of me to work. I believe that had I made a habit of it things would have been different, and perhaps what I hoped for would have come true.” 54. Bar-Gil, Looking for a Home, 62–81. 55. Simhah, “Lessons of the Past,” in Utterances (Ein Harod: Youth Group E, 1948), n.p., Ein Harod, YTA 2–18/13/6. 56. Untitled article, in First Anniversary of the Youth Group (Tel Yosef, 1937), 1, Tel Yosef 1934–36, YTA 2–18/13/5.

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57. Shlomo, “Our Beginning,” in Sprouts: Ha-bonim Pioneer Youth Group, Half a Year in the Homeland (Kevutzat Kinneret, 1938), 10, Kevutzat Kinneret, YTA 2–18/11/6. 58. Gita, “First Steps—Work,” in Link [in the Chain]: One Year of the Aliyah of the Bulgarians (Gevat, Nov. 1947), n.p., Gevat 1935–56, YTA 2–18/10/6. 59. David, “Words in Conclusion,” in Sprouts: Ha-bonim Pioneer Youth Group, Half a Year in the Homeland (Kevutzat Kinneret, 1938), 8, Kevutzat Kinneret, YTA 2–18/11/6. 60. Azriel, “The Youth and Members of the Kibbutz,” in Upward Bound (Gevat: Immigrant Youth Group B, 1939), n.p., Gevat 1935–56, YTA 2–18/10/6. 61. Rahel Bustan, “How Did the Embers Survive?” in Testimonies of Members of Kibbutz Ein Ha-mifratz, [n.d.], 26–27, Moreshet Archive (MA) 489.11. 62. Tzipporah S., “Concluding Two Years in the [Youth] Group,” in Our Words (Beit Ha-shittah: Youth Group B, 1947), 1–4, Beit Ha-shittah, YTA 2–18/10/2; Miriam Z., “In My Work,” Alei Deror [bulletin of Deror Youth Group in Yagur] (1947): 11, Yagur, YTA 2–18/11/5. 63. Tzipporah S. “Concluding,” 2; Here on the Face of the Earth, 240–42. 64. Yitzhak A., “My Immigration to Eretz Israel,” n.p. 65. Shimon, “A Letter to Friends in France,” Hed Ha-no’ar: Yarhon Ha-No’ar HaBorokhovi Ha-oleh [Heftzibah] (1949): 6, Hefzibah, YTA 2–18/11/4. 66. Yitzhak, “Work in Ginnosar,” in Homeland: Half a Year in the Country and in Ginnosar (Ginnosar, 1947), 2, Ginnosar, YTA 2–18/11/3. 67. Edna, “The Development of the Youth Group,” in ibid., 4. 68. Shoshanah, “The Problem of Labor,” in On the Path: One Year of the Youth Group (Tel Yosef, 1937), 6, Tel Yosef, 1937–56, YTA 2–18/13/5. 69. Shlomo, “Binding in the Orchard,” in ibid., 14. 70. Shoshanah, “The Problem of Labor,” 5–7. 71. Shoshanah Sh., “Concerning Labor,” in Summing Up the Two Years (Tel Yosef, 1938), 15–16, Tel Yosef 1934–36, YTA 2–18/13/5. 72. Azriel, “The Youth and Members of the Kibbutz,” n.p.. 73. Eliezer, “[Introduction],” in In the Negev (Dorot: Youth Group B Noham, 1947), 1. 74. Ilana, “Thoughts,” in Echoes: A Publication Summing Up the Year (Ha-hotrim: Youth Group Lapid, 1950), 2 Ha-hotrim, YTA 2–18/11/4. 75. “A Year in the Country,” in One Year of Youth Aliyah (Gevat, 1936), n.p., Gevat, YTA 2–18/10/6. 76. Ilana, “Thoughts,” 2. 77. Yehudah Wallenberg, “In the Pasture,” in Nitzanim: Half a Year in the Homeland (Tel Yosef, 1937), 7, Tel Yosef 1934–46, YTA 2–18/13/5. 78. Shlomo, “Our Beginning,” 10. 79. Tzipporah S., “Concluding Two Years in the [Youth] Group,” 1–4. 80. “How We Decided to Speak Hebrew,” in Devarenu (Beit Ha-shittah, 1947), 6, BeitHa-shittah, YTA 2–18/10/2. 81. Reuven, “Ginnosar Receives Youth,” in Homeland: Half a Year in the Country and in Ginnosar (Ginnosar, 1947), 6, Ginnosar, YTA 2–18/11/3. This was translated into Hebrew from German. 82. “A Year in the Country,” n.p. 83. Channa Aschwega, Letters 1–11, CZA A564/7. 84. “A Visit to the Transit Camp,” in Echoes: A Publication Summing Up the Year (Hahotrim: Youth Group Lapid, 1952), 6, Ha-hotrim, YTA 2–18/11/4. 85. Avivah, “The Group’s Anniversary,” in The Yearly Summary (Kabri: Youth Group, 1950), 2–3, Kabri, YTA 2–18/11/6.

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86. “The Week’s Program,” in On the Way (Heftzibah, 1949), 9, Heftzibah, YTA 2– 18/11/4. 87. Ernst, “Stages of Work,” in On the Path: Two Years of the Youth Group from Germany (Tel Yosef, 1938), 17, Tel Yosef 1934–46, YTA 2–18/3/5. 88. Aharon, “As the Year Draws to an End,” 1. 89. Interview with Zeev Sternhell, Coffee and Theater [in Hebrew], Israel Television, Channel One, November 11, 1999. 90. Shmuel, “A Letter to a Friend in the Diaspora,” On the Way: Bulletin of the Immigrant Youth Group [Heftzibah] (1945), 2–3, YTA 2–18/11/4. 91. Bar-Gil, Looking for a Home, 135–214.

7

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ON KIBBUTZIM Resettling Unsettled Memories

Micha Balf



Because My Life is before Me I have so much of everything But I have no parents At the same time I hear the wind whisper Child, don’t listen to that voice There are many children like you Who have no mothers So don’t cry You must sing, study, and dance And build our land1

The young survivor who wrote this poem, published in her school paper and distributed to members of the kibbutz, was not in the midst of resettlement, in spite of the title of this article. A narrow definition of the concept of resettlement might be understood to imply that a person is on a continuum of life and that the essence of the change is not upheaval, but simply geographical relocation. This chapter will focus on the reestablishment of Holocaust survivors’ lives in a personal and communal context. The story of an orphaned Holocaust survivor—perhaps one who has been living in hiding, or alone in the woods, or in a concentration or

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work camp, and who then finds himself in another country on a kibbutz with people who speak Hebrew, live a completely different lifestyle, and have only a superficial sense of what that person has endured—only goes to illustrate how inadequate the term “resettlement” is for describing the process that this survivor has gone through. The experience of being orphaned, culturally dispossessed, physically dislocated (either alone, or as part of group of youths) can not simply be encompassed in a few words or in a few sentences. Nonetheless, this article will attempt to illustrate the struggles of survivors who came to kibbutzim in their early teens, yet who were not children in terms of life experience. These young people had disparate and unclear memories of their families. The survivors slept, ate, talked, worked, and studied day in and day out, yet their memories remained unsettled, without solace. These survivors had a need to find a way to continue their lives, yet lacked the cognitive tools, the stability, and the emotional maturity to clearly articulate those needs and desires. Among the few examples of survivors telling of their experiences in those times, we have the following quote: If a child misbehaves, yells, acts selfishly, it is all because of his past. The child never knew freedom, was always afraid, didn’t plan for tomorrow because he knew that tomorrow they could catch him or kill him. The child was influenced by the fact that there were corrupt people around him. He learned from them and became like them. The child on kibbutz is different because he has always been free. He wasn’t afraid that they would take him to a concentration camp or kill his parents. He is with his family, his friends, in his homeland. For the “children of the Golah” [survivors] it is harder now than during the war. Just now he begins to view the world. He sees that he is alone with no family. In the war it was easier because he didn’t think about tomorrow. . . . When he falls asleep, he dreams of forgotten things—home, parents, how nice it all was. . . . he tries to forget it all, but these memories are hard to forget.2

The kibbutz members who took the survivors in had sympathy, but lacked the tools and the awareness to express these feelings. In fact, expressing feelings was neither a highly regarded attribute nor a frequent occurrence. As Binyamin, an orphaned survivor at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, said: “The members did not ask us questions about ourselves. They did not talk about their own stories either. One did not talk about personal feelings. The kibbutz came first. . . . We were never requested as a group

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or as individuals to tell our stories—I don’t remember that we wanted to (Binyamin).”3 We must recognize, then, that groups of orphaned survivors who attempted to find their way both individually and collectively on kibbutzim as well as in the Jewish society of Palestine (before the founding of the State of Israel) had to find a way to navigate between an external demand for assimilation and their internal demand for rehabilitation via a murky yet evident need to preserve something of an unsettled, visceral past. As will become clear by examining the “resettlement” of groups of Holocaust survivors at three specific kibbutzim, the process was long and often unguided, and it found its most meaningful expression in the place where all kibbutz members arrive eventually: the kibbutz cemetery, in which kibbutz members created a Holocaust memorial site. This chapter will illustrate the commemorative process that took place at three kibbutzim—which belonged to three different movements—in order to show how the Holocaust commemoration practices that evolved there were unique in their reflection of the local autobiographical narratives of the communities, yet simultaneously universal in some very significant aspects. In order to support this claim, we must first present a few comments on the nature of memory as reflected in commemorative practices. Secondly, we must comment briefly on the lifestyle, organization, and communal society known as the kibbutz. The story of survivors and the tale of their commemorative practices is always one of interaction between individual and collective memory. As Emmanuel Sivan and Jay Winter tell us: Collective memory is the sound of voices once heard by groups of people, afterwards echoing in an individual who was or is part of that group. It is a form of individual memory, socially constructed and maintained. . . . Collective memory is thus the matrix of socially positioned memories. This is critical: memory does not exist outside of individuals, but it is never individual in nature.4

Public Holocaust commemorative activities provided the kibbutz the stage upon which the dynamic interaction between personal and collective played itself out. Public rituals reflected the state of Holocaust memory and simultaneously influenced its reconstructive adaptations to a changing world. As anthropologist Don Handelman reminds us: It is in various public occasions that cultural codes—usually diffused, attenuated and submerged in the mundane order of things—lie closest to the

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the surface. . . . As the flow of living is so often not, public events are put together to communicate comparatively well-honed messages. If the flow of mundane living may be quite uncertain in terms of direction and outcome, the converse is true of public events. In the extreme case, they are operators of, and on, social order.5

This chapter will clarify the process of confronting and articulating these prescient memories primarily by examining the development of Holocaust commemorative activities and analyzing the local narrative as reflected in these public processes and collective communal actions. The archival sources are published kibbutz materials, recorded information about the nature and content of public commemorative activities on the kibbutzim, and oral testimonies of kibbutz members—survivors and others—recorded over the course of several months in 1999 and 2000. “Kibbutz” (pl. kibbutzim) refers to a collective communal settlement, originally founded by ideologically motivated pioneers that mainly came from eastern Europe and Germany. They were primarily agricultural, rejected private property, and maintained a very active cultural and democratic life style. The first kibbutzim were founded in or around 1910, but the heyday of their growth and influence was from the mid-1920s to the first decade of statehood. The kibbutzim and their members saw themselves as the vanguard of the “new Jew” devoid of many of the defining characteristics of the golah (Diaspora), such as religious observance, an inability to defend oneself, and an aversion to working the land. Kibbutzim ranged in size from several dozen settlers to several hundred and were grouped into movements which delineated themselves on the basis of their chosen implementation of socialist practices, leadership style, communal goals, and political affiliation. Three of the main movements were avowedly secular, while the fourth adhered to Orthodox Judaism. Each of the three kibbutzim referred to in this article had about 150 members in 1950, with the veterans being in their early twenties. Today they all have upwards of 250 members and total populations ranging around 800.

The Hashomer Hatzair Movement at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai: The Melding of Movement and Local Narratives The Hashomer Hatzair and Kibbutz Hameuchad movements were among the Zionist organizations most closely associated with Holocaust resistance and rebellion. Members played prominent roles in several ghetto rebellions as well as among the partisan groups. The leader of the rebellion in Warsaw was Mordechai Anielewicz of Hashomer Hatzair. After

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his death in 1943 during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, he was adopted by the movement’s leadership as a symbol of the heroic, martyred combatant, a Zionist youth pioneer who strove to embody his movement’s ideals while struggling against all odds to defeat a militarily superior force. Kibbutz Mitzpeh Yam agreed, at the prompting of the movement, to rename itself Yad Mordechai in his memory. In 1949, members of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai and the movement leadership took the decision to hold an annual Yom Ha-Shoah ceremony and create a dual memorial site which combined a heroic statue of an armed Mordechai Anielewicz standing on the central hill of the kibbutz alongside the symbol of the kibbutz’s resistance to the Egyptians during the War of Independence: a bullet-riddled water tank. Hashomer Hatzair had funded and orchestrated the placing of the monument of Anielewicz, and members of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai demanded that their loss and struggle be equally immortalized, which explains the placement of the statue beside the water tank. A founding member of the kibbutz summed up the symbolic duality: The commemoration of Mordechai Anielewicz now had the added meaning of the fallen heroes that defended Yad Mordechai. The heroism of the revolt in Warsaw was merged with the heroic defense of the kibbutz fighters in the struggle for the State of Israel.6

Since 1949, a central Hashomer Hatzair ceremony has been held annually at the foot of the hill in Yad Mordechai. The unveiling of the statue of Anielewicz in 1951 next to the bullet-riddled symbol of the kibbutz’s struggle completed the binding of the two heroic stories into a single, symbolic entity. The ceremony focused almost exclusively on the motif of heroism and was viewed as the epitome of the Holocaust message of the movement, obligatory for all to participate in. The central ceremony at Yad Mordechai continues today with little or no change in its conceptual format. Despite the many changes in the world, the ceremony still abides by the movement’s dictate of 1953 pertaining to the essence of Holocaust memorial day: “Do not turn this ceremony into a day of mourning, but rather a celebration of the heroic faith of the lohem/fighter.”7 Thus the heroic motif reenacts itself annually under the watchful presence of the interconnected symbols on the hilltop. The movement chose a single motif of heroic resistance as the primary, if not singular, message of Holocaust commemoration. Homage is paid annually to the two symbolic entities by an attending audience numbering in the thousands.

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It is enlightening to contrast the movement commemorative narrative with one individual kibbutz from the same Hashomer Hatzair movement. Kibbutz Gan Shmuel Kibbutz Gan Shmuel is one of the older Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim, though the average age of members present at the time of the Holocaust was only in the low twenties. Adjacent to the kibbutz cemetery stands a memorial stone that overlooks an enclosed area of unfinished stones that resembles a smaller version of the memorial site at Treblinka. Engraved on the memorial stone are the words: “Remember the dead as they are forever in our sight.” In the years 1946–52, a large number of groups of Holocaust survivors came to Gan Shmuel, the most prominent among them composed of orphans. They had been between seven and nine years old at the outbreak of the war and were consequently separated from their families (many had been hidden). When they arrived at the kibbutz, they were aged twelve to fourteen. The vast majority of them had no relics remaining from their families except for scattered childhood memories. After an epic tale of survival and struggle, the first children arrived at Gan Shmuel in 1946. There was complete and seemingly consensual silence on the subject of the Holocaust. Little or nothing personal was asked of the survivors, and they, for their part, volunteered little information, preferring to focus on absorption and integration. A large number of these survivors remained on the kibbutz and became members. During the course of the next three decades, there was almost no mention of local commemorative Yom Ha-Shoah activity in the local newsletter. Members of Gan Shmuel believe that the kibbutz held an annual, regimented ceremony fashioned along the lines of youth movement ceremonies in Israel: flags, military commands, youth movement dress, and quotes from the pantheon of heroic movement figures who figured prominently in the armed resistance to the Nazis. While the Holocaust survivors on the kibbutz identified with the ceremony, it did not reflect their personal biographies. On the whole, the level of kibbutz discourse could be characterized by a pervasive silence even among the survivors themselves, many of whom chose not to tell their story to their children and in some cases not even to their spouses. However, while communal commemorative changes come slowly, many survivors at Gan Shmuel, particularly women, recounted that life cycle events—births, weddings, birthdays, and the like—revived their

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sense of bereavement, awakened family memories, and accentuated their unsettled and unresolved loss: We started individually to think about the Holocaust when we gave birth and after the children were with us . . . when I was married it was difficult . . . a lot of deep feelings that my parents were unable to see me on this day (Aya). After we gave birth to our children it was impossible to deny the Holocaust. It was very difficult. I felt that I lacked something, the presence of my mother to aid me with my babies. I didn’t work with children and I didn’t know how to hold a baby. It is very difficult to describe that sense of loss (Drora).

Changes in commemoration practices began at Gan Shmuel in the early 1980s. Though it is beyond the scope of this article, my research indicates that the mid-1980s were a time of change in Holocaust commemoration at nearly all of the kibbutzim of all the movements. At that time, several members—again, not all of them survivors and most of them women—combined forces to create a memorial book in which each family was given a page to inscribe the names of family members who had been killed in the Holocaust. In 1985, the completed book was displayed in the main dining hall. The following year, the kibbutz began televising portions of interviews with kibbutz members who were survivors. The results of these two actions were profound: From the moment that they started airing the personal stories, the Holocaust ceased to be anonymous (Shlomit). There is a need to speak out. For ourselves and for others. One can know and understand a bit more about others. A person can speak in privacy in front of the camera, but in the end others also hear. We have been together since we were twelve years old, but we only told our story to each other in generalities. We had no time. We had to run and rehabilitate ourselves and not rub salt into our wounds. Now we have reached a place of refuge where we can look around and talk (Drora).

The videos revealed segments of the private world of survivors and led to many changes in the commemorative practices of the kibbutz. For example, there was a significant increase in the number of articles written about the Holocaust in the local newsletter, with the focus shifting to reflect autobiographical stories and private thoughts. In addition, the annual Yom Ha-Shoah ceremony was altered to allow for personal narra-

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tives and reflections. Many members who had previously been reticent to express themselves suddenly agreed to tell their story to various internal audiences from school children to adult groups. Most important, in 1987 a first attempt was made at creating a memorial site. Gan Shmuel’s first memorial site still exists today, though it has been abandoned as a commemorative site and is now treated with an attitude that runs the gamut between scorn and irrelevance. It is a mound—intended to resemble the death pits such as those at Babi Yar and Ponar— that covers several square meters next to the main dining room. It has no sign, names, or any other identifying features. Some of the survivors derisively call it the Smurfs’ Hill. Despite its geographical centrality, it has only been used once as a place for commemoration. Members rejected it, according to their testimony, because there were no names inscribed on it and because it was not located in the cemetery. The 1990s began with an attempt to create a second memorial site at the cemetery. Despite widespread consensus regarding the project, the kibbutz only completed and inaugurated the site in 1997. The new site consisted of individual stones—one per family—each inscribed with the names of relatives murdered in the Holocaust. In the members’ minds, each stone symbolized a gravestone. Identical words were employed by members of Gan Shmuel and all the other kibbutzim examined in my research to describe the significance of the stones. Numerous interviewees repeatedly told me: “These are symbolic graves that our relatives do not truly have. Their names are here, as is their memory. This is a place to shed a tear on a stone, to place a flower, to say a prayer or a private word.” The inauguration of the commemorative site has led to an additional ceremony for Yom Ha-Shoah in Gan Shmuel, in which members congregate at the memorial site, stand next to the gravestones of their family members, and observe the two minute moment of silence observed by all Israelis. The orphans of Gan Shmuel can finally stand next to the resting places of their loved ones (symbolic as they may be) and place flowers and stones on the graves. In some cases they stay to whisper a few special words. They say that it is not a grave. In spite of the fact that it is an imitation of a grave. For every kibbutz member, living or dead, there is a right to have a stone. Those who came as orphans were the force behind this site and the stones (Ayelet). We demanded that that there be individual commemoration. Each person has his own stone. For me it is a cemetery. That is how I feel. . . . I know

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that it is not a grave, but it is a substitute. We did the right thing . . . the stones speak (Miriam).

To the members of Gan Shmuel, the Holocaust was a profound experience that radically affected their lives. In this context, they recognized the significance of passing along to the next generation the need to remember the Holocaust and commemorate its victims. The commemorative choices shifted over time and led to different paths that reflected their own ideology and autobiographical awareness. In the end, they found meaning in confronting their collective and personal bereavement in the symbolic burial at the memorial site.

Hakibbutz Hadati (Religious Kibbutz Movement) and Holocaust Commemoration The second kibbutz in this study is Kvutzat (the word today is synonymous with kibbutz) Yavneh of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, the smallest of the kibbutz movements. Hakibbutz Hadati combined a fully Orthodox lifestyle with traditional collective kibbutz principles. Kvutzat Yavneh was the first religious kibbutz and was perceived as the prototype for the entire movement. Further, the Holocaust commemoration narrative of Yavneh is in many ways synonymous with that of the entire movement. Kvutzat Yavneh Kvutzat Yavneh was founded at its present location in 1941 by a group of Orthodox Jews, nearly all of whom were from Germany. The vast majority of their relatives were killed during the Holocaust. After the war, the kibbutz took in quite a few Holocaust survivors, most of them young and many of them orphans. Holocaust memorial activities at Yavneh began in 1948 with the decision to implement the ruling of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to designate Yom Ha-Kaddish Ha-klali (the Day of Communal Kaddish—the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Teveth, in December and January) into Holocaust Memorial Day. The tenth of Teveth is a fast day that commemorates the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. This day was chosen for being the traditional date on which observant Jews say the Kaddish (mourners’ prayer) for all the dead whose place and date of death are unknown. The rabbis felt that this date was appropriate and met the need of observant Jews who were unable to say the mourners’ prayer for their lost ones. The Religious Kibbutz Movement—and among them the mem-

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bers of Yavneh—adopted this ruling. This decision meant that there was no need for a movement-wide or kibbutz-specific ceremony, as the prayers to be recited in the synagogue already existed, with the only change being that now the ritualized act was imbued with additional meaning. In addition, this ruling meant that Yavneh observed a ceremonial date to commemorate the Holocaust that differed from that of the other two kibbutzim that are the subject of this chapter, and one that throughout the 1950s differed from the date legally sanctioned by the Knesset. Finally, the content of the prayer led to a focus on the issue of bereavement and had no connection to the themes of heroism, resistance, or revolt as reflected in the movement-wide Yom Ha-Shoah ceremonies of the other kibbutz movements and of the State of Israel. On the surface, therefore, it might appear that the members of Yavneh were intuitively more attuned to the issue of bereavement and that this might have led to greater openness and accessibility of Holocaust memory within the kibbutz. However, in practice that is not what took place. In spite of the ritual mourning prayer which left an indelible imprint on all of the kibbutz members: “to hear the Kaddish prayer come to a crescendo and all of the survivors around us, was an unforgettable experience” (Natan), the memory of the Holocaust was characterized by all as one based on a pervasive silence: survivors did not speak, parents rarely told their children details, and almost nothing was written on the Holocaust in the local newsletter: I think that with the exception of saying the Kaddish on Yom Ha-Kaddish Ha-klali in the synagogue there was no real relating to the Holocaust in my youth. Much later there were stories and lectures on the 10th of Teveth and later the 27th of Nissan. On the 10th of Teveth I remember the day as standing in the synagogue as we prayed for the souls of those who had been murdered in the Holocaust. We would say the Kaddish and I would try and imagine in my mind what my grandparents looked like. I tried to imagine what they wore. We had no photos. My parents came with nothing. I tried to pray for them. As a religious person I believe that they are in heaven and are watching us, following us. I tried very hard during this prayer to approach them (Israel).

Several members recounted that what they know of their parents’ lives during the Holocaust is what they read in the kibbutz archives. Their parents had told stories of life before the war, but the war itself was like a black void—present, yet unmentioned. This all-encompassing silence remained unbroken until the early 1980s, when a group of members, mostly women Holocaust survivors and children of survivors, began a project to compile the names of members’

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relatives who had been killed in the Holocaust. They created a memorial book that led to a kibbutz decision to create a memorial site in the local cemetery. (It is noteworthy that such a change also took place in Gan Shmuel—as well as in the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz, as we will see shortly—during these same years.) In 1987, the members built and inaugurated a memorial site that consisted of several large, white, polished stones with only the names of those relatives who had perished in the Holocaust inscribed on them. The site is landscaped to distinguish it from the rest of the cemetery while maintaining a sense of aesthetic integration among the gravestones. The creation of the memorial site led to a new memorial ceremony that ever since has been observed annually on the 10th of Teveth, rather than on Yom Ha-Shoah, as observed by nearly all other Israelis and as mandated by law and by consensus. On this day, members chant the Kaddish in the synagogue in the morning, and in the late afternoon, the entire community assembles for the local ceremony at the memorial site in the cemetery. While there are designated texts that appear annually, the high points are the personal words and stories of members who feel, after decades of silence, that they can freely unburden their souls and speak to the hearts of their fellow members. In a personal speech at the memorial site in 1996, a member described it in the following terms: “There is a place—the people remembered here do not have a grave. There is a tombstone to remember them. We can place a flower and shed a tear. We know that no one is buried here, but here their names are enshrined and preserved.”8 As one member stated in oral testimony in 2000 (many others used similar words): The creation of the memorial site in memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust was an important act in our community. It filled an enormous void in the hearts of many of us. This void contained sorrow and longing that had had no release. A void of loss and pain for which one had no place to even shed tears. . . . now we have the memorial site which is both personal and communal (Hedva).

Here, as at Gan Shmuel, members created a “symbolic burial” site as their place of Holocaust commemoration. Previously, their bereavement had no outlet, no physical focal place at which they could perform the requisite acts of mourning. Now they can place flowers, weep, or make a personal statement within the context of the community. The narrative and the grief are no longer private; they also extend into the public realm. At the memorial site, where the names are etched in stone, the private

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memory is released. At the site of the “symbolic grave” one can mourn and allow personal memory and Holocaust commemoration to find their collective meeting ground.

Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Resistance during the Holocaust The Kibbutz Hameuchad movement was very closely identified with resistance and revolt during the Holocaust. Two of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin, were members of the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement who had survived, traveled to Israel, and become prominent spokespersons both within the movement and in the broader populace. The Kibbutz Hameuchad leadership, particularly their iconic leader, Yitzhak Tabenkin, embraced them and played a key role in supporting the kibbutz that Antek and Zivia founded along with other survivors, Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot, and in promoting the Holocaust commemorative activities associated with the kibbutz. Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot The third kibbutz to be discussed is Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot (Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz), which belongs to the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement. Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot was founded on April 19, 1949, commemorating the day that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began. Several of the kibbutz’s most prominent members had been among the leadership of both the Kibbutz Hameuchad-affiliated youth movement “Dror” and the Warsaw uprising. These leaders, Zuckerman and Lubetkin, were revered by the Israeli movement leadership as the embodiment of the Zionist pioneer who rose to combat the Nazi menace. The name of the kibbutz implies a homogeneous background. In fact, though nearly all of the founding members had been in Europe during the Holocaust, only half had been in Nazi-occupied territory (the others had spent the war years in the former Soviet Union), and a mere handful had actually been ghetto fighters. In other words, the symbolic name of the kibbutz implies a unity of homogenous background that was not affirmed by the member’s autobiographies. This fact notwithstanding, the founding day ceremony on April 19, 1949—also designated by the kibbutz movements as Yom Ha-Shoah until the Knesset, in 1951, legislated the 27th of Nisan in March and April as the permanent date—focused only on the heroic struggles of the ghetto fighters while drawing a powerful parallel between them and the prestate

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Palmach paramilitary units and the members of the Israeli Defense Forces who fought and died to bring about the State of Israel. Within a few years the kibbutz had—in close cooperation with Hakibbutz Hameuchad—developed this theme into a Yom Ha-Shoah ceremony that was essentially a ritually reenacted dramatization of their interpretation of the Holocaust and its meaning for future generations. This reenactment took place on a large outdoor stage before an audience of thousands. In the background stood the remains of a Roman aqueduct that seemed to be reaffirming the presence of a historical site for all time. The ceremony depicted Jewish victims being marched off into the darkness, symbolizing their murder. In the second act, youth group members reenacted the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, complete with readings and sound effects. In the final scene, uniformed Israeli soldiers appeared to solidify the symbolic connection between the heroic Zionist struggle and that of the Warsaw ghetto fighters. The final words of the ceremony, part of the unique “Yizkor” written by members of the kibbutz for this occasion, were as follows: “Blessed be those Hebrew fighters, may their memory be consecrated.” Not the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, but the fighters, are blessed. The ceremony is dedicated to their memory. This ritual ceremonial drama took place in the evening at the conclusion of Yom Ha-Shoah (the Hebrew day begins and ends at sunset) without change until the beginning of the twenty-first century. One might think that such continuity would indicate that the ceremony accurately and satisfactorily reflected member’s innermost feelings about and comprehension of Holocaust commemoration. Interestingly enough, this was not the case. The legacy of the kibbutz and its collective memory, as epitomized in its name, was a great burden to bear both for the survivors and for their progeny. The story is told that many of the kibbutz youth dreamed of a different name for the settlement, one that was more like the names of their neighbors’ kibbutzim, reflecting nature, agriculture, and more of what they associated with their current life: It is told that a group of teenagers agonizingly deliberates whether it is acceptable to approach the uncrowned leader of the kibbutz, Antek, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, to discuss changing the name of the kibbutz. They finally do so. After they haltingly present their case, there is a long silence. Antek explains to them: “We can’t change the name. The name reflects the settlement. We are not a regular kibbutz. We were intended to be the memorial grave for the six million who perished in the Holocaust.” “We left in silence—weighted like gravestones.”9

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In the early 1980s, as a result of the publication of the personal sagas of nearly all members of Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot who were survivors (an enormous undertaking that encompassed four volumes and nearly 2,000 pages), members had access to a wealth of personal material of which many of them had previously been unaware. Suddenly the members read about themselves, their friends, and their neighbors, and they discovered that not only had their personal story had been submerged under the rubric of heroic struggle, but that the stories of their friends and kin had been submerged as well. In addition, they realized that the issue that weighed most heavily on all was the separation and grief at the incomplete parting from their loved ones. These realizations fueled an intense effort to create a memorial site in commemoration of those family members who had been killed in the Holocaust. On the site in the kibbutz cemetery—in this case, too, created in the mid-1980s—workers erected several large stones upon which were engraved the names of the Holocaust victims. In addition to establishing their own memorial site, the kibbutzniks created their own internal memorial service, which still takes place annually on the eve of Yom HaShoah (i.e., the night before the large-scale public ceremony.) The following appears in the booklet specially prepared for the dedication of the site: A memorial site in the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust will be created at the entrance to the cemetery. We need to commemorate communally just as we have chose to live together communally.

We are revealing these grave stones—the stones of our loved ones. We engraved their names on the stones. . . . their bones are scattered on foreign soil throughout Europe. In the eyes of the Holy One and with His blessed sanctions, we rest their memories here with us.10 The internal ceremony is private and attended by nearly all of the kibbutz members and their families, as opposed to the large-scale ceremony which is considered to be more for the outside public. In interviews conducted with kibbutz members in 2001, the members proudly stated that the internal ceremony was their personal statement, while the larger public ceremony was primarily ideological in nature and often did not address their personal concerns. At the private ceremony, the members speak of loss and grief, place flowers on the stones, and express their mourning. There is no mention of heroism, fighters, or revolt. Here, too, the stones are referred to as “gravestones,” both in the wording of the texts and the acts of the participants.

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They also read a completely different “Yizkor” than that which is read at the public ceremony: We remember our beloved ones. We remember our grandparents, mother and father, brother and sister, aunts and uncles. They were our family. We remember the life that was—the home, the school, the youth movement, the club, and the Jewish neighborhood. We remember the days of our youth which were taken from us, our dreams that were dashed, the world that we were born into and that went up in flames during the war. For what and why?

In this private ceremony, the sense of loss and bereavement are overwhelming and singular. Here the memory of the ghetto fighter is not consecrated, nor even mentioned. The final words leave one with the haunting questions for all that confront the Holocaust: “for what and why.” There is no ideological interpretation of history, only the lingering personal tragedy. It is of interest that as the actual number of survivors diminishes, the need to accentuate the memory of family members has increased, even though many of the participants are second-generation Israelis who never experienced what is being so viscerally remembered. For them, the experience is vicarious, though none the less powerful. Here the dead are not only remembered; they are put to rest in symbolic burial. The words of the texts, the vision of the names on the stones, and the unleashing of repressed grief provide public expression for the most heartfelt feelings of the members. The ceremony binds their autobiographical narrative to their commemorative acts in a way that creates meaning for them both as individuals and as members of a community.

Conclusion We can now contrast three groups of survivors who each bear very different personal and collective local narratives, as well as distinctive commemorative practices, and who created similar resting places for their unsettled memories in the collective Holocaust memorial sites in the kibbutz cemeteries. The survivors did not find long-term solace in either ideological explanations or a historiography that did not console their family longings. They did find solace in the bereavement activity of creating symbolic

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graves, sites that could be a focal point for their unresolved and unsettled amorphous memories of loved ones of whom there were no pictures, no memorabilia—only a fading memory that needed to be anchored in a sacred site where the time that had elapsed was immaterial and where they could commemorate their loss, as did others in the kibbutz. Each of these three kibbutzim has its own unique narrative reflecting its distinctive community and history. Each kibbutz created a different memorial site that reflected the collective autobiographical narrative of its members. Yet in spite of their uniqueness, they also have much in common. Each memorial site is located in the cemetery; each site is related to as if people were buried there, though no one is. In all these kibbutzim, the turning point was the moment when the engraved names of the Holocaust victims were revealed, an act which provided a focal point for bereavement and which closed an incomplete cycle of unresolved loss and parting from loved ones. The phenomena of “symbolic burial” in the Holocaust memorial site took place at all of the kibbutzim described in this article. The engraving of the names, which first publicly appeared in a local memorial book, unlocked wells of memory that then found public expression. The restoration of the mourning cycle, with its symbolic burial, freed members to come forward and express themselves within their community. Furthermore, it is instructive to note that kibbutzim did not accept the dictates of their movements. Over time, the gap between the Holocaust memorial activities of the parent Hashomer Hatzair movement and the individual Kibbutz Gan Shmuel caused the two activities to develop into completely different forms of commemoration. Though it is beyond the scope of the present article, this phenomenon took place in all of the kibbutzim in the study. The kibbutz movements chose to commemorate the Holocaust through monuments that symbolized their historiographical, ideological interpretations of the Holocaust (as expressed, for example, in the statue at Yad Mordechai.) The kibbutzim themselves chose to commemorate the Holocaust through memorials that reflected their personal and communal loss, rather than an ideological interpretation of the meaning of the Holocaust. At no kibbutz was a monument created to commemorate the Holocaust itself; rather, memorial sites were created to commemorate its victims.12 The literature of bereavement refers to the concept of “disenfranchised grief”13 as a personal loss that remains unrecognized and invalid in the public sphere. The creation of the sacred memorial space provided a resting place and a legitimacy that were both personally and publicly necessary for the survivors and their families, and seemingly for the entire community:

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Today, after the creation of the Memorial site for those who died in the Holocaust . . . my priorities in terms of the Holocaust will be here, in our cemetery where one day I too will be buried. . . . It is my intention to come here, just to sit, not necessarily on Yom Ha-Shoah, to place a flower or a stone—there is a place. It is important also for my children and my grandchildren that they know, they’ll come to the memorial and see my father’s name—then there is history and that history will not be forgotten.14

The name, the memorial site, and public recognition were all essential in the transition from private grief to public mourning. In all of the examples in this chapter, as well as in the research data not included herein, the changes that all took place in the mid-1980s seemed unrelated to external historical factors, such as the Eichmann trial and others. What caused this change at precisely this time with no coordinating hand guiding it? One can only speculate as to the answer to this important question. Several points seem clear. One factor was the age of the survivors: as they were aging and becoming increasingly aware of their own mortality, the time frame for commemoration became more of a factor. They understood that without commemoration their legacy would go unrecorded. Many of the survivors had grandchildren; they reported that in many cases they could speak to them more freely than to their children and were able to tell more of their personal stories. The generational shift they described is not unique to survivors on a kibbutz, but is in fact a widely documented phenomenon. There could also be a connection to the fact that in the late 1980s a period of widespread change began within the kibbutz movements. These changes led to a greater emphasis on the individual within communal life and less on communal group values. One point is clear: as noted, these turning points do not appear to be connected to external events such as the Eichmann trial. Rather, the impetus for change came from within local communal settings in which members developed local commemorative responses within their collective autobiographical narratives. The common denominator was the symbolic burial in the sacred memorial site located in the cemetery. The following quote, taken from records of discussions in Kvutzat Yavneh after the creation of their memorial site, indicates that the choice may very well be deeply anchored in Jewish tradition:

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Despite his lofty status in the eyes of God and the people, Abraham was still considered a temporary resident, a person whose status in the Land [of Israel] was not guaranteed. He had not yet made a place for himself. Abraham went down on his knees and begged the residents of the Land to sell him a burial plot. Only when he had acquired a family burial plot, was Abraham counted as a permanent resident of the Land.14

Burial is not just the end of life, but also a state of permanency—a settling of an unsettled status and a resting place for much more than the physical remains of a person. In many of the interviews, survivors stated that although today the pain of the Holocaust is more acute, their sense of loneliness has diminished. Their memories may not be settled, but they are less unsettled and more rooted in the public domain than ever before.

Notes 1. “Shachar” class—from the pamphlet “Class Notes” [in Hebrew] (1946), Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-emek Archive, unattributed quote. 2. “Pamphlet on Education”—”Our School” [in Hebrew] (1946–47), Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-emek Archive, unattributed quote. 3. In all of the oral testimony quotes, the names have been altered to protect the identity of the speaker. All interviews were recorded in Hebrew on audio cassettes and are found in Micha Balf’s personal archives. Binyamin, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 20, 1999; Aya, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 18, 1999; Dvora, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 18, 1999; Shlomit, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 21, 1999; Drora, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 11, 1999; Ayelet, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 9, 1999; Miriam, Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, November 24, 1999; Natan, Kvutzat Yavne, March 18, 2000; Israel, Kvutzat Yavne, March 20. 2000; Hedva, Kvutzat Yavne,March 11, 2000. 4. See Emmanuel Sivan and Jay Winter, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 24. 5. Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 4, 15. 6. “Commemoration on Yad Mordechai”—internal pamphlet prepared by Monio Brandwine [in Hebrew] (1992), Yad Mordechai Archive. 7. Yom Ha-Shoah file [in Hebrew] (1953), Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-emek Archive. 8. Kibbutz newsletter file [in Hebrew] (10 Teveth 5756/January 2, 1996), Kvutzat Yavne Archive. 9. Tzvika Dror read the story to me at his home in the year 2000. It was under consideration for his book on the people and history of Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-Geta’ot, but was not included in the published version. 10. Memorial booklet prepared by Tzvika Dror (in Hebrew), Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot Archive, file zc/1-#6. 11. Ibid.

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12. James Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 3–4. 13. Kenneth J. Doka, “Disenfranchised Grief: An Exposition and an Update,” in Readings in Thanatology, edited by John D. Morgan (New York: Baywood Publishing, 1997), 275. 14. Kibbutz Newsletter # 1626 [in Hebrew] (April 28, 1989), Archive of Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. 15. Culture File, 1988–92—General Material [in Hebrew], Archive of Kvutzat Yavneh.

8

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN ISRAEL Time for an Initial Taking of Stock

Hanna Yablonka



Introduction This chapter begins by defining the demographic characteristics and motivations of those Holocaust survivors who chose to immigrate to Israel. It then reviews the various stages of their absorption in Israel, which in those years was a society in the making. I present the integration of Holocaust survivors in Israel in the context of several constitutive events that had a crucial impact on attitudes toward them, such as the Eichmann trial. I also refer to the survivors’ role in the shaping and perpetuation of the memory of the Holocaust by presenting an edifying example of Holocaust remembrance in the southern city of Dimona.

Definition of “Holocaust Survivors” The theme of this chapter—Holocaust survivors in Israel—is one of the most complex and controversial topics in historical research about the post-World War II era. The definition of Holocaust survivors has expanded considerably over time, probably due to a combination of social

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and political developments and changes in consciousness that have taken place in the intervening sixty years. One of the most salient examples of this point is the sweeping definition of a Holocaust survivor that the demographer Sergio DellaPergola proposed in 2004: “Any Jew who lived for some time in a country that had been ruled by the Nazis or their allies and anyone who fled from these countries.” DellaPergola’s definition, unlike previous ones, included north African Jews during the Holocaust, except for those in Egypt, as well as the Jews who lived in Syria and Lebanon.1 Since definitions have many implications—moral, demographic, and of course economic, not to mention their implications on consciousness—those who engage in comparative research of Holocaust survivors’ history may assume the existence of several definitions of the term “survivors,” each definition stemming from the unique contexts of the survivors’ major destination countries after the end of the war. I first defined this term, “survivor,” in my initial study in the 1980s on the absorption of Holocaust survivors in Israel. In this work, I defined Holocaust survivors as being all Jews in continental Europe who had suffered from Nazi oppression, either directly (the ghetto, the camps, the need to live in hiding) or indirectly (losing their families, fleeing or being expelled from countries conquered by the Nazis). After the war, many of these Jews sought to rehabilitate themselves in Israel or in countries overseas. I based this definition on three measures: those who saw themselves as Holocaust survivors in early postwar years, those who were seen as such by the Jews then living in Eretz Israel (the Yishuv, i.e., pre-Israel Palestine), and those consumed by a profound sense of historic consciousness and mission due to having witnessed the magnitude of the devastation and to having been affected by it, whether directly, individually, or via their families. This article begins by referring to that initial postwar period because it was then, more than at any other time, that the definition of the survivors can be considered to be “unadulterated” by all subsequent considerations.

Numbers and Basic Data During the dozen years or so that began in the last period, the British Mandate and the early years of Independent Israel, more than half a million Holocaust survivors immigrated to Eretz Israel (Palestine and the newly established State of Israel), bringing demographic characteristics that any country would have coveted.

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Some of these characteristics deserve some elaboration. From the time it was established to the mid-1960s, Israel absorbed approximately 1.2 million immigrants, nearly half of whom were Holocaust survivors. Almost 367,000 survivors arrived before 1952 (during the period known as the “great aliyah” or the “mass aliyah,” aliyah denoting Jewish immigration to Israel), most of them fifteen to fifty-nine years old. These supplemented the approximately 70,000 survivors who immigrated in 1946–1948, almost 62 percent of whom were aged fifteen to twenty-nine. The significance of this is enormous, because this wave of immigration was an aliyah of young people whose youth made them able to integrate easily into the settlement and industrial efforts of the young state, as well as into other economic activities. They also constituted an invaluable addition to Israel’s fighting force.2 Additionally, in terms of their schooling attainments and occupational distribution,these newcomers constituted a human reserve that offered a combination of educational and vocational qualities and great integration potential. Several facts stand out when one compares the survivors’ education with that of the members of the existing Yishuv. Holocaust survivors had the highest literacy rate among the participants in the mass aliyah: 97.4 percent of men and 92.7 percent of women were literate. In higher education, these immigrants were just a fraction behind the oldtime members of the Yishuv (most of whom were of European descent). As for intermediate levels of schooling, the survivor immigrants’ attainments closely resembled those of the locals: 64.3 percent of men had post-primary schooling, and the rates among women were similar. Among women, 61.9 percent of those in the Yishuv and 61.8 percent of newly arrived immigrants who had survived the Holocaust had gone beyond primary school. The most dramatic difference has to do with the share of those who did not finish primary school. The percentage of persons who lacked this opportunity was much higher among the newcomers from Europe than among the local Jewish population. Evidently, those of younger age in Europe had broken off their studies when the war began; afterwards, they were unable to return to the classroom and directed most of their energy to rehabilitation. Despite this last difference, the survivor immigrants formed a collective whose level of schooling was bound to facilitate its absorption in Israel. Furthermore, many survivors had occupational skills, with large numbers having been trained in crafts and manufacturing, administration and white-collar occupations, and the liberal professions (medicine, engineering, etc.). Almost no survivor immigrants fell into the “unskilled” or “agricultural” categories. Consequently, the employment rate of the sur-

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vivor surpassed the national average (92.1 percent versus 91.7 percent)— solid evidence of their positive and rapid integration into the labor force of the young state. It is difficult to understand how these immigrants integrated so quickly without relating to the fact that many of them congregated in urban settlements in the center of the country, a privilege that they enjoyed because they were among the first immigrants and because some had relatives in Israel.3 These advantages gave them easier access to local centers of economic, cultural, and political power. I wish to stress that Holocaust survivors constituted half of those who came to Israel in the mass aliyah of 1948–1951, which delivered almost 750,000 Jews from different countries to the country’s shores. These vast numbers of survivor immigrants are even more conspicuous when compared with the mere half a million Jews who populated the Yishuv at the end of World War II. It is no wonder, then, that this inbound tide of immigration had a profound impact that persists even today.

The Ideological Component of Immigration The fact that many survivors elected to immigrate to Israel and that most remained there is not self-evident. The military and political struggle for Israel’s future was at its peak during this period, and as if that were not enough, most survivor immigrants came in the midst of a bitterly fought War of Independence in which many of them took part. If so, what was the motive force behind this mass movement to Palestine/Israel? Was it Zionism? Although most of European Jewry did not affiliate with the Zionist Movement on the eve of World War II, research shows that Zionism had a profound effect in the DP (displaced persons) camps in Germany, Italy, and Austria. The survivors’ choice to make their way to Israel despite the aforementioned hardships; may be submitted as evidence of their having taken a Zionist stance. Theirs, however, was not the ideological Zionism that we know from the pre-war era, but rather—as researchers have explained—an instinctive “gut” Zionism rooted in a loss of faith in the European emancipation and the profound sense of humiliation that they felt during the years of destruction. Many felt that the main problem in their being Jews was the lack of a homeland, and they wished to rebuild their lives among their brethren. Their life experience during and after the war—replete with stress, antisemitic attacks, and the destruction of their communities—also helped them to decide that their homes must be

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rebuilt and their lives rehabilitated in the Jewish homeland among fellow Jews and in a Jewish state. This invested aliyah with a sense of homecoming.4 In the eyes of the survivors, the Israelis were perceived as brothers. Itzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, a leading personality in the Warsaw ghetto resistance, defined the matter succinctly: “All of Europe was wandering. Citizens of Yugoslavia, Serbians, Croats, Hungarians, Greeks, and Italians returned from the concentration camps. Who did not return? Whom did we not encounter at the borders on European soil? There was a street, a house number, a woman. Only the Jews migrated to other locations . . . faraway locations . . . overseas, because they had been dreaming about Eretz Israel for so long.”5 In fact, only the Zionists had a program that managed to create a meaningful picture of the future. The Zionist ideology bonded the survivors with the most profound personal experiences and established unity between the lessons of the past, the hardships of the present, and the hopes of the future. Notably, such interrelations also existed among groups of survivors who had been Zionists in the past and who had gone back to organize their comrades immediately after the liberation. The existence of the Yishuv and relations with members of it—soldiers of the Jewish Brigade who were in Europe at the end of the war, emissaries of their movements who came later, or members of the official Palestine mission that operated alongside UNRRA—offered a great deal of psychological and material assistance to the new leadership and to the survivors themselves. In contrast, survivors who had belonged to political movements such as the Bund, which had had a considerable impact on Jewish life in Poland before the war, lacked this support and lost much of their confidence that safe and fruitful Jewish life could be restored in their countries of residence. Among the survivors’ leaders, Zionism—and the struggle for revitalization and the preparation to return to the Jewish homeland that went with it—channelled humiliation and nihilism onto positive tracks. The survival of many Holocaust victims had defeated the Nazi goal of blotting the Jewish people out of history; the renewal of Jewish life in Eretz Israel was emblematic of the true vengeance against the murderers. Thus, moving to Israel and achieving personal rehabilitation along with the national resurrection, provided therapeutic qualities that also had qualities of revenge—the revenge of resurrection.6 A personal redemption that overlaps a national redemption nourishes the national redemption and is nourished by it. This was the main component of this process that produced the unique context of the survivors’ rehabilitation and that aided their integration into Yishuv and Israeli society.

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Stages in the Integration of Holocaust Survivors in Israel The integration of survivor repatriates7 in Israeli society was a process of milestones that were dictated by political circumstances in Palestine/Israel and by the dialogue that took place between the repatriates and the Yishuv. Consequently, the period may be divided into several subperiods: 1945–May 1948: the sunset of the British Mandate, the peak of the political and semimilitary struggle for statehood, and the Yishuv’s first encounters with Holocaust survivors. 1948–1952: the attainment of statehood, the War of Independence, and the mass aliyah. 1953–1959: the consolidation years of the fledgling state and the survivors; the struggle for integration. 1960–1966: years of calm after Operation Kadesh (the Sinai-Suez War) and the trial of Adolf Eichmann; the survivors join the social mainstream. 1966–1977: the survivors as a new elite. 1980s and 1990s: the repatriation of Soviet Jewry, which still awaits thorough research. Two noteworthy factors differentiate the survivors from other repatriates who reached Israel in the mass aliyah years (1948–1953) and from survivors who went to other countries. First, the survivors who reached Eretz Israel before statehood and many of those who came in the early phases of the mass aliyah (1948–1950) had an important advantage over the others: they participated actively in the War of Independence and became part of the constituting founders’ group. These facts blunted their experience of foreignness and gave them the right to make demands of the mainstream at the outset of their integration—an unusual phenomenon in the history of immigration. Second, those who came to Israel joined a Jewish-majority society, unlike survivors who migrated to other countries. Below we examine the following dimensions in each of the subperiods defined above: the survivor repatriates’ patterns of organization, their patterns of public activity, the role of the Holocaust in their dialogue with society, and their role in various areas of culture. Although their contributions to the economy, settlement, and politics are also of utmost importance, the limited scope of this chapter precludes a detailed discussion of them.8

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Holocaust Survivors in Palestine 1945–1948 Most of the 70,000 Holocaust survivors who came to Palestine before independence did so within a framework of illegal immigration, which entailed personal risks. From August 1946 onward, those who were intercepted were sent to detention camps in Cyprus and kept there at length. Many of the repatriates were young members of youth movements and Zionist training facilities that had been set up on European soil. Almost all surviving leaders of fighting organizations in the ghettos and partisan units also came to the country in these years. Among them were Ruzka Korchak, Zivia Lubetkin, and Itzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, all of whom were received with great love mingled with admiration, but also with much trepidation about the influence of the war on their ideological views.9 Here is an example of how Yitzhak Sadeh, the venerated commander of the Palmach (the commando unit of the Haganah, the Yishuv’s main militia), described these leaders to his soldiers: Some of the newcomers have abundant assets that they should give us [emphasis in the original]. . . . They are the ghetto rebels . . . who did not surrender even in hell. It is supreme heroism. . . . The [Jews] in exile crumpled but the banner remained and this banner, hidden from sight, was brought to us by the fighters in exile. Let us safeguard it in their name and with their help, and together let us demand of every Jew in our land that he do his duty.10

The interpersonal encounter and the public impression that it left were much more complex than the picture presented by the research literature, which tends to color things in black and white. The contrast between the “wretched and broken” survivors, representatives of the wretchedness and brokenness of the Jewish Diaspora, and the “proud, condescending, and alienated” Israelis is badly flawed by superficiality. Most survivors were not “broken,” and most of the Israelis who received them were neither alienated nor condescending. Remarks by Yitzhak Poritz of Kibbutz Afikim in 1947 demonstrate this well: There’s something that lifts you above calculations and reckonings. It is the moment when you encounter today’s repatriates. My brothers on my mother’s side did not have the privilege of making aliyah [repatriating to Eretz Israel], and I regard a young man from Kovno or Shavli [Kaunas and Siauliai, Lithuania] as one of these brothers or his messenger, who placed in their mouths his final blessing, his cry and prayer, to their brethren in Eretz Israel. This is why I find these surviving embers so precious. It is they who brought me the last greeting from my father’s destroyed house, from

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the cradle of my youth that was burned to the ground. And sometimes you may forget that they are people whom you did not know yesterday and who came here just today. You think they’re literally members of your family and when you take care of them and their affairs you see them as your affairs, as your family’s affairs.11

By saying this, Poritz made it clear that most Jews in Eretz Israel had had relatives—parents, brothers, cousins—in Europe. The sense of grief and anxiety for their fate was dominant; it was accompanied by guilt feelings for having abandoned them, a sense of compassion, and also shame due to the namelessness of the mass death. Poritz, as stated, was not exceptional. Some of the most important Israel-born writers expressed the same sentiments. This may seem surprising given that few of them (unlike the preceding generation of writers) were personally familiar with either the destroyed Jewish reality or the newcomers’ world. The works of these writers, such as Moshe Shamir and Yigal Mossinson, displayed from the earliest stages a complex perception of the survivors, a more empathetic and delicate one. An example is found in Moshe Shamir’s story “The Second Stammer” (1945), which deals with the world of the survivors on a kibbutz. It recurs in Yigal Mossinson’s story “Ash,” which probes empathetically the psyche of the survivor Sonya, who lost her entire family in the Holocaust and is engulfed in guilt feelings.12 Most importantly, in these years the survivors and the Yishuv conducted a one-way discourse in which members of the latter community, listening to the survivors and reading their stories, were swept away by overwhelming feelings of shock, grief, and horror. As for the survivors, some spoke and some wrote, driven by inner fuel. At a convention of the Hakibbutz Hameuhad kibbutz movement at Yagur in 1946, Zivia Lubetkin said the following: “I cannot find the words to express what’s in my heart. . . . I want to relay, describe, tell—so that you will hear and judge.” Then, concluding her speech, she confessed, “I’m well aware that I’ve failed to relay these matters so that you may relive them as we did. . . . No human being can express this disaster properly.”13 Ruzka Korchak spoke similarly in early 1945 before the executive committee of the Hakibbutz Ha’rtzi kibbutz movement: “What I’m about to tell you won’t be a report. It’ll be a giving of ‘best regards’. . . . I want to cry out all the truth from there, everything we went through, each and every one of us—things you know so little about” [emphasis added].14 Since the information given over was so unusual, so terrifying, and so different from the human experiences that were familiar until then, the listeners often misunderstood it. All the foregoing was clouded by the country’s hard times. The entire period was marked by the military and diplomatic struggle to establish the

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State of Israel. The survivors wished to leave their imprint on this matter as well. The most prominent expression of this wish was their induction rate for service in the War of Independence. Almost half of the fighting force in this war was comprised of newly arrived Holocaust survivors—a fact also reflected in their casualty rate.15 For many years, these dramatic developments did not reverberate in the public discourse and in research. The War of Independence was perceived as the war of the “1948 generation,” a generation that the public mind perceived as being comprised solely of native youth, the “mythological sabras.”16The true profile of the fighters who took part in this war and the casualty rate among the youngsters enrolled in Youth Aliyah who had settled in Eretz Israel since the second half of the 1930s and the survivors who came during and after the War of Independence has come into clear view only in the past two decades with the publication of studies on Holocaust survivors and the War of Independence. The resulting portrait contradicts all the stereotypes and superficial attitudes toward relations between the repatriates and the country’s settled population.17 In retrospect, however, we see that mobilization played a crucial role in the survivors’ ability to penetrate Israeli society. Only this group of survivors, it seems, had this characteristic. Mobilization and fighting in the country’s formative war were crucial in shortening the time during which these repatriates felt like newcomers. What is more, they even developed a sense of being true citizens at an especially early stage of their presence in the country. Memoirs by these “Israeli” Holocaust survivors almost always devote a section to the Israeli chapter of their lives and reserve a place of honor in this chapter for their fighting in the War of Independence.18 This kind of account elucidates the duality that accompanied the survivors’ lives in Israel and their concurrent existence in two worlds: the Israeli world, which demanded assimilation and integration in the society-in-formation by taking an active part in its shaping, and their memories of the traumatic events, which demanded that they work through the events’ meaning for the sake of their personal lives and for Israeli society as a whole. The story of Dr. Arie Bauminger, eventually head of the Righteous among the Nations department at Yad Vashem, has much to teach us in this regard. Bauminger, a Holocaust survivor who reached Palestine in 1947, began working as a teacher at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, where he initiated and founded the first extracurricular class for study of the Holocaust. The class had a regular attendance of seventy (!) students until the outbreak of the War of Independence; Bauminger’s military induction brought it to an end.19

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Such activity, reflecting the dual dimensions of integrating into Israeli society and of striving to teach and remember the disaster and the lives of European Jews, became even more conspicuous in survivors’ doings in the next two subperiods, 1949–1952 and 1953–1959.

1949–1952 and 1953–1959 Once the War of Independence wound down, all efforts were diverted to the consolidation of the State of Israel in the personal, economic, demographic, and cultural senses. The survivor repatriates were central in this process. Along with the prominent part they played in fulfilling the military ethos, many also pledged themselves to the fulfilment of the rural settlement ethos. Within one year, fifty-three moshavim (cooperative rural settlements) specifically for repatriates were founded.20 Survivors also took part in the establishment of dozens of kibbutzim.21 Reports from visits to the repatriate moshavim tell the story. Aqir (today Beit Elazari, founded by Holocaust survivors from Poland), May 31, 1950: “What shall we say and tell—everything exceeds our wildest dreams. Social development [here] surpasses that in many of our older settlements. . . . They are already getting along without instructors. One of their own was appointed instructor and is showing remarkable success.” Satriya, May 31, 1950: “The Cyprus repatriates report: the settlement has attained a satisfactory social situation. One of our best settlements. Young human material. A strong core of members who know where they’re heading and [the settlement] has already become an immigrant moshav [emphasis in the original].” Djiya-Aldjiya, May 31, 1950: “Czechs: 50 heads of household—if you want to know what halutsiyut [Zionist pioneering] is, go to Aldjiya and you’ll get a handful of it.”22 In 1952, Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany concluded their reparations treaty. The reparations were given to the State of Israel for the express purpose of helping with the absorption of Holocaust survivors. Most reparation proceeds were invested in the economic development of the state, which overnight received an opportunity to industrialize and develop rapidly—a process that animated far-reaching changes in Israelis’ quality of life.23 Some survivors received personal compensation from Germany for damage that they had sustained during the Holocaust, enabling them to surmount various states of distress.24 The integration patterns of the survivors in Israel display two parallel features. First, the survivors showed great eagerness to become “Israeli,” as they perceived this, and became active in intellectual, economic, and social life. (An external manifestation of this is their wish to erase the num-

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bers that were tattooed on their forearms in the camps.)25 By the same token, they took great care to preserve their group uniqueness, legacy, and mission. An expression of this is found in the hundreds of organizations that survivor repatriates established in the 1950s, differentiated by towns or countries of birth or by their role during the Holocaust: Holocaust Survivor Doctors, the Organization of Camp Prisoners, etc. Survivors also spearheaded the demand for legislation such as the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950, the Invalids of the War against the Nazis Law of 1954, and Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day Law of 1958.26 Survivors also played active roles in the establishment and operation of the Yad Vashem authority and the museum at Beit Lohamei Hagetaot (the Ghetto Fighters’ House), the first Holocaust museum in the world.27 These last two are vivid manifestations of the survivors’ imprint on social and cultural life in Israel in the 1950s. The survivors’ contribution to literature and the arts, manifested by Aharon Appelfeld, Uri Orlev, Dan Pagis, and others in the 1950s and 1960s, is surprising in view of one of its requirements: the study and mastery of the Hebrew language. Forty years after the fact, the Holocaust survivor writer Aharon Appelfeld sadly described how the survivors established their toehold in Israeli culture: I had a sort of great nostalgia for things that had once been and were now gone. . . . This longing was completely hidden. The conscious thing, rather, was the desire to sink roots in Israel, to become “one of us.” This created a severance of the personality because there was a dual identity. . . . All of my contemporaries created a sort of dual personality—a personality living somewhere else, feeding on other roots, from a different language, another leverage, and another personality functioned here, it had gone to a kibbutz . . . it had been in the army . . . and to be honest we did not know which part was the important one—was it that part that we’d left behind or the one living here? We adapted to the Zionist ethos, but the hidden part was drawn in a completely different direction. . . . Israel’s society was an ideological one and it demanded of these newly landed kids, consciously or subconsciously, forcefully or gently—it demanded that they change. But the desire to change did not come from the outside, it came from within . . . the desire to be in Eretz Israel, to be here with our heart and soul, it came from within and overwhelmed what came from the outside, and this made the repression much more profound. I said “repression” but let me immediately add another word—”flattening.” Many members of my generation created a very flat personality because they repressed their history, the Holocaust, their home. . . . They flattened their lives and have no link to the depth of their souls. They have no language because they repressed their authentic language into the local vernacular. The whole generation flattened its personality . . . and I know that potentially they are people

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who can establish real contact with their inner selves. They’ve narrowed their horizons, reduced their vocabulary, and made it political or sociological. My generation is almost devoid of people who engage in literature. . . . They engage in many things, but almost none in literature.28

Appelfeld maintained that the Israeli experience, whatever it may be, overwhelmed all the other life experiences for most members of his generation. This disregard of everything preceding the Israeli chapter in their lives impoverished the survivors’ language. It seems, however, that Appelfeld treated his brethren too harshly; even though acquiring a language in all its registers is always one of the most complicated processes that takes place when one enters a new society, quite a few survivor-repatriates did reach out to Hebrew. In the 1950s, Uri Orlev published his first book, The Lead Soldiers; Abba Kovner published Face to Face; and Ben-Zion Tomer published his poem “Children of the Shadows.”29 The most prominent literary figure of all in these years was Ephraim Kishon, a Holocaust survivor repatriate from Hungary who soon after his arrival had a satire column in Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Ma’ariv. In his column, Kishon provided accurate and critical insights on Israel’s society and establishment, while at the same time innovating within and helping to resurrect the Hebrew language that he had acquired only few years earlier.30 The foregoing discussion gives evidence of the active and resolute penetration of survivor repatriates into the deepest strata of Israel’s formative culture, as well as their ability to shape that culture from within. This pattern is much different than the one Appelfeld observed, and it recurred among many Holocaust survivor painters in the 1950s and 1960s, quite a few of whom also gained wide public recognition that enhanced their influence. An entire group of painters composed largely of Holocaust survivors came into being in Israel of the 1950s. Although they did not often exhibit together and had no common manifesto, they were a distinct group on the Israeli painting scene. They were united by mutual appreciation, their joint struggle against the institutions and people that had taken control of Israeli painting in those years, and, above all, a symbolic signpost that stationed Eretz Israel and Jewish tradition in its center. The members of this stream include Naphtali Bezem, Abraham Ofek, Shraga Weil, Pinchas Shaar, and Samuel Bak.31 Other major themes in their works were the refugee experience, repatriation to Israel, and the transition from Holocaust to revival. Two elements are particularly important in our context: the national perception of the Holocaust and, derived from it, the painters’ mission statement as survivors who would show the public its

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common identity through their response to the Holocaust. This identity, moreover, was linked to fundamentals culled from their parents’ homes and Jewish symbols (i.e., the same old goal of connecting with the Jewish shtetl and its preservation.) Here is yet another expression of the duality between conscious preservation of the past and the new Israeliness—returning to the past for the purpose of reinforcing national existence in the present. The artists Shmuel Katz and Kariel Gardosh (Dosh) provide an important example: although they did not deny the Holocaust chapter of their lives, they marginalized it in their artistic endeavors.32 Their emphasis was on the “revival” chapter, (i.e., on resurrection within the Israeli framework.) Katz’s most important work in this respect was a series of illustrations for Yigal Mossinson’s Hasamba series of books, which was recently declared the ultimate cult publication in Israeli children’s literature.33 For many Israelis, this series and its patriotic ethos shaped the image of the mythological Israeli in the form of its hero, Yaron Zehavi. The artist who outperformed all others, however, was Dosh. He created the image of the essential Israeli: a boy-man wearing a round brimless cap (typical of kibbutzniks in the early statehood period) with an insolent lock of hair sticking out, wearing shorts and biblical sandals, sporting a pug nose, a constant expression of innocence mixed with puzzlement in his eyes, and a trace of a smile on his lips. Thus, a recently landed Holocaust survivor shaped the ultimate image of the new Israeli, one that ranged far beyond the country’s borders. Defining the phenomenon, Dosh said: We are prisoners of something that we helped to create. . . . The Israeli public quickly identified in our work the old Jewish comicality and was very grateful to us for bringing it into their homes without the self-hatred and the despair of the ghetto. But there’s another aspect: the spirit of new Israel that absorbed us and allowed us to round off the picture. We belong here and are very happy; perhaps we’re too happy to continue creating this two-dimensional image in the long term. The signs of danger are already visible. Recently I’ve been approached by people who ask me, “Where are you really from?”34

Kishon offered an alternative explanation in his description of Dosh: “His power lies in the strength of the idea, his language is the language of symbols. Dosh invented—after much probing and deliberations—a rich language of symbols that we were lacking here until he came along, [symbols] that are now rising before our very eyes to the status of national values that the entire nation shares.”35

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The atmosphere that characterized Israel in the 1950s created the conditions in which survivor repatriates could express their inner world and, in so doing, influence the shaping of the formative Israeli identity. No such thing appears to have happened in any other country to which Holocaust survivors migrated. Below we demonstrate the survivors’ collective impact on Israeli society as they continued to influence the shaping of “Israeliness.” In the third and fourth subperiods, ordinary survivors would burst into the public consciousness by claiming a central role in Israel’s sociocultural scene.

1960–1962 and 1963–1967 The third subperiod begins with the capture of Adolf Eichmann on May 23, 1960, an act that shocked the Israeli public. At the time of his capture, Holocaust survivors constituted a quarter of the Israeli populace (i.e., one Israeli in four in 1960 was a survivor.) Most repatriates in these years came from northern Africa, but the survivors were already deeply involved in Israeli society. The most important aspect of the third subperiod is the unification of the survivors’ two identities: the Israeli identity and the emotional burden that they had been carrying since World War II and the Holocaust. Following the Eichmann trial and the testimonies heard in the courtroom, the Holocaust became central in the national identity of Israelis at large. During the trial, the influential poet Nathan Alterman wrote that the trial had given hundreds of thousands of Israelis “facial features”: We all knew that people from that world were circulating in our midst [emphasis in the original]. We bumped into them every day in the street, in offices that we visited on business, in the shops, at the market, in meetings, on the forearm of the clerk who handed us a form through the grille, on the forearm of an artist bent over his work, on the forearm of the ticketseller who gives us change on the bus. We sometimes saw, from time to time, above the wrist, the tattooed number [emphasis in the original], the bluish number that had become part of the azure tissue of the arteries, the lengthy number that can never be erased. We knew that there were men and women from that world in our midst, but it seems that only during this awful and awesome trial, as the witnesses continued to take the stand, did we connect in our consciousness all these separate entities of strange and anonymous people, whom we have passed by countless times. They joined and consolidated into the sudden and clear realization that these entities are not just a collective of individuals but a fundamental and assertive essence whose nature, whose shape, and the terror of whose memories, tran-

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scending life and nature, are an inseparable part of the nature and image of the living people to which we belong. . . . Only in the Jewish people does an intertwined and integrated entity of these people exist today as a routine daily part of the social structure [emphasis in the original]. . . . It is the trial in Jerusalem that exposed and determined this identifying feature as one of the basic facts of national Jewishness.36

Alterman’s remarks are important in two senses. They were the firstever acknowledgement of the survivors as part of the Holocaust story. Until then, the Holocaust had largely been the legacy of the “six million” only; the survivors were perceived almost exclusively in terms of “new immigrants.” The Eichmann trial reinstalled them in the context of the Holocaust and, by so doing, allowed the two components of the survivors’ experience to merge. One of the immediate outcomes of this acknowledgement was the new perception of Holocaust survivors as a collective that could build a bridge to that devastated world, as the only people who could confer a “blessing of memory” on the nameless and faceless dead, by the power of which blessing they would “live again, clear as a cry in the dark of night in people’s thoughts.”37 The survivors’ reaction to these developments was dramatic. They had thus far established themselves materially, entered the political and cultural mainstream, and risen to public prominence. Now, in addition, their legacy as the bearers of both the Holocaust and the murdered Jews was acknowledged as well. In the aftermath of the Eichmann trial, the survivors undertook, singly and severally, to serve as a bridge between the perished millions, their legacies, and their lives, between the Diaspora that so many Israelis rejected and the Israeli Jews and their identity. One of the examples that illustrate this dimension is the organization of two youth missions to Poland in 1963 and the successful effort by Yosef Galon, a Holocaust survivor from Sziget, Hungary, to devise ways to keep the Holocaust memory alive in Dimona, a small peripheral town in southern Israel, and beyond.

Youth Missions to Poland Fredka Mazia, a Holocaust survivor from Sosnowiec and an educator who testified in the Eichmann trial, and Dr. Leo Bernstein, chairman of the Organization of Partisans, both initiated, separately, the dispatch of youth missions to Poland. Both had similar goals in mind: “to demonstrate to ourselves and the whole world the continuity and the identification of Jewish youth with the obliterated Jewry of Europe.”38

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The first youth mission, in 1965, was comprised of eighteen young people from seventeen to twenty-two years of age. The Ministry of Education followed this mission up with a second mission that comprised thirty members, and that was sent in 1966 for the express purpose of “meeting with Holocaust survivors and Jewish youth and learning about the sites associated with Jewish life in the past and the present.”39 The rupture of diplomatic relations between Israel and Poland after the 1967 Six-Day War brought this educational endeavor to a halt, but it would resume on a much larger scale in the 1980s. This initiative points for the first time to the connection between the wish to strengthen the Jewish consciousness of youth and to create a link with the fate of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. This may be seen as the beginning of the process that made the Holocaust increasingly central in shaping the identity of Israeli youth. The survivors have played a pivotal role in this enterprise since 1960 and in escorting trips to Poland from the 1980s to this day. It seems to me that these projects—among other factors such as the traumatic “waiting period” that preceded the Six-Day War and the grim experience of the Yom Kippur War—reflect the common feeling among Israelis that their destiny is inseparable from the course of Jewish history in the Diaspora.40

Yosef Galon and the Perpetuation of Holocaust Memory in Dimona In 1963 Yosef Galon, a Holocaust survivor from Sziget, Hungary who had come to Israel in 1946, was named secretary of Dimona, a city where two-thirds of the population originated in northern Africa. Previously, Galon had served as secretary of the Yokneam Local Council.41 His work brought him into contact with populations and youth that, to his taste, were very distant from the topic of the Holocaust. His goal was to “instil the memory of Holocaust and heroism in the public’s consciousness.42 One may say that the desire to create a remembrance of the Holocaust burned in his bones. Approximately a year after arriving in Dimona, Galon pondered about how to organize the Holocaust Day events, and he began to plan this activity almost a year in advance. He recruited various local personalities and institutions to help him. Thus, the 1965 Holocaust Day assembly took place in the local Gil Cinema, which was requisitioned for the occasion (Galon having emphasized to its owner that no entertainment events are allowed on the eve of Holocaust Day).43 In a letter to Habima, Israel’s national theater, a year later, Galon expressed

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his opinion on the importance of the assembly in Dimona and its significance for the town’s population: As you may know, according to the Holocaust remembrance law, every local authority organizes an annual Holocaust assembly. This is easy to do in places like Tel Aviv and the like, where much of the public took part in the Holocaust (unfortunately). Not so in the development towns, where most of the population came from countries that did not know about all this hell and where it is difficult to explain it to them. A year ago I made a successful attempt to organize a memorial evening for the Holocaust and heroism by substantiating the matter—that is, by dramatizing the material and putting it on stage by means of live pictures. It attained its goal. Weeks after the play, youngsters and adults from various parts of the local population approached me, some to say thank you and others to ask me whether things like that really happened.44

In September 1966, on the occasion of the Jewish New Year, Galon wrote to the education officials of Dimona: “The people are putting twice as much distance between themselves and the impact [of the Holocaust]. Much of the Israeli population does not know about the Holocaust.” In October, he called a special meeting on this issue (!) and urged teachers to mobilize for the assembly.45 The program included an exhibition on the Holocaust received from the Ghetto Fighters Museum and displayed at the entrance to the cinema two days before Holocaust Memorial Day. More than 3,000 people visited the exhibition, “and that’s a lot for Dimona.”46 The ceremony itself included the lighting of memorial candles, the recitation of the Yizkor prayer, a dramatic performance on Holocaust and heroism, speeches by Galon himself and the two municipal rabbis, and the singing of the national anthem, Hatikva.47 The materials that Galon left behind show that his activity was aimed mainly at the residents of north African origin whom he encountered in Dimona and in whom he wished to instill Holocaust awareness. Thus he wrote to Zvi Shner, one of the founders of the Ghetto Fighters Museum, in a letter of appreciation for the exhibition that Shner had sent: I personally monitored the reaction of the Mizrahi [eastern-Jewish] and locally born youth who did not know about the Holocaust, and the impression was profound, as manifested during the Holocaust assembly that we organized. . . . The turnout was massive (unfortunately we couldn’t let everybody in for lack of space) and everyone identified fully.48

Galon also wrote to Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor at the Eichmann trial, ahead of the 1969 assembly and asked him to deliver a lecture:

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Dimona is a town where most residents are from Islamic countries. Nevertheless, in the past four years we’ve found an appropriate way to instill yizkor [remembrance] consciousness among the residents and the annual Holocaust assemblies enjoy massive turnouts.49

The Dimona activities set a precedent, catapulting Galon to the post of Holocaust Day consultant in the Negev. In 1968, Yad Vashem advised local authorities in the Negev to consult Galon for guidance in the preparation of their own Holocaust Day assemblies.50 Participants in the assembly in Dimona were invited to perform in Arad, Ashdod, Bat Yam, Ramle, and even Tel Aviv. Thus, Dimona became an agent in shaping and sustaining the memory of the Holocaust throughout its geographic space. The wish to integrate Mizrahi youth into the shaping and perpetuation of Holocaust consciousness was also expressed by the educators who took part in the commemorative efforts following the Eichmann trial. The program in this matter was designed in 1964 by a Ministry of Education committee composed of Hanoch Rinot, Gideon Hausner, and Yaakov Sarid and established for the purpose of “enhancing the fundamentals of identification on the one hand, and readying the [Holocaust] topic for regular teaching in schools, on the other.” Two components of the program deserve emphasis: “Attention shall be given to communities of Eastern origin . . . and cultural, social, spiritual, and economic endeavors that preceded the disaster shall be emphasized.”51 The meaning of these directives is clear. Following the consensus that had coalesced around the Eichmann trial, a new conceptual approach came into sight: Holocaust history should be presented to the many Israelis who, although they never experienced the Holocaust as a major element of their life stories, had nevertheless felt the impact of the trial. The survivors were central to this process as sources of information and as people who stirred the pupils’ emotions and sympathies. As in the case of Dimona—despite the uniqueness of what happened there—many of the mass commemoration ceremonies were products of the initiative of survivors who were eager—in fact, possessed with a sense of mission—to educate youth and to continue observing the imperative of yizkor. Their initiatives included monuments, museums, educational activities, and intensive documentation projects.52 As noted, the Eichmann trial had an intense effect on the survivors and Israelis at large in insinuating the Holocaust into the public and individual consciousness. Later in the 1960s, however, came the tense days of waiting and alert on the eve of the Six-Day War, and the 1970s witnessed the sense of loss and failure in the 1973 war. The public mood in those

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years was fertile ground for repeated references to the peculiarity of the Jews’ existence, considering the state of relations between them and their neighbors and the world’s attitude toward them in the past and the present. These were only some of the key issues that were raised in the public discourse pursuant to the Holocaust.53 The involvement of survivors in the shaping of Holocaust memory, Holocaust research, and Holocaust education would increase in the 1970s and 1980s, fueled by the country’s social and political realities.

Conclusion The book From the Vale of Slaughter to the Gate of the Vale54 by Beni Vircberg, a Holocaust survivor from Altona, Germany, begins with two dedications that symbolize the author’s two identities: “A memorial to my dear father and mother, who were murdered in Auschwitz, and a monument to my friends who fell in the War of Independence.” Vircberg’s opus was one of the first memorial books published in Israel that granted equal weight to the experiences of Holocaust and of repatriation and assimilation into Israel’s physical and human landscapes—two powerful experiences in the lives of the repatriate survivors. The story of the Holocaust survivors in Israel is the unique tale of a large immigrant group who had experienced a trauma unprecedented in human annals, who had come to a new country in its founding stages, and who, in their first generation, had already became a shaper of the national culture. It is also the story of newly landed immigrants who transformed their disaster into constructive energy and their harsh experiences into leverage for the creation of a national culture in their new country. The public discourse in Israel tended to characterize the survivors as a scarred group that carried all the defects of the Diaspora Jew: weakness, perpetual adaptability, being towed in the wake of unfolding events instead of initiating them. It also became a matter of conventional wisdom that most survivors elected to remain silent about their past. The facts challenge these claims. The repatriated survivors, mostly literate young people, established an extensive infrastructure in Israel that helped the country’s society to consolidate itself in terms of its economy, security, industry, settlement, and—surprisingly—even culture. Nor were they a collective of mutes! On the contrary: The survivor repatriates engaged intensively and comprehensively in shaping the way the Holocaust was remembered and documented, allowing the Holocaust to become a central component of the Israeli national identity. Once this happened, the survivors finally managed to fuse the two main components of their

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lives, the Holocaust and the State of Israel, and became a leading group in Israeli society. As such, they led the initiatives of youth missions to Poland, the giving of personal testimony in encounters with Israeli youth, the commemoration of destroyed communities, and the introduction of the Holocaust as a compulsory subject in the national curriculum and the matriculation exams. Due to this far-reaching activity, the Holocaust survivors in Israel have become one of the most vital groups in the Israeli public discourse.

Notes 1. Sergio Della Pergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information on World Jewry,” Report submitted to the Claims Conference, Jerusalem, November 2004. 2. Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, Israel after the War (New York: New York University Press and Macmillan, 1999), 8–30, and Mark Dworzecski, “Sheerith Hapleita in Israel,” Gesher 1 (1956): 81–115. Between 1946 and 1948, 70,000 survivors immigrated to Palestine; by 1961 the total number of survivor immigrants came to 510,000. 3. Reuven Zilberberg, The Distribution of the Israeli Population. 1948–1972 (Jerusalem: Central Statistical Bureau, 1973), 50. 4. The name of the famous ship, the Exodus 1947, evokes the historical parallel of the exodus from Egypt, the formative event in the creation of the Jewish nation. 5. Itzhak Zuckerman, The Polish Exodus [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Lohamei Hagetaot and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1988), 56. Note the symbolism of the title of the book. 6. An additional, if less crucial issue is related to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which many survivors viewed as the central symbol of Jewish resistance. The Jewish uprising in Warsaw was perceived as an act carried out for the sake of Jewish honor. Most survivors did not view it as an act of despair, since despair by its nature thwarts activity while uprising entails a spiritual commitment. Many survivors viewed the warfare in Warsaw as an unfinished battle that could end successfully only with the attainment of Jewish independence in Eretz Israel. Moreover, they perceived the rationales, the leaders, and the meaning of the uprising all in Zionist terms, even though this was not entirely true in historical terms. 7. In the current Israeli discourse, there is a tension between the word olim, denoting Jewish repatriates to Eretz Israel (“ascenders”), and mehagrim, immigrants at large. In this article I speak generally of repatriates, even though this is a charged and valuespecific concept, because it expresses better and more accurately the feelings of the survivors who immigrated to Israel. 8. See Bella Gutterman, Hanna Yablonka, and Avner Shalev, We Are Here (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008). 9. Neima Barzel, Sacrificed Unredeemed: The Encounter between the Leaders of the Ghetto Fighters and the Israeli Society (Jerusalem: Zionist Library, 1998), 88–99, 148–155. 10. Yitzhak Sadeh, Around the Fire (Tel Aviv: Yad Tabenkin, 1989), 7. The talk took place in 1947. 11. Minutes of third meeting of aliyah group coordinators, 1947, Hakibbutz Hameuchad Archive, Unit 2, Immigration and Absorption, Container, 11 File 2. The minutes

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contain many other expressions of compassion toward the survivor immigrants. Mordechai Lipski of Kibbutz Tel Yosef, for example, recounted how his kibbutz decided that those who had been in the camps would never be lodged in tents. 12. Moshe Shamir, “The Second Stammer,” in The Book of the Friends’ Backpack [in Hebrew], ed. Shlomo Tanai and Moshe Shamir (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1992; first published in The Friends’ Backpack Book for New Literature, 1945); Yigal Mossinson, “Ash,” in Gray as a Sack [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1946); Ka-Tzetnik [Yehiel Dinur], The Confrontation (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1987). See also Yehudit Handel, They Are Other (Tel Aviv: 1950), Shlomo Nitzan, Togetherness (trilogy) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990; first published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, 1956). See also account of relations between the well-known Holocaust author Yehiel Dinur (Ka-Tzetnik) and his Israel-born wife, Shoshana Asherman, in his book The Confrontation, above. 13. Zivia Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Am Oved, 1981). 14. Yehuda Tubbin et al., eds., Ruzka Korchak-Marle, the Personality and Philosophy of Life of a Fighter (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1988), 87–96. 15. Emmanuel Sivan, The 1948 Generation—Myth, Profile, and Memory [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1991), 73–103. 16. For a description of the image of the immigrant soldiers as perceived by their Yishuv contemporaries, see Zerubavel Gilad, Book of the Palmach 2 [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1957), 769; Yigal Mossinson, In the Plains of the Negev [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tversky, 1949); Uri Avnery, In the Fields of Philistia [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: 1949). 17. Gabi Daniel, Peter the Great, Igra 2 (Tel Aviv: Keter, 1986), 199–200; Dalia Ofer, “‘Oldtimers’ and Newcomers in the Great Wave of Immigration” [in Hebrew], in Israel in the Great Wave of Immigration, 1948–1953, edited by Dalia Ofer (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996), 7–24. 18. Examples are Marek Herman, From the Alps to the Red Sea (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Beit Lohamei Haghettaot, 1985) and Menahem Sherman, From My Parents’ House to My Country [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1989). 19. Davar, 8 October 1947, 3. Another example is the works of painters who documented the Holocaust very shortly after the Holocaust. Notable among these artists is Avigdor Aricha, who began painting for both documentary and therapeutic purposes as soon as he was liberated from the Transnistria camp. See Ziva Amishai Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation: The Influence of the Holocaust on the Visual Arts (Oxford: Pergamon, 1993): 273. Another noteworthy artist, Maryan (Pinchas Burstein), produced paintings of camp inmates immediately after the liberation for purposes of documentation, commemoration, and commitment to the victims; these works were displayed in 1949 in Jerusalem. See Avram Kampf, Maryan: the Fate of an Artist, an Artist’s Portfolio (Tel Aviv Museum Archives). For expanded discussion of the foregoing, see Hanna Yablonka, “Holocaust Survivor Painters in Israel—Another Aspect to the Silence That Was Not” [in Hebrew], in The Holocaust—History and Memory: Essays Presented in Honor of Israel Gutman, ed S. Almog, Daniel Bankier, Daniel Blatman, and Dalia Ofer (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2001): 207–35. 20. Remarks by Yitzhak Koren, Secretary of the Moshav Movement, at a gathering of coordinators in immigrant settlements, 14 March 1950. Labor Movement Archive (hereinafter: LMA), IV 307, 1–473.

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21. Several of these include the kibbutzim Megiddo, Beit Kama, and Gaaton. Kibbutz Lohamei Ha-geta’ot was established exclusively by survivors and is today one of the wealthiest and most successful of the kibbutzim. 22. Reports on visits to immigrant villages, 7–13 September 1949, LMA, IV, 271–2. These are several examples among many. 23. Michael Landsberger, The Effect of Personal Reparations from Germany on Consumption and Saving in Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: 1969). 24. Data on the number of recipients of personal reparations are unavailable. In the conclusion of his important book, The Biological Solution—The Scandalous Affair of Personal Reparations for Holocaust Survivors (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008), Raoul Teitelbaum writes (p. 112): “The total number of survivors who received reparations up to 2003 is 310,000. Of them, 190,000 received monthly payments from Germany, Israel, or other European countries. Some 120,000 survivors received a nonrecurrent payment over the years, mostly from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The bottom line is that among 740,000 survivors, some of whom are still alive, only 42 percent received any reparations. 58 percent passed away without receiving anything at all.” 25. Brechmann, Immigration Department Medical Service, to trade unions’ immigration committees, 2 July 1946. LMA, IV 235, 2595. 26. Hanna Yablonka, “What and How to Remember? Survivors of the Holocaust and Forming Holocaust Awareness” [in Hebrew], in The Age of Zionism, edited by Anita Shapira, Jehuda Reinharz, and Jay Harris (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Centre, 2000); Hanna Yablonka, “The Punishment of Nazis and Their Collaborators Law: Legislation, Implementation, and Attitudes” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 82 (1996): 135–53. 27. Roni Stauber, Lessons for This Generation—Holocaust and Heroism in the Israeli Public Discourse in the 1950s [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Ben-Gurion Research Center, 2000), 157–262. 28. Aharon Appelfeld, “Remarks at Authors’ Symposium,” in Israel: the First Decade of Independence [in Hebrew], edited by Zvi Zameret and Hanna Yablonka (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1997), 360–61. 29. Uri Orlev, The Lead Soldiers [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim 1956), Ben-Zion Tomer, “Children of the Shadows” [in Hebrew], in River Returning (Tel Aviv: Machbarot Lesifrut, 1959. Abba Kovner, “face to face”, [in Hebrew], Two volumes, (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim 1953 - 1955), 30. Kishon immigrated to Israel in 1949. His first book was Immigrant Upon Us (Tel Aviv: Alexander, 1951). First published in Hungarian and translated into Hebrew, the book described the experiences of a recently landed repatriate combined with critical remarks on life in Israel. Only a year later, Kishon had his own column in Ma’ariv. 31. Other members are Yehuda Bacon, Paul Kor, Avigdor Aricha, and Dan Reisinger. See Ziva Amishai Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation, 273–74; Hanna Yablonka,” The Myth of the Holocaust Survivors’ Silence: the Case of the Israeli Artists,” in The Holocaust—History and Memory, in Honor of Israel Gutman, ed. Dalia Ofer, et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2001), 207–35. 32. Three other important artists in this group are Paul Kor, Dan Reisinger (an Israel Prize laureate) and Zeev, for many years the cartoonist of the daily newspaper Ha’aretz. 33. Yedioth Ahronoth, “Seven Nights” supplement, 24 November 2006, 4. 34. Kariel Gardosh, Those Funny Hungarians, Dosh file, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. 35. Kariel Gardosh, 220 Cartoons (Tel Aviv: Karni, 1957), introduction by Ephraim Kishon, 3–4. 36. Nathan Alterman, “A Face,” Davar, 9 June 1961, 3.

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37. “Ma’ariv Journal,” Ma’ariv, 10 May 1961, 10. 38. Fredka Mazia to Yosef Shochat, Ministry of Education, 10 March 1965, Israel State Archive (ISA), Education, GL/48/6/25/4782. 39. Yitzhak Frischmann, Ministry of Education, to head of governmental teacher training academy, 11 May 1966, ISA, Education, GL/48/6/25/782. 40. Dalia Ofer, “She’erit Hapletah in the Israeli Historiography” [in Hebrew], Iyyunim 17 (2007): 465–511; idem, “History, Memory and Identity: Perception of the Holocaust in Israel,” in Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Patterns, ed. Uzi Rabhon and Chaim Waxman (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2004), 394– 419; Jackie Feldman, I Seek My Brother: Trips by Israeli Youth to Poland in the Footsteps of the Holocaust (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000). 41. Yosef Galon, Public Positions, Dimona Archive (DA). 42. Yosef Galon to Rivka Erez, Josephtal School in Dimona, 19 April 1966, DA. It must be mentioned in this context that in the late 1950s and early 1960s Yad Vashem provided endowments for hundreds of commemorative assemblies countrywide. See Yad Vashem Bulletin 17–18 (Jerusalem, December 1958). This exhibited a strongly decentralized orientation, one much different from the approach that typified Yad Vashem in subsequent years. 43. Yosef Galon to Gil Cinema, 15 March 1965, DA. 44. Yosef Galon to Habima Theatre, 2 October 1966, DA. 45. Yosef Galon, “Dear sir/madam,” 19 September 1966, DA. 46. Yosef Galon to Zvi Shner, Kibbutz Lohamei Haghettaot, 20 April 1966, DA. 47. Yosef Galon to Shamai Rosenblum (a skilled narrator and actor), 2 October 1966, DA. Raphael Klatchkin, one of the leading actors at Habima, agreed to help direct the ceremony alongside a local director who had worked for Ida Kaminska’s Yiddish theater in Poland. 48. See n. 46. With his letter, Galon enclosed 100 Israel pounds as a donation to the museum. 49. Yosef Galon to Gideon Hausner, 2 June 1969, DA. 50. Galon to Binyamin Armon, director of the Yad Vashem Commemoration and Spokesperson’s Department, 25 March 1968, DA. Yad Vashem provided financial support to Galon that year in the sum of 400 Israel pounds. 51. Consultation on project of adoption of communities by schools, 24 April 1964, ISA, Education, GL/3/6/22/4767. 52. Hanna Yablonka, “What and How to Remember?” 53. Hanna Yablonka, “Israel Reacts to the Holocaust,” in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, ed. David Wyman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1996), 880–89. 54. Beni Vircberg, From the Vale of Slaughter to the Gate of the Vale [in Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Massada, 1967).

9

ROOTING THE ROOTLESS The Absorption of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Rural Settlements

Ada Schein



Introduction From its outset, the Zionist Movement placed agriculture at the pinnacle of its scale of priorities and made it an inseparable part of the fulfillment of the ideal of establishing Jewish national control of the land. Zionism viewed agriculture as the best way of restoring the Jewish people to economic and social health, defining it as the preferred method for the creation of a permanent, stable, continuous, and broad-based Jewish presence in Palestine. Agriculture was even considered to be a convenient way of assuring the nation’s economic steadfastness under any conditions that might evolve, as well as the ability of the Yishuv (the preindependence Jewish community) to meet its needs with a minimum of dependency on market conditions. Despite this primacy of agriculture in the Zionist priorities, the Mandate-era Yishuv was concentrated largely in urban and semiurban localities. By the late 1930s, Jewish society in Palestine had already become pronouncedly urban. The annual gross product of the country’s manufac-

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turing, construction, and transport industries was more than twice that of its agricultural sector. In 1944, Palestine had an urban population of 427,000, as against 140,000 in its rural sectors.1 The pool of human resources for settlement in Palestine resided with the young Diaspora Jews who joined Zionist youth movements. These movements eased their members’ transition from the environment in which they were raised to the new one, where life was both different from anything they had known and in many senses more difficult. The movements formed a corridor to Palestine, so to speak, because they trained their members for the arduous lifestyle that would greet them in Palestine and because they placed labor on the highest rung of the scale of values.2 Young human resources for the rural settlement enterprise were apportioned on the basis of the political identity of the youth movements in the Diaspora, since each such movement was associated with both a political current in Palestine and a specific philosophy for settlement. Unlike the kibbutz movements, the “Moshavim Movement” had no Diaspora youth organization that trained people for membership in its cooperatives.3 Organized efforts ahead of settlement took place after the immigrants had reached the country and waited at length for an appropriate place to settle. In the Socialist Zionist movement, the moshav (pl. moshavim) served as a magnet for those who found the kibbutz model too collectivist and egalitarian for their taste. Unlike the kibbutz, the moshav treated the nuclear family as the basic unit of production and consumption. In the moshav, the family received an income commensurate with its output, an arrangement that many considered more equitable than the collectivist uncoupling of effort and recompense. The moshav form of settlement was so popular that the core groups that came together to establish moshavim waited five to ten years for a “slot” where they could set up their cooperative. Although some in the Socialist Zionist movement thought that the moshav reflected “petit-bourgeois” aspirations, it was nevertheless part of the Socialist Zionist movement, and Socialist Zionist institutions lent the moshavim their patronage, albeit without excessive enthusiasm.4 During World War II, the momentum of rural settlement was arrested due to the severe constraints that the Mandate authorities applied against entering Palestine. Just the same, 48,146 Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe between 1939 and 1945, 77 percent of the 62,525 illegal immigrants who entered the country in that period.5 The Mandate authorities’ wartime land policy also had a severe slowing effect on the momentum of rural settlement.6 After the war, the perception of Palestine as the solution to the Holocaust survivors’ distress became a unifying concept in the DP camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Already at the early date of 25 July 1945,

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participants in a conference of survivors at St. Ottilien in Germany linked their refusal to return to their countries of origin with the political demand to open the gates of Palestine to mass Jewish immigration. A manifesto issued in the name of all survivors at the end of the conference stated: Eretz Israel [the Land of Israel, Palestine] in its revitalization, with its agriculture and its evolving industry, is awaiting us. Awaiting us are hundreds of thousands of free Jewish civilians from Eretz Israel, who have avenged our agony, our humiliation. Awaiting our decision are all the Jews who hold Zion as their ideal, their dream, their future. We have only one way—the way to Eretz Israel.7

The activities of the official Jewish Agency mission that began to operate in Germany in late December 1945 was guided by the expectation that the Holocaust survivors would join the agricultural settlement enterprise after reaching Palestine. Even before the mission set out, Eliahu Dobkin, head of the Emissaries Desk and deputy director of the Immigration Department at the Jewish Agency, announced that the emissaries from Palestine would engage in agricultural training above all and would pledge most of the Agency’s financial resources to it.8 This policy was consistent with the outlook of David Ben-Gurion, chair of the Jewish Agency, who believed that action in the DP camps should follow the model that the Zionist Movement had applied before the war: pioneering action, study of the Hebrew language, and agricultural training.9 To bring these ideas to fruition, however, the Jewish survivors, like the entire Zionist Movement, were asked to mobilize for an obdurate political and diplomatic struggle for the right of unrestricted immigration to Palestine. This article describes the encounter in the rural-settlement arena between the survivors and the Moshavim Movement, the largest and longest-tenured movement in the moshav sector. As such, the Movement preceded the Organization of Cooperative Villages, an association of “middle-class moshavim,” and the religious settlement movements of Hapoel Hamizrahi and Agudath Israel.10 In September 1945, the Moshavim Movement encompassed fifty-three moshavim with approximately 5,000 farmers, 750 public employees and permanent residents, and 6,000 children. At the end of World War II, nearly 70 percent of the member cooperatives relied on budgets from the Jewish Agency and had not attained economic independence. A more painstaking look shows that only nine of these moshavim—comprising 456 farmsteads—were “veteran” moshavim. Twenty-three localities with

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1,286 farming households were considered “settlements in transition” that still needed financial assistance from the Jewish Agency. Sixteen moshavim comprising 585 farmsteads that had been established between 1936 and 1939 were considered “new settlements.”11 Thus, about onefourth of the cooperatives affiliated with the movement still fell short of economic independence and depended on budget infusions from the Jewish Agency. The intake of survivor immigrants in the moshav sector was organized and directed from the top down in cooperation between the Moshavim Movement and the immigrant absorption bureaucracies of the newly born State of Israel. The goal was to settle the immigrants in the country’s frontier areas and transform to them into tillers of the soil, the premise being that only agriculture would assure that the immigrants would become productive. In the course of the act of settlement, the Holocaust survivors, like immigrant groups from Asia and northern Africa, were urged to accept the principles of the Moshavim Movement and adopt its ways of life.

Shaping the Immigrant Absorption Policy The Moshavim Movement’s immigrant absorption policy was shaped by the movement council at a meeting in Kefar Haim on 17–18 February 1944. About two weeks before the meeting, the vessel Niassa had arrived with 757 immigrants on board, including 168 children from various European countries. This marked the inception of the arrival of adult Holocaust survivors. The Yishuv was not prepared to receive them, and the daily press criticized their treatment at length.12 The council adopted as its slogan “Our Home is Open to the Immigrant-Refugee.” Its speakers used the expression She’erit Hapletah (surviving remnant) lavishly, but they applied it not only to those from Europe but also to immigrants from Islamic countries and soldiers discharged from the British army, all of whom were perceived as appropriate candidates for joining the movement. In a debate about the intake of soldiers, Assaf Wilkomicz (subsequently Ami Assaf) coined the concept of “concurrent training and settlement” (i.e., those joining should be admitted to the movement’s ranks even without prior training for moshav life.)13 The deliberations ended with the resolution: “Every home in our settlements shall receive at least one immigrant from among those of our nation who have been redeemed.”14 How did the movement wish to put its ideas into practice?

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When the war ended and it became possible to take action for the survivors in Europe, the Moshavim Movement organized belatedly. In contrast to the kibbutz movements, which moved their activities to Europe in order to organize young survivors and refugees and steer them toward movement membership in Palestine, the Moshavim Movement posted only a few delegates to Europe under Jewish Agency auspices. These representatives prodded the movement leaders to establish a center of their own in Europe.15 One of the prominent members of this group was the emissary Shabtai Luzinski, who operated among the Jewish refugees in Italy. Luzinski sought to expand Zionist activity among those aged 20–30, who were unsuited to youth movement settings. To Luzinski’s mind, the most appropriate vehicle for the establishment of a mass movement that would create a pool of human resources for rural settlement was Ha’oved, a movement established at the initiative of the refugee organization in Italy on 15 October 1945, “to train the human material that is about to emigrate to Palestine in a productive direction.”16 To disseminate the idea of the moshav among the masses of refugees, Luzinski lent his services to the publication of D’var ha’oved, a fortnightly information bulletin put out by the Ha’oved Movement. D’var ha’oved, which appeared in a regular fourpage format, ran brief surveys about the activities among and training of refugees in Italy as well as events in Palestine, primarily those in the labor settlement sector, in order to familiarize the refugees with daily realities in Palestine. Only at the XXII Zionist Congress in December 1946 did the movement’s delegates resolve to establish a nine-member secretariat that would base itself in Europe and coordinate activity relating to Jewish refugees in the various countries there.17 The resolution was endorsed in April 1947 at the movement conference in Beit Yosef.18 Although 59,413 immigrants reached Palestine from Europe from 1945–1948—83 percent of all immigrants during those years—few of the adults among them made their way to the movement’s cooperatives. One may offer a variety of reasons for this: the Moshavim Movement had no recognized status in the Hehalutz [lit. the Pioneer] organization before or after the war: the movement suffered from organizational weakness and acted belatedly to establish its own emissary array; the actions taken in the survivors’ centers under the independent banner of the Moshavim Movement were too little, too late; the possibility of settling in moshavim was predicated on kinship between the survivor-refugee and a family on the moshav that took responsibility for his or her maintenance in its home; the family-farm form of organization and the principle of self-labor were impediments to absorption in the Moshavim Movement (which eschewed temporary labor due to its principled objection to wage labor.) The immigrants preferred to find immediate sources of livelihood in non-

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cooperative villages where they would not have to adopt the demanding moshav way of life. Finally, given the shortage of vacant farmsteads and new places to settle, the Moshavim Movement had no realistic organizational solutions at hand for the intake of large numbers of immigrants. When it came time to assure the education of newly admitted children and adolescents, the Moshavim Movement again lagged behind the kibbutz movements, but it did not give up on the idea.19 Indeed, the movement spent three years battling the immigrant absorption bureaucracies so that its constituent settlements might admit children and adolescents. The movement leaders warred against the “definition” method, in which groups of children that had been organized in Europe by pioneering Zionist youth movements were received by various kibbutzim under the auspices of the Youth Aliyah program, with the choice of kibbutz made in accordance with the movements and political streams that were associated with the youth movement abroad. Lacking a youth movement in the Diaspora, the Moshavim Movement had to wage a public struggle to attract groups of young people.20 Yaakov Uri, a leading personality in the movement, viewed “definition” as a nefarious practice that ultimately damaged the entire enterprise of labor settlement.21 When the ship Max Nordau reached Palestine and none of the children aboard it was referred to the Moshavim Movement, Yitzhak Korn, secretary of the movement, hurriedly dashed off a protest letter accusing the Youth Aliyah bureau of being uncooperative.22 In discussions among officials of the Moshavim Movement about the intake of children, a conspicuous preference for orphans was expressed because these officials considered the moshav method of intake as the model closest to adoption.23 In early December 1947, the movement secretariat sent the Youth Aliyah bureau a list of 1,270 places for children and adolescents on moshavim, some of them veteran moshavim and others new (less than ten years old).24 It was agreed that initially veteran moshavim would receive children and adolescents first, but that children would only be received by moshavim that had a social setting conducive to their acculturation.25 Since the Moshavim Movement comprised 2,400 farming families and 500 households headed by public servants, the acceptance of more than 550 children meant that one family in four would be receiving a child in its home. Unlike the kibbutz movement, in which the entire collective shared the burden of accommodating new members, the Moshavim Movement, due to the weakness of its central apparatus of training and care, thrust the burden of absorption on the individual family.

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The Rural Settlement as a Venue for Mass Immigrant Absorption The War of Independence brought about a change in the Moshavim Movement’s attitudes toward immigrant absorption. The movement redirected its interest from the young pioneering population and orphaned children to heads of household, from now on regarding them as the movement’s most appropriate reserve of human resources. The change in concept can be traced to two factors: the movement needed people to reinforce existing cooperatives, and, as a settlement movement, it had to respond to the new reality that had come about in Israel after the IDF captured large expenses of land. On 15–16 June 1948, a month after statehood was proclaimed and in the midst of the War of Independence, the Moshavim Movement Council convened at Kefar Vitkin and expressed the sense that the movement’s attitudes needed revision. At the end of the deliberations, a resolution that attempted to reconcile two clashing intentions was adopted: the movement would receive adolescents and young people with physical disabilities that exempted them for military service as well as families that had agricultural experience.26 Indeed, there was good reason to believe that candidates for the Moshavim Movement could be found in Europe. In the second half of 1948, the emissaries in Europe realized that Israel would be receiving larger waves of immigration in the future and that the DPs were getting increasingly impatient and eager to set out and sink their roots in a permanent location. The possibility of reaching Israel and settling in a rural locality on national soil without the fetters of a kibbutz found an attentive ear among the camp inmates. The emissaries in the DP camps in Germany now directed their efforts at older families and those with children, who seemed the most suitable group for the demographic reinforcement of small moshavim.27 The results of the War of Independence changed the national attitude toward rural settlement. The country’s situation, as the newspaper Ha’aretz described it, resembled that “of a pauper who has become rich overnight and is bemused by his wealth and doesn’t know what to do with it.”28 The country had 2.05 million hectares of territory, including 1.2 million in the Negev, south of Beersheva.29 The new uninhabited expanses that had come into Israel’s possession made the unbalanced geographic distribution of the Jewish population, severe to begin with, even more extreme. On the eve of the War of Independence, 79.5 percent of the Jewish population lived on the central coastal plain as against 20.5 percent in other areas, including Jerusalem, and 70.5 percent of the popu-

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lation were congregated in the three largest cities and their suburbs, with a rather large share in metropolitan Tel Aviv. Among the non-agrarian population, 82 percent dwelled in the larger cities and their suburbs as against 18 percent in rural settlements.30 Only 12 percent made their living from agriculture at that time.31 The abandonment of Arab villages reduced supplies of fresh produce in the markets just as fledgling Israel was being inundated by masses of immigrants and in desperate need of farm produce. Accordingly, immigrant absorption in agricultural settlements was now perceived as a national goal that would meet a range of needs: reinforcing frontier settlements, dispersing the population, assuring supplies of fresh food, and housing the immigrants. From then on, the Moshavim Movement became, more than the kibbutz movements, the ally of Levi Eshkol’s Rural Settlement Department in carrying out “the State of Israel’s great colonization project,” as Yitzhak Korn subsequently described it.32 To enlist in the new rural settlement venture, one had to join a group known as an “organization.” The first organization to reach an abandoned Arab village was “El ha-Kefar” (To the village), established by newcomers at the immigrants’ camp at Pardes Hannah. Avraham Silberberg, a leading personality in this organization, wrote later on that few members of the group had known each other back in Europe or, for that matter, in Israel. Gershon Gilad of moshav Be’er Toviyya told them about the moshav, a way of life of which they knew nothing. Nevertheless, several families signed up for the program right after the first meeting. In early December 1948, a vanguard group of twenty men headed for the abandoned village of Aqir, cleaned it up, and readied its houses for their new inhabitants. A week later, the group met with representatives of the movement, who gave them a detailed explanation of the moshav way of life. In early January 1949, the immigrants spent a weekend with families at a neighboring moshav, Kefar Bilu, and even held a joint assembly with members of this cooperative, who did not whitewash the hardships of the moshav way of life.33 The Moshavim Movement sought to double its membership by integrating immigrants in two ways: accommodating them in veteran moshavim and establishing new cooperatives. Shmuel Dayan spoke about this explicitly at a meeting of the movement council in Ramle on 10 February 1949. Dayan believed not only in the Jewish Agency’s ability to steer thousands of immigrants to the rural sector, but also in the ability of training and guidance “to adapt this human material to the spirit of the movement.” Above all, however, he expressed his confidence in the potential of the immigrants themselves, saying, “These immigrants aren’t

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human dust; that may be the most encouraging thing about the whole operation.”34 David Ben-Gurion, the council’s guest of honor, pressed those in attendance to adopt the philosophy of rapid absorption without training. Possessed by a sense of time running out and by the imperative for rapid action, Ben-Gurion ruled out protracted training and demanded that Jews: be brought in just as they are, with no training whatsoever. We won’t keep them in the nurseries of Hehalutz because we have no time and they have no time. We’ve got to bring them over quickly because our existence will be menaced if we’re few.

Although Ben-Gurion addressed this entreaty to the kibbutz, the qevutza (small collective group), and the moshav, he proposed, “The moshav may be better fit for this than others.” He drew an analogy between heading for the countryside and the prosecution of the War of Independence: just as there was no time to train soldiers and commanders for the war, so in rural settlement facts had to be created swiftly and under whatever conditions, leaving the conditions to be improved over time.35 The referral of immigrants to settle abandoned villages provoked controversy among the settlement movements and within the Moshavim Movement itself. A public manifestation of the disagreements occurred at the 48th conference of the Agricultural Federation, held in late February 1949. Proponents of this new form of settlement embraced Ben-Gurion’s necessity-based outlook and believed in the immigrants’ ability to carry out the rural settlement act. Against this, representatives of Hakibbutz Ha’artzi and Hakibbutz Hameuhad argued that the immigrants had no pioneering background, were unsuited by age for rural settlement, and therefore could not beef up the population of the border and Negev areas. The right candidates for the new rural settlements, they argued, were young people with no or few children. Furthermore, to refer immigrants who were illiterate in Hebrew and ignorant of the country’s geography and conditions to rural settlement would subject them to immense hardships. Some participants also doubted the immigrants’ ability to get the job done, but favored mass settlement of the moshav type due to their realistic perspective that they had no choice.36 The debate over population distribution was part of a more profound controversy concerning the essence of pioneering in the statehood era. This controversy pitted Ben-Gurion against the leaders of the kibbutz movements, Hakibbutz Ha’artzi and Hakibbutz Hameuhad and Pinchas Lavon, head of the Gordonia youth movement. The kibbutz movements continued to favor the movement framework, which educated and trained

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the individual for enlistment in their settlements and which viewed pioneering youth as the spear-carriers of the new settlement enterprise.37 To Ben-Gurion’s mind, in contrast, the veteran Yishuv leadership should pay a different role: not to absorb new immigrants into kibbutz society, but to raise the level of the separate communities that they would continue to inhabit. In Henry Near’s view, Ben-Gurion stressed the pioneer’s personal values and not his or her class or movement affiliation; he believed that the forces Israel needed would be marshaled via personal volunteering at the individual level.38 The historian Paula Kabalo argues that Ben-Gurion, mindful of the new reality of Israel, sought a way to redefine the status of the volunteer entities and the volunteering act, as well as a way to view both as vehicles for the enhancement of civil solidarity and the reinforcement of citizens’ sense of belonging to the state.39 The Moshavim Movement leaders sided with Ben-Gurion and sought to apply his views, which involved combining mass immigrant absorption in the rural sector with population dispersion along the frontiers and volunteer mobilization by the host society. In 1949, fledgling Israel had to contend with “inundation-immigration,” as Baruch Kimmerling put it—non-selective mass immigration that threatened the veteran population’s sense of identity.40 Israel received 239,141 immigrants that year: 121,967 (51 percent) from various European countries, 71,169 from Asia, 39,442 from Africa, 602 from the United States and Canada, 711 from South and Central America, 45 from Australia, and 5,205 from unspecified countries.41 By August 1949, 322 of the 350 families earmarked for settlement in existing movement-affiliated moshavim had completed the move, 11,068 immigrants had settled in thirty-four abandoned villages, 1,835 families from Europe had settled in twenty-three abandoned villages, and 718 families of Asian and African origin had gone to eleven villages.42 The referral of immigrants to abandoned Arab villages was an innovation in the settlement institutions’ approach to the question of settling the frontier areas; until then, only strong candidates had been sent to such localities, and even then only after lengthy training.43 Holocaust survivors belonged to the first wave of immigrants who settled in the rural sector and the frontier zones. In early 1951, Yitzhak Korn termed them amkha, “simple folk,” and “na’ase ve-nishma’ pioneers,” denoting people who obey first and ask questions later.44 Three fundamentals merged here: mass immigrant absorption, rapid implementation, and only afterward training and study—the exact opposite of the patterns of rural absorption in the Yishuv era. Although Holocaust survivors accounted for most groups in the abandoned villages, they never exceeded 2 percent of the Holocaust survivors

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who immigrated to Israel from Europe at that time. Within a year, however, the Moshavim Movement population doubled as its veteran population of 14,600 was augmented by 11,000 members of new settlements, 1,230 settlers who joined existing moshavim, and 1,100 demobilized soldiers. In the meantime, the movement came to the realization that the flow to abandoned villages should be organized on the basis of country of origin. Why did this way of thinking come about? The El ha-Kefar organization, which had settled in Aqir, an Arab abandoned village, was composed of Jewish immigrants from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. At this time, movement activists were conducting information assemblies in the immigrant camps, allowing groups of a similar kind to form. After working in these camps for three months, the organizers revised the recruitment procedures. Now those wishing to join the rural settlement enterprise were asked to fill in questionnaires that included their personal particulars. This allowed the Moshavim Movement to gather information about the candidates and to control the groups that came together for relocation to abandoned villages. Since these immigrants lacked a specific movement or political identity, language and country of origin became the unifying factors that allowed them to engage in basic communication with each other. Presumably, too, the instructors’ proficiency in some foreign language abetted his or her ability to communicate with people in their own vernacular. Sometimes Yiddish served as a lingua franca among immigrants from Poland and Romania. The Moshavim Movement leaders wished to assimilate the newly enlisted immigrants into the movement’s rank and file. On the eve of the eighth movement conference (27–28 October 1949), Shmuel Dayan expressed the approach: We’re a movement. And they, the immigrants, individual gleanings [shibolim, lit. ears of corn] are coming here like victims of a fire. Had it not been for the great conflagration, who knows whether they would have immigrated. They’re reaching a base that was readied for them. Therefore, it’s obvious, logical, just, and efficient, for the immigrants’ wellbeing and for that of the cause that we all share—the nation and the state—to assimilate them into our midst, to melt them in the flame of our tempestuous lives, and to be one camp. This is our calling, individually and as a movement [italics added].45

Dayan’s melting pot philosophy envisioned total assimilation of the immigrants into the movement and a full identification of the movement’s

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welfare with that of the state. Without ignoring the patronizing tone of voice toward the immigrants that emerges between the lines, one must acknowledge the movement’s commitment to placing itself at the service of the state. For seeing things this way, the movement leadership was attacked by internal opponents who feared that opening the ranks to mass immigrant absorption would degrade the settler population and preclude the continued upholding of the movement’s principles. But the leaders stuck to their guns: barring immigrants from the moshavim, they said, would diminish the importance of the moshav in Israeli rural settlement. Ruralization was only the first stage in the immigrants’ absorption process. While admission to a veteran moshav allowed immigrants to assimilate the patterns of moshav life in daily direct encounters with veteran moshav members, in new settlements the absorption was accomplished by imposing the organizational framework of the moshav on the immigrants—by transforming an “immigrants’ moshav into a workers’ moshav.”46 The movement wished to impose seven main values on the immigrants: agricultural labor as a way of life, egalitarianism in terms and means of production (land, housing, farm implements, and working capital) that would result in an equal standard of living, mutual aid, cooperative marketing of moshav produce and supplies of essential commodities, democracy in public life and the election of delegates to the committees, self-reliance in terms of labor (no outside wage labor allowed), and maintaining a closed community that would constitute a nucleus of local governance for taxation, culture, entertainment, joint enterprises, and representation.47 The assumption was that the immigrants would identify with the movement’s living principles and adopt them with understanding.48 The cooperative institutions would have to be shaped appropriately; this task was given to the instructor in charge. Fifteen years after the fact, the immigrants held the instructors in great esteem. Tova Sigati of Moshav Ometz recounted how the guide Refael Winnick of Kefar Yehezkel had taught her and her associates the moshav ways of life: The moshav owes its existence to him. Within a few days, he took control of the situation. With his devotion, simplicity, and willingness to unite with us, he captured our hearts. He worked and lived with us, ate the lentil porridge that we ate, and displayed extraordinary devotion toward us. He taught us the first things about moshav life, about creating a society. From him we learned how to organize a rural settlement, how to take joint responsibility, how to organize the selling [of produce] and all the vegetable and field work. The years that he spent with us determined our image.49

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In his retrospective testimony, Avraham Silberberg expressed his immense appreciation of the mentor Eliezer Ben-Arye, who left his family in Kefar Vitkin and came to live with the settlers of Aqir. There, Ben-Arye became a fount of knowledge about Israeli realities and, to a large extent, a role model: The first instructor at Beit Elazari was Eliezer Ben-Arye, a very devoted guy who knew what he wanted, knew what he wanted to give. As someone who had gone to instruct the first “organization,” he knew what to demand of others. He was a paragon of fulfillment and self-directed demands. He left his family in Kefar Vitkin, settled with us, and taught us what labor is, what the Histadrut is, what the Jewish Agency is, what farming is, and the difference between a kibbutz and a moshav. Everything from the beginning. And we listened to him and observed his devotion and toil. He set us a personal example.50

Despite these examples, the Moshavim Movement leaders’ naïve assumption that the responsibility for training in the new moshavim could be left to old-timer volunteers generally proved to be mistaken. The movement was unable to recruit enough instructors to chaperone the new settlements because many of the offspring of veteran farmers were still in the army, leaving no one to manage the family farm in their absence. The movement made the dispatch of instructors to the abandoned villages test of its ability to impose its decisions on the veteran moshavim. On 22 February 1950, the movement secretariat resolved to force each moshav to meet an instructor mobilization quota of no less than 5 percent of members.51 Credit for the movement’s ability to direct developments in the settlements belongs to the close coordination that movement leadership worked out with the settlement institutions, as well as to the fact that the movement people held various posts in these. The effective supervision of doings in the moshavim themselves was assured by a supervisory mechanism embodied in the Audit Union of the Workers’ Agricultural Co-operative Societies, which penetrated all areas of life in the newer moshavim.52 Since the new settlement enterprise relied on government budgets, the Holocaust survivors were dependent on the immigration absorption bureaucracies. In this sense, they were no different from other immigrant groups that had gravitated to the rural sector. The cooperation that had been worked out between the Moshavim Movement and the government bureaucracies also made it easier for the movement to impose its principles on the new settlers.

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Enforcing of the rules of the workers’ moshav did not proceed smoothly in the new settlements, including those founded by the Holocaust survivors. After the movement’s executive committee adopted these rules, they were printed up in several languages and sent off to most of the settlements, where the local instructors explained what they meant. At that time, however, no concerted action was taken to explain the rules or to sign the settlers to them, as they would have to in order to conclude provisional contracts with the Jewish Agency. Immigrants who were unwilling to sign and live according to the rules left their moshavim; in one case, dozens of settlers left Moshav Tsipori. The instructors demanded that the settlers accept the principles of moshav management; the settlers balked. For example, immigrants employed by the Mekorot water company, the Solel Boneh building concern, and the Jewish National Fund refused to deposit their wages with the committee treasury and pay moshav dues even when threatened with eviction from their moshavim. The movement asked employers to bypass their workers and transfer their wages directly to the settlements, but the employers refused on the formal grounds that the workers had to certify by their signature that they had received their wages and the law forbade the remittance of their wages to any other party. In a moment of despair, Eliezer Ben-Arye said—invoking an expression so commonly used against Holocaust survivors—that if the Moshavim Movement could not find a way to impose its principles on the new members, the cooperatives would become “settlements of human dust.”53 The instructors were also taken by surprise when inexperienced members expressed acute acrimony toward elections for the settlement committees; the outpourings of passion and hostility that the instructors witnessed at the assemblies left them stunned.54 Often the assemblies were so impassioned and antagonistic that the instructors were taken aback. Rivka Grinker of Nahalal, an instructor at Moshav Betzet, a cooperative of immigrants from Yugoslavia, admitted: The new settlement enterprise found us veteran settlers unprepared for the great turning point that the rural settlement project crossed after statehood was attained. . . . We didn’t know how to reach the new people, survivors of the Holocaust. We certainly didn’t know how to impart to them the values that had been implanted in the very foundations of our buildings and to lead them to see things as we did.55

The immigrants faced many economic hurdles in the new settlements, even in moshavim where they were deeply involved in economic life and applied effective self-management. The pace of resource allocation by the

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settlement institutions did not correspond to the needs of farmers who were totally dependent on the bureaucracies. The allocation of land for cultivation by new moshavim often triggered severe conflicts between immigrants’ moshavim and neighboring kibbutzim. The most conspicuous conflict of this type broke out between Moshav Beit Elazari and Kibbutz Giv’at Brenner.56 By 1951, the fervor for settling the countryside had ebbed. The young settlements waited for the construction of their homes to be completed, and the provision of agricultural means of production dragged on. In summer 1952, several moshavim descended into so severe a general state of crisis that the members could not continue to run them. The Holocaust survivors’ moshavim were not exempt. In Olesh (Be’erotayim B), for example—a moshav tenanted by immigrants from Romania—things got so bad that on 7 June 1952, the moshav assembly resolved by unanimous vote to demand the dissolution of the local administration without the election of new members who would undertake to run the moshav and to demand that the Jewish Agency and the Moshavim Movement assume this responsibility urgently.57

Integrating the Cultures—Vision and Demise The Moshavim Movement leadership adopted the melting pot philosophy of Ben-Gurion, who believed that the immigrants’ diverse cultures would be blended through the mediation of the education system, the Hebrew language, and military service,58 but the leadership added two new elements to the process: agriculture and life in the rural settlements. Yaakov Uri articulated this point of view: The main melting pot for the nation’s soul and the practical pillar on which its character will stabilize is agriculture. Urban life does wield much influence but the rural sector has an influence that is more solid and fundamental, even though it embraces only a few. The vitamins of life, in both the material economy and spiritual content, in the reality and form of life . . . come from the countryside. Two main factors will serve loyally in unifying [the nation]: cultivation of the soil and the Hebrew language. . . . Many obstacles lie in the path of both—language and agriculture alike. It is not easy to impart a language to adults and not easy to accustom oneself to agriculture as such an age. [The country] will experience many birth pangs and many ways of coming into being, but there is no reason to despair of hope. The actions of our past will be the guarantee that the pangs we face in establishing a toehold in both agriculture and language will be appropriate, cultured, and consistent.59

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Gershon Gilad of Moshav Be’er Toviyya, one of those who designed cultural activities in the immigrants’ cooperatives, was determined to instill Israeli culture among the newly landed: It was our obligation to bring a little joie de vivre to the immigrants’ cooperatives—a release in desirable directions for the young people—to inject an Israeli ambiance into the festivals and observances; to implant common basic values in all these products of the diverse Diaspora communities; to attempt to implant Israeli culture in them instead of Diaspora cultures, because this we surely knew: the day our external enemies desist, the immigrants’ failure to be acculturated will be our country’s number-one enemy [italics added].60

A more balanced attitude toward the Jewish spiritual assets that had taken shape in the Diaspora was suggested by Yosef Shapira in the deliberations of the Eighth Moshavim Movement Conference at Kefar Yehoshua on 28 October 1949: I am not one of those who believe the exile brought us only negative things; it brought us timeless assets of Jewish culture. We have to figure out how to put the whole thing together, to integrate it into the new life in this country. . . . The question is not only how we’ll assimilate them, how they’ll assimilate. The question is how to generate sparks of love of history, culture, virtues. There are not only negative virtues; there are good ones, too.61

Even though the Moshavim Movement remained true to its agrarian melting-pot policy, it encountered many difficulties in implementing it. At a conference of instructors in March 1950, Eliezer Ben-Arye admitted: The intermingling of three or four ethnic groups in one place is too much for us. We did it before because we thought it was a Zionist ingathering-ofexiles solution, but what’s happening now shows that it isn’t sustainable. Even people from neighboring countries aren’t integrating in one location.62

As time passed, the activists realized with growing clarity how vast the differences among the immigrant groups were. Devora Dayan, appointed to coordinate the activities of women instructors in the moshavim, noticed this adroitly: [Settlements] are also different in terms of the composition of their members—those who came from the camps, people who lost their families

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and are establishing families all over. There are unnatural age differences among them—between men and women, between middle-aged parents and newborn babies. The whole thing leaves its imprint on the individual and the family and, in turn, on the entire settlement. By the same token— organized immigration of entire ethnic communities as they are, each with its own traditions and habits. One settlement is a random combination of families; another is cut entirely of one cloth.63

Devora Dayan was also one of the few who drew a connection between the immigrants’ experiences in the war and their acculturation hardships in the present: The new immigrants are inadequately prepared to undertake the life of the country and its duties, and even those who go to rural settlements haven’t the strength to satisfy all the needs of a village that’s been built on the foundations of labor settlement. Women are even less prepared for this than men. Life in the camps, a reality in which there’s a Joint Distribution Committee that looks out for them, the small number of women relative to men—all of this could not but serve as a factor that induces women to take an independent stance. There’s another factor on top of this: although no research has been done about it, the large percent of families in which an older man rebuilds his family, because more Jewish women were annihilated than men, stands out blatantly. This spectacle of an older man taking a woman-child under his wing has an impact on the family’s daily life, and it’s noticeable in the life of the new organized village.64

Even though the activists noted with emphasis the immigrants’ cultural diversity in the earliest stages of their acculturation, and even though activists such as Devora Dayan acknowledged the problems that flowed from the immigrants’ life experiences, prominent movement personalities continued to tout the rural settlement enterprise as the be-all and endall—the vehicle that would do the most to transform the Jewish people into a working and independent nation in its homeland and “a crucial way to effect the ingathering of the exiles, absorb the immigrants, achieve economic convalescence, and attain national resurrection.”65 Notwithstanding the Moshavim Movement’s express aim of bringing about cultural integration, the combination of the government’s population dispersion policy and the movement’s decision to establish cooperatives by ethnicity resulted in the dispersion of immigrants among small localities that had no contact with veteran population centers. This grim circumstance forced the immigrants to adjust to an unfamiliar region and practice the unfamiliar vocation of farm labor amid a powerful sense of isolation and distance from the center of the country. It is hard to imagine

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acculturating and identifying with a new way of life under such conditions. It did not take the movement leaders long to admit that their vision was quite far from reality. In 1951, Yaakov Uri described life in the abandoned Arab village Umm Zari’a (Mizra’-Har, subsequently Moshav Mazor), where eighty families, most from Hungary, had been settled: This step of integrating immigrants from different countries may ultimately be justified. At its outset, however, it is causing additional hardships. Different habits and ways of life and different languages are a separating factor—a negative factor that comes on top of the quarrels and disagreements, the hardships of adjusting to the new conditions, to the sizzling naked boulders by day and the wailing of jackals by night, to the shortage of the most essential commodities, especially water. The idea of living in our country by the labor of our hands and the fruit of our toil has indeed unified everyone and brought us all together, but see how far from them this vision remains!66

Three years later, Ami Assaf expressed the gist of the problem in his book on the labor cooperatives: “Living together in a tiny settlement with hardly any contact with the ‘outside’ world, along with the difficulty of doing the work and adjusting to it, leaves people with hardly any chance of learning the language.”67 Twenty years later, Yitzhak Korn admitted that the mere fact of joining a rural settlement did not assure “[the immigrants’] spiritual integration into the Israeli reality.” The establishment of a cooperative by ethnicity, he said, made such a settlement not only a lonely island of foreign language use, but also a place where Diaspora customs and a Diaspora reality could continue to exist.68 In 1954, the Moshavim Movement institutions decided to publish a monthly journal called Ba-telem (In the furrow) in Hebrew (with vowels for easy reading) in order to strengthen relations between the new moshavim and the movement center. Ba-telem provided material about agricultural training, historical information about leading personalities in the Zionist Labor Movement and the Moshavim Movement, explanations about the structure of the moshav, and descriptions of important milestones in Zionist Movement history. It also ran excerpts from Jewish sources about Jewish festivals and observances in the given month, as well as their customs. Its “Members Ask” department was devoted to discussion of some current issue and brief responses from movement leaders. No less important was the custom of inserting accounts of events in the cooperatives written by the settlers themselves.69 Even though the new rural settlement enterprise was built along ethnic lines and even though its cooperatives were largely isolated, these cultural niches did not breed a culture of Holocaust remembrance. The

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Holocaust survivors’ voices were mute in the 1950s. This phenomenon entails a special explanation given the fact that three different players—the historical committees, the youth movement, and the Landsmanschaften organizations—had cultivated a remembrance culture in the DP camps immediately after the Holocaust. The Jewish historical committee in Munich had given form to a Holocaust remembrance culture that centered on the story of the individual’s sufferings. The youth movement and the political parties had nurtured a remembrance culture focusing on the fighters and rebels in contrast to the masses that did not rise up, whereas the Landsmanschaften memorialized those who had perished in each and every town.70 Once the survivors reached Israel, however, their encounter with the Yishuv marginalized the Holocaust in the public consciousness, while World War II and the War of Independence were continually present.71 The Holocaust survivor immigrants who joined new rural settlements had not belonged to any Zionist pioneering organization and had not shared the ghetto-uprising ethos. Their struggle for daily survival in the new cooperatives crowded out any preoccupation with remembering. They pledged their best efforts to the reconstruction of their personal, family, and occupational world. It was a process most of the surviving vestiges of European Jewry shared, irrespective of their chosen destination country.72 The change among the survivor immigrants took place in the aftermath of the Eichmann trial. In 1962, Hasia Drori of Kefar Yehezkel published a collection titled A Home on the Moshav, Women Comrades Retell. The book begins with a historical account of the veteran women of the Moshavim Movement and continues with the retelling of the doings of women from “Oriental” ethnic communities, women who had survived the Holocaust, Christian women who linked their fate with that of the Jewish people, and even moshav women who had enlisted in the British army—all of which was woven into the story of the movement at large. Some of the Holocaust survivors’ accounts were written by movement activists; others were penned by the survivors themselves. Occasionally the identity of the author and the moshav is blurred. In her article “Yizkor,” Hasia Drori describes her encounter with a moshav member who has only Holocaust survivors as friends. Since her last visit, the homes of the moshav have been expanded, the settlement has grown, and the livestock operation has acquired more cattle. One of the women members invites Hasia into her home:

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As soon as I entered the home I was blinded by a powerful jet of light from a chandelier decorated in cheap popular taste. In contrast, on a bookshelf in a corner of the room, a weak flame flickered in a small kerosene lamp. “It must be a yorzeit [the anniversary of a death],” I said aloud. “Not just my yorzeit,” the woman replied, “but that of all of us. Go from house to house and you’ll see memorial candles lit everywhere.” It must have been the anniversary of the extermination of many members of the families of these settlers, who had been in one camp, I told myself. As if she had read my mind, the woman shook her head excitedly. “From the day they announced the capture of Eichmann,” she explained, “the moshav has been a cauldron. Many of us have gone off our ordinary course of working. Everything we’d gone through erupted anew. The terrible memory rose out of the depths of forgetfulness, as if the disaster happened only yesterday. So then, from an inner urge, one woman member lit a little memorial lamp and suggested to her neighbor that she do the same. The idea circulated by word-of-mouth and all the women rushed to the grocery store to get candles or kerosene lamps. It happened without an assembly, without an explanation from anyone, without a general meeting. One woman consulted with her neighbor, another women advised her friend, to light a memorial candle for their dear ones—until the day when [Eichmann], may his name be erased, is hanged.” I couldn’t move for quite some time. Afterwards, on the pretext of having an essential meeting to go to, I headed into the street and stepped into several houses. In each of them, the weak light of a yorzeit candle flickered, a tongue of fire emanating from the heart, from an interminable flame. I didn’t close an eye all that night. How had it not occurred to me to do as they had? After all, the soul of my mother too, may she rest in Eden, went up in the flames when the Nazi hobnailed boots swept across Russia and torched her home with her inside. . . . I felt that I had become a partner of the people of this village and its women in this ghastly experience. The pyres of all the generations had suddenly become part of my body and soul.73

It would seem, then, that the “oldtimer” woman and the survivor immigrant truly met each other only after the eagerness to inject the rural Israeli culture into the reality of the villages had ebbed, after the hosts had found the willingness to listen to the survivors’ stories, and, most importantly, after the survivors felt stronger and were willing to reveal what their hearts had repressed. A Home on the Moshav, Women Comrades Retell was the first of a series of books that articulated the personal stories

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of Holocaust-survivor immigrants who had made their homes in the Israeli countryside. Another book in this genre appeared in 1974: This Is the History of Kefar Ahim, from the Recorded Stories of the Moshav Members.74 The structure of the stories is bumpy: some contributors gave lengthy and detailed accounts of what had happened to them in the war; others withheld details about the sufferings they had endured. Some had made their way to Kefar Ahim by chance; others preferred to bring their stories to a close by noting the fact of their having immigrated to Palestine/Israel. One motif recurs in the settlers’ stories: the move to the countryside, the establishment of their families, and working in the field or with the livestock were central in their personal rehabilitation. How many Holocaust survivor immigrants joined rural settlements? No more than 3,000 families in new settlements and another 840 in veteran ones. One may add several hundred young survivors who joined the IDF and made their way to the moshav sector after undergoing socialization during their military service. The survivor moshav settlers were a minority among the survivor immigrants, whose numbers are estimated at more than 350,000, nearly all of whom settled in urban localities. They were also a minority among the 40,000 other immigrants from various Diaspora locations who found their place in the Moshavim Movement. The importance of these groups, however, lies not in their numbers but in their being trailblazers for other immigrant groups. The survivor immigrants proved their ability to fulfill the national goals that Israel had handed them: settling the border areas, delivering fresh produce to the markets, reinforcing veteran moshavim, and boosting the numerical strength of the Moshavim Movement, even if they lacked prior training. These survivor immigrants were no strangers to failures, economic crises, and critical departures, and the Moshavim Movement imposed the rules of its cooperative game on them as much as they did upon immigrants from North Africa and Asia. Just the same, the story of these immigrants did not work its way into the public consciousness—or into their own consciousness—as a story of marginalization; it is not even perceived as a story about a lack of choice. In the 1970s, Jewish immigrants of European origin were more inclined than those from Asia and northern Africa to leave the moshav. The proximity of many moshavim to urban centers made it easy for those who chose to quit agriculture to sell their farmsteads and move into town. The farmsteads were usually snapped up by relatively wealthy urbanites, mostly second-generation Israelis of European and Israeli extraction, which changed the composition of the moshavim into something unrecognizable.75 The absorption of Holocaust survivor immigrants in rural settlements during Israel’s first decade stresses the significant relationship among the

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institutional framework, the political climate, and the methods used to effect this absorption. Unlike the absorption of immigrants in urban localities, it was not a process of self-absorption, but one of an encounter between individuals and an organization. In this encounter, each side needed the other. The rural settlers needed the movement organization just as they needed constant assistance from state institutions; the immigrants enabled the organization to gather strength and the fledgling state to attain its goals.

Notes 1. Binyamin Eliav, The Jewish National Home from The Balfour Declaration to Independence [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1979), 386. 2. Zvi Lamm, The Zionist Youth Movements in Retrospect [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1991), 51–52. 3. The moshav is a planned smallholders’ cooperative settlement that emerged in the 1920s. Generally numbering about 60–100 families, farmers in the settlements work their individual parcels of land and draw income from their farm yields. See Michael Sofer, “Pluriactivity in the Moshav: Family Farming in Israel, Journal of Rural Studies 17 (2001): 363. The Moshavim Movement was founded in 1930 to relieve the lonely rural settlement. See Yishai Geva, “From Moshav Ovdim to Tnuat Hamoshavim—The Development of an Agricultural Settlement Framework,” in A Historical Achievement and its Evolution: The Kibbutz and Moshav Settlement Movements 1910–1990 [in Hebrew], edited by Abigail Paz-Yeshayahu and Yosef Gorny (Sede Boqer: Ben-Gurion Research Institute, 2006), 197–230, at 226. 4. Moshe Schwartz, “From Agricultural Cooperative to Rural Residual Settlement? The Story of the Moshav: Freezing and Transformation in a Changing Environment, in Paz-Yeshayahu and Gorny, Historical Achievement, 671–705, at 673. 5. The data were processed on the basis of Moshe Sicron, Immigration to Israel 1948– 1953: Statistical Appendix, Special series no. 60 (Jerusalem: Falk Project for Economic Research in Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, Dec. 1957), Table A6, 5. 6. Yossi Katz, The Battle for the Land: The Jewish National Fund (K.K.L.) Before the Establisment of the State of Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2002), 138–43. 7. Di tsaytvaylike farvaltung fun ‘Brit oley ha-gola,’ A Ruf tsu ole ibergeblibenen yidn in Eiropa, Central Zionist Archives (hereinafter: CZA), S25/5215. 8. Eliahu Dobkin to Central Committee of Zionist Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Germany, Munich, 9 November 1945, CZA, S6/1626. 9. Ben-Gurion to Eliahu Dobkin, Cable, 18 November 1945, CZA, S6/4682. 10. The Organization of Cooperative Villages was established during the Fifth Aliya period. In late September 1950, another organization of farmers, the Agricultural Council, was set up by a merger between the Organization of Cooperative Villages and the private Agriculture Council. See Esther Zelzer, “The Middle-Class Moshavim: Moshavim Established by the Section for Middle Class Settlement Division in Israel’s First Decade” [in Hebrew] (MA thesis, Israel Studies Department, BarIlan University, 2003), 12. On private and public activity of religious Jews to establish religious rural settlements, see Haim J. Peles, “The Development of the Religious

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Moshav in Eretz Israel between the Two World Wars” [in Hebrew] in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 16–24 August 1989, Division B, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1990), 407–14. 11. “The Moshav Movement and the Organizations, from Conference to Conference, October 1942–October 1945” [in Hebrew], Lavon Institute for Labour Research, (hereinafter: LI), IV-307-1-597. The term “organization” denotes the social setting in which candidates for the establishment of a new moshav lived during the years of training that preceded their actual settlement. 12. For a discussion on the topic, see David Simrot, “The Yishuv and the Holocaust Survivors: Treatment and Ways of Coping in Palestine 1945–1947” [in Hebrew] (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995), 3–11. 13. Assaf Wilkomicz, Kefar Haim Council, morning session, 17 February 1944, LI, VI307-1-675, 12–13. The idea of opting for rural settlement after discharge sprouted among soldiers who had served in the British army in 1943; for a detailed discussion, see Meira Yakoba, “Settlement after the Second World War of the Jewish Palestinian Soldiers who Served in the British Army” [in Hebrew] (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 1994). 14. “Report to the Seventh Congress for October 1942–October 1945” [in Hebrew], Telamim 62 (Autumn 1945): 28. 15. See, for example, Haim Ben-Zvi to Yitzhak Korn, 15 September 1945, LI, IV-307-139; and Yirmiyahu Rabinowitz to Yeshayahu, 3 February 1946, LI, IV-307-1-529. 16. L. Bernstein to General Federation of Jewish Labour in Eretz Israel, 15 October 1945, [in Hebrew], Inter-University Project for Research on the Ha’apala [clandestine Jewish immigration to Palestine], Tel Aviv University, 1.25(89). 17. Conference for the founding of a Labor Cooperative Center in Europe, Basel, 8 December 1946, LI, IV-307-1-24. The resolutions were also published in “Conference for the Establishment of a Labor Cooperative Center in Europe” [in Hebrew], Telamim 74–75 (Winter 1946): 82. 18. Resolutions of the Movement Council, Beit Yosef, 27–28 April 1947, LI, IV-307-1675. The resolutions were also advertised in the press; see “Our Finest Comrades on Mission to the Diaspora,” Davar, 30 April 1947. 19. Ofra Kenan accuses the Moshav Movement of having renounced the idea of taking in and educating children in its settlements. See Ofra Kenan, “The Kibbutzim and Moshavim Movments and Mass Immigration to Israel during the First Decade of the State” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 112 (June 1984): 113–36, at 129–30. The charge deserves to be rejected. 20. See, for example, “Intake of Adolescents and Children on Moshavim (Remarks of Comrades at the 11 February Meeting)” [in Hebrew], Telamim 63–64 (Winter 1946): 38–46; and Yitzhak Korn to Hans Beit, February 27 1946, LI, IV-307-1-400B. 21. Yaakov Uri to Shimon, 20 June 1946, LI, IV-307-1-529. 22. Yitzhak Korn to M. Yaari, 24 May 1946, LI, IV-307-1-400B. 23. “Report to the Seventh Conference for October 1942–October 1945” [in Hebrew], Telamim 61 (Autumn 1945): 28. 24. Yitzhak Korn to Hans Beit, 10 December 1947, CZA, S75/2350. 25. Yitzhak Korn to M. Kolodny, 3 March 1948, LI, IV-307-1-400B. 26. Yitzhak Korn at Moshavim Movement Council, Kefar Vitkin, 15–16 June 1948, LI, IV-307-1-675, 12–16. 27. Yisrael Elimelech Hirshberg of Deggendorf to Moshavim Movement Secretariat, 28 August 1949, LI, IV-307-1-454B.

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28. Dan, “Cooperative Agriculture—the Immediate Imperative,” Ha’aretz, 24 December 1948. 29. Avraham Herzfeld, “Actions and Problems in Rural Settlement” [in Hebrew], Bakefar (February 1951): 8. 30. Eliezer Brutzkus, “Urban dreams: on attempts to plan rural-settlement and immigrant-absorption areas in 1948–1952” [in Hebrew], in Immigrants and Transit Camps 1948–1952: Sources, Summaries, Selected Stories, and Reference Material, ed. Mordechai Naor (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1987) 127–40, at 128–29. 31. Yishai Geva, “Settlement of Israel in the Early Statehood Days: [The Difference] between Pioneering Settlement and Mass Settlement” [in Hebrew], in Ya’ad: Collection for the Study of the Labor Movement and Socialism, Vol. 2, (June 1989): 97–113, at 101. 32. Yitzhak Korn, Immigrants to Israel Settle on the Land [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1964), 23. 33. Avraham Silberberg, “From Abandoned Gleanings to a Cohesive Society” [in Hebrew], in My Road to the Moshav, ed. Yosef Rubin (Tel Aviv: Moshav Movement, 1964), 106–108. 34. Shmuel Dayan, Council of the Moshav Movement and Organizations, Ramle, 10 February 1949 (the “Ramle Council”), LI, IV-307-1-675. The dictionary meaning of the term “human dust” is a person of no worth. On the use of this term in reference to the Holocaust survivors, contrasted with the demographic data on this group, see Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War, trans. from Hebrew by Ora Cummings (Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1999), 9–17. 35. Ben-Gurion, Ramle Council, 14–17. 36. Forty-eighth meeting of the Agricultural Federation Council, 28 February 1949, LI, IV-307-1-110. 37. On the kibbutz movements’ attitude, see Eli Tsur, “The Exodus Began and What Did the Pioneers Contribute to it,” in Paz-Yeshayahu and Gorny, A Historical Achievement, 377–98. 38. Henry Near, “Pioneers and Pioneering in the State of Israel: Semantic and Historical Developments 1948–1956,” Iuonim Bitkumat Israel, Studies in Zionism, The Yishuv and the State of Israel, A Research Annual 2 (1992): 116–40. 39. Paula Kabalo, “Voluntarism and Civic Engagement According to David Ben-Gurion, 1948–1955” [in Hebrew], in Society and Economy in Israel: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, vol. 2, ed. Avi Bareli, Daniel Gutwein, and Tuvia Friling (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2005), 773–802. 40. Baruch Kimmerling, “State Building, Mass Immigration, and the Establishment of Hegemony (1948–1951)” [in Hebrew], Israeli Sociology, A Journal for the Study of Israeli Society 2, no. 1 (1999): 167–208, at 173. 41. Jewish Agency for Israel, Absorption Department, Statistics Division, “Jewish Immigration from Statehood to 15 May 1952, by Countries of Origin,” in Summaries, 15 May 1948–15 May 1952 (Tel Aviv, June 8, 1952), 4. 42. “From Conference to Conference, Report of the Movement Secretariat to the Eighth Conference, Kefar Yehoshua,” 27–31 October 1949, LI, IV-307-1-597. 43. Amiram Gonen, “Who Is to be Dispersed—Rural Pioneers, Disadvantaged New Immigrants or Middle-Class Exurbanites?” [in Hebrew], in Studies in the Geography of Israel 14 (1993): 273–85. 44. Korn, Immigrants to Israel Settle on the Land, 86.

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45. Shmuel Dayan, “Ahead of the Conference of the Moshavim, Letter to the Members,” Davar, 24 October 1949. 46. Yitzhak Korn, Minutes of meeting of lecturers, 25 February 1951, LI, IV-307-1445B. 47. Yaakov Goren, The Villages of the New Immigrants in Israel, Their Organization and Management [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Agricultural Publications’ Division, No. 33, Dec. 1960), 18. 48. Shmuel Dayan, “Letter to the Members,” Davar, 21 August 1949. 49. Tova Sigeti, “They Didn’t Believe that Infiltrators Came,” in Rubin, My Road to the Moshav, 195. 50. Testimony Silberberg, CZA J123/24; see also Avraham Silberberg, “From Abandoned Gleanings to a Cohesive Society,” in Rubin, My Road to the Moshav, 110. 51. Plenary meeting, 22 February 1950, LI, IV-307-1-119; and notice to all moshavim, Circular 11, 5 March 1950, LI, IV-307-1-473A. 52. The Audit Union of the Workers’ Agricultural Co-operative Societies was established in 1934 by the Agricultural Workers’ Organization to supervise the corporate entities of which the labor settlement enterprise was composed: moshavim, cooperative moshavim, kibbutzim, companies that marketed and delivered farm produce, etc. 53. Eliezer Ben-Arye to Moshavim Movement, undated, LI, IV-307-1-283. 54. See description by Yosef Dromi, “Excerpts from an Instructor’s Diary” [in Hebrew], in Tenth Anniversary of the Immigrants’ Moshavim, ed. by Yosef Rubin (Tel Aviv: Workers’ Moshav Movement, 1959), 484–85; and description by Eliezer Bar-On, “Rooting the Rootless,” ibid, 472. 55. Rivka Grinker, “Today, Reality—Tomorrow, Legend,” in Rubin, My Road to the Moshav, 274. 56. In regard to this affair, see Giv’at Brenner to New Moshav Aqir Committee, March 15, 1950, LI, IV-235-5-549; plenary meeting of Moshav Movement, 18 June 1950, LI, IV-307-1-122; New Moshav Aqir to Brenner Regional Council, 18 December 1950, ibid.; Brenner Regional Council to [Moshav] Aqir, 25 December 1950, ibid.; A. Silberberg to Raanan Weitz, 18 December 1950, ibid. 57. Letter of six moshav members to Agricultural Center, 8 June 1952, LI, IV-235-5343. 58. On the melting-pot outlook and its implications for the education system, see Zvi Zameret, Across A Narrow Bridge: Shaping the Education System during the Great Aliya [in Hebrew] (Sede Boqer Campus: Ben-Gurion Research Center, 1997), 75–108. 59. Yaakov Uri, Roots in the Homeland: A Journey in Israel’s New Immigrant Cooperatives [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1951), 8–9. 60. Gershon Gilad, Phases: Acculturation Processes at the Immigrants’ Cooperative [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: General Federation of Jewish Labor in Israel—Center for Culture and Education, 1958), 10. 61. Yosef Shapira at Eighth Conference of Moshav Movement at Kefar Yehoshua, 28 October 1949, LI, IV-307-1-671-B. 62. Conference of instructors at immigrant cooperatives, 15 March 1950, LI, IV-307-1473. 63. Devora Dayan, In Happiness and in Sadness [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Massada and Moshav Movement, 1957), 175. Subsequent historical research confirms Dayan’s observations. The psychologist Yael Danieli termed marriages of the kind addressed by Dayan “marriages of despair” that were often embarked on in disregard of the ordinary considerations that guide prospective spouses. See Yael Danieli, “The Impact of

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Holocaust Experience on Families of Survivors Living in the United States” [in Hebrew] in The Nazi Concentration Camps: Structure and Aims, The Image of the Prisoner, Jews in the Camps, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Rachel Manber (Fourth International Historical Conference, Jerusalem 1980; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1984), 603–19. 64. Devora Dayan, report on women instructors’ activities in immigrants’ cooperatives, 8 February 1950, LI, IV-208-1-473A. 65. Ami Assaf, Israel’s Immigrant Cooperatives [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ayanot, 1953), 217. 66. Yaakov Uri, Roots in the Homeland: A Journey in Israel’s New Immigrant Cooperatives [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1951), 66. 67. Assaf, Israel’s Immigrant Cooperatives, 204. 68. Yitzhak Korn, The Generation in Its Struggle, the Zionist Movement in the Statehood Era [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Otpaz, 1970), 227. 69. See, for example, Moshe Meir, “Moshav Galia,” Ba-telem, Journal for the Immigrant Cooperatives (Moshav Movement) 5 (Feb. 1955): 8–10; Nahum Rafael, “Oasis of Green,” Ba-telem 11 (Aug. 1955): 20–29. 70. On the documentation enterprise in the DP camps in Germany, see Ada Schein, “Everyone Can Hold a Pen”—on the Documentation Project in the DP Camps in Germany,” in Holocaust Historiography in Context, Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, ed. David Bankier and Dan Michman (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008), 103–32. 71. Anita Shapira, “The Holocaust and World War II as Components of the Yishuv Indecision” [in Hebrew], in Zionism, Studies in the History of the Zionist Movement and the Jewish Community in Palestine 20 (1996): 243–58, at 250. 72. See Anita Shapira, “The Holocaust: Private Memories, Public Memory,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society 4, no. 2 (January 1998): 40–58. 73. Hasia Drori, “Yizkor,” in A Home on the Moshav, Women Comrades Retell [in Hebrew], collected by Hasia Drori, ed. Yosef Margalit (Tel Aviv: Tarbut ve-Hinukh Publishers, 1962), 78–80. 74. Yosef Margalit, ed., This Is the History of Kefar Ahim, from the Recorded Stories of the Moshav Members (Tel Aviv: Milo, 1974). 75. Levia Appelbaum, “Migration of Urban Families to the Moshavim in Israel 1968– 1978” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1986), 96.

10

NEW ROOTS FOR THE UPROOTED Holocaust Survivors as Farmers in America

Françoise S. Ouzan



Introduction: On the American Experience of Survivors During the 1930s and the war years, the mood of the American Congress—as well as public opinion towards refugees and the victims of the Holocaust—was apathetic. After the war, church leaders showed interest in the issue when they learned that eighty percent of the displaced persons in the DP camps were not Jews but European Christians fleeing communism. Meanwhile, the leaders of American Jewry had taken the lead in financing the Citizens Committee for Displaced Persons (CCDP), founded in 1946 and initiated by the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Services (ACVAFS) and the National Committee for Postwar Immigration Policy (NCPI), both nonsectarian. Headed by Earl G. Harrison (Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law school and American representative on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees), the CCDP lobbied for the passage of legislation suspending immigration quotas to permit the admission of postwar refugees in a concerted effort with Jewish and Christian organizations. This resulted in the adoption of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act which indirectly discriminated against the Jews, mainly because of its “agricultural preference.” Indeed, this occu-

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pational selectivity was understood by Jewish organizations, as well as by President Truman himself, as a means to discriminate against Jews, who were known to be mostly urban dwellers.1 After the 1950 amendment of the 1948 DP law, the CCDP disbanded, having attained its goals.2 For the first time in the history of American immigration, postwar immigration to the United States differed from the traditional laissez-faire immigration policy. The 1948 DP law (amended in 1950) established a four-year program which entailed a close partnership between governmental and voluntary agencies. The latter had to develop special skills in working with immigrants in order to help them with the technicalities of migration from the DP camps in Europe to the American ports. Social workers aided immigrants in making preliminary adjustments and in achieving the first stages toward integration. However, this assistance was much more concentrated in certain areas than in others and, specialized services only reached a limited number of immigrants. The amended Displaced Persons Act issued in 1950 extended the life of the act until June 30, 1951, and allotted 4,000 visas to refugees from China. But most postwar refugees (41,000 of them) came to America in 1949, after the passage of the 1948 DP law. By the end of July 1949, newcomers had been resettled in forty-three states, helped by either the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) or the United Service for New Americans (USNA), the latter taking on the most difficult cases. Indeed, some had survived the hardships and horrors of the concentration camps, had fought with the partisans, or had escaped to the Soviet Union. Others had fled to Shanghai as refugees. These immigrants mostly settled in New York City, the main port of entry, but many also ended up in Boston, New Orleans, Baltimore, San Francisco, and even Galveston, Texas, encouraged by the aid agencies to resettle outside of New York. By 1953, two-thirds of the refugees were concentrated in the New York metropolitan area and one-third went to communities with significant Jewish populations. Those who settled in smaller communities acculturated more rapidly. It is known that a third of the Jewish DPs went to the United States, while two-thirds went to Palestine/Israel. What were the main motivations for their choices? Restoring ties with one or more family members who had emigrated before the war was the most common motivation. However, the American dream also played its role, as did the image of tolerance and of the anonymity of life in such a vast country. In a number of cases, the Zionist dream was also important, either because of a Zionist background or because of an “instinctive Zionism” inherited from the experience of the Holocaust and stirred to life in the DP camps.3 The intricacies of red

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tape that one had to master in order to reach American shores deterred a number of postwar refugees. The 1948 annual report of the Committee for the Foreign Born of the National Council of Jewish Women accounts for this situation: In February 1948, the Truman Directive, initially established at the end of 1945, was liberalized to include persons who had arrived in Germany, Austria and Italy prior to April 1947. However, few benefited from this since the Directive (which did not challenge the quota laws) was replaced by the Displaced Persons Act. These changes, requiring new procedures and functional reorganizations actually resulted in a slowing up of immigration during the latter half of 1948.

As a consequence, most of the refugees had found new homes in Israel by 1950, as confirmed by the reports of the National Council of Jewish Women for these two years.4 In other cases, the hardships undergone had weakened some survivors, who dreamed of a new life in Eretz Israel to the point that they could not envisage being a pioneer in a conflict-ridden land, although in many cases their children accomplished their dreams of aliyah.5 Among the survivors who chose America specifically were those who had no commitment to Zionism, as well as Orthodox Jews who yearned for the established Orthodox institutions in New York. Were survivors generally welcomed by the American Jewish communities? In spite of the remarkable involvement of American Jewish organizations and their dedicated staff and social workers, a substantial number of written testimonies, oral history, and in-depth interviews affirm survivors’ ambivalent reception by Jewish communities. Often perceived as demanding, the “refs” (for refugees) were looked down upon. Jewish Americans were frequently reluctant to see their children date the child of a refugee, for example.6 In the research, the adaptation and integration of survivors entering the American milieu, we can distinguish five main periods: the early postwar years, the mid-1950s, the 1970s and 1980s, the 1990s, and eventually the twenty-first century, research on which focuses more particularly on the survivors’ impact on American Judaism (especially Orthodox), as well as on Holocaust awareness and commemoration in the United States. Within the framework of the Displaced Persons Program, American Jewish organizations devoted considerable effort to transforming public opinion on immigration policies as well as on immigrants. In that light, it is easier to grasp why, in the early postwar period, the publications serving the newcomers emphasized the successful adjustment of immigrants, as well as their resilience and their eagerness to start new lives in America.

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Social work professionals presented a different and more nuanced picture as they focused on the challenges and difficulties of the new arrivals. They concluded that with appropriate help, the newcomers could well adapt to their host society. True, in spite of their traumatic experiences, the approximately 140,000 men and women—as well as unaccompanied children—who reached American shores between 1945 and 1952 had shown a remarkable determination, first in obtaining a visa in spite of the bureaucratic process, and then in adjusting to life in America. In the mid-1950s, considerably less was written on this topic, apart from newspaper articles and reports from Jewish agencies such as the National Council of Jewish Women or the United Service for New Americans. In the 1970s and 1980s, extensive research was conducted and published in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, largely based on interviews with patients. Scholars argued that the survivors were suffering from permanent psychological damage, although this research tended to concentrate on those who had been in therapy rather than on the “average” or “typical” survivor. In the 1990s, as a reaction against an overemphasis on maladjustment, a number of scholarly researchers, mostly sociologists and psychiatrists, found that in spite of their trauma, the survivor community, although not monolithic, was overall rather successful, and that to a certain extent survivors’ achievements could fall under the label of “paradoxical success.” Though limited in numbers, the immigration of Orthodox Jews has revitalized both religious and secular institutions and organizations. Indeed, these immigrants exerted an influence on the traditional branches of American Judaism—not only Orthodox, but to a certain extent, Conservative Judaism as well.7 Thus, in the twenty-first century, the influence of the survivors on both American Jewry and American society has been brought under close scrutiny. As new archives have been opened, scholars have come to a more nuanced understanding of the general framework of survivors’ successful adaptation.8 Furthermore, there has been increased interest in the social networks of refugees who entered the country before World War II.9 There is now a more multifaceted methodology for approaching the question of postwar rehabilitation and resettlement, one that makes use of published testimonies, archival material, and oral history. Recently, the survivors’ early participation and initiatives in commemorating the memory of the Holocaust challenged the “myth of silence.”10 Survivors had a marked impact on the memory of the Holocaust, as can be shown, for example, in the dedicated life of one-time American chicken farmer Miles Lerman. Born Shmuel Milek Lerman in 1920, he

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was a resistance fighter in Poland who after the war purchased a poultry farm in Vineland, New .Jersey, and later still started a series of successful businesses, including one involving real estate. Lerman not only contributed to the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), but also served as its first chairman (1993–2000). Agricultural settlements lasted for the most part until the 1960s, when industrialization made it difficult for Jewish small farmers to prosper. However, the case study that follows shows to what extent farming settlements constituted a microcosm of the survivors’ world and its growing networks in North America.

Holocaust Survivors as Farmers on American Soil Jews are not typically associated with farming, and even less with successful farming. Yet the story of Jewish agriculture is probably one of the most fascinating chapters of Jewish history on American soil.11 The archives of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and of the Jewish Agricultural Society within the American Jewish Historical Society reveal a little known fact: some 2,000 Holocaust survivors became farmers. Of the 140,000 DPs (Displaced Persons) who immigrated to the United States after World War II, about 65 percent remained in the New York area while 35 percent resettled in 341 different communities.12 This chapter focuses on postwar Jewish immigration in rural areas with a special focus on DPs: uprooted people who were unwilling or unable to return to the countries where their families had been decimated during World War II.13 For the sake of comparison, the chapter will also address the previous wave of refugees from Hitlerism in the 1930s. It is estimated that 10 percent of the Jews who came to the United States after the war settled on farms.14 The percentage of DPs resettled in rural areas contrasts with the estimate that established farmers at the time represented only 2 percent of the general Jewish population, which was mostly urban. My focus is therefore fourfold: Why was there a strong attraction to rural life after the Holocaust? Did survivor immigrants have a sense of self-determination that enabled them to assume responsibility for their future? Did survivors’ relocation to the rural American scene, where Jews constituted but one of many religious and ethnic minorities, have an impact on their postwar Jewish self-consciousness?

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What initiatives did survivors take to root themselves in the various rural settlements? My perspective takes into account not only geographical space but also social space: the configuration and constitution of Jewish neighborhoods in relation to non-Jewish groups. This will enable us to determine how this configuration bears on the reconstruction of postwar Jewish identity. Providing accurate definitions of identity is a task doomed to failure. One identity often prevails over another, depending on the circumstances and the interests at stake at a certain time. Identity refers both to practices and to a category of analysis. Yet in spite of its flaws, the concept of identity is essential to any sociological approach. In the case of survivors, the process of forging an identity helps to mold the social and historical reality in which both individuals and communities seek to situate themselves. To address these questions, I will mainly draw upon extensive archival material from the Jewish Agricultural Society (founded in 1900) and from the Yiddish monthly magazine it founded in 1908, The Jewish Farmer. This publication developed into a bilingual journal in later years and enjoyed a wide circulation for forty-six years. Reading it in Yiddish and in English gave the survivor immigrants a sense of belonging. They could feel part of the community of Jewish farmers in various instances and in different parts of America. To illustrate my point, I will also make use of oral history, personal interviews, and documentary films as well as published material. In particular, Dr. Arthur Goldhaft’s account of his life as a veterinarian in southern New Jersey provides a vivid picture of the Jewish agricultural colonies of the Vineland area and of the newcomers, “refugees” and “displaced persons” found there.

Farming as an Occupation after the Holocaust: Historical Background and Motivations As American and Jewish farmers were recovering from the depression of the 1930s, the Jewish Agricultural Society (JAS) had to face a new and complex problem: the resettlement and rehabilitation of refugees from Hitlerism. In fact, the Society’s tradition of assistance to the Jewish migrants had prepared it for this challenge. In its annual report for the year 1952, it admits rather proudly: One is almost tempted to believe that it was providential that the Society had developed successful farm areas in New Jersey and other states prior to the influx of refugees and displaced persons into the United States. Emigrés

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started coming to the Society’s office in 1933, seeking advice about farming. They were generally men in their middle years, formerly prosperous merchants and professionals; men of education, culture and superior background. Some had considerable capital while others had salvaged but little of their possessions. They sought refuge in farming.15 Yet they were hesitant. They were not sure that they had the capacity to operate a farm successfully. However, the Society adhered to its policy that the farm aspirant should make his own decision without urging or undue influence.16

The self-determination of newcomers was therefore essential to the success of resettlement in the eyes of the JAS, and several reports were to corroborate that fact later. The immigration of refugees from Germany and their settlement in rural areas had indeed paved the way for the resettlement of DPs after World War II. The archives of the Jewish Agricultural Society show that in 1937 there were eleven refugees from “Hitlerite persecution” who applied for loans from the JAS, while in 1938 the number of applicants from Germany and Austria increased to 600, reaching 741 by 1940. That same year, to make the transition to farming easier for these migrants, the JAS created a refugee training farm near Bound Brook in New Jersey. By the end of 1942, 300 refugees had been trained, of whom 144 bought farms. After 1942, with immigration to America cut off, the number of applicants diminished dramatically and the farm came to be used by the New York City Board of Education for the training of high school boys for farm work during the war. 17 In the aftermath of World War II, on 22 December 1945, President Harry S. Truman issued a directive and in June 1948 signed a law, both of which enabled the immigration of the postwar refugees identified as Displaced Persons. DPs were so identified by the allied forces in charge of them in “DP camps,” also called “assembly centers,” and they were located in Germany, Austria, and Italy. The presidential directive of late 1945 that gave priority to “those who have suffered the most” and to orphans became effective in 1946. However, the subsequent Displaced Persons Act of 1948, reluctantly signed by President Truman, did not give priority to Holocaust survivors, but on the contrary to their former oppressors: the Baltic Priority allotted 40 percent of the visas to Balts and the Agricultural Priority allotted a further 30 percent of the visas to immigrants engaged in “agricultural pursuits.” Since it was well known that Jews were generally urban dwellers, this provision was perceived by Jewish groups in America as being discriminatory. The “Baltic priority” of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act also sounded unfair, as there were some among the Balts who had collaborated in rounding up Jews. Only in 1950

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was the law amended and its discriminatory provisions suppressed. However, the Displaced Persons Commission (DPC) instituted by President Truman to implement the 1948 law interpreted “agricultural pursuits” in a very broad sense, one that approved for admission to the United States displaced persons engaged in trades that were only remotely linked to agriculture.18 Jewish DPs who started coming to the United States in 1946 turned to the offices of the Jewish Agricultural Society for help in establishing themselves on farms. What, therefore, were the reasons for choosing rural resettlement?

Motivations of the Uprooted Four main reasons may be put forward to justify the choice of farm settlements. First, the experience of survival had left an imprint on the survivors’ personalities. The independence and self-reliance which they had developed to escape the fate of most Jews during World War II were valuable qualities in farm life. What they had gone through imparted to them a strong dislike for being given orders or working for others, and a farmer is his own master. This behavioral pattern has been corroborated by various oral testimonies.19 The second reason is that language difficulties that were likely to handicap any immigrant in a retail business or in any other independent enterprise were of much less consequence on the farm. The displaced persons who resettled on American farms came from almost every European country, the majority being from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Germany. A third reason for choosing rural areas may be found in the success encountered by the prewar German refugees who had settled around Lakewood and Vineland in New Jersey, in New York State, and in eastern Connecticut. By word of mouth, some DPs knew of friends or former neighbors who as refugees had achieved success through a combination of hard work, intelligence, and opportunity. They also felt that they could rely to a certain extent on ethnic networks. For instance, a large German-Jewish community had been established in Washington Heights, New York, which was not far away from New Jersey. Like the refugees who had immigrated to America a decade earlier, the displaced persons who came in 1946–47 were enterprising and determined to start a new life on more hospitable shores. Furthermore, they were helped by continuing farm prosperity. In 1949, seven hundred DPs applied for loans from the Jewish Agricultural Society, with a similar number in 1951.20 This influx had two main consequences: it enabled the growth of existing Jewish farm communities and permitted the establish-

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ment of new ones, such as the community of Danielson in Connecticut or that of Dorothy in New Jersey. The last reason—and not the least—is that farming was conceived as a more stable way of life for which the DPs could be trained. Life on the farm retained the mythical appeal of redemption, independence, and security while it was known that immigrant Jews from the overcrowded cities sought peace of mind in working the land.21 In addition to the educational work performed by the members of the Extension Department of the Jewish Agricultural Society, the JAS provided means for further education through its monthly magazine, The Jewish Farmer, and through group meetings conducted in farm areas as well as annual conferences held in New York. Moreover, the JAS provided the newcomers with “facts and figures” by checking every year on the number of settlers who had given up farming. It found that between 85 and 90 percent of those who originally chose farming remained in that field. The Jewish farm communities of Lakewood, Flemington, and Vineland in New Jersey as well as those in the Catskills, in Connecticut, and in California were all cases in point. The 1954 report of the Jewish Agricultural Society emphasized that this record of stability stood in sharp contrast to the quick turnover experienced by small urban business owners. However, the records of a Society or an agency that deals with resettlement often present a bright picture, whereas the accounts of social workers and biographies provide the historian or sociologist with examples of maladjustment and economic failure.22 We may speculate to what extent a more romantic vision of agricultural resettlement, the idea of the American Pastoral, influenced some DPs. Above all, postwar refugees had to make a living. According to some interviewees, the best way to root oneself in a country is to work the land.23 However, the myth of the Pastoral and its ethical values of hard labor24 was clearly conveyed through American culture and especially through the movies. In the 1939 classic film, Gone with the Wind (based on Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel), Scarlett O’Hara’s vow to retain her family’s land during the Civil War and its aftermath may well have influenced some of those who took up farming.

Farming as a Second Choice Among displaced persons, there were significant examples of those for whom the choice of a rural life was a second choice, one that followed the failure of life in an urban milieu. The famous veterinarian and poultry pathologist Dr. Arthur Goldhaft encountered refugees and former DPs in

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the poultry farms of Vineland, New Jersey. In his 1957 book, The Golden Egg, he cited one who became a leader not only in his community of Holocaust survivors, but in the larger Vineland community as well. The aforementioned Miles Lerman, whose family owned flour mills, had been a student in Poland intent on a university career when the war broke out. When Poland fell, Lerman took to the woods to join a partisan unit and became a commander of one of the Jewish partisan groups in the area. At the war’s end, he learned that his family had been murdered in the death camps. He met and married a girl who had survived Auschwitz, and after spending a period in DP camps, they managed to immigrate to America. For six months Lerman tried life in New York, where he worked as a grocery clerk and learned some English. He obtained a position as manager of a wholesale warehouse, but while visiting a friend he had known in a DP camp, both he and his wife decided they would enjoy a better life on a chicken farm in Vineland.25

Poultry Farming and Community Life Many survivors confirmed that “you could be more or less independent” and “there was no need to learn English to communicate with the chickens.” The 1966 report of the Jewish Agricultural Society points to the main reasons for the influx of Holocaust survivors in the late 1940s: Another factor which influenced the choice of location for the new settlers was meeting their need for a type of community life and social environment to which they were conditioned by their European background and their experience. In other words, together with creating the means for a livelihood, it was also necessary to look ahead for means of satisfying the religious, social and cultural requirements of the prospective settlers.26

For instance, in the community of Fontana, California—the most successful Jewish farm settlement, and one that had been almost entirely developed by the Jewish Agricultural Society after 1945—the community became large enough in April 1948 to establish a temple and a community center.27 Furthermore, we may assume that community life in the country was likely to help Holocaust survivors cope with the psychological aftermath of trauma. The JAS developed new settlement areas in southern California, some in Baldwin Park and the San Fernando Valley, about eighteen miles from Los Angeles, and some in Fontana, fifty miles from Los Ange-

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les. The northern town of Petaluma, however, was the first Jewish farming community in California to attract survivors. What accounted for this preference for Petaluma? The northern city already had a tradition of hospitality and friendliness that was ideal for community life. This atmosphere has been particularly well rendered in the 2004 documentary “Jewish Chicken Ranchers” of Petaluma. Bonnie Burt and Judith Montell’s documentary brings to life a fascinating aspect of early agricultural settlement: Despite their rural surroundings, the Jewish community was comprised of people who strongly identified with their cultural heritage. They expressed Yiddish culture through the use of language, songs, and traditions, influenced as they were by both radical politics and diverse Zionist approaches. In addition to Zionists, socialists, and Yiddishists, there were a number of communists in Petaluma at the time when the survivors joined that community, and thus through interviews the filmmakers present a picture of the political conflicts in the 1950s. When the House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigations of communist activists, the “right-wingers” in Petaluma—that is, those who weren’t communists—were afraid of being considered guilty by association. As a consequence, they banned the left-wingers, a group which included many of the founding members of the Jewish community, from the Jewish center around which the cultural life of the community of Petaluma evolved. Indeed, one of the founders of the center had been tarred and feathered because of his pro-unionizing activities during the anti-Communist hysteria. Because the rural settlement of Petaluma was essentially steeped in Yiddish culture, Philip Naftaly, who concentrated on the “creation of cultural identity” in that part of California without focusing on survivors, maintains that during its heyday the community “consciously chose to create a specific identity of chicken farmer.” He therefore analyses that identity while stressing the fact that Petaluma was a “microcosm of Jewish life in all its facets” and emphasizing both the oddity and the importance of a farming identity: “In so doing, they selected and combined aspects of a rural Jewish tradition with a desire to perform productive work.”28 Indeed, the identity of a Jewish poultry farmer was important, a fact reflected in the creation of the Jewish Poultry Farmers’ Association by a survivor in Vineland in 1951.

Resettlement and Its Impact on Jewish Self-consciousness Holocaust survivors settled in two types of farming communities: existing Jewish communities and communities the survivors founded themselves.

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Joining Existing Jewish Farming Communities There were about sixty Jewish farmers in the Petaluma region in 1920. This number increased to 100 before World War II through the help of the Hebrew Free Loan Association and the Haas Fund of San Francisco, and reached 300 in 1954, the date of a report by the Jewish Agricultural Society. The efforts of the JAS—and especially the creation of a committee of local farmers with the purpose of helping new settlers—account for this expansion. In most cases, as we have suggested previously, first the settling of German refugees and later the postwar immigration of DPs infused the farming communities with new blood, thus invigorating Jewish culture and identity (a topic to which we shall return below.) Two ideas can be put to the test here in relation to how rural surroundings influenced survivors’ identities. First, through tilling the land or working in rural surroundings, the survivors reconstructed their identities by thwarting derogatory stereotypes of Jews as those who prospered from the labor of others. Second, since many of the survivors of eastern European origin shared a common ideology with the kibbutzniks of Israel, the idea of redemption through working the soil may have been present more or less consciously. Indeed, the first Jewish settlers in the American agricultural colonies dreamed of escaping the urban poverty and sweatshops of New York’s Lower East Side and cherished the idea of creating a binding tie between their labor and the soil. The states of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut attracted the greatest numbers of survivors who turned to farming. Vineland, New Jersey There were about a hundred Jewish farmers in Vineland in 1936. The immigration of German refugees and of DPs in the prewar and postwar periods (respectively) led the Jewish Agricultural Society to establish an office there in 1952, with a twofold objective: not only would a Vineland office help individual farmers with economic problems, but it would also assist their various community organizations and thus participate in the effort at “Americanization.” Dr. Arthur Goldhaft estimates that “in the post-war years, nearly a thousand Jewish survivor families moved into the Vineland area, so they soon became virtually the largest single group, in the economics of the vicinity, in egg and poultry production.”29 He goes on to acknowledge that both the refugees and the DPs gave back to Vineland its image as a poultry center: “What we did for them was repaid by what they did for the community.”30 However, the group identity of the survivors was far more complex than a collective identity of new

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American chicken farmers who struggled with adversity in the guise of poultry diseases or hurricanes. As a matter of fact, the community spirit that emerges from reading The Jewish Farmer until 1959 gives the feeling that the survivors’ acclimatization was made successful by the bridge they built to connect their former European cultural structures to the new environment. They formed small committees to safeguard their Jewish culture and the memory of the lost ones. They created the Gmilas Chesed free loan association, an activity that emerged from the Jewish Poultry Farmer’s Association (JPFA). This mutual aid society, the name of which reflected its Jewish heritage, was a fund modeled on those of the Old World: one which anyone could join and donate to. In 1956, its capital fund amounted to $15,000, which could be loaned out to newcomers in small amounts without interest. It combined the precepts of Judaism with the concept of self-help. For instance, when hurricane Hazel struck Vineland, killing thousands of chickens and destroying machinery, the committee loaned money to those who were most in need to enable them to make a new start with new flocks. Arthur Goldhaft could not conceal his admiration: “They were even able to go to a bank as a sponsor group and borrow a large sum. They acted like a large community.”31 Therefore, although those who settled on farms chose independence, they needed the community’s help to rebuild new lives, even as they remembered their loved ones and coped with the traumatic experiences of the war years. New York State: The Catskills By 1954, the state of New York could boast of many successful refugees and DPs settled on farms. The Jewish Agricultural Society has a record of seventy-five such families whom it helped to settle in New York State during the years from 1947–1953, when the special immigration acts expired. At least an equal number settled without the Society’s initial assistance, although in many of these cases the survivors made use of the Society’s extension or loan facilities once they had commenced farming.32 Both refugees and DPs differed from previous settlers in that they specialized, concentrating on particular branches of the farming industry. They either became egg producers or raised broilers for meat. They also differed from previous migrants to the Catskills in that they generally did not try to combine boarding with farming (assuming that farming was their full-time occupation.) The majority of the postwar settlers were successful, and some of them are still farming today, in spite of the adverse conditions they have had to overcome.33 This decade between 1945 and 1954 was the most fruitful period in the more than half-century history of the JAS, as stated in some reports. The

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Society played an important role in rehabilitating thousands of refugees and DPs without appealing to the public for help, and it opened two new offices in that period: one in New Jersey and another in California. Petaluma, California Several identities blossomed on American soil: Jewish-American chicken farmer, socialist, Yiddishist, right-winger. Yet it sounds somewhat artificial to point to one identity as prevailing over others where there existed a group of identities, whether these were political, cultural, secular, religious, or national. In the case of the Holocaust survivors, at least, many of these identities were combined. Often, identity was defined by others: the identity of “grine,” or “greenhorn,” was applied to the survivors, and conceived of by the existing Jewish community of Petaluma as a social frontier, a dividing line between “us” and “them,” no matter how welcoming and helpful the community was claimed to be by the self-satisfied official reports of the JAS and other bodies. The existence of terms like these shows the discrepancy between the accounts of governmental agencies (such as the Displaced Persons Commission and the various nongovernmental agencies that helped in resettlement) on the one hand, and the perceptions of survivors on the other. Many testimonies attest to this dividing line in the social space of the Jewish community, whether in Petaluma or in other rural or urban resettlements.34 This is what one woman, an “old-timer” from Petaluma, had to say: The grine were weird and uptight. They had tattoos on their arms, from the concentration camps, and they hid those tattoos. They never said a word about it, but the grine women always wore something to cover their arms. In the Jewish community we passed clothes around from one family [to] another, but we had to be careful with the grine. We never passed a shortsleeved dress or a short sleeved shirt to these certain women. The grine made the whole community look uptight.35

We may argue here that DPs were not even the object of sympathy but were perceived as misfits and outcasts, to be treated with caution.36 In this context, the point of view of a woman survivor in Petaluma is worth quoting: All the newcomers feel this. Still, we were always a separate bunch, the newcomers. . . . There never was a fight with the old-time community but we were always together, the newcomers. It was not always mixing up with the others. They sometimes looked at us kind of funny.

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You know, they called us “the grine.” The Greenhorns. To this day, some of us do not like this name.37

In Petaluma, like in most rural Jewish communities in which survivors resettled, there were chapters of national organizations such as the Workmen’s Circle, B’nai B’rith, the National Council of Jewish Women, and Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization. Indeed, most were women’s organizations, so women played a key role both in the Americanization process through these organizations and by transmitting Jewish tradition to their children and taking them to the neighboring Jewish Sunday school. At the same time, these organizations, as well as schools, created social networks that enabled the Americanization process.38 Communities Created by Survivors Two cases of new communities created by survivors are Dorothy, New Jersey, and Danielson, Connecticut. Dorothy, New Jersey About ten miles from Vineland, Dorothy—a small town in the southeastern region of New Jersey—is a case in point, as there had been little or no poultry farming there until Jewish displaced persons arrived in 1947 and 1948 under the Truman Directive and the DP Act. In 1954, of about fifty farm families engaged in poultry raising, only twenty had been there for three years or more. Surveys conducted by the JAS as to the economic status of Jewish farmers showed that they had increased their assets and income since they first became established in farming. Their average annual gross income was about $25,000, which contrasted sharply with the average American farm with its gross income of about $7,000. Furthermore, not only did this small community improve its equity capital and standard of living, but it also built a large synagogue with the financial help of the JAS.39 The Jewish Agricultural Society reported that “the most important development of the post-war period, although its significance was not fully understood at the time, was the decision to settle newcomers on poultry farms in New Jersey.” In the early 1920s “it was demonstrated that city Jews possessed special adaptability for the minutiae and intricacies of poultry farming.”40 Yet in the 1960s, Dorothy’s chicken farmers began to be gradually bought out by bigger corporations, and farmers found independent jobs when they could not survive as such.

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Danielson, Connecticut New England and particularly Connecticut (Colchester and Norwich) attracted the DPs who had some experience in farming, or who were more favorably disposed to dairy farming, or who could not afford to settle on the expensive New Jersey farms. The settlement of Danielson, created by the survivors themselves, was also a microcosm of Jewish life. There they built synagogues, worshiped in a traditional manner, and educated their children by transmitting Jewish values. As in many other farm communities, their children gained prominence in state and county farming associations after achieving recognition for excellence in contests at the University of Connecticut. Some farm children were also successful off the farm thanks to university education. National identity and patriotism were elements of the fragmented Jewish identities of the survivors. When President Truman proclaimed September 17 as Citizenship Day to commemorate the signing of the US Constitution in 1787 by reemphasizing the meaning and importance of citizenship, the Jewish farmers of the Danielson area observed the day solemnly in the Beth Israel Temple. Benjamin Miller of the JAS translated into Yiddish the speech of T. Emmet Claire, chairman of the Danielson Board of Education. The latter invited the fifty farmers in attendance to take advantage of the adult courses offered at the local high school. The American pledge of allegiance concluded the program, according to the report published in The Jewish Farmer.41 National identity found an adequate expression, for instance, in the interfaith services for Thanksgiving conducted in Danielson, in Temple Beth Israel, where classes in Hebrew and religious education took place several times a week. From these observations emerges the concept of “frontier”: a frontier is both a place of contact and of physical separation, a notion relevant to the central concept of neighbor and neighborhood in American culture. The enthusiasm displayed in Danielson on Citizenship Day also applied to all Jewish communities of survivors in America, as newcomers were generally extremely grateful for the refuge they had found in the United States under the Truman administration and under the 1953 Refugee Act during the Eisenhower presidency. The 1952 final report of the DP Commission, The DP Story, noted the eagerness with which all the DPs applied for citizenship.42

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Newcomer Organizations: Bridges between Old European and New American Culture In all major American cities with a significant number of survivors, there were “newcomer organizations” in addition to the landsmanschaftn in which Holocaust experiences were shared. In this respect the rural areas were no different. We have already mentioned the initiatives, especially the free loan associations, that survivors adopted in order to form an active community—one that others called “a community of survivors”— within the local chicken farmer community. Two other main initiatives are noteworthy: the efforts to preserve both Yiddish culture and the memory of the Holocaust, which may be considered an integrating factor on American soil. The Desire to Preserve Jewish Culture: Back to the Roots Among the numerous immigrant organizations, most of them self-help associations, the Jewish Poultry Farmer’s Association (JPFA) contributed to many endeavors in the region both financially and through manpower. Its founders wanted to establish continuity between the cultural milieu from which they had been uprooted and the American soil on which they could expect some sense of alienation. As mentioned previously, the JPFA launched mutual aid programs while reviving locally the use of Yiddish as the language of their meetings and records. In so doing, they also displayed independence from existing organizations in Vineland that were founded and headed by German Jews (from which, however, they were not excluded.) Sociocultural tensions existed within the Vineland Jewish community between three groups: the natives of Vineland, the Germans, and the eastern Europeans. Using the concept of an “ethnic frontier” helps to underscore the fact that a new body like the JPFA—a body that expressed two prevailing identities as common denominators of the Jewish farming community—could probably bridge the dividing line.43 A concrete example of this is that “even some native and German Jewish farmers, attracted to that type of Yiddishkeit from which they had unfortunately been more or less estranged, joined JPFA.”44 In this light, the words of the president of the JPFA, Miles Lerman (to whose creativity and intelligence we referred earlier), are noteworthy in being at first sight so much at odds with the very name of the JPFA. Yet the words are meant to set an example for other Jewish communities and to make an effort to recapture the rich past of which Jews had been brutally deprived: “The Jewish spiritual centers in Europe have been destroyed, but it is our duty, that of the saving remnant to create new spiritual and cultural bastions

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here in America for the sake of this greater part of our people now living outside of Israel.”45 Some remarks are called for at this stage. First, Lerman’s use of the word “bastion” powerfully conveys the idea of a battle that should not be lost, even after the destruction of the European spiritual and cultural centers. In plainer words: the war against Hitlerism was not over. Besides the cathartic value of continuing to wage a war while armed with spiritual and cultural weapons borrowed from the arsenal of the European Jewish heritage, Miles Lerman has a more positive intention: the transmission of heritage from one generation to the next. Second, the other striking word in these powerful lines is “redemption.” Its spiritual value needs not be dwelt upon. However, we may illustrate its impact on the Jewish farming community of rural America by emphasizing the fact that the synagogues that the Orthodox European Jews established in Vineland bore revealing names. To cite but two of them: She’erit Hapletah, literally rendered as “the surviving remnant,” and Congregation Agudat Achim, literally the “society of brothers”, put emphasis on the Jewish concept of “peoplehood” and the mythical as well as pragmatic notions it implies. Last but not least, a third point needs to be emphasized in what may be termed the “dialectics between ethnicity and integration”: the impact of The Jewish Farmer. Focusing on its last issue (December 1959) is a rewarding task, as well as a nostalgic pleasure for the researcher with a sentimental nature. The first of the six reasons given for discontinuing a costly publication is weighty enough: the Yiddish section is no longer needed, since all Jewish farmers have been in the United States for five years or more and “understand English fairly well.” The sixth illuminates the role this outstanding agricultural monthly magazine played throughout the years: “The argument that the Jewish Farmer was serving as the tribune of the entire Jewish farmer class in the country and in some ways as a unifying force for Jewish farmers the world over, was no doubt weighty” [emphasis mine].46 In this last issue, which bears the headline “‘Jewish Farmer’ Says Farewell to Its Readers,” there is an acknowledgement of the cultural value of the journal “besides its value as an agricultural paper.”47 It is difficult to gauge the impact of The Jewish Farmer on the willingness of Jews resettled on American soil to rekindle the flame of Yiddish culture. However, whether they joined existing Jewish communities or formed new ones like that in Danielson, Connecticut, the survivors expressed their desire to revive and transmit Jewish culture. Their involvement in various organizations—some of which, such as Poale Zion, had existed in Eastern Europe—testify to this yearning. Harry Levin acutely observed this fascinating phenomenon in the Vineland area in an article aptly entitled “A Haven for Refugees”:

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Here was a real Yiddish life transplanted from Eastern Europe to our shores. Many of our so-called “Native American Jews” had almost forgotten what a Yiddish word was, a Jewish play, a Yiddish concert. The group activities from the very beginning created actually a new Yiddish culture era in Vineland Jewish history. . . . Some are actively engaged in the work of the Poale Zion, the General Zionist Group, Mizrahi, and Hadassah.”48

Sharing and transmitting the memory of the Holocaust was not the least of the concerns of the survivor community. For the sake of brevity, I will only mention the most striking articles in The Jewish Farmer that relate to such commemorations. It is perhaps not redundant to underline the fact that survivors were commemorating their dead while attempting to gain acceptance into American society and trying to mix with their new neighbors.49 In 1954, only a short time after the arrival of the most recent newcomers, the survivor communities held a commemoration ceremony for the six million. It was followed by many others year after year. Although an entire article could deal with their contribution to the transmission of the memory of the Holocaust on American soil, it may suffice here to recall the fact that Benjamin Miller of the Jewish Agricultural Society made an appeal for the systematic collection of material pertaining to the persecution and extermination of European Jews and for the creation of a special museum that would keep these materials and memorialize the martyrs for future generations.50 In that sense, these communities have been prophetic in their great degree of Jewish identification.51 The remarkable involvement of the communities of farmer survivors on behalf of the State of Israel is another aspect that will be the subject of another study.

Conclusion Most agricultural settlements lasted until the 1960s, when industrialization made it difficult for small farmers to prosper. Nonetheless, attraction to rural life was justified by a number of motivations including the fact that a farmer is his own master, a notion that mattered since what survivors had gone through imparted to them a strong dislike for given orders. The independence and self-reliance which they had developed to escape the fate reserved to Jews during World War II were valuable qualities on the farm. Besides, for some, rural life retained the mythical appeal of redemption and security. Also, language difficulties were of much less consequence in this environment. As a second choice, one that followed the failure of life in an urban milieu, rural life brought the neces-

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sary rehabilitation in so far as social, cultural, and sometimes religious needs were met. The process of forging or reinforcing identities helped to mold the social and historical reality in which survivors sought to situate themselves. In that perspective, The Jewish Farmer was instrumental in instilling a sense of belonging to American Jewish farmers and survivors alike. Furthermore, the acclimatization of the newcomers was made successful by the bridge they built to connect their former European cultures to the American environment through various committees and associations combining the precepts of Judaism with the concept of self-help. As we have argued, the group identity of the survivors was far more complex than a collective identity of new American chicken farmers in so far as they established plural identities in congruence with the American milieu. To a certain extent, rural settlements were a refuge within the larger refuge of the United States, the traditional land of freedom and opportunity. The postwar newcomers were faithful to the American Jewish tradition of excellence, and most of them achieved excellence in their fields, as confirmed by records of the JAS, which was, again, dedicated to help “farm-minded Jews realize their ideals and aspirations.”52 In most places, the survivor immigrants retained the Jewish culture of the Old World. As sociologist William Helmreich rightly noted, “because they were insular and cohesive,” the farming communities provide a good example of the contributions survivors made both to the Jewish communities already created as well as to the ones they founded themselves. By preserving Jewish culture and initiating the commemoration of the Holocaust almost from the time they arrived in the United States, they raised the level of Jewish consciousness within some segments of American Jewry. The Americanization process survivors underwent was reflected in their financial contribution to Jewish and non-Jewish causes. Above all, their involvement in communal life was particularly strong in respect to both their preservation of the memory of the Holocaust and their interest for their brother farmers in Israel, as mentioned in The American Jewish Farmer in Changing Times.53 From that perspective, the evolution of The Jewish Farmer is emblematic of the change undergone by Jewish farmers themselves, and in particular the change undergone by survivor farmers. While The Jewish Farmer gradually diminished its Yiddish section, it continued as a bilingual publication. But by 1959, it maintained, the farmers were acculturated: “Every segment of our farming population is now so Americanized that there is no need for a foreign language publication” [emphasis mine].54

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Notes I am grateful to William Helmreich for his advice and to Lyn Slome of the American Jewish Historical Society for the help they provided in locating some of the sources. I wish to thank the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University for their generous assistance in my comparative research on the resettlement of Holocaust survivors. 1. The influence of restrictionists in Congress increased partly because a large majority of the refugees that had been admitted under the Truman Directive (December 22, 1945) were Jews. See Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 163. 2. The Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons Records (1946–1953), General/Multiethnic Collection, IHRC 454, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota. 3. Oral history and personal interviews record cases in which, at the moment they learned that the State of Israel had been declared, DPs tore up their American visas and decided to immigrate there. The 1948 annual report of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York section, Committee on Service for the Foreign Born states that “However, many Americans are reluctant to have their relatives who have suffered greatly in Europe face the current difficulties in Israel.” National Council of Jewish Women, Committee on Service for the Foreign Born, New York section 1895–2004, annual reports, 1948, p.1, I 469, box 45. 4. National Council of Jewish Women, New York section, Committee on Service for the Foreign Born, 1895–2004, annual reports, 1948 and 1950, I 469, box 45, American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History, New York.. 5. Paula Neuman Gris, interviewed by Françoise S. Ouzan, Atlanta, 1990; Grenoble 1999, and Jerusalem 2009. Interviews were also conducted in Jerusalem of children of survivors from the United States, in particular Los Angeles and Atlanta. Aliyah among children of survivors can also be noticed among those who migrated to Canada, Australia, and Argentina. Quantitative research is needed in this area. 6. Maria Devinki, interview by Françoise S. Ouzan, Kansas City, Missouri, August 1990; Paula Gris, interview by idem, Atlanta, Georgia, August 1994; Fanny Gottesfeld Heller, interview by idem, New York, August 2005. 7. Chaim Waxman, “The Holocaust, Orthodox Jewry and the American Jewish Community,” in Sociology Confronts the Holocaust, Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, ed. Judith M. Gerson and Diane L. Wolf (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 55. 8. Beth B. Cohen, Case Closed, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007). 9. Rhonda Levine, Class, Networks and Identity (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). 10. Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love, American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 11. See Gabriel Davidson, Our Jewish Farmers and the Story of the Jewish Agricultural Society (New York: L. B. Fisher, 1943). When Russian Jewry was hit by a wave of pogroms during the 1880s, especially after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Jews started to think of leaving their country to start afresh in hospitable lands. From

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the nobility of farm life (“In the plow, there be fortunes and blessings”) emerged two movements: Bilu, the first organized Zionist movement (whose name derives from the initials of four Hebrew words meaning “O House of Jacob, come ye and let us walk”), whose aim was to settle in Palestine, and a group called Am Olam (the Eternal People) oriented towards settling in America, where better conditions for agriculture could be expected. Those of the latter group planned to derive a livelihood from the soil as well as to found model communities on a more or less collectivist basis. The first was established in Louisiana but lasted only a short time, and was followed by the creation of others in Arkansas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Jersey. Herman J. Levine and Benjamin Miller, The American Jewish Farmer in Changing Times (New York: Jewish Agricultural Society, 1966), 8–9. It is noteworthy that the two main countries of resettlement of the Jewish DPs have been Palestine/Israel (in particular the kibbutzim) and the United States. 12. William Helmreich, “Don’t Look Back : Holocaust Survivors in the US,” Jerusalem Letter: Viewpoints 123 (1 October 1991): 4. 13. Memorandum, SHAEFF, number 39, April 16, 1945, G5, European Theater, Box 5, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. 14. Jewish Agricultural Society, Jews in American Agriculture: The History of Farming by Jews in the United States, Published on the Occasion of the American Jewish Tercentenary ([New York], 1954), 9, Archives of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, box 82, Center for Jewish History, New York. The figure of 2,000 Holocaust survivors comes from a report by Theodore Norman, Director of the Jewish Agricultural Society. Other sources mention 1,500 survivors and their families. Some refugees may have been counted together with displaced persons under the heading of “survivors.” 15. Emphasis is mine, as will be developed below. Two elements must be borne in mind here. First, in 1943 the survivors called themselves She’erit Hapletah (“the surviving remnant”). However, the biblical overtones of this expression point to the active part they took in their future. Zeev W. Mankowitz quotes a book by Leo Schwartz entitled The Redeemers, thus underscoring his reading of the She’erit Hapletah as “the saving remnants” rather than the “saved remnants”; see The Redeemers: A Saga of the Years 1945–1952 (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953). Even though we are dealing with small numbers of survivors in this study, as Mankowitz warns in his book, “the question of how to strike a right balance in the portrayal of She’erith Hapleitah persists.” See Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 9. Second, agricultural settlements brought back memories of the hakhsharah kibbutzim (communal agricultural training farms) that helped combat the debilitating effects of idleness in DP camps within the protective framework of kibbutzim, which could function as a substitute family. There, young people could prepare themselves for life in Eretz Israel, while pioneering Zionism emerged as a “lesson” of the Holocaust (ibid., 146). 16. Quoted in Jewish Agricultural Society, Jews in American Agriculture, 46. 17. Ibid., 47. It is interesting to note that in Argentina, where Jewish agricultural colonies had been created by Baron de Hirsch through the Jewish Colonization Association (1891), postwar immigration policies indirectly discriminated against the Jews by giving preference to Italians and Spaniards. See Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991). 18. DP Act, Public Laws, chapter 647, 25 June 1948, Official File 127; Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Here is the provision loosely interpreted by the members of the DPC: “First, Eligible Displaced Persons who have been previously

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engaged in agricultural pursuits and who will be employed in the United States in agricultural pursuits: Provided, That not less than 30 per centum of the visas issued pursuant this Act shall be made available exclusively to such persons; and Provided further, That the wife, and unmarried dependent child or children under twenty one years of age, of such persons may, in accordance with the regulations of the Commission, be deemed to be of that class of persons who have been previously engaged in agricultural pursuits and who will be employed in the United States in agricultural pursuits.” 19. Yad Vashem tapes of recordings dating back to the 1981 World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors held in Jerusalem. My personal interviews were begun in the 1990s. 20. Jewish Agricultural Society, Jews in American Agriculture, 50. 21. Jacob M. Maze, “Jewish Farmers Build Top Poultry County in the USA,” Jewish Farmer 50, no. 2 (Feb. 1957): 1. Maze was the manager of the western office of the Jewish Agricultural Society between 1945 and 1960. In this article, he praises Jewish farmers, immigrant Jews from American urban areas, refugees, and DPs “who preferred to rebuild their broken lives on the land of free America.” In so doing, they and the JAS strongly contributed to the “amazing jump [of Monmouth County, NJ] from obscurity and insignificance in egg production to scale the heights to the notable rank of being the leading county in the United States in the number of egg producing chickens.” 22. Joseph Berger, Displaced Persons: Growing up American after the Holocaust (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001), 90–94. Berger’s mother rejected life on the farm, even though her husband had been a farmer and friends of theirs who resettled in Lakewood had shown them the way: “She had grander, more cosmopolitan visions of what her life might amount to, visions that she had tasted in her teen-aged year in Warsaw. . . . The air was dusty and feathery. None of us slept well. In the morning we rose early to have breakfast and catch a return bus to New York.” 23. Howard Ginsburg, interview by telephone and email correspondence by Françoise Ouzan, January 2006. Ginsburg was born in the Foehrenwald DP camp (a major DP camp in the American zone of occupation in Germany) and has worked the land all his life in Troy, in upstate New York, with his father Mordehai Ginsburg, a partisan who had been a cattle dealer in Poland. However, his mother never agreed to live on the farm they eventually owned, as she wanted to be near a synagogue and schools for the children. 24. Gabriel Davidson, “The Romance of Jewish Farm Life in the United States,” Jewish Forum (June 1946): 131–33. The Phoenix Effect, a feature-length documentary about second-generation survivors who grew up in Vineland after the Holocaust, concludes with the transference of trauma effects to the newest generation of survivors. To give but one example, this conclusion contrasts with the impression of success expressed by one Auschwitz survivor presented in the film, Sol Finkelstein, who admits: “We came out of the ashes . . . the pits of concentration camps, and raised a very sane . . . a very effective family . . . all of us . . . that’s the phoenix effect.” He and his wife had become chicken farmers. His wife, who survived Bergen-Belsen, voices a deep feeling of isolation, even from the American Jewish community. Sharyn C. Blumenthal, with the collaboration of Edith Hirshtal, The Phoenix Effect, 16mm, color, 59 min. (2004). 25. Arthur Goldhaft, The Golden Egg (New York: Horizon Press, 1957), 268–69. Goldhaft was the vetrinarian who provided both financial support and friendly advice to the newcomers. Miles Lerman’s itinerary is worth bearing in mind as it shows so much coherence and relevance to our perspective. He became a prominent contribu-

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tor to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Lerman died in 2008 after having achieved his goals relating to Yiddish culture and the commemoration and teaching of the Holocaust. 26. Levine and Miller, American Jewish Farmer, 85. 27. Ibid., 86. 28. Phillip Naftaly, “Jewish Chicken Farmers in the Egg Basket of the World: The Creation of Cultural Identity in Petaluma, California,” SACC Notes (Fall–Winter 1995– 96): 25. 29. Goldhaft, The Golden Egg, 269. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 267. 32. Levine and Miller, American Jewish Farmer, 38. 33. Howard Ginzburg, interview. 34. The most relevant oral history recordings for this topic are the Yad Vashem tapes, which date back to the 1980 World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors held in Jerusalem; the interviews conducted by William Helmreich are now on deposit at the Oral History Department of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Spielberg Video Archives of the Shoah Visual Foundation. 35. Kenneth L. Kann, Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a California Jewish Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 179. 36. This is in part what Elie Wiesel suggested in A Jew Today (New York: Random House, 1978). 37. Kann, Comrades and Chicken Ranchers, 179. 38. The subject of gendered identity on the farm is outside the scope of the present article and will be addressed in a forthcoming study. On social networks and the role of community in maintaining ethnic identity, see Rhonda F. Levine, Class. Networks, and Identity: Replanting Jewish Lives from Nazi Germany to Rural New York (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 113–32. Focusing on German refugees in particular, the author shows that the recreation of German-Jewish communities in rural New York served both to maintain and convey Jewish identity. 39. Jewish Agricultural Society, Jews in American Agriculture, 51. 40. Ibid, 43–44. 41. Jewish Farmer 45 (November 1952): 128. 42. Françoise S. Ouzan, “L’immigration des personnes déplacées sous la présidence de Truman: l’exemple des Juifs,” 3 vols. (PhD diss., Sorbonne University Paris I, 1993). On the difficult admission of the Jewish DPs to America and the role of the Cold War, see idem, Ces Juifs dont l’Amérique ne voulait pas, 1945–1950 (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1995). For an excellent study of American attitudes towards the DPs, see Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 43. A concept I am borrowing from Norwegian anthropologist Fredrick Barth. 44. I. Harry Levin, “Vineland, a Haven for Refugees,” in Tenth Anniversary Journal (JPFA, 1962) 6, quoted by Joseph Brandes (in association with Mark Douglas), Immigrants to Freedom: Jewish Communities in Rural New Jersey since 1882 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1971), 331. 45. Miles Lerman, “Jewish Vineland and the Newcomers,” Tenth Anniversary Journal (JPFA, 1962), 43. Archives of the American Jewish Historical Society (Baron de Hirsch, microfilms), Center for Jewish History, New York, also quoted by Brandes, Immigrants to Freedom, 330. Brandes emphasizes that the resilience and uniqueness of the survivors was recognized in the farming settlements: “More than any others

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before them, they had undergone years of suffering—in the concentration camps, among the partisan fighters of the East European forests, or in some cellar hiding place. Yet, they proved particularly resilient and stable in their efforts to learn the ways of their adopted country.” Ibid., 327. 46. The emphasized passage is intended to throw light once again on the consciously built identity of the Jewish farmer, one among the plural identities survivors established in congruence with the American milieu. 47. Jewish Farmer 52 (December 1959). 48. Levin, “Vineland,” 5. 49. See Françoise S. Ouzan, “Antisemitism in the US at the End of the War and in Its Aftermath: Attitudes toward Displaced Persons,” in Antisemitism Worldwide, 2003/2004 (Tel Aviv: Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary AntiSemitism and Racism, Tel-Aviv University, 2005), 51–74; also at http://www.tau. ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/ouzan.htm. 50. Breina Goldman, “Hazkoroh zum elften yortog nuch die 6 million hakedoshim” (Memorial ceremony for the eleventh year of the extermination of the Six Million Martyrs), Der Yiddishe Farmer 74 (1954); Alfred Rosinek, “Groise Yomtof in Dorothy, New Jersey” (Important commemoration in Dorothy, NJ); Der Yiddisher Farmer (1958); Benjamin Miller, “Jewish Farmers in Connecticut,” Jewish Farmer (1958): 77–81; Breina Goldman, “Hazhoroh zum zwelften yortog fun Ghetto oifshtand,” (Twelfth memorial ceremony for the ghetto uprising in Warsaw), Der Yiddisher Farmer (1955): 79. 51. William Helmreich, “Research Report: Postwar Adaptation of Holocaust Survivors in the United States,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2 (1987): 309. On resettlement of survivors in general, see idem, Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). 52. Maze, “Jewish Farmers.” Jewish DPs were intentionally called New Americans by the welfare organizations which dealt with them, such as the United States Service for New Americans (USNA), in order to underplay their Jewish identity and facilitate their integration. For instance, the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) cooperated with the Jewish Agricultural Society and advanced interestfree loans to survivors under the supervision of the JAS. Without this cooperation, the resettlement of these uprooted Jewish populations could not have been achieved. See Levine and Miller, American Jewish Farmer, 35; United Service for New Americans records, 1945–1954, American Jewish Historical Society, I-93; USNA, 1946– 1955, YIVO Archives, RG 246, Center for Jewish History, New York. 53. The American Jewish Farmer in Changing Times, pp. 92-93. 54. Levine and Miller, American Jewish Farmer, 58. “‘Jewish Farmer’ Says Farewell to Its Readers,” Jewish Farmer 52 (December 1959). The word “foreign” is indicative of a major change: Were new roots to be found from then on in the New World? Was this report too self-satisfactory? Without indulging in a romantic vision of life on the farm, we may emphasize the therapeutic aspect of farming. Indeed, the gratifying vision of growing vegetables or trees could, in some cases, act as therapy for the traumatized survivors by engendering a feeling of rebirth in harmony with nature.

11

ATTITUDES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN BUENOS AIRES TOWARDS HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, 1945–49 Leonardo Senkman



Legal and Illegal Entry of Holocaust Survivors into Postwar Argentina The regime of Juan Perón (1946–55), which reopened the gates of Argentina to European immigration according to his populist Five Year Plan for modernizing of the economy and society of the “New Argentina,” raised high expectations among potential Italian and Spanish immigrants. In the five years from 1947 to 1951, about 600,000 immigrants settled permanently in Argentina, compared to nearly 127,000 in the fourteen-year period between 1933 and 1946. But the New Argentina, whose postwar economy was marked by years of growth, development, and a demand for manpower to be filled by European immigrants, discriminated against the entrance of She’erit Hapletah DPs.1 In the three years 1945–47, Jewish sources recorded the legal immigration of no more than 1,000 to 1,500 Jews, while the bulk of Jewish immigrants entered Argentina illegally.2 However, on the positive side, illegal immigrants were pardoned in large numbers by a general amnesty

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granted by the Perón government. According to the Society for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants (Soprotimis)—the immigration aid society in Argentina, sponsored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), that lobbied for the unification of families—by the end of 1949, nearly ten thousand Jews had taken advantage of the opportunity granted by the populist government, and several hundred more did so during the first quarter of 1950. We do not know precisely how many of the Jews who benefited from the amnesty settled in Argentina after the Holocaust, nor how many non-Jewish immigrants—including Nazis and Nazi collaborators—were pardoned as well. The only figures available for these years are Simon Weill’s estimates for the total number of Jewish immigrants, both legal and illegal. According to Weill’s figures, reviewed by Haim Avni, 800 entered Argentina in 1945, 500 in 1946, another 500 in 1947, 2,000 in 1948, and 1,000 in 1949, for a total of 4,800. If we accept Soprotimis’s figures, which state that 1,500 Jews entered the country legally, then the remaining 3,300 must have been illegals.3 It should be borne in mind that these figures of Jews illegally entering Argentina are much lower than those published later by HIAS. According to that institution, 5,180 arrived in 1948 and 3,090 in 1949, including both legal and illegal Jewish immigrants who arrived from neighboring countries and whose entry was then legalized by the amnesty granted by Perón.4 In comparative terms, Argentina became de facto the most important haven in Latin America for survivors during the postwar years, although de jure these survivors were not legally admitted by the Perón regime. In contrast, Brazil gave legal entry to 1,485 Jews in 1946 (of whom only 450 remained in the country), and the HIAS office in Rio de Janeiro registered 2,637 Jewish arrivals in 1947 (of whom only 193 stayed on). The rest of the survivors continued on to Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.5 We know a little, through oral history, about how illegal DPs succeeded in entering Argentina, and we are also well informed about the limited success the local Jewish organizations had in changing the Peronist immigration policy against survivors in need of visas to Argentina. However, we scarcely know anything about the ambiguous attitudes and efforts of the Jewish community to help those DPs who entered Argentina legally. This, precisely, is the main objective of this study. A great number of articles and studies have been devoted to the issue of Argentinean hostility towards Jewish survivors as compared to their attitude toward fleeing Nazis and their collaborators, who did find refuge in Buenos Aires(although the Peronist regime was not the only country that remained unmoved by the demands Jewish international organizations made on behalf of Jewish

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DPs.)6 Let us bear in mind the case of another country of immigration, Canada, from which the Canadian Jewish Congress obtained only two thousand entry permits for Jews between 1945 to 1948.7 The main questions to be addressed in this chapter are: How did the central Argentine Jewish institution that dealt with immigration react to government discrimination against survivors? To what extent did the Jewish establishment and welfare organizations such as Soprotimis assist and help those survivors to enter both legally and illegally? And how did the local relatives of those survivors who begged them to bring them legally into Argentina react and behave?

The Argentine Jewish Community Faces the Plight of the Survivors Prior to the Holocaust, both the Jewish establishment in Argentina and the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA)—the body responsible for the huge agricultural and Jewish immigration project in the country that had been operating since the late nineteenth century—refrained from any explicit encouragement of immigration to Argentina. As has been demonstrated by Haim Avni’s pioneering study, the JCA refused to consider agricultural settlement as a means of expanding immigration, even during the years when Argentina’s immigration policy afforded an opportunity to bring in more Jews. HIAS-JCA-Emigdirekt (HICEM), the international organization devoted to emigration, did not see its task as encouraging of emigration to Argentina or to any other country; its role was to assist those who had individually decided to emigrate, irrespective of their chosen destination.8 This situation changed a little during the Holocaust years, but basically Jewish immigration and rescue to Argentina remained a personal enterprise that involved the immigrant and his or her close relatives. During both the war and postwar years, the Jewish organizations modified their stance by approaching the Argentinean authorities on behalf of potential refugees, but restrictions and discrimination closed the ports of the country to the legal entry of Jews. When illegal immigration became the main way for refugees to enter the country during 1938–41, the Jewish organizations now employed their limited resources to help these de facto immigrants legalize their status. From the outset, the JCA refused to be a party to fictitious authorizations of settlement. Thus, the colonization scheme of the JCA was a solution only for those few individuals who could endure the rough life of farmers. Consequently, this situation became even worse after the war, and the role the JCA played in assist-

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ing survivors was limited to its support of Soprotimis locally and HICEM internationally. However, after its breakaway from HIAS in November 1945 and the dismantling of HICEM, the JCA was much less involved in Soprotimis’s activities. Its interest flagged all the more after the war, when candidates for agricultural settlement in Argentina became increasingly hard to find, and the few who met the JCA’s requirements were refused visas by Argentina’s Immigration Department. HIAS, which took over HICEM’s duties, continued to maintain close ties with Soprotimis and to contribute small sums to its budget.9 During Santiago Peralta’s term of office as director-general of the Immigration Department, which lasted until July 1947, it was impossible to obtain entry permits even for first-of-kin, and the few permits that were somehow secured were not approved by the Argentine consular agents in Europe, according to Soprotimis’s annual report for 1948. However, as noted above, figures for 1948 illegal Jewish survivors and other immigrants rose dramatically. That year, the government granted an amnesty to thousands of immigrants who lacked documents and who were considered illegal, an amnesty that clearly benefited the Jews.10 The government’s discriminatory postwar immigration policy against the Jews led to ever-increasing attempts to enter the country illegally. As during the first wartime years, the neighboring countries—especially Paraguay—were used as a cover. There were various agents in Buenos Aires and Paraguay who operated independently, helping Jews in Argentina and elsewhere to obtain visas for their relatives. However, the Argentine immigration service did not grant transit visas easily as it had in 1934–36. Transit passengers reaching the port of Buenos Aires in 1946–47 were denied permission to disembark until their destination was confirmed. In previous years, when Paraguay was prepared to issue visas to Jewish immigrants, travelers took advantage of their transit visas to remain in Argentina. They were required to pay the full price of an Argentine visa at the consulate in Europe, but were eligible for a refund when they arrived in Asunción. Instead of going on to the Paraguayan capital, many Jewish immigrants disembarked in Buenos Aires and disappeared into the multitudes. Others spent a few days in Paraguay and crossed the border back into Argentina after receiving their refund. A tactic common among those who lacked a full set of papers was to apply for a tourist visa. Prior to the war years, Argentina still welcomed tourists, despite the restrictions on immigration, and immigrants and Jewish refugees from Germany or Austria could pretend they were tourists and travel first class, although the cost was high. But in the postwar years, poor Jewish survivors could not pass themselves off as tourists.

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In the postwar years, two ways were still open to survivors who wished to reach Argentina: legal permits for immigrants to Paraguay through Argentina, with appropriate transit visas, and illegal crossing of the border from neighboring countries. After reaching their destinations in Paraguay, Bolivia, or Uruguay, the survivors would return to Argentina by stealing across the border or by crossing the Parana and Uruguay Rivers. However, when tighter control was introduced in the northern provinces, many of these border-crossers found themselves in jail. Through cartas de llamada (requests for family reunification), local families could bring over their parents and children with the assistance of Soprotimis. According to the immigration regulations, cousins, brothersin-law, and siblings were not eligible to join their families in Argentina. Despite this, Soprotimis did its best in negotiations with the Immigration Department to beg for mercy on behalf of these ineligible family members who were still in Europe. Unable to join their families in Argentina, Soprotimis managed to arrange legal crossing for them into Paraguay if the local family could succeed in acquiring transit visas to Paraguay. No applications would be accepted by Soprotimis from anyone who did not have such transit visas. Surprisingly, considering their unbending attitude toward those who sought visas in order to join their families, Argentine authorities were more responsive to border-crossers and to tourist or transit passengers whose real intention was to remain in Argentina illegally. But Soprotimis refused to be involved in the illegal traffic of Argentine transit visas, a trade carried out by intermediaries with influence in Argentine political and police circles and good connections with corrupt officials in the Migration and Agricultural-Colonization Department of Paraguay. This Paraguayan government department was authorized to issue cartas de llamada on behalf of the survivors. Then, Paraguayan consuls in Europe were authorized to issue visas on the basis of the personal documents survivors had, irrespective of whether they held passports or other such kinds of official documentation. By a similar method, Nazi spies and German refugees who were fleeing Allied justice were granted entry visas.11 A survivor in Europe who wanted to emigrate to South America was unable to receive a permit to leave the DP camps without being able to produce both a llamada and a visa. However, on many occasions survivors who did manage to receive entry permits into Paraguay were not issued visas by the Paraguayan consuls in Europe, who did not always honor the authorization issued by the immigration officials in Asunción.12 Unlike the considerable efforts invested by Soprotimis before the war to assist illegal Jewish refugees through welfare committees if they agreed to settle far from Buenos Aires, in 1946–49 this organization refrained from becoming involved in helping clandestine border-crossers into Ar-

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gentina. Instead, Soprotimis’ endeavor during these years was to assist the thousands of illegal Jews already in Argentina in legalizing their status.13 As a result, legalization of both survivors who lacked the required papers and the bulk of illegal Jewish refugees who had arrived between 1938 and 1941 became a more urgent and pressing issue for Soprotimis, which was by now the only major organization left in Argentina during the postwar years that assisted Jewish immigrants. Handling the day-to-day affairs of the illegal immigrants was now almost exclusively in the hands of Soprotimis, which dealt with two challenges: to bring survivors to Argentina, and at the same time to legalize the status of Jewish illegal immigrants.

Bringing Survivors to Argentina: The Challenge Faced by Soprotimis Bringing survivors to Argentina was no easy task for Soprotimis, given the need work under government administrative regulations against the immigration of Jews. Together with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC), Soprotimis had first of all to endeavor to locate in Argentina relatives and families of survivors in the European DP camps. Secondly, once the relatives were located they had to submit legal applications on behalf of those survivors who were family members. However, in order to ask for a carta de llamada, they first had to prove that they themselves had been residents of Argentina for at least two years. In addition, they had to prove that the survivors they intended to bring over were their first of kin, the only immigrants for whom it was permitted to request cartas de llamadas, according to the Argentine authorities. Third, while Soprotimis had to provide legal assistance to the local relatives in order to make it possible for them to get through all the administrative processes of immigration, at the same time its officials had to convince these relatives that all legal and other expenses incurred in this process should be borne exclusively by the relatives. As we will see, sometimes the local family refused to pay those costs, not to mention the cost of bringing a survivor relative to Argentina from Europe. The fourth task of Soprotimis was to help those survivors who were denied disembarkation in Buenos Aires to get transit visas in order to reach their final destination in neighboring countries such Paraguay or Bolivia. Soprotimis usually received information on the movements and present whereabouts of the survivors from the survivors themselves through the HIAS offices in the DP camps. Other sources of information were the lists of survivors published by the Jewish press of Buenos Aires in 1946–47.

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The personal files of survivors who were assisted by Soprotimis in Buenos Aires between 1946 and 1949 are a very rich primary source for the study of their transit to Paraguay.14 Furthermore, the attitude of the local and international Jewish organizations to their plight is attested to in many personal files. From dozens of individual files in the Soprotimis archives, a gloomy picture of bureaucratic delay and apathy on the part of the central Jewish institutions towards the needs of the survivors emerges. In addition, the files are informative about the ambiguous reactions—and at times the indifference—of local families once survivors had notified them directly of the survivors’ desire to come to Argentina. The first priority of local relatives was to bring over to Argentina only parents, brothers, and sisters. I came across cases in which relatives in Argentina were notified by Soprotimis that it had located first cousins, but the relatives insisted that they be financially involved with the llamada only if Soprotimis would first be able to locate their parents. Sometimes, local relatives even refused to help in pushing forward delayed administrative procedures regarding cousins for whom Soprotimis has just submitted a request for a carta de llamada. These relatives agreed to help only on the condition that Soprotimis should first notify them of the likely whereabouts of their parents.15 However, in most cases local relatives were prepared to open a file through Soprotimis in order to apply for cartas de llamadas on behalf of survivors who were relatives of the second degree, and they were prepared to pay the full expenses incurred. But sometimes, in the case of bringing over a cousin or a nephew, the local applicant relative refused to repay the travel loan the AJJDC had provided: “Had I known that I ought to pay the travel bill of my two nephews, I would have not sent the carta de llamada to them,” replied one local relative when a Soprotimis official demanded that he pay the full travel costs of his Polish orphaned nephews before they could embark from Paris to Buenos Aires.16 This was not an ordinary case of an insolvent relative unable to pay, but one of a person who lacked feelings of solidarity toward survivors who were relatives of the second degree. However, the most frequent cases involved poor relatives who had a deep sense of family solidarity, and from whom HIAS and Soprotimis demanded the full travel expenses of their survivor relatives. The Argentinean relatives were not always able to cover the cost of travel by themselves, and often lacked the economic resources to repay the travel loans the AJJDC provided. In these cases, survivors were frequently branded as “not suitably eligible” immigrants for HIAS. Soprotimis refrained from starting its bureaucratic handling of the immigration processes through the HIAS offices in New York and Europe

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until the local relatives of the survivor could guarantee payment of the travel costs, part in cash and part by a promissory note with a solvent guarantor. Usually, the delay in beginning such handling of the paperwork, from the moment the survivor was located until HIAS commenced to act on his behalf, may be put down to the difficulties the local relative encountered in presenting Soprotimis with a fit guarantor to ensure payment of the promissory note. I found no cases of a HIAS-provided loan for travel expenses without a suitable guarantor that had been presented to Soprotimis by the local relatives, and then always on the condition that the debt and administrative expenses should be borne by this guarantor. Such precautionary measures may explain why it took a long time for HIAS to begin the acquisition of an exit permit for a survivor in the DP camps; the same precautionary measures also explain the long delays before HIAS began the family reunification process for those survivors who lived outside the camps. Some files reveal that the local relative frequently had to replace the proposed guarantor with another in better financial circumstances. The solvency and responsibility of both the local relatives and their sponsors/guarantors were scrutinized with caution and suspicion by a special subcommittee of Soprotimis charged with deciding about the granting or refusal of loans to local relatives of the survivors. Incidentally, from these confidential reports it is possible to learn even more about the ambivalent and contradictory attitudes of relatives towards the survivors, especially the prejudicial statements relatives’ wives and sons made against them made to Soprotimis inspectors.17 Only in a few cases of absolute poverty did I find that Soprotimis had decided to submit a request to the Buenos Aires AJJDC office to exempt the applicants from having to pay of the travel expenses of their survivor relatives.18 Furthermore, in Soprotimis files relating to individuals, I found not one case of assistance or guarantee given by the leading Jewish institution of Buenos Aires. Soprotimis tried to obtain money from the local emergency fund, the Comité Central Unido de Socorro para las Víctimas de la Guerra, which the Jewish community had established with the purpose of assisting illegal immigrants who has just arrived in Argentina, rather than assisting with the immigration of survivors in the DP camps. Only paltry sums were devoted by the Comité Central to legalization efforts, and even less to immigration to Buenos Aires. The fundraisers’ assumption was that the illegals were not in danger of expulsion and that the money would be better spent to help those who were still homeless in Europe. Argentina was perceived by the Comité Central as a country whose

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doors were locked and bolted, whereas Palestine offered greater prospects for both legal and illegal immigration. For the local Zionist community, assisting survivors in Europe to go on aliyah to Palestine took ideological priority over bringing survivors to Argentina.19 According to the balance sheet for September 1945–December 1946, the Comité Central granted Soprotimis only 37,561 pesos for social relief to survivors in Argentina, in contrast to the 1,298,042 pesos that it devoted to assisting survivors in European DP camps.20 Transit visas helped only those survivors whose relatives in Buenos Aires were willing and able to pay bribes—which varied in amount according to each case—in order to have the authorities honor the visas they had already issued. The Jewish community and Soprotimis refused to pay bribes for transit visas or to finance legalization procedures on behalf of the survivors who had entered Argentina illegally. From the Soprotimis archival documentation reviewed, we learn that those Jews living in Buenos Aires who were prepared to pay for transit visas for relatives of the second degree were ready to do so only on condition that HIAS would pay the full price of their travel. Such a demand led to arguments and caused additional delays in beginning the immigration procedure on behalf of the survivors. Interestingly, however, the real reason for such behavior on the part of the local relatives was often a lack of interest in reunification with distant family members, not a matter of money.

The Role of Landsmanschaftn in Assisting Survivors In sharp contrast to the formal communal organizations, some landsmanschaftn played an important role in assisting those survivors who had been abandoned due to the apathy of their families in Buenos Aires and the indifference of the central Jewish institutions. The landsmanschaft societies that emerged in the late 1910s and the 1920s as Jews from the same country or hometown banded together played an important role in the absorption of survivors during the years following World War II. The landsmanschaftn most active in this respect were notably those organized by Polish, Galician, and Romanian Jews, all of which provided a cultural niche for people from the same hometown in addition to advice and economic assistance. The Association of Polish Jewry (Polisher Farband) also operated as a formal address for family and relatives’ references, which were required in order to bring over relative survivors from Poland.21 In addition, the Asociacion Filantropica of the German Jews operated

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alongside the landmanschaftn in offering aid to Holocaust survivors from their hometowns. The landsmanschaft of Jews from Galicia paid the required sums for llamadas on behalf of the acquaintances of its members; in addition, during 1947 and 1948 it covered between 25 and 30 percent of the price of many of the travel tickets HIAS provided to survivors coming to Buenos Aires.22 The landsmanschaft of former residents of Ostrowiec also assisted with many passages to to Paraguay, and even refunded the debts to HIAS that a few local families had contracted and refused to pay.23 In August 1947, the landsmanschaft of Jews from Siedlec helped one of its members pay the travel costs for his sister and young son from the DP camp of Rochelle after the HIAS office in Paris sent Soprotimis a summary warning that it would stop handling their exit permits if the economic problem could not be settled.24 The landsmanschaft of Jews from Radom provided economic assistance and legal counsel to a survivor widow and her two sons who had all been arrested as illegals during their prolonged stay in Buenos Aires while in transit to Bolivia. The widow’s brother, a resident in Buenos Aires, pretended to be unaware of the economic and legal problems his sister and nephew faced. This being the case, members of the landsmanschaft who were old friends of the woman came to her and her sons’ aid with both money and a writ of habeas corpus to obtain their release from prison. Once they were freed, Soprotimis handled the procedure for guaranteeing their transit to Bolivia.25 This case reveals that sentiments of solidarity and mutual ties developed by such locality-based associations with survivors were sometimes more remarkable than those developed through family ties. There are dramatic cases of complaints and suffering by survivors due to HIAS’s inexplicable delay in providing them with exit permits from the DP camps in Germany, even though their relatives in Buenos Aires had long ago received the llamadas for Paraguay. In addition, there were cases in which Paraguayan consuls in Bordeaux after October 1948 refused to issue visas, even though the llamadas has been granted a long time ago. The handling of llamadas and entry permits to Paraguay and Argentina on behalf of the Kerschnbaum family went on for four long years, a dramatic case well documented in the Soprotimis papers.26 Furthermore, individual files in the Soprotimis Archives provide extensive documentation about complaints to HIAS both by the relatives in Buenos Aires and the survivors in the DP camps, demanding to be informed why their immigration had been postponed for such a long time after their applications for llamada.27

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Landsmanschaftn and the First Stage in the Creation of a Collective Memory of the Hurben It comes as no surprise that the first initiative to create a collective memory of the Hurben (the term used by Yiddish-speaking survivors, long before it would become known as Holocaust or Shoah) in Argentina was carried out by the most central organization among Jewish landsmanschaftn: the Polisher Farband. Unlike the other sites of memory and commemoration established by the central Jewish institutions, the objective of the landsmanschaft initiative was to commemorate the vanished Jewish world of eastern Europe, not only to erect memorials to the murdered Jews of Poland. The first book of testimony in the Yiddish commemorative series Dos Polishe Idntum (Polish Jewry) was published in 1946 and based on the testimonies of Malka Owsiany, an Auschwitz survivor who had settled in Buenos Aires. The editor of this volume and of the series was Yiddish journalist Mark Turkow, then a HIAS official in Buenos Aires who would later be appointed executive director of the Latin American branch of the World Jewish Congress. Dos Polishe Idntum—a series comprising 176 volumes published over a period of twenty years—includes a variety of documented memoirs, personal diaries, photographs, maps, and notebooks on Polish Jews that testify to and memorialize their hometowns and a myriad of small shtetls before and during the catastrophe.28 This monumental enterprise commemorating the Hurben was the vanguard outcome of the unique conception of Trauerabeit (“the work of mourning”) that many years later Saul Friedländer would recommend as a genuine Holocaust politics of memory: “Working through the past means confronting the individual voice . . . without giving in to the temptation of closure.”29 According to Samuel Rollansky, the director of YIVO in Buenos Aires and someone personally involved in the project, Dos Polishe Idntum was devoted to commemorating vanished Polish Jewry, its distinctive culture, and its way of life before the Holocaust, as well as serving as an outstanding living tribute to the lost communities as perpetuated through the landsmanschaftn and the survivors.30 It is noteworthy that already in the immediate post-Holocaust years the Polish landsmanschaftn in Argentina grasped the necessity of commemoration and the impossibility of Trauerabeit to fathom the meaning of the the fatal period that they called in Yiddish Hurben: a catastrophe that is eternally destined to remain beyond consolation. While the central institution of the Jewish community built funerary monuments in permanent locations, hoping for symbolic commemoration and spiritual catharsis, Dos Polishe Idntum brought to the broad spectrum of Yiddish readers inside and outside of Argentina a commemoration of

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the Shoah through a series of volumes that dealt with the immediate past “of what remains indeterminate, elusive, and opaque.” In addition to this series, as early as Fall 1940 the landsmanschaftn in Argentina began to publish memorial books (yizkor bicher) for their destroyed small shtetls and hometowns.31

Conclusions In the postwar years, the central Jewish institutions once again demonstrated greater sensitivity to the plight of Jewish survivors in Europe and greater commitment to the struggle to create the State of Israel than they did to the immigration and relocation of Jewish DPs in Argentina. The hostile immigration policy of the Perón government toward Jewish survivors was not conceived of by the local Jewish leadership as an act of blatant antisemitism. On the contrary: not only was government policy not accompanied by any state action against the established Jewish community, but Perón himself cultivated correct formal relations with this community and praised the spirit of Jewish national solidarity and the Zionist cause.32 The contradictory Peronist policy of inclusion-exclusion seemed to prove to the Jewish leadership that although immigration restrictions excluded survivors whom the government deemed “undesirable,” it did not contradict Perón’s stance on granting legitimacy to the “desirable” established Argentine Jewish community. Strengthening the community was not possible through increased legal immigration, but rather by transforming the established institutions into the framework of an accepted and legitimate ethnoreligious and cultural Jewish Kehillah. In fact, during the postwar years the Jewish community did go through a process of consolidation and growth, and it was able to claim legitimacy as an ethnic and religious community of immigrants, a legitimacy similar to the type Perón granted to other ethnonational immigrant collectivities in Argentina such as Spaniards, Italians, and Germans.33 Helping illegal ìmmigrant survivors was not a priority for the central Jewish institutions such as DAIA and AMIA whose leadership was skilled primarily in communal affairs related to education, worship, burial, charity, antidefamation efforts, Zionism, and building the groundwork for the complex institutional system that expanded significantly in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Handling the legalization and family reunification of the survivors remained a secondary issue, one that only a handful of activ-

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ists in AMIA pursued and one confined to the administrative efforts of Soprotimis. Yet Jewish leaders were far from silent in confronting Argentina’s immigration policy that drastically limited the number of survivors allowed to enter its gates. They were effective in individual cases, and some leaders acted directly in the ancient shtadlan34 tradition of quiet intercession on behalf of survivors. Similar to their performance during the Holocaust era, in the postwar years leaders lacked the political experience necessary for lobbying in the public sphere against the hostile immigration policy. Under the authoritarian populist democracy of Perón, these leaders refrained from flooding the media with protests and organizing repeated mass demonstrations. But this was not for a lack of will or courage, let alone from indifference to the suffering of survivors. Under these conditions, the choice of legal immigration to Argentina (for those few survivors who did so) was influenced basically by his or her personal connections with local relatives and landsleit, people from their home town. From the individual case files of Soprotimis, we learn that solitude characterized the first years survivors in the DP camps spent, forced to wait for long periods until their local relatives agreed to apply on their behalf, until sponsors and guarantors could be found, and until HIAS finally brought them to Argentina. The attitudes these local relatives displayed sometimes revealed mixed feelings toward the survivors.

Notes

1.

2. 3. 4.

This is a shorter version of a more extensive essay in French: “Les survivants de la Shoah en Argentine: représentation et mémoire au sein de la societé globale et de la communauté juive, 1945–1950,” in De la mémoire de la Shoah dans le monde juif, ed. Françoise S. Ouzan and Dan Michman (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2008: 391–420.) Leonardo Senkman, “Etnicidad e Inmigracion durante el primer Peronismo,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe 3, no 2 (July–Dec. 1992): 5–39; Miguel Galante, “La construcción de políticas migratorias en tiempos de transición y consolidación del primer peronismo: del nacionalismo racista a la planificación económico-social y la promoción de la inmigración,” Ciclos en la Historia, la Economía y la Sociedad, 30 (2005): 247–72. Mark Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration since 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1948), 291. Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991), 192–93. According to HIAS, the total number of Jews entering Argentina both legally and illegally during 1948 and 1949 was 8,270; in addition, 1,053 entered in 1950 and another 878 in 1951, for a total of 10,201 Jews; see Mark Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom: The History of HIAS (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Co., 1956), 229–30.

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5. Ibid., 230; Jeff Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 221, Table 5. Lesser’s figures are based on Wischnitzer’s earlier study, To Dwell in Safety: the Story of Jewish Migration since 1800, Philadelphia, 1948, p. 198. 6. See Leonardo Senkman, “Perón y la entrada de tecnicos alemanes y colaboracionistas con los nazis, 1947–1949: un caso de cadena migratoria,” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 31 (1995): 673–704; Holger M. Meding, Flucht vor Nürnberg?: Deutsche und osterreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien 1945–1955 (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1992), chapters 3 and 4; see also the special issues on the flight to Argentina of Nazis, war criminals, and collaborators: Ignacio F. Klich, ed., “Los Nazis en la Argentina: politica y economia”, Ciclos en la Historia, la Economía y la Sociedad, 19 (2000), and “Inmigrantes, refugiados y criminals de Guerra en la Argentina de la segunda posguerra”, Numero monofrafico de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, 43 (1999). 7. Harold Tropper, “Canada and the Jewish Displaced Persons,” Michael 10 (1986):194– 97. 8. Avni, Argentina and the Jews, 137–41. 9. Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom, 196–97; 228–31. 10. Leonardo Senkman, “The Response of the First Peronist Government to Anti-Semitic Discourse, 1946–1954: A Necessary Reassessment,” Judaica Latinoamericana 3 (1997): 194–96. 11. Alfredo M. Seilferheld, Nazismo y Fascismo en el Paraguay: Los años de la guerra (Asunción: Editorial Histórica, 1986), 271–73. 12. According to the HIAS figures of sponsored immigration of survivors to Paraguay, only 773 Jews entered the country between 1945 and 1948, the peak being in 1947 with 415 entries. However, these figures for 1947 were lower than the 729 Jews entering Chile, the 551 immigrants to Colombia and Venezuela, and the 598 to Uruguay that same year; see Wizschnitzer, Visas to Freedom, 230. 13. Avni, Argentina and the Jews, 189–91. 14. They form part of the Soprotimis Archives deposited at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), Jerusalem. 15. The personal files in the Soprotimis Archives are as yet not classified. They will be referred to according to the original file number. See Soprotimis, file [hereafter: Sopro/] 1357, 1946, Buenos Aires, 1 Febrary 1946. 16. Sopro/ 742, 1949. Report on a local relative, 10 December 1947. After the local relative refused many requests to appear before Soprotimis, the final report, dated September 1948, states: “Se trata de una familia de pocos recursos, y que ademas no tiene interes alguno en traer aqui a sus familiares. Informar al comite de HIAS de Varsovia y Paris que los pasajeros se entiendan directamente con el sponsor.” For additional cases of local relatives refusing to pay the travel bill on behalf of survivors of next of kin twice removed, although Soprotimis had procured cartas de llamada for them, see Sopro/ 739, 740, 742, 744, 808, and 815 for the year 1948. 17. Soprotimis to HIAS Munich, 27 July 1948, Sopro/ 817, 1948. According to the Soprotimis correspondent, despite the good economic circumstances of the sponsor, the real reason for the local relative’s refusal was that he lacked interest in family reunification. 18. See HIAS Berlin to Soprotimis, January 5, 1948, Sopro/ 818, 1948. From the report of a Soprotimis inspector and a list of possible sponsors, we can garner important information about their professions and occupations. Out of twenty-four listed sponsors, eight were artisans and craftsman (two tailors, a cap maker, an ironer, two carpenters, and two shoemakers) and seven were small merchants; see Sopro/ 1347, 1948.

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19. Avni, Argentina and the Jews, 139, 193. 20. See the Yiddish daily newspaper, Di Iddishe Tzaitung, 16, January 1947, 5. 21. For the early economic and social role of landsmanschaftn in Argentina, see Victor Mirelman, Jewish Buenos Aires, 1890–1930: In Search of an Identity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 161, 185, 187, 194; for their social and cultural role, see Samuel Rollansky, “For the History of Landsmanschaftn in Argentina” [in Yiddish], Argentiner YIVO-Shriftn 14 (1988): 97–203. 22. “Annual Report for the Year 1948,” Sopro/ 522/48; on the Galician landsmanschaft, see the memoirs of Miriam Vogelfanger, Luces y sombras del corazon: Memorias y escritos (Olivos: privately published, 2001). 23. Reports on the handling of the case of Herzl Szerman, 20 April and 13 September 1948, Sopro/ 535, 1948. 24. HIAS Paris to Soprotimis, 21 July 1948, Sopro/ 535, 1946–48. 25. Isaac Tolchinsky and Jacobo Feuermann, Sopro, to HIAS, New York, 31 May 1948, Sopro/ 802, 1948. 26. HIAS, Paris to Soprotimis, 21 October 1948, Sopro/ 916, 1948; Ichel Kerschnbaum of Foshremvald, 3 to Soprotimis, 2 June 1952, Sopro/ 325, 1948–1955. 27. Sopro/ 516, 1948–1949. In 1941 and 1943, the Argentine authorities imposed restrictions on the entry permits Paraguayan consuls in Madrid and Marseille had issued to refugee Jews from Romania, Yugoslavia, and France; see Leonardo Senkman, Argentina, La Segunda Guerra Mundial y Los Refugiados Indeseables, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1991), 337–49. The rescue of refugee Jews by means of Latin American passports and invalid documents in the guise of exit permits issued by consuls has recently been studied; see the pioneer research on the case of the fate of Jews with Ecuadorian passports, Efraim Zadoff, “Pasaportes de Ecuador para Bergen- Belsen,” Judaica Latinoamericana: Estudios Históricos, Sociales y Literarios 6 (2009), 351–78. 28. The 176-volume Yiddish series Dos Polishe Idntum, edited by Marc Turkow with the administrative assistance of Abraham Mitelberg, published between 1946 and 1966, had to wait a few decades for a Spanish translation. The first volume, by Maka Owsiany, appeared in a Spanish translation published by the Comunidad Judía de Buenos Aires–AMIA’s publishing house MILA in 2001, under the title: Malka Owsiany relata: Cronicas de nuestro tiempo, Testimonios recogidos por Marc Turkow. During the first decade of publication, 124 volumes of Dos Polishe Idntum appeared; see Jan Schwarz, “A Library of Hope and Destruction: The Yiddish Book Series ‘Dos poylishe yidntum’ (‘Polish Jewry’), 1946–1966,” Polin 20 (2008): 173–96. 29. Saul Friedländer, “Trauma, Memory, and Transference,” in Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 261–62. 30. Samuel Rollansky, interview by Daniel Bargman, Buenos Aires, 18 May 1988. I am indebted to Bargman for allowing me to read a preliminarily version of his research on the role of the Polisher Farband among Polish Jewish survivors in Buenos Aires. 31. See the list of published commemorative volumes edited in Argentina, the United States, and Israel in Naum Lindman, “Jewish Landsmanschaftn in Argentina,” The Book of the Community in Buenos Aires on its 75th Anniversary [in Yiddish] (Buenos Aires, 1969), 78–80. 32. Raanan Rein, Argentina, Israel y los Judíos: Encuentros y desencuentros, mitos y realidades (Buenos Aires: Lumiere, 2001), chapters 2 and 3.

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33. Leonardo Senkman, “Ser judio en Argentina: las transformaciones de la identidad nacional,” in Identidades judías, modernidad y globalización, ed. Paul Mendes Flohr, Yom Tov Assis, and Leonardo Senkman (Buenos Aires:, Lilmod, 2007), 423–36. 34. A person who intercedes with the authorities on behalf of others or the entire community.

12

WHY WE CHOSE AUSTRALIA Sharon Kangisser Cohen



The influx of Holocaust survivors more than doubled the size of Australian Jewry. Between 1945 and 1961, approximately 27,000 Holocaust survivors migrated to Australia, thus transforming the community.1 Bill Rubinstein remarks that “it was this wave of immigrants, even more than the earlier Jewish refugees, which altered the face of the Jewish community in Australia.”2 On arrival, Holocaust survivors found a community that worked to achieve “a non-distinctiveness with its essentially lukewarm Jewish religiosity as its central mode of Jewish identity, a mode tailor-made to speed up Jewish assimilation.”3 However, the survivors brought with them the cultures and traditions of central and eastern Europe, which bolstered the Jewish community and helped reverse the trend towards assimilation. Holocaust survivors who came to Australia were part of the massive emigration from postwar Europe. By September 1950, 155,500 DPs had been admitted to Australia, 152,000 of them under government contract and the remainder by private initiative with landing permits.4 The Australian migrant experience was therefore not unique to Holocaust survivors and Jews, and has become one of the nation’s defining characteristics. As a result of mass migration to Australia, the country was socially, culturally, and economically transformed. Prior to 1945, Australia had implemented a “white Australia policy” which sought to maintain a 98 percent British-heritage population. But after World War II this policy

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changed, and within a short time schemes for the mass immigration of non-British immigrants were developed. According to James Jupp, a migration specialist, “the Displaced Persons intake laid the foundations for a multicultural Australia.”5 Australia, because of its restrictive immigration policy, had not been a traditional port of call for European immigrants and consequently was not foremost in the minds of survivors as a possible destination. Furthermore, survivors knew very little about Australia. As Bill Rubinstein remarks: “Only a limited number of post-war refugees appeared to have any knowledge of Australian life; an admiration for Australia’s egalitarianism, misinformation about its ‘wide open spaces’ seem to have been the most frequent positive images.”6 One of the interviewees in this study, Kate, explained that she had read about Australia in books and predominantly believed that “It’s not yet populated, they need the people to work.” Survivors who had relatives or friends who had previously migrated to Australia had some sense of what to expect. Their letters had reassured them to some degree that it was a place they could rebuild their lives. The question this article will address is: how and why did these survivors choose Australia? What were their motivations for choosing a country they knew very little about and yet were prepared to migrate to? Researchers claim that there were: significant differences between those who chose the U.S. as their destination and those who wanted to settle in Palestine. Those who came to the U.S. were more likely to have family connections at that time, who in some instances paid for the travel costs. Additionally, those seeking to go to the U.S. did so because they thought of that country as a land of opportunity for personal freedom and for the pursuit of economic achievements. Those who went to Israel were more likely to do so because of a Zionist orientation and/or background and because of personal convictions. They arrived in Israel after their Holocaust experiences, to contribute to the establishment of a Jewish state.7

In short, researchers propose that survivors making their way to Palestine were for the most part ideologically driven, while those who chose the United States were more pragmatically motivated to rebuild their lives in a country that offered security and freedom. In order to understand why Holocaust survivors chose Australia, I examined an existing collection of survivor testimonies and conducted further personal interviews. The testimonies are part of a collection compiled by the Sydney Jewish Museum in the 1990s. There are a total of thirty-eight interviews in this series. This chapter is for the most part based on these testimonies, supplemented by interviews conducted by

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myself between 2005 and 2006. This study represents diversity. Survivors were mostly born in central and eastern Europe and came from an array of religious, social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They endured diverse wartime experiences. Some managed to survive the Holocaust in hiding, while most were incarcerated in ghettos or interned in forced labor and death camps. Although their ages differed, most experienced the war as children or young adults. There were an equal number of male and female interviewees, all of whom arrived in Australia between 1946 and 1956.

Why Australia? From the testimonies examined it is clear that Australia was not the first choice for many of the interviewees. Australia as a destination did not loom in the imagination of the DPs in the same way that America did. Indeed, America seems to have been the preferred choice. As Bill Rubinstein writes: “There is not a shred of evidence that more than a tiny percentage of Jewish survivors wished to migrate to Australia—a country whose very name was synonymous with remoteness and, although a prosperous democracy, not a world leader like the United States.”8 Australia was also not the preferred choice amongst non-Jewish refugees leaving Europe. Only a fragment of those on the move chose Australia, but this choice was encouraged by assistance with passage money and settlement. James Jupp writes: “Assisted passenger schemes were Australia’s answer to the ‘tyranny of distance’ and a fundamental part of Australia’s migration history.”9 It is clear that there are three main reasons as to why survivors chose Australia as a destination. (Rubinstein corroborates these findings in his own work.) First, the most common reason survivors gave was that a relative living in Australia had sponsored them. Second, survivors had made several applications to different countries and chose Australia because it was the first place that offered them a permit. Lastly, there was a strong desire to get as far away from Europe as possible, especially after the onset of the Cold War. Australia opened up as a possible destination for the survivors with the “close relative scheme” of 1945 and the framing of a comprehensive immigration policy in 1947. For the most part, however, Australia did not attract the survivors; there was no emotional pull to emigrate there.

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The First Offer Many of the interviewees made the decision to come to Australia because it was the first place to offer them the possibility of leaving Europe and rebuilding a new home. In his interview, Eddie explains that after the war he wanted to stay in Belgium, but could not. He recalls: “I made two applications: one to Australia and one to France. In March 1950 came my permit to come here, and I decided to come and bring my family here.” Olga was born in Czechoslovakia. After the war she returned to Prague and married. As Communist control tightened, Olga and her husband decided that they needed to leave. She explains: After that [decision] the big question of where we could emigrate to. Which country would give us entry visas? There were very few. To America you had to apply, and you were only eligible to go if you had very close relatives. To Canada the same story. To Australia we didn’t even contemplate at that time because it seemed to be a little bit too far. . . . But at that time we thought we would rather immigrate to America because it was closer to Europe. We soon found out it was impossible; there was a waiting list for America . . . so it was out of the question; to Canada was the same situation. . . . Australia was the only country which extended the possibility actually to . . . accept migrants, and we applied.

The insecurity some survivors felt in postwar Europe propelled many to take the first permit offered to them. Kate’s interview exemplifies this situation and also conveys the courage and ingenuity that was required to leave Europe. Kate was born in Silperk, Czechoslovakia, and after the war she returned to Czechoslovakia, married, and lived in Prague. As Communist control tightened there, too, Kate and her husband were harassed by the secret police, whereupon they decided to leave. She recalls: So one day, my husband comes from the Jewish office and said: “I’ve seen some numbers in Australia, from Jewish Welfare Society, and Australia, what did you think that I can get the telephone number and we will ring through.” I said: “We will write the telephone number and we will go to a telephone booth because we can’t ring from here.” But of course we didn’t know English, neither of us. . . . I bought a Czech–English dictionary, and I looked [for] the phrase “please send us landing permits quickly.” I learned it, I read it, we went to the . . . telephone booth and my husband had the telephone number and we rang and there, on the other side [we heard]: “Dr. . . . speaking,” so I started: “Please send us landing permit, we want to migrate to Australia quickly. They are after us. Quickly, as soon as possible. ” Within three weeks or two and a half weeks, came a landing permit. We could go to Australia.

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Many survivors were granted permits because they had family members who were able to sponsor them. Friends and even fellow refugees whom the survivors had met in Europe helped others. In her interview, Helen explains that in Poland after the war, she and her husband were living in an apartment with other Jewish people. She explains: We met there, a couple, childless people, Jewish people, and they took a liking to us, they were twice our age, and they said “You know . . . I have a sister which left us just before the war, to Australia, and I can . . . if I get a permit, I will send the permit and I bring you out to Australia.” And that’s exactly what happened . . . they went with the first boat to Australia as immigrants, and they send us a permit.

These survivors did not plan on where to go; instead they took the first opportunity that came to them. Barry Stein explains that this type of decision-making is endemic to any refugee for whom “any destination will do . . . and he will leave as soon as he finds a country willing to take him.” He writes: “In an acute moment the refugees leave their homeland on a moment’s notice. They have not planned or prepared for the journey; they are not looking at the future; they are simply trying to get out of harm’s way.”10 Reuniting with relatives was an important factor for these people, especially after having lost family members during the Holocaust. Yet from their testimonies it seems that it was the fact that their relatives could sponsor their immigration and not the prospect of reuniting with family that was fundamental to their decision. Several testimonies reveal that the decision to immigrate to Australia was circumstantial. After the war, Alex left Poland and made his way to Paris. He recalls: I didn’t expect any . . . spectacular results from my sojourn . . . in Paris, but it was a blessing to me because that’s where I met this young lady survivor . . . she had some relatives in Australia, who helped her get to Australia. Eventually I managed to join her in Australia and I arrived in Sydney on the 25th of October 1948.

Elizabeth was about to leave Hungary for America when she met George and fell in love. However, as she explains, George was “coming to Australia, that was the catch. . . . He has his papers ready almost, and we fell in love and we said ‘Okay, we get married and coming together to Australia.’ Forgot Sweden, forgot America, and we could go there later.” While waiting for authorization to leave, the Soviets stopped immigration from Hungary. Unable to leave, Elizabeth and George remained in

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Hungary until 1956. The interesting point in Elizabeth’s testimony is that she immigrated to Australia by default. The last few words of this piece are most revealing: Australia was clearly not the first choice and was not even seen to be a realistic long-term option. For Elizabeth, going to Australia was a way out of Europe while following the man she loved. Yet it was conceivable that it also represented a stop on the way to America. Even though many did accept visas to countries out of desperation to leave Europe, some were not prepared to accept a visa at any cost. There were cases in which survivors refused a permit if it meant leaving their family behind. Ivan’s story presents one such example. Ivan was born in Hungary. After surviving the war, he made his way back to his hometown and found his father alive. They chose to remain in Hungary, reopened their business, and tried to rebuild their lives. However: In 1949, the Communist party secretary has walked into his shop, asked him for the shop keys and told him to get out. And that was more than what one could bear under the circumstances. Having to start twice in four or five years, and we made a decision that there wasn’t much future to stay in such a country.

Ivan explains that in 1949, he was granted a university placement and admission to the United States. However, at that time the United States “was only prepared to give me a visa and not to my parents. Which obviously after what we had been through was not an option to be considered, so after several inquiries, we had decided that we could come to Australia through normal channels.”

The Further Away the Better While most of the interviewees went to Australia because it presented them with a quick exit from Europe, others actually chose Australia because of what it seemed to offer. Edith chose Australia because of its geographical location. Originally from Prague, Edith decided that after the Communist takeover in 1948, she could no longer remain there as “it reminded me of the Nazi times and I decided . . . I’ll get out. I wanted to get out.” At the time she was a secretary at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and she managed to obtain a visa for both Canada and Australia. Edith chose Australia as “I thought it would be easier to be hungry in a warm climate than in a cold climate, so I came to Australia; I looked in the Atlas and I decided Sydney had the better climate, so I came to Sydney.”

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Australia’s geographical location was attractive, as many survivors wanted to get as far away from Europe as possible. They felt uneasy in Europe and were determined to move away from the continent in which they had suffered so much. Australia was an ideal choice. Its remoteness was appealing and it represented a new beginning, far from Europe and the past. Australia, in contrast to Europe, was a young country full of potential, and many hoped that this would give them the new start they were looking for. It appeared to be a country free from turmoil and strife. Lucy’s testimony epitomizes these feelings. After the war, Lucy worked for a Jewish communal organization in Vienna. She recalls that in 1948, the people in the organization offered her the possibility of immigrating to various destinations. She recalls them saying to her: “We get papers for you; you can go to America; you can go to Australia; you can go to Israel, or to Canada. Everything will be paid for you, your permit, accommodation, and job. You will get a job; your husband will get a job. You have twenty-four hours to decide.” We went back to our camp; we were sitting and talking, and from all the countries, we chose [to go] to Australia. I knew Australia is a young country. The students ask me “Why did you choose Australia?” I choose Australia because first of all, I wanted to be far away from the war. Secondly, I knew it is a young country with a great future. There’s no unemployment. I will do anything. Any work. We don’t have any children. I was pregnant in Austria, but decided to get rid of the pregnancy because I knew we have no money; we have no relatives; we have to start a new life.

Jacob explains that he chose Australia because “I want to get out from here, and go as far as possible . . . as far as possible was New Zealand or Australia. Away from Europe, as far as possible.” The Cold War heightened anxieties among people who had barely survived the last war. The move to Australia was to protect themselves and their families from being caught in another war. After fleeing Hungary in 1956, George had to decide where he would settle. He recalls: I told my wife, my little son, and my friend: I am going somewhere very, very far from Europe. Doesn’t matter where. I am going to New Zealand, or I am going to Australia. Doesn’t matter where, just very far from Europe because unfortunately, what is happening there ten years ago, it will be starting again, maybe just different time, but it will be going again.

Previous research has claimed that avoidance is a core response to trauma. “The purpose of avoidance is to protect the individual from the feelings of fear associated with the particular event.”11 Many survivors

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from Poland “viewed the country as a cemetery and had vowed that they would never return to Poland after what had happened to them and their families.”12 Thus by removing themselves from Europe physically and psychologically, these survivors protected themselves from their traumatic memories. In his testimony, Oscar explains that since his arrival in Australia in 1946, “I’ve never been back to Europe. I have no intention of ever going back to Europe because I can only deal with my experiences the way you deal with an infestation. Just by physically distancing yourself from it. The whole of Europe to me is the graveyard of my people.”

Understanding the Choice Despite the fact that most of the survivors did not choose to come to Australia, almost all are very grateful they did. There is no indication of regret or disappointment with their “choice,” and a number have come to view Australia as a “heavenly” destination. Hanka relates that “we arrived here in 1949, which I must tell you, I love Australia, and the same, my husband loved Australia, because I was lucky to find people, Australian people which they were very kind to us.” At the end of his interview, Sol explains: “We arrived on the 9th of February. February is a very important month to me. It’s a happy month. That’s when I was liberated, and I arrived on the 9th of February, that’s when I arrived, to a beautiful . . . literally heaven on earth, Australia. It is a place where the world had provided Gods gift. It’s heaven . . . heaven on earth.” Life stories or narrative interviews uncover more than the historical circumstances around the individual’s life. They also—as Jerome Bruner points out—bring to light the “meaning of experience.”13 Narratives and testimonies provide researchers with an insight into how the individual constructs, understands, and interprets his or her own past.14 While the choice of Australia was for the most part arbitrary, survivors today see it as the “right” one. In many of the testimonies, Australia is presented—and therefore understood—as the antidote to the threatening postwar reality in Europe. From a close reading of the texts, it becomes apparent that Australia is constructed in relation to the interviewees’ experiences in postwar Europe. The reasons survivors give in conversation for leaving their home country are the values that they have attributed in their minds to Australia. In these testimonies, Europe is identified with experiences of loss, betrayal, antisemitism, and a fear of living under communism. Alternatively, Australia is identified with rebuilding, trust, security, and freedom. The images of the two places are scattered throughout the text, and yet they mirror one another remarkably. Furthermore, for many of

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these survivors postwar migration is seen as part of their escape from the Holocaust. Their move from Europe to Australia was a flight to safety, not only from the Nazis, but also from the threat of victimization.

The Image of Europe Anti-Jewish sentiment in postwar Europe was the most significant factor motivating Jews to leave after 1945. Jan Gross, in his recent work, Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz, writes that in August 1944, “The war was still going on. Germany had not yet been defeated. The area had barely been liberated from a long and exceedingly brutal occupation that had caused suffering to virtually every Polish family. And local people were already after the remnants of Polish survivors.”15 In 1945–47, a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment swept across Europe. There were incidents of individual murders, pogroms, and expulsions of Jews from small towns and villages. According to Zeev Mankowitz, between November 1944 and December 1945 351 Jews suffered fatal attacks in Poland, and by the summer of 1947 this number had exceeded 1,500.16 Thus from 1945 on “Jews were running away from Poland, fleeing for their lives.”17 As a result, for many survivors “The place left behind is so hated that one neither wishes to nor perhaps can idealize it, even retrospectively.”18 These survivors’ view of Europe was also shaped by the deep sense of betrayal that they felt towards their former homes and countrymen. Survivors in many parts of eastern and central Europe felt “irrevocably alienated from their fellow citizens of the past, and . . . they seldom entertain the hope, and rarely the wish, to return to live among their fellow compatriots.”19 This was particularly true in Hungary, where as a result of the Holocaust the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish Hungarians was dramatically altered.20 Furthermore, survivors, when returning to their homes, “came to realize that they, a handful of survivors, were seen as a nuisance and that very few Europeans sincerely mourned the annihilation of their Jewish communities.”21 Consequently, many of these survivors left Europe and their memory of their home was radically altered, as “trauma spread backwards to poison the good times before it.”22 Furthermore, these attitudes towards Europe and their former homes helped survivors protect themselves from their pain of memory and loss. Memories of home, which are usually connected with feelings of warmth, familiarity, and love, are what Ruth Wajnryb refers to as “nostalgia.” Traditionally, for immigrants “nostalgia is the most inevitable outcome of taking up residence in a new country.” However, Holocaust survivors could not

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allow themselves to have nostalgia for their former homes, as it was “too painful.”23

Idealization of Australia In her work reflecting on the experiences of the second generation, Ruth Wajnryb reminisces about how her parents glorified Australia and hardly criticized the government and its policies. She writes: “If the home country is disparaged, and Germany vilified, then the converse is seen in the unremitting thanksgiving lavished on Australia. . . . The message that pervaded all other messages was that Australia was a paradise and we should be grateful to be here.”24 My own research confirms Wajnryb’s experience. From the testimonies examined, it is clear that in contrast to Europe, the survivors idealized Australia. This idealization can be understood on various levels. First, in Australia, most of the survivors managed to create new families and rebuild secure homes. Therefore, Australia has enabled many to recover some of what they lost in Europe. Furthermore, the contrast between the two continents helped survivors to believe that what had happened to them in Europe would not happen in Australia. The construction of Australia as the antithesis of Europe gave them a sense of security and the reassurance that they would not become victims again. These dynamics are illustrated in the following extracts. Morrie was born in Poland. At the beginning of his interview he relates: “I was the youngest of nine children. . . . I am the only survivor.” In the course of his interview, Morrie explains that he decided to leave Poland “when I found out that I had lost everyone, I didn’t want to go home. I . . . I couldn’t face it actually. You were not strong enough to face it, so . . . um . . . I stayed back in Germany and in 1948, we came to our lucky Australia.” After the war, Morrie could not return to his home and could not bear living in Poland. It was a physical reminder of his loss. When explaining what he feels about Australia, he comments: “So fortunately we made it to here, and ahh . . . we established a good life here, and I am happy to say that I have a lovely family; we’ve got four lovely grandchildren, all educated, so at least we got rewarded.” For Morrie, Poland is where he lost his family, and Australia is where he managed to rebuild his family and recover some of his loss. In Australia he is no longer alone. After the war, Helen returned to her hometown, but felt unable to remain there, as she explains: “because the Poles are very antisemitic and I don’t feel comfortable there. They could see I came back from the camp and they all say . . . ‘Look at them, so many lived through.’ I couldn’t stay there.” In her reflections on Australia, Helen remarks: “And we are very,

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very lucky that we came to such a good country, and are very happy here.” Helen identifies antisemitism and hostility as the reason she left Poland and associates Australia with goodness. After surviving the war, Elizabeth felt unable to resume her life in Hungary. She felt betrayed by her fellow Hungarians for their compliance with the Nazis during the war, and because of the continued presence of antisemitism. In her interview she remarks: “Every minute what I spent in Hungary, I hated. It was just suffering because number one, I didn’t know who was the person who took my parents to a concentration camp, who tortured them. I didn’t know. I didn’t like the Communist regime at all. I didn’t want to be part of the party at all.” Later on in her interview, when relating her experiences in Australia, she comments: “And we are here, very, very happily; we had a lot of struggling here the first time, who hasn’t? But it was quite difficult with a five years old child and pregnant. But doesn’t matter. . . . people was . . . was good people here who helped us.” In Hungary, Elizabeth and her family were betrayed. She no longer trusted Hungarians, and she did not want to live among them. But in her new home, Australia, she has found “good people”: people who are willing to help and who therefore will not betray her. Based on her experiences in Australia, she can reassure herself that what happened to her in Hungary cannot happen to her here. As mentioned earlier, after the war Kate returned to her home in Czechoslovakia, but felt increasingly pressured and threatened by the Communist regime. She was deeply troubled by their threats, and, as she recalls: I had that horrid feeling again, that we should be put in some camps or somewhere in Russia away, we thought we have to do something to get out before it’s too late. We didn’t blame our parents, we just thought we can’t do the same mistake, perhaps we could have got out, perhaps my brother and my family could have been alive but it was no good to thinking back, we have to think ahead.

Kate wanted to avoid more persecution. She concluded that her safety was only guaranteed if she left Europe and went to live in a country that promised her “freedom.” Her lack of freedom under communism threatened her security, so she searched for it in Australia. She explains: “We didn’t expect gold on the streets; we were expecting work and hard work, [and] only freedom. That’s all we seek in Australia.” Later on in her interview, when she describes how she feels in Australia, she says:

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Such a free country. So beautiful; we can talk about what we want. Nobody’s persecuting. Nobody’s following us. We just relished on the freedom which this country gave us. . . . We made our way so we gave back to the country, because for us, that was such a freedom from all the oppression and for all the hard things . . . what we lived through, it was a miracle.

Similarly, Chesha felt increasingly threatened by Communism while living in postwar Poland. She was born in Warsaw and survived by escaping from the ghetto and living in Warsaw by using false papers. She explains that after the war, she was very hopeful Poland would be now a country of justice, of equality, of a fair go for everybody. I liked the idea. I was ready to work for an idea like this. But after a while, we realized that these beautiful slogans have nothing to do with what was in reality happening in Poland. We became disillusioned. And later on, nearer to 1956, when in Poland there were changes . . . when it was allowed legally to say that there are too many Jews in the government, that the Jews have too much to say in what was happening in Poland, we decided that it’s time to get out of Poland as soon as possible.

Chesha had hoped that she could be part of a new democracy in Poland, but she was bitterly disappointed with the reality. Chesha and her husband came to Australia where, she explains: “We liked the freedom, the equality, even if many things were strange for us, but we accepted it, we came to this country and we have to adapt to this country. And we are very grateful and still are to Australia for accepting us on these conditions and treating us like this.” While survivors themselves viewed Australia as the antidote to their postwar trauma and as an immunization against future trauma, researchers would argue that these testimonies signify that Australia facilitated some measure of emotional recovery. In her work, Judith Herman explains: The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. In her renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience.25

Herman’s theory is powerfully illustrated in the narratives presented above. These extracts affirm that for each of these individuals, their postwar experiences were traumatic; the survivors experienced disconnection from their homes, neighbors, and countrymen. They also experienced disempowerment living under Communism. Connection was established in

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Australia through the creation of families and also from their experiences of living among “good” people. Democracy in Australia also gave them freedom, a condition that they rarely experienced living in eastern and central Europe.26 Freedom, in turn, gave them equal opportunities to reestablish themselves financially and to build a secure base for themselves and their families. Survivors’ idealization of Australia may also be connected to their current stage of life. Narratives are influenced by numerous factors, including the context in which they are told, the audience, and the stage of the interviewee’s life. At the stage of their lives when they were interviewed, most of the survivors had reestablished themselves; they had rebuilt their lives and had sired children and grandchildren. Most were middle class and had stable, peaceful, and secure lives, which they had created in Australia. Australia had indeed afforded them the opportunity to rebuild successful lives, and consequently they relate to Australia with gratitude and affection. Memories of struggle and hardship in integrating into Australian life are therefore distant and not at the fore of their recollections. They retell their lives from the vantage point of today, when most are physically and financially secure. Their current reality is not one that resembles their early years of resettlement in Australia and the difficulties they faced in migrating to a distant and foreign land. In order to ascertain the consistency of the idealized image of Australia, future research would need to compare earlier testimonies with those conducted more recently. The idealization of Australia can also be explained in terms of the interaction between personal and collective memory. As researchers point out, “People are meaning-generating organisms; they construct their identities and self narratives from building blocks available in their common culture, above and beyond their individual experience.”27 Thus it is hardly surprising that the images of Australia these survivors employ are ones that are core values in the Australian collective memory. Survivors were part of the great migration experience that transformed the country socially, culturally, and economically. Consequently, they identify with and have absorbed the symbols of that experience. One of the foremost motifs of contemporary Australia is multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, which succeeded the white Australia policy, is a bipartisan approach to Australia’s cultural and ethnic diversity that aims to engender the feeling of acceptance and tolerance within Australian society, a value that resonates through these interviews. Another symbol of Australia that these testimonies articulate is that it is a “land of opportunity.” Richard White, in his work Inventing Australia, argues that in the early nineteenth century “Immigrants were lured by the image of Australia as a land of opportunity for all comers and above all

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for the working man. . . . No longer a land of the convict and kangaroos, Australia was depicted as the land of the emigrant.”28 Another strong impression is the idea of Australia as a land of “freedom.” Like other countries of the “new world,” Australia became increasingly identified with liberalism and political and social progress. Similarly, White asserts that Australia became identified as a “bulwark of freedom” against the backdrop of the Cold War.29 The way survivors have understood their experiences have been influenced by the messages and meanings that operate in Australian society. Survivors may also be less inclined to speak about their difficulties as migrants to Australia because they do not want to be perceived as ungrateful. They have also become loyal citizens, and they identify strongly as Australians. They may be mindful that they also represent a wider community and are influenced by its considerations. Australian Jewry is not an overtly critical and vocal community. Its politics are conservative and largely supportive of the government and its policies. Peter Medding writes that “the belief that bad behaviour endangered their status and acceptance, and that all would be well if everyone behaved properly.”is one of the primary attitudes of Australian Jewry both in the interwar period and the postwar period, and this has continued until today.30 As Ruth Wajnryb comments, “When issues pertaining to Jews ‘go public,’ some within the Jewish community in Australia cower in embarrassment and urge restraint and a low community profile.”31 Thus, the political character of the community may have influenced the way survivors relate to their new home and may have made them supportive, rather than critical, of the government’s policies both then and now.32 Yvonne is one of the only survivors who expressed any disappointment with Australian society. She remarks: “And in 1948, the Australian people weren’t very hospitable to the foreigners. Because they were not used to . . . they felt that we have invaded their country. . . . They didn’t make you feel very comfortable, not like today where we are a multicultural society.” The one area in which survivors in these testimonies do communicate the difficulties they experienced is in their initial struggle to establish themselves financially. Morrie explains that in Australia, “you had to start from the beginning again. That was a big problem ‘cause you didn’t have the language, so you had to start from A again to build a home, to build up a family, to build a future.” Gerty remarks: “It was not an easy beginning, but we liked Australia right from the start.” They were more comfortable speaking about economic challenges than about emotional or social ones. For many of the survivors interviewed, financial difficulty was overcome at a certain stage and most had managed to establish a secure economic base at a particular point in their lives. It is easier to speak

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of monetary difficulties after one has overcome them. Furthermore, the narrative of the migrant who arrives with nothing and who works tirelessly to establish him or herself is universal. Migrants who made their way to Australia all had a difficult time financially; survivors were no different. It is a common story and is validated by the experiences of others, making it easier and more acceptable to speak about. It is also not a criticism that is leveled against Australia—either its government or society—and that they may feel ambivalent about articulating. Not all of the interviewees viewed Australia as the antidote to Europe. This was apparent in George’s interview. While it was clear that he was happy with his decision to come to Australia and that it had offered him an opportunity to rebuild his life, he was not able to feel completely secure and protected there. George opens his testimony with the following words: “My name is George X. I was born in Hungary in a little village, a dusty rotten village full of Nazis.” These opening lines form the narrative core around which George’s life is organized. He was born surrounded by Nazis: they contaminated his home, they taunted and tortured both him and his family, and their presence remains in his life today. He is still not rid of them. George recalls that when they deported the Jews from his village, They took them to the village railway station, the Hungarian Nazis, or all Hungarians like we say, stood around the highway . . . and they clapped and laughed, [at] our Jews’ misery. They clapped and spat. And one of the . . . ahh . . . about my mother’s age jumped to the fore and spat in her face . . . and everyone clapped and shouted “Don’t let them back,” “Kill them.” They did. In Auschwitz.

For George, Hungarians and Nazis are the same. They betrayed him; they celebrated the Jews’ deportation and collaborated in the murder of his family and community. After the war, the Nazis were not caught and tried, but instead disappeared by disguising themselves. In the final stages of the war “the Nazis changed their outfit . . . or grabbed some outfits, dressed, changed from their Nazi uniform to civilians, and disappeared.” Not only were they responsible for the murder of ninety-three members of his family, but George’s Hungarian neighbors also robbed him of his possessions and destroyed his home. He tells that when his father went back to the village, he saw “that even not a window frame was left, not a door left in the house. . . . That was just an empty shell of a home, a good Jewish home.” After the war, Hungary had a communist government, but in reality the Nazis continued to rule. According to George, “The Communist party boss was a Nazi boss before.”

Why We Chose Australia • 289

George and his wife only managed to leave Hungary in 1956. They realized that “we didn’t have a future. So we decided as soon as we can leave Hungary, we go.” Following the revolution, they made their way to Austria where they took a ship to Australia. Of the voyage he remembers that “On the boat was about 900 Hungarian[s] on . . . on it . . . out of 900, 90 percent of them were Nazis. Hungarians who wanted to leave Hungary.” He recalls how they threatened them by saying: “‘Jews, you will never arrive to Hungary . . . to Australia . . . no . . . I . . . I will never arrive to Australia because we will throw you into the ocean. We do not need Jews.’ We organized that all the time to supervise the children, hoping they won’t throw over our children into the ocean. And we reported them to the captain of the boat.” George left Hungary because he felt he had no future there, and he was overcome by the abundance in Australia. Yet he has never been able to feel totally secure. In Australia, while enjoying his freedom, he still feels the threatening presence of Nazis. He relates that in Australia, “we’ve been happy from the first day; we’ve been happy and we enjoyed and we appreciate the freedom here. No one spat on us; no one said anything nasty until now. They start, the Nazis start to put their heads out again. That why we have to be very strong and we have . . . to fight against them [Holocaust deniers].” For George, there are still Nazis in his life. They are still living in Australia. He explains: “Look, last week was in the television for instance a . . . a person, a man, from Adelaide . . . he refused to accept that Auschwitz existed. He refused to accept that the Jews . . . been killed by the Nazis. It’s all Jewish propaganda . . . so we have to fight against them.” George has never been able to fully regain a home or to restore his sense of security. His experiences during the war in Hungary have challenged his sense of trust. The Nazis invaded his home and his life and continue to lurk, never giving him the freedom he seeks. It can also be argued that after the severity of his traumatic past, it is doubtful George will ever feel totally secure, as the “resolution of the trauma is never final; recovery is never complete.”33 While most of the extracts above do reveal some measure of recovery from the trauma of their experiences in postwar Europe, George’s interview serves as a reminder that trauma does reverberate.

* This study began with an investigation into the historical reasons why Holocaust survivors chose to move to Australia after the war. The testi-

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monies revealed that emigration to Australia was fundamentally a practical decision; Australia was the first place to offer the survivors a visa. Australia offered a new home to these people, one in which they could rebuild their lives in relative peace and security, and most of them managed to do exactly that. Australia was also attractive in that it offered the dimension of distance—it was the end of the world, far away from Europe and the past. It was far away from communism and the Cold War, and also from the conflict and insecurity in Palestine. It was an island, removed from age-old and modern national conflicts, where survivors could avoid the past and focus on rebuilding their lives physically and emotionally. In essence, the reasons survivors gave were simple, and the decision to come to Australia quite random. However, through their testimonies, these individuals have been able to give this random decision meaning. After a close analysis of the interviews, a pattern emerged in the texts: When reflecting through conversation on their postwar migration, the reasons survivors give for leaving their home country are the values that they have attributed to Australia. The extracts presented clearly show that for these survivors, Australia was not only seen as a refuge, but more importantly as a place in which they would not become victims again; it was a “corrective experience.” Their lives after the war, and their decision to migrate, were for the most part “a response to diminish anxiety and foster a sense of security.”34 For them, migration was an escape from a terrifying world. It is likely that the need to “diminish anxiety and foster a sense of security” is not particular to survivors who chose Australia, but is a universal reaction among survivors of the Holocaust—and, indeed, survivors of trauma generally.

Notes

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Research for this paper was generously supported by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. Suzanne D. Rutland and Sophie Caplan, With One Voice: A History of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies (Darlington: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 1998), 318. William D. Rubinstein, The Jews in Australia (Melbourne: AE Press, 1986), 65. Rubinstein, The Jews in Australia: A Thematic History, vol. 2 (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1991), 5. Henry B. M. Murphy, “The Assimilation of Refugee Immigrants in Australia,” Population Studies 5 (1952): 180. James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13. Rubinstein, Jews in Australia: A Thematic History, 59.

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7. Boaz Kahana, Zev Harel, and Eva Kahana, Holocaust Survivors and Immigrants: Late Life Adaptations (New York: Springer, 2005), 57. 8. Rubinstein, Jews in Australia: A Thematic History, 59. 9. James Jupp, ed., The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 62. 10. Barry Stein, “The Refugee Experience: Defining the Parameters of a Field of Study,” International Migration Review 15 (1981): 322. 11. Eve B. Carlson and Constance J. Dalenberg, “A Conceptual Framework for the Impact of Traumatic Experiences,” Trauma, Violence and Abuse 1 (2000): 14. 12. Amelia A. Klein, “March of the Living: Active Holocaust Commemoration in the Landscape,” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 18 (2004): 31. 13. Jerome Bruner, “Narrative and Paradigmatic Modes of Thought,” in Learning and Teaching the Ways of Knowing, 84th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, part 2, edited by Elliot Eisner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 97. 14. While there are significant differences between the life story and testimony, there are certain features that they share. For the purpose of this study, both reveal the individuals’ life stories—their prewar, wartime, and postwar experiences. The testimonies for the most part also include reflections on their current circumstances, their opinions, and their attitudes towards the future. 15. Jan T. Gross, Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz (Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2006), 32. 16. Zeev Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18. 17. Gross, Fear, 42. 18. Salman Akhtar, “The Immigrant, the Exile, and the Experience of Nostalgia,” Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 1 (1999): 126. 19. Egon Kunz, “Exile and Resettlement: Refugee Theory,” International Migration Review 15 (1981): 43. 20. Throughout the war, Hungarian Jews, on the whole, fervently believed that the Hungarians would protect and rescue them from the Nazi menace. Their trust in the assimilationist contract and the belief that they were Hungarians—no different from other Hungarians—was shattered. Not only had the Hungarians failed to protect them, but many Hungarians also collaborated in their murder. 21. Zeev Mankowitz, “The Affirmation of Life in She’erit Hapleita,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5 (1990): 19. 22. Akhtar, “The Immigrant,” 128. 23. Ruth Wajnryb, The Silence: How Tragedy Shapes Talk (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001), 256. 24. Ibid., 203. 25. Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 133. 26. Dr. S. Cove, personal conversation with author, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2006. 27. Amia Lieblich, Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, and Tamar Zilber, Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis and Interpretation (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998), 8–9. 28. Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688–1980 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 29. 29. Ibid., 158.

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30. Peter Medding, From Assimilation to Group Survival: A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1968), 166. 31. Wajnryb, The Silence, 118. 32. Researchers do point out that although “most became loyal, grateful and permanent citizens of their new country, adjustment to Australian conditions did not come easily. For most, learning a new language and the struggle to establish financial independence made the first few years in Australia difficult.” Suzanne D. Rutland, “The History of Australian Jewry, 1945–1960” (Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1990), ch. 3. Peter Medding stresses the social isolation that first the refugees and then the Jewish DPs felt when arriving in Australia. Foreign Jews felt that Australian Jews were “condescending towards them and kept their distance. . . . Australian Jews have a less than favourable stereotype of the personal behaviour and business ethics of immigrant Jews”; Medding, From Assimilation, 169–70. The established Anglo-Australian Jewish leadership’s reaction to survivors was not dissimilar to that of the Jewish communities in the United States and Israel; they too marginalized and silenced the survivors. 33. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 211. 34. Paul Marcus, “Loss and Renewal,” in Light from the Ashes: Social Science Careers of Young Holocaust Refugees and Survivors, edited by Peter Suedfeld (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 424.

13

JEWISH SHOAH SURVIVORS Neediness Assessment and Resource Allocation

Sergio DellaPergola



Background More than sixty years after the end of World War II, issues of dormant bank accounts, slave labor, confiscated property, looted art, and unpaid insurance policies still play an important role in public discourse about the direct consequences and long-term implications of the Shoah.1 Following several years of public debate and negotiations, at the beginning of the twenty-first century a new program of allocation and distribution of resources to Shoah victims and other eligible individuals and organizations was initiated within a framework of Swiss bank claims. This legal procedure generated a need to develop adequate criteria for just and efficient allocation of such resources. The United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York, under the direction of Judge Edward R. Korman, was charged to handle the administration and distribution of funds that had been transferred in these Swiss bank claims. In one of his early rulings, Judge Korman established that priority in fund allocation would be given to the needy among the survivors. Assuming that resource allocation had to be related in some meaningful way to the number and geographical location of needy victims, it did not

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appear plausible that decisions about the resources that were becoming available for allocation should be made on a “first come, first served” basis. Since requests for fund allocations typically exceeded the limited resources available, and in view of the global nature of the Shoah’s original impact and of population dispersion since the end of World War II, some general criteria were needed for the allocation of otherwise unclaimed resources. Several recent attempts existed to evaluate the number and geographical distribution of Shoah survivors.2 The results provided a variety of estimates, and at the same time—and equally importantly—fueled a wide-ranging debate about the criteria for defining survivors, the validity of research methods, and above all, the implications of these results for policy planning and division of labor among intervening agencies. One such recent research effort, commissioned by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), was intended to provide the most extensive definition of the possible number of survivors.3 That report provided a detailed overview of research regarding Shoah survivor estimates, as well as a critique of the main limitations and problems of such research. The fundamentals of that overview will be reported later in the present study, calling attention to the need to significantly reevaluate some of the criteria conventionally adopted in the assessment of survivors and their needs. Clearly, the relevant population of Shoah survivors cannot be considered as one homogeneous constituency, either in terms of past personal experiences of discrimination, suffering, and deprivation, or in terms of current personal standards of living, available resources, and neediness. It will be noted, however, that over time the tradition has been established of addressing the needs of all Shoah survivors as one group, regardless of the wide variation in their past experiences. While the same approach will be followed in the present study, some descriptive information will be provided to outline different types of survivors that exist today. At the beginning of the present century, the need to assess the global extent and distribution of Shoah survivors became more urgent. A special focus on the needy emerged following the Swiss Bank Claims Court’s deliberations. Research upon which this study is based was commissioned by the Ministry of Diaspora, Social, and Jerusalem Affairs of the Government of Israel4 and by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). This research aimed at providing a new, independent, thorough, and reliable evaluation of the number and geographical distribution of needy Jewish Shoah survivors. More specifically, the principal aim was to develop a set of detailed and verifiable criteria that will allow for a just and efficient allocation of compensation resources available for Shoah survivors worldwide, and to the needy in particular.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 295

Need for the Present Study Over the last years, several studies have been undertaken concerning aspects of the question of the number of Shoah survivors and their geographical distribution worldwide. Some of these investigative efforts tried to provide a comprehensive picture of the relevant population worldwide. Other efforts focused on specific subpopulations, as defined by country of residence or by criteria relating to suffering and survivorship. Interesting contributions to understanding the issue of Shoah survivors have been made using a variety of approaches that involve quantitative research and institutional sources.5 The Special Master who instructed the case for the New York District Court necessarily drew some of his preliminary reports and recommendations from on the research evidence that had been available up to that time.6 There are, however, a number of crucial weaknesses in the body of research available so far. These problems include: 1. inconsistent, biased, or speculative criteria for establishing Jewish population estimates at different points in time as a basis for estimating the current number of survivors; 2. insufficient attention paid to the need to define Jewish populations coherently and consistently across different countries; 3. quite simplistic—and therefore inaccurate—demographic techniques used to reconstruct the course of Jewish population change before, during, and after the Shoah period; 4. a nearly exclusive focus on Shoah-related events and people in Europe, basically ignoring all non-European territories that should be included in the broader evaluation, having been under the rule of hostile European powers; 5. inconsistent and sometimes reductive criteria for defining the period of years of suffering and the generations and locations of people likely to have been exposed; 6. insufficient consideration of the major demographic trends and changes of the last several years, which have witnessed massive transformations in the geographical distribution of the Jewish population worldwide, primarily through international migration but also through differential death rates, birth rates, and assimilation; 7. reliance on a static concept of Jewish population, rather than on a concept that incorporates the highly dynamic observable trends that portend further major changes in the foreseeable future;

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8. reliance on disparate and barely comparable sources of data to establish the amount and characteristics of eligible persons in different countries; 9. a focus on those countries for which there are at least partial sources of evidence, totally ignoring other countries that also host—even to a minor extent—a population of Shoah survivors; and 10. overly simplistic criteria for establishing eligibility on the basis of neediness. Because of these and other reasons, we require a systematic reassessment of the complex problems inherent with the demography of Shoah survivors and with assessing their neediness. This study, unlike other research efforts that have been produced in the recent past, not only addresses the issue of how many Shoah survivors exist today worldwide, but also attempts to provide integrated criteria to measure the extent of neediness currently observable among the survivors.

Conceptual Framework It may be noted at the outset that any evaluation of survivors and their characteristics and needs might reasonably address not only the generation of those who suffered directly under duress, but also the first or even the second generation of their descendants. Clearly the physical, mental, social, and economic consequences of persecution can be shown to have affected not only those directly concerned, but also their close family environment. However, the mandate of the present study is circumscribed to those persons who were alive at the time discriminatory laws or other regulations were enforced to persecute, endanger, or suppress Jews, loot their property, or otherwise limit their health, freedom of life, and civil rights. Therefore, in the context of the present discussion, three central questions need to be examined in order to create an essential background for policy decision-making with regard to global and just resource allocation: 1. How many Jews who survived the Shoah are now alive? 2. How many Jewish survivors can be defined as socioeconomically needy? 3. What has changed over the recent period that requires a substantial reevaluation of criteria previously established to deal with the problem of providing indemnification to Shoah survivors?

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In answering these questions, the analyst is faced with very complex—and so far unsolved—research problems. Ideally, one would directly approach the pertinent issues at the individual (or microsocial) level. This would require creating a large database (or a worldwide census) of all eligible Shoah survivors, one specifically designed to investigate their characteristics and needs. Analysts should undertake the systematic processing of the few national databases not keyed to any specific issue that exist with regard to Jews in Israel and to some extent in the United States and in the Former Soviet Union (FSU), as well as in other countries. But because of the unavailability of such data regarding other large sections of the Jewish diaspora, an exhaustive comparison across all different Jewish populations is not currently feasible.7 Ideally, a thorough and timeconsuming investigation—one that employs and bases itself on specially designed social science instruments—should be planned and undertaken of all of the issues at stake here. This is not practical under the existing time deadlines—especially those dictated by the framework of the recent round of decision-making that relates to the Swiss bank claims. However, the partial systematic information available for many Jewish populations and for the general societal context they live within allows for an indirect approach. This addresses the contextual (or macrosocial) level of Shoah survivors. The main goal of investigation—in the name of justice and fairness—is to develop an adequate geographical key to resource allocation across the globe, and analysts can obtain this goal by simultaneously assessing the best possible data available about the population of survivors—even though these are not ideal data—together with a thorough assessment of their respective environments. One will note, incidentally, that the relationship between the depth of suffering inflicted on survivors—and even more obviously on nonsurvivors—appears to be totally at variance with the amount of compensation made possible by limited available resources. It should be clearly understood that in no way can any resource allocation to any specific individual even remotely be compared to truly adequate personal compensation. However, having acknowledged this objective inadequacy, it appears plausible that a serious and equitable allocation strategy should consider not only the obvious microsocial approach aimed at single survivors, but also a significant macrosocial approach aimed at the whole community of survivors. As part of this process, projects aimed at perpetuating the memory of the Shoah and other community welfare projects would plausibly go hand in hand with personal reimbursement and indemnification of the survivors. Given the impossibility of reaching each individual or of producing ultimate justice at the personal level, the strategy for decision-making

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should be as impersonal and nonmanipulative as possible. In this study this will be attempted through an assessment of the amount of eligible individuals weighted by their different degrees of neediness. Neediness, in turn will be defined as a complex of different variables touching upon several critical aspects of an individual’s existence. Shortly stated, the investigative strategy pursued in our study aims at translating into practical terms the concept outlined in Figure 13.1. Figure 13.1. Geographical key to resource allocation.

Environment Based Measure of

Population Based X

Total Number of Shoah Survivors

Geographical Key =

to Total Resource Allocation

Shoah Survivors’ Total Neediness

In what follows of this paper we present an operationalization of these general concepts and an application toward establishing an adequate global allocation policy. In accordance with the recommendations of the main public bodies involved, the main analysis will be conducted with reference to four major geographical divisions under four rubrics: (1) Israel, (2) the FSU and Eastern Europe, (3) North America (United States and Canada), and (4) other countries.

Shoah Survivors: Definitions and Assessment The purpose of this study is to find a common denominator for the evaluation of Shoah survivors’ needs in the different geographical areas. In order to obtain a synthetic measure of the incidence and diffusion of neediness among Shoah survivors, we first need a careful reassessment of the total eligible constituency. The total number of Shoah survivors can be determined based on a thorough examination of institutional sources, namely lists of people declared as eligible based on certain legal criteria,

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lists of applicants to relevant funds and welfare organizations, and aggregate populations included in sociodemographic population studies. These different sources provide the following picture of various groups of Shoah survivors. Those subjected to slave labor In other words, those who were in concentration camps or ghettos, or who were otherwise submitted to slave labor. Included here are people eligible under the Claims Article 2, including pending cases, but excluding rejected cases; people—all of them in the FSU and other Eastern European countries—eligible under the Central and Eastern European Fund (CEEF) agreement, including pending but excluding rejected cases; people eligible under the German Bundes Entschadung Gesetze (BEG); and people directly taken care of by parallel agreements with national governments, primarily in Israel but also in countries like France, the Netherlands, Greece, and Poland. Those forced to flee In other words, those who were involved in flight and illegality, or whose life was disrupted in similar ways. Included here are people eligible under the Claims Hardship Fund, including pending cases, but excluding rejected cases. Also accounted for is an estimate of the people who would be eligible in the FSU and Eastern Europe under similar assumptions (a situation similar to the CEE Fund vis-à-vis the Article 2 Fund). It was estimated, on the basis of existing evidence, that such people in the FSU and Eastern Europe would constitute about 15 percent of the total in other countries. Those disrupted by Nazi endeavors In other words, all other survivors included in the very extensive concept adopted in a previous report, namely all those Jewish persons who are alive today and who at least for a brief period of time were submitted in their locations to a regime of duress and/or limitation of their full civil rights in relation to their Jewish background—whether by a Nazi foreign occupying power or by a local authority associated with the Nazi endeavor—or who had to flee elsewhere in order to avoid falling under the aforementioned situations.8 This such definition incorporates all Jews who actually suffered physical or other kinds of persecution, those who escaped from areas in which they were the designated target for persecution, and those

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who suffered any kind of other limitation of personal freedom, even temporary or potential limitations. Obviously included here are those Jews who lived at the time in countries submitted to the colonial or mandatory rule of hostile powers, such as France and Italy.9 A simple operationalization of the relevant definitional concepts of Shoah survivors leads to Figure 13.2. Figure 13.2. Operationalization of Jewish Shoah survivors. Total current Jewish population

Total Jewish population born before 1946

Total lived at least shortly or anyhow at risk in relevant areas

Total suffered significant health and/or economic damage

Total were in concentration camps or slave labor or similar

Figure 13.3 provides a graphic illustration of the estimated relative sizes of these various groups of survivors. Figure 13.3. Typology of estimated Jewish Shoah survivors. Type of experience

Concentration camps, ghettos, slave labor

Total number of survivors of which: needy (grey area)

Cumulated total

213,000

213,000

Flight, illegality

327,000

540,000

Other

552,000

1,092,000

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The graph and the estimates are suggested primarily to help in establishing an appropriate general understanding of the major human dimensions involved in the study of Shoah survivors. The proportions in the figure do not pretend to faithfully portray the amount of neediness within each of the three groups, but they convey the hypothesis that neediness is likely to be more frequent among the more hard-hit groups. The numbers in Figure 13.1 represent the results of our current analysis of the various types of people eligible for compensation. We estimated the total more extensive definition of Shoah survivors at 1,092,000 persons, and of these, about 213,000 are in the first group, 327,000 in the second group, and 552,000 in the third group. We may plausibly assume that neediness among survivors tends to be proportionally more frequent among those who suffered the heaviest hardships. Indeed, both the survivors’ health status (which in turn relates to mental health) and their other personal characteristics and experiences since the Shoah, including lost opportunities, can be assumed to bear at least some relationship to personal experiences during the Shoah period. However, following the prevailing general consensus, in this study all Shoah survivors will be considered as one whole group, ignoring possible internal differences. Table 13.1 reports regional estimates of Shoah survivors. Table 13.1. Jewish Shoah survivors in 2003, by type of experience and region of residence Region

Type of Experience Concentration camp, ghetto, slave labor

Flight, illegality

Other

Totala

Total number

213,200

326,800

552,000

1,092,000

Total percent

100

100.0

100.0

100.0

Israel

49.4

50.2

43.2

46.5

FSU and Eastern Europe

12.9

12.1

21.1

16.8

North America

27.8

29.3

5.3

16.9

Other countries

9.9

8.4

30.4

19.8

a. Due to the improved documentation available in the present report, there are minor discrepancies between these percentages and those reported in DellaPergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information.”

In accordance with the definitional criteria adopted, our estimates are generally higher than those suggested by previous reports. The share of

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Israel is higher than in previous assessments, mainly because of two factors: 1. The recent continuing inflow of immigrants increases Israel’s Jewish population and decreases the number of Jews in the relevant countries of origin, particularly the FSU; and 2. The incorporation of North African and Middle Eastern communities that were mistakenly omitted in previous assessments tends to expand Israel’s share more than that of other parts of the world, but also increases the share of western Europe, as most of the migrants from relevant former European colonies in Muslim countries settled either Israel or France.

Measures of Neediness Neediness in general, and among Shoah survivors specifically, cannot be reduced to one straightforward dimension. It rather relates to a whole complex of personal and environmental characteristics and constraints. It would be impossible to establish a unique criterion for the best way to operationalize the concept of neediness. On the other hand, the main relevant areas of investigation should clearly include: demographic composition of the Jewish population, health standards in the countries of residence, socio-economic characteristics and access to resources among Jewish populations, and standards of living in the respective countries.10 In dealing with Jewish neediness, it is clearly important that reference be made to the specific context of Jewish history and society. The approach should consider the needs and profile of a Jewish constituency that has been known for its generally high levels of education, its peculiar residential distribution, and its occupational composition, the latter of which is significantly concentrated in the middle classes. It is important to consider that the global geographical distribution of the Jews raises challenges to determining levels of neediness, both in absolute and in relative terms. The high level of international geographical mobility of Jewish populations has often been related to the division of family networks across different countries. Communication within and between these networks implies an exchange of information about people’s respective life experiences and standards of living. These exchanges of information may in turn affect perceptions of personal status and needs. It is therefore a sensitive analytic and policy approach not to isolate a consideration of a survivor’s individual needs from those of his or her proximate environment.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 303

As already noted, the issue of children and other close descendants of survivors and nonsurvivors (children who are not themselves survivors) is beyond the main concerns of this study. However, it is quite obvious that the provision of services and assistance to the survivors cannot be seen as the exclusive prerogative of the Jewish organizational network. Some degree of intervention by the survivors’ families and proximate community should also be taken into account as part of the relevant process. This makes it imperative that the analytic evaluation of the survivors’ needs is not confined to a narrow listing of personal stringency, but that it focuses more broadly on the supporting environment. This, in turn, calls for an approach to Shoah survivors that incorporates a keen look at the broader sociodemographic picture of contemporary Jewish population and society. Furthermore, an exclusive focus on concepts and measures of poverty that may be appropriate to underdeveloped societies, such as access to primary food or potable water, would be inadequate in the social context of contemporary Jewish society. Whereas absolute poverty should be given priority in resource allocation, relative neediness among Jewish Shoah survivors—relative to other Jews or other inhabitants within the same country, and relative to Jews and others in other countries—should be carefully considered in the overall assessment. However, the issue of access to adequate and appropriate food is a serious matter to be considered. While there is evidence that this concern may be more diffused among Jewish Shoah survivors in the FSU, recent data indicate that the problem may exist for a significant minority of the population in Israel11 and in other countries as well. One important set of relevant data for consideration would include pension arrangements for survivors and their families, as well as other types of safety nets. While we know that these are highly variable in the different countries of past and current residence of Shoah survivors, a comprehensive and comparable global database of these variables is not currently available. Therefore, we need to develop some adequate proxies that will convey the differential exposure to economic need and deprivation among the survivors. Keeping in mind these basic requirements, in order to assess the extent of neediness among Shoah survivors we examined a significant number of social indicators pertinent to the different concerns now outlined. These provided measures of several relevant aspects of the proximate environment and broader context within which Shoah survivors live their lives. It is important to stress that a major goal in this study is to pursue the global comparability of neediness indicators, a quality which is conspicu-

304 • Sergio DellaPergola

ously lacking in the relevant literature reviewed so far. More specifically, the following indices were computed for each country12 (see Table 13.2): Total Demography Index (TDI) TDI is a composite of the following four indices, each of which receives equal weight in the total index: Aging Ratio, or the ratio of the number of Jews aged 75 and over to the number of Jews aged 65 and over; Age Dependency Ratio, or— the ratio of the number of Jews aged 65 and over to the number of Jews aged 25–64; Gender Equity Measure, an index of gender inequality in each country of residence; and Recent Immigration Load, a measure of the percentage of recent Jewish immigrants among the total Jewish population of a country. Total Health Index (THI) THI is a composite of the following four indices, each with equal weight in the total index: Life Expectancy at Birth, a major synthetic measure of health status in a population; Health Expenditure Per Capita, a measure of private and government investment in health, also implying access to medical facilities; Access to Improved Sanitation, a measure of the quality of health and hygienic environment; and Access to Affordable Essential Drugs, a measure of access to essential medical treatment. Total Socioeconomic Index (TSI) TSI is a composite of the following four indices, each with equal weight in the total index: GDP Per Capita, a measure of standard of living at the national level, with significant implications for individuals; Gini Coefficient of Income Distribution, a measure of income inequality; Percent Unemployment, a measure of access to regular sources of income; and Jewish Social Status, a measure of the relative socioeconomic standing of the Jewish population, based on the percentage of persons with a higher education degree. Purchase Power Parity Index (PPPI) PPPI measures the efficiency of monetary resources in a given national economy, based on the PPP/GNI Ratio.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 305

Total Neediness Index (TNI) TNI is a synthetic measure based on the average of the four indices above; it provides a multidimensional measure. All indices are illustrated in greater detail in the continuation of this study. The TNI is shown in Table 13.2 for the four main regions of reference of this study. The next necessary step toward reaching a key to total resource allocation is to multiply the total number of Shoah survivors by our measure of neediness, the TNI. The product is a number for each region examined. Summing up these numbers and computing the respective percentages of each region out of the total provides the required key to resource allocation. Table 13.2. Demography, health, socioeconomic, and purchase power indices by region of residence of Jewish Shoah survivors, 2003 Total Demography Indexa (TDI)

Total Health Indexa (THI)

Total Socioeconomic Indexa (TSI)

PPP Indexa (PPPI)

25

25

25

25

Israel

0.807

0.375

0.611

0.948

0.815

FSU and Eastern Europe

0.858

0.645

0.567

0.568

0.784

North America

0.710

0.259

0.402

0.967

0.695

Other Countries

0.733

0.467

0.565

0.887

0.789

Region Weight (percentage)

Total Neediness Index (TNI)b

a. All indices were calculated separately based on individual country data. Each index can vary between 1 and 0, the highest value representing in each case the least favorable situation. All indices presented here are regional averages weighted by the Jewish population in each country in 2003. Highest (worst) values for each index are in bold. b. The Total Neediness Index (TNI) is an average of the four previous indices (each representing 25 percent of the total weight). Original TNI country values were transformed to make the highest value equal 1.

Main Findings Table 13.3 summarizes the main stages and results of our evaluation. The following fundamental features emerge from the data:

306 • Sergio DellaPergola

Concentration of the current Jewish population. The current Jewish population is highly concentrated in two areas that make up a combined 83.1 percent of the world total—North America, 43.8 percent, and Israel, 39.3 percent. The share of Jewish population that currently remains in the FSU and Eastern Europe is estimated at about 4 percent of the total, while 13 percent of world Jewry lives in the rest of the world—Latin America, western Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. All population data refer to the concept of “core Jewish population” and do not include non-Jewish members of Jewish households or other persons eligible for the purposes of Israel’s Law of Return. Geographical distribution of total Shoah survivors. The geographical distribution of total Shoah survivors is quite different. According to the extensive definition, 46.5 percent of Jewish Shoah survivors overall live in Israel, 16.9 percent in North America, 16.8 percent in the FSU and Eastern Europe, and 19.8 percent in the rest of the world. Looking at the more hard-hit groups of Shoah survivors, the percentage in Israel is quite high and reaches about one half of the total. The percentage in North America is higher, too, at 28–29 percent. On the other hand, the percentage of hardest-hit survivors in the FSU and Eastern Europe declines to 12–13 percent, and the percentage in other countries also declines to 8–9 percent. Such significant variation reflects the different historical circumstances before, during, and after the Shoah in the different countries, including patterns of occupation, flight, massive destruction, and the rescue of communities. From the 1930s to today, international migration has played an important role in various ways in determining the geographical location of Shoah survivors. Of particular import was the evacuation of displaced European Jews after World War II, when Israel and North America (respectively) were the main areas that absorbed such large-scale migration. The more recent exodus of about one million individuals from the FSU was primarily directed to Israel, which absorbed roughly two-thirds of the total Jewish migrants.13 Variance in TNI across different regions. The distribution of the Total Neediness Index (TNI) reflects the interaction of thirteen different social indicators, four related to demography, four related to health, four related to socioeconomic status, and one related to comparative purchasing power. The resulting TNI is interestingly

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 307

quite balanced across the four regions considered in this study. Indeed, while individual regional values vary significantly for each separate indicator, the various indicators tend to compensate each other to a large extent when considered as regional averages. The comprehensive result is that the overall highest TNI, showing the greatest neediness, appears in Israel (0.815), and the lowest in North America (0.695), which shows only a minor variance. Regional gaps are much wider within each of the component indices, and across the several social indicators that served as a basis for their elaboration. It should be stressed in particular that although the FSU and Eastern Europe score quite badly with regard to most demographic, health, and socioeconomic indicators, their low (and hence advantageous) PPPI significantly counterbalances those gaps. Total Survivor Neediness Measure. After multiplying the total number of Jewish Shoah survivors by the measure of total neediness, a Total Survivor Neediness Measure (TSNM) results. Following this, a suggested Total Resource Allocation (TRA) results as follows, in rounded percentages: • Israel, 48 percent; • FSU and Eastern Europe, 17 percent; • North America, 15 percent; • Other countries, 20 percent.

The final evaluation shown in Table 13.3 indicates that the suggested TRA generates in the first place a significantly disproportionate allocation for the benefit of the Jewish population in the FSU and Eastern Europe. The FSU and Eastern Europe’s allocation share is more than four times higher than the proportion of world Jewry that resides in those countries. Israel’s suggested allocation is over 50 percent higher than Israel’s world Jewish population share. The allocation for the balance of the other countries is over 20 percent higher. On the other hand, North America is bound to receive a far smaller allocation when compared to its large Jewish population. When compared to the total distribution of Shoah survivors, however the suggested TRA (which, it should be stressed, also considers the actual purchasing power of allocated funds) generates only a minor variation relative to the actual geographical distribution of survivors. North America would receive about 10 percent less than its actual weight among survivors, while Israel, the FSU, Eastern Europe, and the other countries would receive slightly more.

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Table 13.3. Jewish population and Jewish Shoah survivors, Total Neediness Index, and Total Resource Allocation by region of residence, 2003

Total Neediness Index (TNI) (b)

Percent DistribuTotal Survivor tion of Total Resource Neediness Allocation Measure (TRA) (TSNM) (c)=(a)x(b) (d)

Region

Percent of world Jewish population 2003

Total Jewish Shoah survivors (a)

Total Number

12,950,000

1,092,000

Total Percent

100

Israel

39.3

508,100

0.815

414,100

48

FSU and Eastern Europe

3.9

183,700

0.784

143,500

17

North America

43.8

184,700

0.695

128,300

15

Other Countries

13.0

216,200

0.789

170,600

20

856,500 100

a. Sergio DellaPergola, “World Jewish Population 2003,” in American Jewish Year Book (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2003), 103, 203, 588–612. All data refer to “core” Jewish population.

Sensitivity Analysis To complete the evaluation of this analysis, it is useful to review some implications of the research strategy followed. First, it should be noted that this study does not deal with the criteria for individual compensation to Shoah survivors. This is a matter for the various relief agencies involved. Our main goal is to offer decision makers a key to global resource allocation (if any is to be used). The final result, the Total Resource Allocation (TRA) key, derives from a large number of different and independent databases and social indicators. Therefore, it does not depend in any decisive measure on any single population figure, statistical indicator, or analytic criterion. Even assuming the presence of imperfections or biases in the data—and there surely are such imperfections in the data used in this study—the influence on the final result is minor. In other words, the final results, being dependent on a large number of indicators, are quite insensitive to manipulations or even errors in any one indicator. Additionally, changes—such as increases or decreases—in the allocation suggested for one given geographical area will result in compensatory decreases or increases in one or more of the other areas.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 309

In analyzing the specific regions, our assessment of Shoah survivors points to a significantly higher share of survivors (relative to the current total Jewish population distribution) in Israel, the FSU and Eastern Europe, and the other countries, and a significantly lower share in North America. Our Neediness measure reflects thirteen different social indicators, with higher indices of neediness translated into higher resource allocation. The FSU and Eastern Europe fare the worst regarding the demographic measures of age dependency and gender equity, regarding the health measures of life expectancy, health expenditure, and access to affordable drugs, and regarding the socioeconomic measure of GDP per capita. Israel fares the worst regarding recent immigration load and Jewish social status; North America fares the worst regarding aging ratio, Gini coefficient of income distribution, and purchase power parity; and the other countries fare worst regarding access to improved sanitation and percent unemployment. Increasing the weight of any of these indicators, or any combination thereof, may add to the allocation given to a region, but will also entail adding to other regions whose indicators of neediness are higher than average, as well as detracting from other regions. In sum, it is suggested that the approach followed in this study provides a key to resource allocation which is relatively insensitive to manipulations. We trust that this study will provide decision makers with a comparatively objective and efficient tool to work with.

The Predicament of Equity: Comparing Different Approaches Summing up this short overview of our investigation, it may be interesting to compare our conclusions with the preliminary suggestions made by the Special Master.14 We will concisely address a number of sensitive issues that appear to be relevant to equitable decision and on which the suggestions of the present study seem to differ with the conclusions reached by previous investigations. How many Jewish Shoah survivors presently exist? The Special Master worked on the assumption that there are a total of 830,000 to 960,000 survivors. Our estimate of 1,092,000 at the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century (produced following the request by Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger for an independent new assessment) is higher because (a) it uses better and more consistent Jewish population estimates,15 and (b) most importantly, it corrects the historical inconsistency of having neglected the Jewish survivors in countries of the

310 • Sergio DellaPergola

southern and eastern Mediterranean area. Clearly, however, the number of survivors diminishes day by day, due to the high death rates inherent in an aging population. Where are the eligible survivors? The Special Master suggested that for the Looted Asset Class of survivors, 75 percent of the 90 percent that should go to Jewish victims should be given to Jews in the FSU, while the remaining 25 percent should be split between victims now in Israel, North America, and the other countries. This reflects the undeniable fact that in the past, Jews in the FSU and Eastern Europe were excluded from indemnification, as well as the fact that the socioeconomic situation in the FSU significantly lags behind that in the Western countries and Israel. Our estimate that 48 percent of the allocation should go to Israel, 17 percent to the FSU and Eastern Europe, 15 percent to North America, and 20 percent to other countries is also significantly affected by the particularly negative conditions that prevailed and still prevail in the FSU. At the same time, it is imperative to give necessary attention to the large-scale Jewish migration from the FSU that has brought the vast majority of Jews who previously lived in the FSU primarily to Israel, to a lesser extent to the United States and Germany, and in much smaller numbers to other Western countries. Such mass migration was motivated in large part by the accumulated deprivation experienced by Shoah survivors and other Jews during the decades following the end of World War II. This exodus has, among other things, resulted in the geographical redistribution of Jewish need. Needy Jews who settled in countries where the socio-economic situation is objectively better—in part thanks to the existence of safety nets, but these countries also boast better health, housing, and other facilities—should not be penalized for their choices. Jewish investment has been necessary to improve the standing of these Jewish migrants, and significant portions of the burden for their successful absorption continues to be borne by the whole Jewish population and the pertinent public institutions and nongovernmental organizations in the respective countries. Is neediness a generalized concern nowadays? Under the recent economic circumstances related to global economic trends, and keeping in mind that neediness is highly correlated with old age, there is growing evidence of Jewish poverty in nearly every country, including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, and Israel.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 311

In Israel in particular, economic policies adopted in recent years by the Ministry of Finance brought about a significant cut in social benefits and transfer payments. A large number of Israelis—including the elderly, the recipients of pensions, and the physically disabled, the latter of which include a disproportionate proportion of Shoah survivors—were among those who lost support. How do we define need and extreme need? The Special Master has noted particularly the plight of the so-called “double victims” who were left behind the Iron Curtain during earlier stages of indemnification. Again, quite a large proportion of these victims now live in Israel, and to a lesser extent in other Western countries. The Special Master significantly relied on a number of personal cases that can not be considered a representative sample. While appreciating such compassion-inspiring but anecdotal and unsystematic evidence, we strive to address the problem in a more comprehensive and systematic way. Need has to be assessed in its global manifestations, which, as noted, appear to be spread across different Jewish populations worldwide. Which indicators better measure neediness? There may be different ways to measure neediness. One important consideration should be to give all potentially eligible persons the same chance to be accounted for. When specifically needed data, such as comparable information on pension benefits, are not available for all Jewish populations worldwide, one should search for adequate proxies that will illustrate the same or similar needs. While not addressing pensions and other safety nets specifically, our study does seriously address health and socioeconomic variables related to aging. Our conclusions indeed parallel those that would be obtained using alternative social indicators, namely that Jews in the FSU suffer high deprivation vis-à-vis Jews in other countries. They therefore deserve a far higher share of allocation than their proportion among the total Jewish Shoah survivors. Is the current distribution of needy survivors going to stay constant? The number and distribution of needy Shoah survivors is constantly changing as a consequence of three factors: mortality, international migration, and changes in the amount of need (which, as already noted, may be greatly affected by changing economic policies). In view of the strong and well-established demographic patterns of the past decades,

312 • Sergio DellaPergola

the continuing population shift from less developed countries (including the FSU) to the more developed Western countries and to Israel is virtually certain to continue. Resource allocation based on present population distributions underestimates (or overestimates) future regional needs. It would be sensible to periodically revise the criteria for allocation of whatever resources are available at each future point in time. Should real cost of living be considered? Unlike other evaluations issued so far, we indeed suggest to pay adequate consideration to the effective purchasing power of the US dollar in the different countries (PPP). The differences appear to be significant and should inform sensitive decision-making about limited resource allocation. The purchase power of the US dollar is significantly higher in the FSU than elsewhere. However, in this study it was deemed considerate not to overstress the impact of this factor, which would tend to diminish the actual resources allocated to the FSU. Therefore, in the procedure followed for assessing need, the PPP index was not given a weight equal to the complex of all other measures (demography, health, and socioeconomic status), and was instead given only 25 percent of the total weighting.

Conclusion After reviewing the evidence available from the existing literature and from raw data, we critically evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of different possible approaches to an equitable allocation of resources to needy Jewish Shoah survivors. In our view, the Total Resource Allocation key suggested in this study provides a fair solution to an exceedingly difficult problem. A range of possible variation may, of course, be considered around the central values suggested in this study, but variation cannot depart too much from the values suggested here, for the sake of keeping a reasonable representation of the real situation in terms of the demographic composition and geographical distribution of the survivors, as well as an objective and balanced assessment of their needs. As time goes by and the current pool of Shoah survivors continuously diminishes, a just assessment of their needs is imperatively urgent.

Jewish Shoah Survivors • 313

Notes 1. Throughout this study we consistently refer to Shoah rather than Holocaust. While the etymology and original meaning of these two terms are deeply different, they have been interchangeably used in public discourse. Shoah (destruction, devastation, extinction) clearly is more appropriate in our case than Holocaust (a voluntary religious sacrifice). For the practical purposes of this study, however, the two terms can be considered as equivalent. For an account of the historical, legal, and political issues at stake in this distinction, see Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). 2. For a compilation of relevant materials, see “Background Materials for Claims Conference Allocations Committee Meeting,” (New York: Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany Inc., December 2003). 3. Sergio DellaPergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information on World Jewry.” Final Report Presented to the Hon. Secretary Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Chairman, International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, November 2003). 4. Then headed by the Hon. Nathan Sharansky. 5. See E. Spanic, H. Factor, and V. Strominski, “Shoah Survivors and Their Number Today” [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1997); Jack Ukeles (consultant), “A Plan for Allocating Successor Organization Resources: Report of the Planning Committee,” (New York: Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany 2000) (see also: http://www.claimscon.org); “Special Master’s Proposed Plan of Allocation and Distribution of Settlement Proceeds in Re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swissbanks): Special Master’s Proposal September 11, 2000” (New York: United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, 2000) (see also: http.//www.swissbankclaims.com); Jenny Brodsky, Shoah Survivors: Characteristics and Needs—Selected Research Findings [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: JDC-Brookdale Institute of Gerontology and Human Development, 2001); Jenny Brodsky, Shlomo Be’er, and Yitschak Shnoor, Holocaust Survivors in Israel: Current and Projected Needs for Home Nursing Care (Jerusalem: JDC-Brookdale Institute, 2003); Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Data on Shoah Survivors in Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 2003); Swiss Fund for Needy Victims of the Holocaust/Shoa, Final Report (Berne, 2002); Ukeles Associates Inc., “An Estimate of the Current Distribution of Jewish Victims of Nazi Persecution,” Prepared for the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (New York, 2003); DellaPergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information”; Jenny Brodsky and Sergio DellaPergola, “Health Problems and Socioeconomic Neediness among Jewish Shoah Survivors in Israel,” (Jerusalem: Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, and The Hebrew University, 2005). 6. Special Master, “Demographics of ‘Victims or Target Groups,’” (New York: United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, September 11, 2000); Judah Gribetz, Special Master and Shari C. Reig, Deputy Special Master, “Special Master’s Interim Report on Distribution and Recommendation for Allocation of Excess and Possible Unclaimed Residual Funds,” (New York: United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, October 2, 2003). 7. An example of a thorough investigation of available data can be found in Andrew Hahn et al., Jewish Elderly Nazi Victims: A Synthesis of Comparative Information on Hardship and Need in the United States, Israel, and the Former Soviet Union—Report

314 • Sergio DellaPergola

Prepared for the Joint Distribution Committee (Waltham, MA.: Brandeis University, Maurice and Marylin Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, 2004). Besides a detailed review and analysis of existing social indicators and a clear recognition of the existence of need across different Jewish populations, the Brandeis Report does not suggest a framework for global resource allocation. 8. DellaPergola, “Review of Relevant Demographic Information”. 9. For documentation on legal, physical, and economic persecutions directly suffered by Jews in North Africa, Syria, and Lebanon, see Michael R. Marrus, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981). For the persecution of Jews in Libya, see Renzo de Felice, Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835–1970 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). 10. An important general illustration of the relevance of social indicators in the study of social policies is provided in the annual report produced by the United Nations Human Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report (New York, annual). 11. Ayelet Berg-Warman and Jenny Brodsky, The Effect of Financial Hardship on the Living Conditions of the Elderly (Jerusalem: JDC-Brookdale Institute of Gerontology and Human Development, 2004). 12. For more detailed explanations of the rationale for selecting the chosen indicators, their main characteristics, and value distributions, see Sergio DellaPergola, “Neediness among Jewish Shoah Survivors: A Key to Global Resource Allocation.” Final report presented to the Hon. Nathan Sharansky, Minister of Diaspora, Social and Jerusalem Affairs, Government of Israel, Jerusalem, and World Jewish Restitution Organization (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 2004). 13. Sergio DellaPergola, “Jewish Diaspora,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Demography, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 2001), 7963–69. 14. Special Master, “Proposed Plan of Allocation and Distribution of Settlement Proceeds” (New York: United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, 2003). 15. Interestingly, other authors have used their versions of the present author’s Jewish population estimates as well, but this author (as might be expected) has prime access to the more updated and corrected version of his own sources and estimates.

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Master’s Theses Simrot, David. “The Yishuv and the Holocaust Survivors: Treatment and Ways of Coping in Palestine 1945–1947” [in Hebrew]. M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995. Yakoba, Meira. “Settlement after the Second World War of the Jewish Palestinian Soldiers who Served in the British Army” [in Hebrew]. M.A. thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 1994. Zelzer, Esther. “The Middle-Class Moshavim: Moshavim Established by the Section for Middle Class Settlement Division in Israel’s First Decade” [in Hebrew]. M.A. thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2003.

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Ukeles, Jack. “A Plan for Allocating Successor Organization Resources: Report of the Planning Committee”,.” New York: Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, 2000. http://www.claimscon.org.

Films Central Committee for Child Welfare of the Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid. We Live Again. 1946. 53 min., restored by the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, Yiddish with some English subtitles. Blumenthal, Sharyn C. The Phoenix Effect. 2004. 16mm color film, 59 min.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS



Micha Balf has been a member of Kibbutz Maagan Michael since 1980. He was born in the United States and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1977. In Israel he completed an MA (1998) and PhD (2003) in Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University Of Jerusalem. His doctoral dissertation was published as Unsilenced Voices: Memory and Commemoration of the Holocaust in the Kibbutz Movement (in Hebrew) by the Kibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House (2008). Micha has taught in many institutions and at many levels. He was principal of a high school for a number of years. He was also a shaliach (representative of Israel) in the United States between 1989–1992 and 2006–2009. He is currently a consultant, lecturer, and administrator at Shedemot Center and at Oranim College in Israel. Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz is chair of the graduate program in Contemporary Jewry and professor of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. She is the author of numerous books and articles and specializes in topics pertaining to the Holocaust, gender, memory, the State of Israel, and commemoration. Among her books are Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell, 1998), The Bergson Boys and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy (Syracuse University Press, 2005), and Perfect Heroes: The World War II Parachutists and

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the Making of Collective Israeli Memory (University Press of Wisconsin, 2010). Sergio DellaPergola is the Shlomo Argov Professor Emeritus of IsraelDiaspora Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a fellow and former chairman of the University’s Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry. A specialist on the demography of world Jewry, he has published extensively on data evaluation, historical demography, the family, international migration and absorption, Jewish education, and population projections in Israel and the Diaspora. Jean-Marc Dreyfus holds a readership in Holocaust Studies. He is a historian, specializing in the economic “Aaryanization” of property during the Holocaust. He received his PhD from the University of Paris I—Panthéon-Sorbonne; his dissertation was on the confiscation of “Jewishowned” banks in France and the restitution policies in the postwar years. He was an assistant professor at the Institute for Political Sciences in Paris, where he taught a course on Nazism and the Holocaust, a guest professor at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau in Germany, and worked at the Centre Marc-Bloch in Berlin, the United States Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He is the author of two books published in 2003 by Fayard in Paris: Looting by decrees. Economic Aryanization of Banks and their Restitution after the Liberation, 1940–1953 and Des camps dans Paris. Austerlitz, Levitan, Bassano, juillet 1943–août 1944 (an English translation of the latter will appear in 2011.) Together with Jean Samuel, he wrote Il m’appelait «Pikolo». Un compagnon de Primo Levi raconte (2005). He is coeditor of the 2009 Dictionary of the Holocaust (in French). Sharon Kangisser Cohen received her PhD from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She currently works in the Oral History Division of the Institute and is a researcher at the Diana Zborowski Centre for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Her book, Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Israel: Finding their Voice, was published in 2005. Zeev Mankowitz was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1941, and since 1963 has been a resident of Jerusalem. For many years he has been engaged in the training of educational leaders and he has directed the Institute for Youth Leaders from Abroad, the Jerusalem Fellows Program for Educational Leadership, and the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Mankowitz is presently direct-

Contributors • 335

ing the recently established Dianne Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Shoah at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. His study, Life between Memory and Hope: Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge University Press) appeared in 2002; a Hebrew version was published by Yad Vashem. Joanna Beata Michlic is the director of the HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University. Until December 2008, she was an associate professor of History and held the Chair of the Holocaust and Ethical Values at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her major publications include Neighbors Respond: The Controversy about Jedwabne (2004; coedited with Antony Polonsky) and Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (2006). She is currently working on two monographs, The Social History of Jewish Children in Poland: Survival and Identity, 1945–1949 and Bringing the Dark to Light: The Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, coedited with John-Paul Himka. Her research interests include the history and culture of East European Jewry, PolishJewish relations in the modern era, Jewish childhood, and the Holocaust and its memory in Eastern Europe. Her recent awards include the Taube Foundation Grant for the translation of Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present into Polish (Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm, forthcoming), the Corrie ten Boom Research Award at the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and a Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellowship 2009–2010. Dalia Ofer is the Max and Rita Haber Professor of Holocaust and East European Studies (emeritus) at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry and the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has published and edited seven books in Hebrew and English and has published numerous articles on the history of the Holocaust, daily life in East European ghettos, immigration to Palestine and Israel, gender, the memory of the Holocaust in Israel, and teaching of the Holocaust. She served as Head of Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry (2003–February 2007) and head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (1995–2002). She was a visiting professor at a number of universities in the United States, including Harvard, Yale, Maryland, and Stockton College. She was the Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellow for Archival Research CHAS—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. and the Mandelbaum Visiting Professor, Sydney University,

336 • Contributors

Australia. She received the Ben Zvi Award for her book Derech Bayam: Aliyah Bet Bitkufat Hashoah (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1988) and the Jewish Book Award for Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Françoise S. Ouzan is a former associate professor at the University of Reims. She holds an “agrégation” and received her PhD in history from the University of Paris I—Pantheon- Sorbonne in 1993. Her thesis on the immigration of displaced persons to America under the Truman presidency has been published with the title Ces Juifs dont l’Amérique ne voulait pas (The Jews America did not want) (Brussels: Complexe, 1995). She has conducted research on the aftermath of the Shoah and on American Jewry at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) from 2002 to 2004. She is currently a senior researcher at the Goldstein- Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University and an associate researcher at the French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ/CNRS/MAEE). Her major publications include Histoire des Américains juifs (Brussels: André Versaille éditeur, 2008) and a historical fiction on the immediate postwar period, Demain, nous partons (Paris, Bibliophane, 2007). Dr. Ouzan also coedited Vivre en Israël après la Shoah (Paris, l’Harmattan, 2008) and De la mémoire de la Shoah dans le monde juif, with D. Michman (Paris, CNRS éditions, 2008). She has participated in the 2009 Dictionary of the Holocaust (in French) and in a documentary film, “La vie après la Shoah,” by Francis Gillery (Ugoprod, 2009) that was presented at the UNESCO in Paris in 2010 as part of the event marking International Remembrance Day. Ada Schein is an educator and independent historian. She holds a PhD in Holocaust studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2000) with a dissertation on the educational systems in the DP camps in Germany and Austria 1945–1951. In 2004, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the International Institute for Holocaust Research of Yad Vashem and researched the historical commissions in the DP camps in Germany, published as “Everyone Can Hold A Pen—The Documentation Project in the DP Camps in Germany” in Holocaust Historiography in Context, Challenges, Polemic and Achievementsi, edited by David Bankier and Dan Michman (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and New York: Berghahn Books, 2009). In 2010, her study on the absorption of Holocaust survivors in rural settlements (moshavim) in Israel 1944–1955 was published in Dwell in Safety: Holocaust Survivors in the Rural Cooperative Settlement, Shlomo Bar-Gil and Ada Schein (Jerusalem, Yad Vashem 2010). Another study, “Health in Temporary Conditions: Health Care Services for Holocaust

Contributors • 337

Survivors in Austria 1945–1953,” appeared in Search and Research Lecture and Papers, edited by Dan Michman (2010). Leonardo Senkman earned his PhD in history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He teaches modern Latin American history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the director for academic programs of the Liwerant Center for the Study of Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and their Jewish Communities, as well as a research fellow of the Harry Truman Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His long-term research interest has been on the Jewish refugees and survivors who fled to Latin America during the post Second World War years. He is now conducting research on the transnational migration of political exiles from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Among his books is Argentina, la Segunda Guerra Mundial y los Refugiados Indeseables, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires, 1991), and he is the coauthor of Fascismo y Nazismo en las Letras Argentinas (Buenos Aires, 2009). David Weinberg is director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies and professor of history at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. He has lectured and published extensively in the field of modern Jewish history, with a special interest in the history of French Jewry. Dr. Weinberg is the author of Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am, and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity (Holmes & Meier, 1996) and A Community on Trial: The Jews of Paris in the 1930s (Chicago, 1974). Dr. Weinberg is presently preparing a monograph on the revival of west European Jewry after World War II, which will be published as part of the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Hanna Yablonka, history department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her research has focused on the cultural and social impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society. She has written about the absorption of Holocaust survivors into Israeli society and examined the Eichmann trial and its long-range impact. Her most recent book deals with the Mizrahim (Oriental Jews) and the Shoah. She is currently a member of the Yad Vashem Counsel and was the academic advisor of Yad Vashem’s exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel. Hanna Yablonka is chair of the Governors of the Memorial Museum of Hungarian-Speaking Jewry in Safed; historian of the Ghetto Fighters Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot; and chair of the history teaching committee of Israel’s Ministry of Education.

INDEX

Places Adelaide, Australia, 289 Afghanistan, 19 Afikim (Kibbutz), 190 Algiers, 117, 119 Alonim (Kibbutz) 142, 143, 162n45 Altona, Germany, 202 Amsterdam, 89–93, 105, 107n4, 108n11, 108n14, 111n48 Antwerp, 16, 36, 89–91, 100 Aqir (Beit Elazari), 193, 214, 217, 219, 231n56 Argentina, 1, 7–8, 36, 253n5, 254n17, 258–264, 266, 268–273 Ashdot Ya’akov (Kibbutz), 143, 162n47 Asunción, 261–262, 271n11 Atlit (Immigrant center), 135 Auschwitz, 16, 26–28, 35–37, 42n8, 43n30, n33, n34, n37, 44n36, 44n61, 85n59, 122, 202, 242, 255n24, 262, 282, 288–289, 291n15 Australia, viii, 1, 8, 12, 18, 34–35, 49, 216, 253n5, 274–278, 280–292 Austria, 2, 13, 19–20, 34, 41n2, 41n14, 130, 161n22, 187, 205n24, 208, 235, 239, 261, 280, 289 Babi Yar, 172 Baldwin Park (California), 242 Baltic States, 34 Baltimore, 206n53, 234 Basle, 99–100 Be’er Toviyya, 214, 222 Beit Elazari (Aqir), 193, 219, 221 Beit Ha-shittah (Kibbutz), 148, 154, 163n62, 163n80 Beit Yosef, 211, 229n18 Belfort, 105 Belgium, 5, 13, 36, 88–91, 94–96, 98–99, 102, 105, 107, 108n5, 109n17, 109n28, 111n41, 115, 121, 124n16, 277

Bełżec 83n37, Bergen-Belsen, 13, 16, 20, 26, 36–36, 255n24, 272n27 Berlin, 12, 99, 271n18 Betzet (Moshav), 220 Bnai Brak, 37, 44n51, n60, 45n70 Bolivia, 259, 262–263, 267 Bordeaux, 267 Borysław, 58 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 19, 42n9 Boston, 86n76, 234 Bratislava, 12 Brussels, 89–93, 99, 106, 108n8, 108n11, 111n44 Buchenwald, 13, 40n1, 40n3, 44n65 Buenos Aires, viii, 258–273 Bulgaria, 12, 130, 160n12, 160n19, 163n58, 217 Canada, 12, 18, 34, 60, 216, 253n5, 260, 271n7, 277, 279–280, 298 Chile, 259, 271n12 Chorzów, 65 Colchester, 248 Connecticut, 240–241, 244, 247–248, 250, 257n50 Copenhagen, 108 Cyprus, 12, 135, 162n48, 190, 193 Czechoslovakia, 240, 277, 284 Częstochowa, 69, 85n60 Czystyłów, 74 Dachau-Kaufering, 13 Danielson (Connecticut), 241, 247–248, 250 Dimona, 184, 199–201, 206n41–42 Djiya-Aldjiya (Aldjiy), 193 Dorot (Kibbutz), 145, 151, 162n50, 163n73 Dorothy (New Jersey), 241, 247, 257n50 Eastern Europe, 10, 20, 34, 50, 80n12–13, 89, 91, 96, 102, 106, 123, 168, 244,

Index • 339

249–250, 268, 274, 276, 298–299, 301, 305–310 Egypt, 185, 203n4 England, 34, 36, 102, 104 Eretz Yisrael, 16–17, 19, 21, 35–37, 42n16, 160n1 Federal Republic of Germany, 193 Former Soviet Union (FSU), 297 France, 5, 13, 56, 59, 78, 88–105, 107, 109n17, 109n25–26, 111n40–41, 111n45, n50, 112–126, 149, 163n65, 272n27, 277, 299–300, 302, 314n9 Frankfurt, 13 Galveston, 234 Gan Shmuel (Kibbutz), 59, 166, 170–173, 175,180, 182n3 German Federal Republic, 120, 122 Germany, xi, 2, 9, 12–15, 17, 19–21, 34–36, 40n1, 41n1–2, 41n4, 42n9, 42n14, 50, 56, 60, 76, 80n11, 88, 90, 100, 109n22, 110n31, 111n44, n49, 112, 118, 124n2, 129–130, 134–135, 138, 140, 149, 155, 161n22, n35, 162n41, 164n87, 168, 173, 187, 193, 202, 205n23, 208–209, 213, 228n8, 232n70, 235, 239–240, 254n15, 255n23, 256n38, 261, 267, 282–283, 291n16, 310, 313n2, n5 Gevat (Kibbutz), 142, 152, 155, 160n19, 161n23, 162n43, 163n58, n60, n75 Ginnosar (Kibbutz), 155, 161n32, n66, n81 Givat Brenner (Kibbutz), 143, 162n48 Grenoble, 105, 113, 119, 253n5 Grójec, 77–78 Ha-hotrim (Kibbutz), 155, 163n74, 163n84 Haifa, 75, 86n72, n83, 134–138, 150, 161n35 Holland, 4, 5, 13, 89–96, 98, 105, 107, 108n5–6, 108n11 Hungary, 13, 27, 130, 195, 198–199, 217, 224, 240, 278–279, 282, 284, 288–289 Iraq, 19 Isère, 113 Israel, viii, x, 1–2, 4–5, 6–7, 12–13, 15n4, 20, 34–36, 42n15, 45n67, 52, 56, 59, 63, 71, 77–78, 81n15, 85n62, 87n84, 94–97, 103, 106, 108n15, 109n24, 126n55, 127, 129–132, 134–135, 138, 143–144, 147, 160n1, 161n33–34, 161n36, 163n64, 164n89, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174–177, 182, 185, 185–206, 208–210, 213–219, 222, 224–232, 234–235, 248, 250–255,

267, 269, 272n32, 275, 280, 292n32, 294, 297–299, 301–303, 305–314 Italy, 2, 12, 19–20, 41n2, 93–94, 105, 187, 208, 211, 235, 239, 300 Jaffa, 134 Japan, 19, 42n9 Kabri (Kibbutz), 156, 163n85 Kefar Ahim, 227, 232n74 Kefar Bilu, 214 Kefar Haim, 210, 229n13 Kefar Vitkin, 213, 219, 229n26 Kefar Yehezkel, 218, 225 Kefar Yehoshua, 222, 230n42, 231n61 Kfar Szold (Kibbutz), 133, 160n18, 161n35 Kibbutz Evron, 52 Kovno (Kaunus), 190 Krakow, 32, 44n48, 63, 66–67, 83n46, 84n47 Landsberg, 36, 205n23 Lebanon, 185, 206n40, 314n9 Lens, 105 Lithuania, 13, 42n12, 49, 190 Lohamei Ha–Geta’ot (Kibbutz), 80n8, 83n35–36, 160n14, 176, 178, 182n9, n10, 194, 203n5, 204n18, 205n21, 206n46 Łódź, 51–52, 58, 65–66, 69–76, 83n35–36, 85n61–62, 86n75 London, 93, 98, 100, 108n14, 109n15, 111n50, 116–117 Lubartów, 76 Lübeck, 32 Lviv, 58, 64 Marseilles, 105 Metz, 105 Mitzpeh Yam (Kibbutz), 169 Morocco, 116 Mt. Carmel, 134–135 Munich, 13–14, 29, 49–50, 225, 228n8, 271n17 Nahalal (Moshav), 220 Nancy, 105 Negev, 163n73, 201, 204n16, 213, 215 Netherlands, 88–90, 103, 105, 108n11, 115, 121, 124n16, 299 New Jersey, 43n28, 238–242, 244, 246–248, 254n11, 256n44, 257n50 New Orleans, 234

340 • Index

New York, 36, 49, 52, 101, 116, 234–235, 237, 239–242, 244–245, 253n3–4, 253n6, 255n23, 257n52, 264, 293, 295 New Zealand, 280 North Africa, 90, 93, 96, 105, 119, 123, 125n26, 185, 200, 227, 302, 314n9 North America, 239, 298, 305–310 Norwich, 248 Olesh (Beerotayim B) (Moshav), 221 Ometz (Moshav), 216 Ostrowiec, 267 Otwock, 49, 55, 80n6, 82n27 Palestine, 6, 11–14, 16–19, 21, 28, 34–37, 42n15, 44n64, 51–53, 56, 58, 63–65, 71, 75–78, 82n29, 91, 94, 97–100, 110n28, 127–131, 134–137, 140–142, 146–148, 151, 160n1, 160n9, 161n34, 161n36, 167, 185, 187–190, 192, 203n2, 207– 209, 211–212, 227, 229n12, 229n16, 232n71, 234, 254n11, 266, 275, 290 Paraguay, 259, 261–264, 267, 271n11–12, 272n27 Pardes Hannah, 214 Paris, 52, 59, 89–99, 105–106, 108n15, 109n23, 112–114, 118–119, 264, 267, 270n16, 272n24, 272n26, 278, 297 Peru, 259 Petaluma (California), 243–244, 246–247, 256n28 Plaszow, 28 Poland, 4, 16, 19–20, 29, 34, 46–52, 54, 56–60, 62–64, 67–68, 72, 74–85, 130, 140, 149, 160n13, 161n24, 188, 193, 198–199, 203, 206n40, 206n47, 217, 237, 240, 242, 255n23, 266, 268, 278, 281–285, 291n15, 299 Ponar, 172 Prague, Czechoslovakia, 277, 279 Radom, 71, 267 Radomsko, 71–73, 85n65 Ramle, 201, 214, 230n34–35 Regensburg, 35 Rio de Janeiro, 259 Roanne, 105 Romania, 12–13, 42n12, 44n46, 91, 130, 143, 217, 221, 240, 266, 272n27 Roszalin, 64 Rwanda, 19 San Fernando Valley (California), 242 San Francisco, 234, 244 Satriya (Moshav), 193

Shavli (Siauliai), 190 Siedlec, 267 Silperk, Czechoslovakia, 277 Sosnowiec, 198 South Africa, 34 South America, x, 12, 34, 36, 262 Soviet Union, 10, 12, 19–20, 76, 176, 234, 297, 313n7 Spain, 114, 126n55 St. Ottilien, 14, 209 Stettin, 12 Stockholm, 49 Strasbourg, 102, 105 Sweden, 49, 278 Switzerland, 56, 93, 96, 99–100, 109n17, 114, 205n24 Sydney, Australia, 8, 275, 278–279 Syria, 185, 314n9 Sziget, Hungary, 198–199 Tarvisio, 12 Tel Aviv, x, xi, 36, 46, 69, 80n1, 134, 136–137, 160n14, 200–201, 214, 253n1 Tel Yosef (Kibbutz), 147, 149–150, 204n11 Treblinka, 72, 83n37, 170 Tsipori (Moshav), 220 Turin, 93 Umm Zari’a (Mizra’ Har, subsequently Moshav Mazor), 224 United Kingdom, 12 United States, x, 1, 4–5, 7, 12, 17–18, 20, 34–35, 37, 49–50, 56, 64, 71–73, 85n65, 90, 92, 101, 114, 121, 216, 232n63, 234, 235, 237–238, 240, 248, 250, 252, 253n5, 254n11, 254n14, 255n18, 255n21, 255n24, 257n51–52, 272n31, 255, 276–279, 292n32, 293, 297–298, 310, 313n6–7, 314n14 Uruguay, 259, 262, 271n12 Usafiyeh (a Druze village), 139–140 Vienna, 12, 280 Villard-de-Lans, 113 Vilnius, Lithuania, 49 Vineland, New Jersey, 237–238, 240–245, 247, 249–251, 255n24, 256n44–45, 257n48 Warsaw, 49, 52–53, 55–56, 59, 61–64, 69, 72, 74, 76–77, 78–79, 80n8, 81n18, 81n20–21, 83n40, 83n45, 84n52, 85n58, 85n60, 85n64, 86n78, 168–169, 176–177, 188, 203n6, 255n22, 257n50, 285

Index • 341

Washington Heights, 240 Witanowice, near Kraków, 63 Wrocław, 57, 82n30, 82n32, 83n33 Yad Mordechai (Kibbutz), 168–169, 180, 182n6 Yagur (Kibbutz), 139–140, 148, 158, 161n27, 161n35–37, 163n62, 191 Yugoslavia, 42n14, 188, 220, 272n27 Zabrze, 78, 87n83 Zeilsheim, 32

People Adin, Jurek, 64, 84n51 Ahad Ha’am, 128 Almog, Shmuel, 128, 160n3, 204n19 Alterman, Nathan, 197, 205n36 Anielewicz, Mordechai, 168–169 Appelfeld, Aharon, 194, 205n28 Arnfeld, Leo, 48, 80n6, 80n10, 80n12 Aron, Raymond, 116 Aschwega, Channah, 134–135, 155, 161n21 Avinum, Sara, 47, 51, 80n5, 81n17 Avni, Haim, 254n17, 259, 260, 270n3, 271n8, 271n13, 272n19 Bak, Samuel, 195 Bankier, David, xi, 125n23, 204n19, 232n70 Baranowicz (Baranowiecki), Avigdor (Wiktor, Wituś), 52, 53, 77, 87n82 Barański, Jan, 77, 86n81 Baranski, Władysława, 77, 86n81 Bardiak, Shulamith, 140, 162n39 Baron, Salo, 101 Bauer, Yehuda, 12, 15n1, 40n1 Bauminger, Arie, 192 Bauminger, Roza, 64 Ben-Arye, Eliezer, 219–220, 222, 230n30, 231n53 Ben-Gurion, David, 205n27, 209, 215–216, 221, 228n9, 230n35, 230n39, 231n58 Berghahn, Marion, xi Berman, Adolf A., 49, 80n8 Berman, Jakub, 49, 80n8 Bernstein, Leo, 198, 229n16 Bezem, Naphtali, 195 Bialik, Haim Nahman, 102 Blecher, Barbara, 64, 84n53 Blumberg, Aviva, 48, 50, 80n14 Blumenfeld, Aryeh, 134, 160n20 Boczkowski, Stanisław, 47, 57, 80n3 Boczkowski, Zofia, 47, 57, 80n3

Bouvier, Albert, 112 Brandstatter, Cecia, 31, 44n57 Brenner, Rachel, 37, 45n72 Brenner, Haim Yosef, 128 Brown, Lydia, 31 Bruner, Jerome, 281, 291n13 Bruttmann, Tall, 113, 124n4 Butler, Judith, 23, 43n24 Cahin brothers, 112 Carr, Maurice, 93 Cassin, René, 116–117, 119, 125n29 Castro, brothers de, 112 Chareziński (Harezinski), Jan, 76–66, 86n74–75, 86n79 Charezinski, Apolonia, 76–77, 86n74–75, 86n79 Davis, Pearl, 27 Dayan, Devora, 222–223, 231n63, 232n65 Dayan, Shmuel, 214, 217, 230n34, 231n45, 231n48 DellaPergola, Sergia, 8, 185 Dewey, John, 102 Dobkin, Eliahu, 209, 228n8–9 Drori, Hasia, 225, 232n73 Eagleburger, Lawrence S., 309, 313n3 Englard, Rivka, 4, 16, 30, 36, 44n51, 45n71 Eshkol, Levi, 214 Finkelstein, Chaim, 49, 80n7 Freier, Rechah, 129 Frenay, Henry, 117, 124n17 Fried, Hedi, 25, 27, 43n30 Friedlander, Saul, 268, 272n29 Friedman, Lauryann Uray, 27 Frochman, Krystyna, 62 Frydman (Friedman), Tamara (Marta), 76 Fuchsberg (Ravet), Lifshe (Catherine), 58–59, 83n36 Fuchsberg (Aloni), Mina (Shulamit), 58–59, 83n36 Galon, Yosef, 198–201, 206n41–50 Gardosh (Dosh), Kariel, 196, 205n34–35 Gaulle, Charles de, 113–116, 122, 124n5, 124n24 Gewercman, Abram–Wolf, 69, 85n61 Gilad, Gershon, 214, 222, 231n60 Ginsberg, Szymon, 74–75, 86n69, 86, 72 Giraud, Henri, 116 Gitler-Barski, Józef, 56–57, 81n19, 82n29, n30 Goell, Yohai, xi

342 • Index

Goldhaft, Arthur, 238, 241, 244–245, 255n25, 256n29 Goldschmidt, Miriam, 26 Goldstein, Zipporah, 26, 43n35 Gordon, Aharon David, 128 Greens, Aliza, 46–47, 80n1, 80n4 Gribetz, Judah, 313n6 Grinker, Rivka, 220, 231n55 Gross, Jan T., 85n59, 86n80, 291n15 Grossmann, Atina, 32, 41n3, 80n11 Grynberg, Henryk, 51, 81n18, 85n62 Grzegorczyk, Helena, 58–59 Grzegorczyk, Władysław, 58–59 Gutman, Yisrael, xi Handelman, Don, 167, 182n5 Harrison, Earl G., 233 Hausner, Gideon, 200–201, 206n49 Helmreich, William B., 27, 33, 39, 41n2, 43n39, 44n62, 43n75–76 Herman, Helen Stern, 25 Herman, Judith, 285, 291n25 Hillard, Robert L., 14, 15n3 Hochheiser, Sala (Salomea), 63–64, 84n9 Hochheiser, Salomon, 63, 84n9 Horowitz, Rivka, 4, 16, 28, 36, 44n44, 45n69 Igenfeldowa-Besserman (Feferkuchen), Racheal, 59 Januszewska, Waleria, 70–71 Jedlińska (Jarzabek, Grynberg), Marysia (Marysia, Dunia), 51–52, 81n18 Jeromirska, Leokadia, 61, 83n43 Jordan, Charles, 103 Jupp, James, 275–276, 290n5, 291n9 Kabalo Paula, 216, 230n39 Kagan, Abram (Abraham), 7–71, 85n62 Kagan, Saul, 88 Kahane, Dawid, 53 Karay, Felicja, 31, 44n54 Katz, Shmuel, 196 Kimmerling, Baruch, 216, 230n40 Kishon, Ephraim, 195–196, 205n30, 205n35 Klausner, Abraham, 14, 15n2 Kolak, Alina, 62 Kopelowitz, Yisrael, 135–136, 160n11, 161n25 Korchak, Ruzka, 190–191, 204n14 Korman, Edward J., 293 Korn, Yitzhak, 212, 214, 216, 224, 229n15, 229n20, 229n22, 229n25–26, 230n32, 230n44, 231n36, 232n68

Kovner, Abba, 195, 205n29 Krasniewski, Stanisław, 71–73, 85n65 Kraśniewski, Urszula, 71 Langer, Lawrence, 29–30, 44n49 Lavon, Pinchas, 215 Laxander, Walenty (Waldemar), 74–75, 85n68, 86n69–70, 86n73 Lederman, Philip, 28 Lefkowitz, Hanna, 37, 45n73 Leitner, Isabella, 30, 44n45, 44n52 Lerman, Miles (Shmuel Milek), 236–237, 242, 249–250, 255n25, 256n25, 256n45 Levin, Harry, 250, 256n44 Locke, John, 21, 42n17 Lubetkin, Zivia, 176, 190–191, 204n13 Ludwik, Jerzycki, 65, 84n54 Luzinski Shabtai, 211 Makarenko, Anton, 110 Mandelker, Pearl, 4, 16–17, 26–27, 35 Mankowitz, Zeev, 282 Mazia, Fredka, 198, 206n38 Medding, Peter, 287, 292n30, 292n32 Mengele, Jozef, 25 Miller, Benjamin, 248, 251, 254n11, 256n26, 256n32, 257n50, 257n52, 257n54 Mönick, Emmanuel, 118 Mossinson, Yigal, 191, 196, 204n12, 204n16 Near, Henry, 216, 230n38 Nordau, Max, 128, 160n4, 212 Ofek, Abraham, 195 Ofer, Dalia, x, xi, 6 Orlev, Uri, 194–195, 205n29 Ouzan, Françoise S., x, xi, 7 Owsiany, Malka, 268, 272n28 Pagis, Dan, 194 Peralta, Santiago, 261 Perón, Juan, 258–259, 269–270 Pétain, Marshall Philippe, 113 Petluck, Ann S., 53, 81n24 Pinkusewicz, Leibel, 36 Pius XII, 60, 83n39 Połowiec, Tadeusz, 66 Poritz, Yitzhak, 190–191 Pougatch, Isaac, 96–98, 104–105, 109n22, 109n26, 110n29, 111n47 Pycz, Józef, 60–61 Rejtbod (Zamarowna), Etka (Teresa Ewa), 70

Index • 343

Rinot, Hanoch, 160n8, 201 Rollansky, Samuel, 268, 272n21, 272n30 Roth, Dora Lampell, 27 Rubinstein, Bill, 274–276, 290n2–3, 290n6, 291n8 Saadya, Alifa, xi Sadeh, Yizhak, 161n26, 190, 203n10 Sapetowa, Karolina, 63–64, 84n47, 84n50 Sarid, Yaakov, 201 Scheinberg, Hanan, 140, 162n40 Schwarz, Leo, 15, 40n1, 254n15 Sendyk, Helen, 31, 44n53 Shaar, Pinchas, 195 Shamir, Moshe, 191, 204n12 Shapira, Yosef, 222, 231n61 Shapiro, Judah, 96, 99, 101–102, 109n25, 110n30–31, 111n35 Sharansky, Nathan, 313, 314 Shner, Zvi, 200, 206n46 Sigati, Tova, 218, 231n49 Silberberg, Avraham, 214, 219, 230n33, 231n50, 231n56 Sivan, Emmanuel, 167, 182n4, 204n15 Stein, Barry, 278, 291n10 Sternhell, Zeev, 159, 164n89 Straucher, Maria, 66, 84n56 Strzelczyk, Zygmunt, 69, 85n60, 61 Szczekacz, Sabina (Zosia), 69, 85n60–61 Szold, Henrietta, 129, 161n35 Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 176 Tartakower, Aryeh, 103, 110n33, 111n43– 44 Tennenbaum, Sara, 35–36, 45n68 Terrroine, Emile, 120 Tomer , Ben–Zion, 195, 205n29 Traube, Henia, 32, 44n60 Traube, Ya ‘akov, 32, 44n60 Truman, Harry S., 234–235, 239–240, 247–248, 253n1, 254n18, 257n42, Turkow, Mark, 268, 272n28 Vircberg, Beni, 202, 206n54 Wajnryb, Ruth, 282, 283, 287, 291n23, 292n31 Wallenberg, Yehudah, 153, 163n77 Weil, Shraga, 195 Weill, David, 121 Weill, Simone, 259 White, Richard, 286, 291n28 Wilkomicz (Assaf), Assaf (Ami), 210, 229n13 Winnick, Refael, 218

Yablonka, Hanna, 7, 39 Zaidenweber, Dora, 39 Zalisiński (Zalisinski), David, 52–53 Zeissel (Darmont-Laxander), Anna (Anna Gizela), 74, 85n68 Zorgier, Sonia, 65 Zuckerman, Itzhak (Antek), 176, 188, 190, 203n5 Zussman, Malka, 36, 45n70

Organizations Agudath Israel, 36, 209 Alliance israélite universelle, 107n4, 110n35 American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Services (ACVAFS), 233 American Jewish Committee, 99, 104, 108n4, 108n31, 111n44, 308 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC, the Joint) (see also JDC), 11, 46, 107n3, 110n30, 111n49, 263 Anglo-Jewish Association, 108n4, 110n31 Asociacion Filantropica, 266 Association des israélites victimes de la Guerre (AIVG), 109n28 Association of Polish Jewry (Polisher Farband), 266 Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, x, xi B’nai B’rith, 247 Baron de Hirsch Fund, 237, 254n14 Beit Lohamei Ha-geta’ot (Ghetto Fighters’ Museum), 83n35–36, 85n62, 194, 204n18 Beit Ya’akov (Beth Jacob), 16, 36–37 Brichah movement, 12–15, 19, 40n1 Bundes Entschadung Gesetze (BEG), 299 Caisse des depots et consignations, 115, 124n7, 124n14, 126n41 Canadian Jewish Congress, 83n40, 107n3, 260 Central and Eastern European Fund (CEEF), 299 Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation (CBF), 93 Central Bureau of Youth Aliyah of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, 56, 82n29 Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bavaria, Munich, 14

344 • Index

Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP), 54–55, 70, 82n25–26 Central Consistory, 90, 114 Central (Jewish) Historical Commission Munich, 14, 29, 82n25 Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem (CRFJ/CNRS/MAEE), xi Chief Rabbinate of Israel, 173 Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency committee (CRREC), 90 Citizens Committee for Displaced Persons (CCDP), 233 Claims Conference Allocations Committee, 313n2 Claims Hardship Fund, 299 Collegio Rabbinico Italiano, 93 Comité Central Unido de Socorro para las Víctimas de la Guerra, 265 Comité général d’études (of the French Resistance), 115, 124n19 Committee of Polish Jews branch in Radomsko, 71 Committee of the Jews of Radomsko in the United States (Radomskie Ziomkostwo, Radomsker Landsmanschaft), 71–72 Committee to Assist Poles (Komitet Pomocy Polakom), 62 Conference on Material Claims against Germany, 88, 100, 110n31, 111n44 Conseil national de la Résistance, 116 Conseil representatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), 119 Consistoire centrale de France, 90, 114 Consultative Council of Jewish organizations, 103, 108n12 Coordinated Commission for Jewish Children (Komisja koordynacyjna dla spraw dzieci żydowskich), 65, 84n55 Coordination (Koordynacja), 54, 78, 81n24 Department for Children Care of the Committee of Polish Jews in Łódź, 70 Department of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 70, 75 Department of United Service for New Americans, 53, 81n21, 234, 236, 257n52 Displaced Persons Commission (DPC), 240, 246 Domains Administration, 118 Dror, 55, 148, 176 Eclaireurs israélites de France (EIF), 114 El–Hakefar, 214, 217 European Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs, 101, 110n34

Federation of Associations for the Care of Orphans (CENTOS), 49 Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS), xi, 253, 290 Fonds social juif unifié (FSJU), 109n26, 110n31 Ford Foundation, 105 General Care Council (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, RGO), 77, 86n80 General Commissioner for Jewish affairs (Commissariat general aux questions juives), 112 Gpoldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University, x Gordonia Youth Movement, 215 Hadassah, 247, 251 Haganah, 190 HaKibbutz Hadati, 173 Hakibbutz Ha’artzi, 215 Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 168, 176–177, 191, 215 Ha’oved movement, 211 Hapoel Hamizrahi, 209 Hashomer Hatzair, 55, 168–170, 180 Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, 192 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 234, 259–261, 263, 264–268, 270–272, 279 Hehalutz, 211, 215 HIAS-JCA-Emigdirekt (HICEM), 260 Holocaust Survivor Doctors, 194 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 233 International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), 294, 313n3, 313n5 Israel and Golda Koschitsky Jewish History Department at Bar-Ilan University, xi Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 213, 227 Israel Ministry of Diaspora, Social, and Jerusalem Affairs, 294, 314n12 JDC, 5, 15, 32–33, 44n59, 46, 52–53, 56–57, 61–62, 65, 72, 80n1, 81n19–22, 82n29–30, 83n34, 84n40, 84n55, 85n63–64, 85n66, 90, 94, 96, 99, 102–103, 105, 107n1,107n3, 108n5, 109n20, 109n25, 110n30–31, 111n35– 36, 11n41, 111n45, 111n51, 263, 265, 313n5, 314n11

Index • 345

Jewish Agency for Palestine, 11, 13, 56, 82n29, 95–96, 99, 109n18–19, 109n24, 209–211, 214, 219–221, 230n41 Jewish Agricultural Society, 7, 237–242, 244–245, 247, 251, 253n11, 254n11, 254n14, 254n16, 255n20–21, 256n39, 257n52, Jewish Brigade, 11, 146, 188 Jewish Children’s Home in Chorzów, 65 Jewish Children’s Home in Otwock, 49, 80n6 Jewish Children’s Home in Zabrze, 78 Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), 254n17, 260 Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, 29, 74 Jewish National Fund, 220, 228n6 Jewish Poultry Farmer’s Association (JPFA), 245, 249 Jewish Religious Council (Kongregacja), 54 Jewish Welfare Society, 277 Joint Distribution Committee, 5, 11, 46, 80n1, 88, 99, 107n3, 110n30–31, 111n49, 223, 263, 314n7 Kibbutz movement, 6, 7, 129, 131, 139, 173–174, 176, 180–181, 191, 208, 211, 212, 214–215, 230n37 Knesset, 174, 176 Mekorot, 220 Migration and Agricultural-Colonization Department, 262 Ministry of Deported and War Victims, 117 Ministry of Education, 57, 82n31, 199, 201, 206n38–39 Ministry of Finances, 112, 118–119, 126n41 Ministry of Justice, 113, 131 Mission d’études sur la spoliation des Juifs de France, 117, 124n13, 124n15, 125n33 Mosad Le-aliyah (Organization for Immigration), 136 Moshavim Movement, 208–231 National Committee for Postwar Immigration Policy (NCPI), 233 National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), 235–236, 247, 253n3–4 Nederlands Israelietisch Kerkgenootshap (NIK), 90 Office for Restitutions, 119 Organization of Camp Prisoners, 194 Organization of Partisans, 198

Palmach, 177, 190, 204n16 Poale Zion, 86n62, 250–251 Polisher Farband, 266, 268, 272n30 Red Army, 12, 31 Red Cross, 27 Rescue Children, Inc., 62 Righteous among the Nations, 64, 70, 74–75, 80n3, 84n49–50, 85n67–68, 86n69, 86n71–72, 86n74n–75, 86n77, 86n79, 87n81–82, 87n83–84, 192 Society for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants (Soprotimis), 259–272 Solel Boneh, 220 Sydney Jewish Museum, 275 Titz Vocational School (in Kibbutz Yagur), 139, 161n35–36 Union générale des Israélites de France (UGIF), 114 United Jewish Educational and Cultural Organisation, 99 United Service for New Americans (USNA), 234 United States District Court in Brooklyn, 293 United Zionist Organization of Bavaria, 14 UNRRA – United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 11, 13, 107n2, 188 Va’ad Ha-hatzalah, 62 Voivodish Jewish Committee in Warsaw, 62 Workmen’s Circle, 247 World Jewish Congress, 49, 62, 110n33, 116, 125n24, 125n26, 268 World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), 294 World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), 92 Yad Vashem, 7, 14, 64, 70, 75, 192, 194, 201 YIVO, 18, 44n59, 108n5, n12, 110n31, 111n44, 111n50, 257n52, 268, 272n21, Youth Aliyah, 56, 82n29, 127, 129–131, 139, 146, 150–151, 159, 160n8–9, 160n12–13, 161n23, 161n35, 162n43, 163n75, 192, 212 Zionist movement, 85n62, 128, 187, 208–209, 224, 232n68, 254n11