Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War

348 Pages·1999·36.7 MB·English

by  Hanna Yablonka (auth.)

SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Also by Hanna Yablonka
THE HISTORY OF THE ASSOCIATION OF DISABLED VETERANS
OF STRUGGLE AGAINST NAZISM AND PARTISANS, 1945-1995
Survivors of the
Holocaust
Israel after the War
Hanna Yablonka
Lecturer in History
Ben-Gurian University oft he Negev
Beer-Sheva
Israel
Translated from Hebrew by Ora Cummings
© Hanna Yablonka 1994, 1999
English translation © Ora Cummings 1999
Sof'tcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1999
First published in Hebrew as Foreign Brethren: Holocaust Survivors
in the State of Israel, 1948-1952, by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press and
Ben-Gurion University ofthe Negev Press, 1994
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as the author of this work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
English translation first published 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-14154-8 ISBN 978-1-349-14152-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-14152-4
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
To the memory of my father, Professor Gavriel
T6r6.k, who survived the Holocaust and was the
founder of Orthopaedics in the Negev
Contents
List of Plates IX
Preface xi
I ntrod uction 1
Part I The Great Rupture 7
Really, 'Human Dust'? 9
2 Old Refugees and New Refugees 18
3 Partisans, Fighters and Katzetniks 43
4 'This Human Matter': the Survivors According to the
Emissaries and the Survivors According to Themselves 63
5 'Stir over a Low Flame' 73
Part II Survivors on the Front Line 79
6 Out of the Holocaust and into the War of Independence 81
7 The Motherland - an Army and a Military Front 114
8 Sabras and Gahalniks in the Israel Defence Forces 130
9 The Israel Defence Forces and the Holocaust 139
Part III No Future for the Kibbutz without Youth Aliya 153
10 These Precious Reserves 155
11 Straight Home 175
12 'It Was a Heavy Fall that Year':
On the Question of Kibbutz Drop-Outs 193
13 The Kibbutz and Youth Aliya 199
14 Education, Occupation, Socialization 208
15 'These Young People - Their Souls are Sealed to Us' 213
16 Home and Parents on the Kibbutz 221
VB
Vlll Contents
Part IV Partial Eclipse of the Histadrut 231
17 The Histadrut in the Shadow of the State 233
18 Local Solutions to ad hoc Problems 247
19 Mobilizing in Defence of the Spirit 259
20 In Summary - A Minor Public Impact 267
Notes 279
Bibliography 323
Index 331
List of Plates
1. European immigrant children, Safed, April 1949
2. Embarking, Haifa Port, 1949
3. Children of the Holocaust, Safed, 1949
4. European immigrants, Ein Ayala, near Haifa (an abandoned Arab
village), February 1951
5. European immigrants, Safed, April 1949
6. European immigrants, Azur (an abandoned Arab village), 1950
7. First sight of Israel, Haifa, 1949
8. Youth Aliya, Haifa Port, August 1950
All plates courtesy of Yad Ben Zvi and the Central Zionist Archive.
IX
Preface
Like many of my generation growing up in the 1950s I did not know
that there was anything strange or different about my parents. Around
the time of Adolf Eichmann's trial, we started getting the first vague
inklings that, somewhere deep down in our parents' pasts, there was a
place we had no access to. It would take many more years of maturity
on our part, for an open, adult dialogue to take place, which would
throw light on our parents' generation as one that had suffered anguish
and known heroism.
Many volumes of memoirs and research projects have been devoted
to the painful period of the Second World War and the Holocaust, so
that it is surprising that little has been written about the heroism of
the Holocaust survivors. Many stories could be told about the rebuild
ing and rehabilitating of their ruined lives, with a special place of
honour reserved for those survivors who chose to make a new life for
themselves in the state of Israel and who, despite all their trials and
tribulations, played a vital role in the painful birth pangs that accom
panied the new state's first few years of sovereignty.
Little research has been done so far on the social integration of these
Holocaust survivors, although they comprised one half of the postwar
wave of immigration into the country, known at the time as 'the big
immigration'. This oversight sticks out like a sore thumb among the
sea of research done into the social integration of immigrants from
Asian and African countries. Perhaps it has something to say about
the quality of the Holocaust survivors' social integration - which was
less like integration into society and more like 'penetration'.
This book describes the meeting between the survivors and the
veteran Jewish Yishuv (yishuv = settlement; the name given to pre-state
Israel, by the people who lived there), a meeting of mixed emotions:
bereavement, despair, guilt, shame, atonement - a meeting of brethren
on the one hand, and foreigners on the other.
This immigration is different from any other in history, both from
a demographic point of view and with regard to the emotional bag
gage carried by the immigrants. Their determination to rehabilitate
their lives and their wonderful vitality put the immigrant Holocaust
survivors in good stead to blend successfully into Israeli society,
and become, after only one generation, a cornerstone of the modern
state.
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