Aliyah Bet
Alija Bet ( Hebrew עלייה ב׳) was the code name for the immigration of thousands of Jews from Europe into the British Mandate Palestine from 1934 until the founding of Israel in 1948. Since the British government had set strict quotas for immigration and had for a time completely banned all immigration, this wave of immigration was under British law illegal. It was countered by the mandate power by picking up Jewish refugees and taking them to internment camps in Cyprus . In today's Israel , this immigration is also known as Ha'apala (העפלה) designated.
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The name Aliyah Bet results from the fact that it was the second, unofficial large wave of immigration ( Aliyah ) to Palestine in addition to the official immigration within the framework of the quotas and Bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
The situation of the Jews in Europe
The 1939 White Paper provided for the immigration of a maximum of 75,000 Jews to Palestine over a five-year period. The circumstances of the war also allowed only a few Jews to flee from German-occupied Europe and thus from the Holocaust . The situation changed with the liberation of Europe by the Allies and the end of the war in 1945. Many Holocaust survivors ( called Sh'erit ha-Pletah in Hebrew ) now tried to get out of the countries where they had been persecuted escape and get to Palestine. Around 250,000 Jews, often in a state of extreme malnutrition and emaciation, were initially so-called displaced persons after their liberation from concentration camps or hiding , who stayed in DP camps for some time , or came to Palestine from Eastern European countries with the Bricha underground movement . While General Patton initially thought of returning the surviving Eastern European Jews to their homeland, this idea met with strong Jewish resistance. All of East and East Central Europe was under Soviet occupation, and the Kielce pogrom in 1946 led to a dramatic outbreak of anti-Semitism in Poland. Most of the humanitarian assistance was provided by UNRRA ; In Germany, the British occupying forces set up a central reception center for Jewish DPs in Bergen-Belsen , while in the US zone the Jews were distributed to different camps. While the British occupation authorities kept the Jews in Germany under strict control and observation, especially to avoid massive immigration to Palestine, the US authorities granted them the greatest possible freedom and support in their zone. Accommodation Jewish survivors as displaced persons on the grounds of a former concentration or POW camp was felt in American reporting as unacceptable - especially since the re-interned for lack of other clothes often still the old warehouse clothing wore - which contributed to the fact that General Patton in September 1945 was replaced by Eisenhower .
The Jews themselves, meanwhile, began to organize. As early as July 25, 1945, delegations from various DP camps met for a joint conference in the St. Ottilien camp , where a 14-point program was drawn up, which in particular provided for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine in accordance with the Balfour Declaration . A Central Committee of Liberated Jews was set up, which was accepted as a negotiating partner by the US military authorities on September 7, 1946 in Frankfurt am Main . While only around 10,000 Jews - often those who came from German or German-speaking families - decided to stay in Germany, around 80,000 went to the United States, while 136,000 reached Palestine, which was perceived as the Promised Land, despite all the obstacles.
Organization of immigration
The problem arose of the practical implementation of immigration over several thousand kilometers and, if possible, without being observed by the British. For this purpose, the Mossad le Alija Bet was created, which coordinated the relevant tasks and which can be viewed as a branch of the Hagana , i.e. the Jewish militias. One of the most important tasks of this organization was the procurement of ships with which the refugees could be transported across the Mediterranean to Palestine, since entry by land seemed too impractical. The first collection points in Germany were the DP camps in Bad Reichenhall and Leipheim in the US and that of Gailingen in the French sector. From here the journey went by truck, by train or on foot to Italy and southern France, where the ships took in the refugees, including many women and children. US, French and Italian agencies did not oppose this migration, in some cases they even provided logistical support. A total of 120 ships were available to the Jews , which made 142 crossings from southern Europe to Palestine, so that with over 100,000 refugees an average of 1,000 passengers could be carried per ship, but some ships also took many times more and were accordingly hopelessly overloaded, which led to partly untenable conditions on board. These ships included the Struma , or the well-known Exodus , which left Sète in southern France on July 11, 1947 with no fewer than 4,515 passengers . Like other ships before, the exodus off the Palestinian coast was stopped by British warships and the passengers were supposed to be interned in Cyprus. The British had set up camps here at Famagusta , Nicosia , Dekelia and Xylotymbou , which, after admitting 50,000 Jews, reached their capacity limits and, through the image of Jews behind barbed wire, angered the world public against the British action. All the more so as the British first brought the refugees from the Exodus back to France and later to Germany as part of Operation Oasis , where they were put ashore in Hamburg and taken to British camps near Lübeck. Such measures and the fact that over 1,600 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean during the crossings also led to increasing rethinking in Great Britain. International pressure ensured that the British agreed to give up the Palestine mandate in May 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel, immigration was also legalized and the Jewish refugees no longer had to rely on conspiratorial methods. The aliyah continued in the following years, but gradually decreased in intensity and affected less the Jews in Europe than those in the Arab states.
literature
- Ronald Friedmann: Exile in Mauritius. 1940 to 1945. The fate of emigrated Jews. Report of a “democratic” deportation. Edition Ost, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-932180-29-1 .
- Ruth Gruber: Exodus 1947. The Ship that Launched a Nation. Times Books, New York NY 1999, ISBN 0-8129-3154-8 .
- David C. Holly: Exodus 1947. Revised edition. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 1995, ISBN 1-55750-367-2 .
- Gershon Erich Steiner: The history of the "Patria". Olamenu, Tel Aviv 1973, (English: Story of the Patria. Translated by Dinah Cohen. Holocaust Library, New York NY 1982, ISBN 0-8052-5036-0 ).
Web links
- zionism-israel.com (English)