Joseph Schechtman

Joseph Boris Schechtman (born September 6, 1891 in Odessa , † March 1, 1970 in New York City ) was a Russian journalist and social scientist . He initially worked for Zionist organizations and, after arriving in the USA in 1941 , wrote studies on population shifts in Europe during and shortly after the Second World War , which are recognized as pioneering works and standard works.

Life

Schechtman studied between 1911 and 1915 law at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin and the New Russian University in Odessa. At the same time he worked as a Berlin correspondent for the weekly newspaper Rassviet . He had been supporting Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky and his revisionist Zionism since 1915 . In 1917 he was elected to the parliament of the People's Republic of Ukraine , the Zentralna Rada , where he became a member of the Jewish national secretariat. He was also a member of the All-Ukrainian Zionist Central Committee, without much being known about his activities during the Ukrainian Revolution . In parliament he campaigned against anti-Jewish pogroms and proposed that Jewish units be set up for self-defense.

From 1919 to 1920 Schechtman worked for the Prodput , a railway workers' cooperative. He saw himself primarily as a journalist and decided to leave the country during the rule of the Bolsheviks . He first went to Germany via Bessarabia .

In 1927 Schechtman wrote a study on anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine together with Leo Motzkin and in 1932 published a volume for a planned multi-volume history of the Ukrainian pogroms. In the same year Schechtman moved to Warsaw , where he worked for the Yiddish newspaper Der Moment and served as Jabotinsky's ambassador between 1936 and 1939. He negotiated with the Polish government about the "evacuation" of 1.5 million Jews from Poland and about an international conference to solve the question of Jewish settlement outside Europe. The aim was to use Poland to put pressure on the British government to allow large-scale settlement of Jews in Palestine . Schechtman had to defend himself against allegations that they wanted to destroy Jewish life in Europe. In June 1939 he went to France and from there to the USA in 1941, where he was to stay until his death in 1970.

In the United States, Schechtman founded the Research Bureau on Population Movements and began work on a study of population movements in Europe. With the support of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the American Jewish Congress and the International Labor Office , he completed work on a first volume in 1942 on resettlements organized by the National Socialists from 1939 to 1941 (" Heim ins Reich "). He worked as an analyst for the OSS in 1944/45. Schechtman's major work, European Population Transfers 1939–1945 , finally published in 1946, is still considered one of the most thorough works on the subject of forced migration. After the end of World War II , Schechtman traveled to Poland to investigate the expulsion of the Germans on the spot.

Schechtman advocated population and forced migrations in Europe as a possible solution to minority problems. In a brochure on Population Transfers in Asia , he proposed a population exchange between Palestinian Arabs and Iraqi Jews . The Israeli government commissioned Schechtman to carry out studies on the situation of Jews in Arab and Muslim countries. In the years that followed, Schechtman devoted himself primarily to his two-volume biography of Jabotinsky.

Fonts

• Evrei i ukraintsy. 2nd Edition. Izd. "Kineret", [Odessa] 1917.
• Di Idishe aṿṭonomye. Un der natsionaler seḳreṭaryaṭ in Uḳraine: maṭeryaln un doḳumenṭn. [Sn], Ḳiyeṿ 1920.
• and IM Cherikover: Di geshikhṭe fun of the pogrom congregation in Uḳrayne, 1917-1921. Mizraḥ-yidishn hisṭorishn Arkhiṿ, Berlin 1923–1932.
• and Meir Grossmann : The revisionist development program. Central Office of the Union of Zionist Revisionists, Paris 1929.
• with Vladimir Jabotinsky and I. Klinov: The nayer ṿeg. "Rassviet", Paris 1926-.
• and Leo Motzkin: The pogroms in the Ukraine under the Ukrainian governments, 1917-1920. Historical survey with documents. [Sn], [London] 1927.
• Ṿer iz faranṭṿorṭlikh far di pogromen in Uḳrayne. Loyṭ naye niṭ farefnṭlikhṭe maṭeryaln un doḳumenṭn. [Sn], Pariz 1927.
• The Jewish Irridenta. Transjordan and Palestine. [sn], [sl] 1929.
• Pogromy dobrovolcheskoi armii na Ukraine. (K istorii antisemitizma na Ikraine v 1919-1920 gg.) So vstupitelnoi statei IM Cherikovera. East Jewish Historical Archive, Berlin 1932.
• Jewish State Zionism. Principles of revisionism. Union of Zionist Revisionists, Praha 1933.
• Self-liquidation of the diaspora. [Sn], London 1937.
• Transjordan in the area of ​​the Palestine Mandate. Glanz, Vienna 1937.
• Territorial illusions. Suomen Sionistiliitto, Helsinki 1939.
• Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. Union of Russian Jews, New York 1944.
• The option clause in the Reich's treaties on the transfer of population. [Sn], Washington, DC 1944.
• Di Yidishe minoriṭeṭ in Iraḳ. Cit., [New York] 1945.
• European population transfers: 1939-1945. Oxford Univ. Pr, New York 1946.
• The elimination of German minorities in southeastern Europe. , [Np] 1946?
• Population transfers in Asia. Hallsby Press, New York 1949.
• Exodus from Iraq. United Palestine Appeal, New York 1950.
• Like a tree which bears no fruit ;. A report on Oriental Jewry. United Palestine Appeal, New York 1951.
• The Jews of Aden. Conference on Jewish Relations, New York 1951.
• The Arab refugee problem. Philosophical Library, New York 1952.
• The repatriation of Yemenite Jewry. Conference on Jewish Relations, New York 1952.
• Minorities in the Arab world. , [Washington] 1953.
• Rebel and statesman. The Vladimir Jabotinsky story; the early years. Yoseloff, New York 1956.
• Fighter and prophet. The last years. Yoseloff, New York, NY 1961.
• On wings of eagles. The plight, exodus, and homecoming of Oriental Jewry. T. Yoseloff, New York 1961.
• Star in eclipse. Russian Jewry revisited. T. Yoseloff, New York 1961.
• Postwar population transfers in Europe. 1945 - 1955. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pa 1962.
• The refugee in the world. Displacement and integration. Barnes [u. a.], New York 1963.
• The Mufti and the Fuehrer ;. The rise and fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini. T. Yoseloff, New York 1965.
• The United States and the Jewish State movement. The crucial decade: 1939-1949. Herzl Pr, New York 1966.
• Zionism and Zionists in Soviet Russia. Greatness and drama. Zionist Organization of America, New York, NY 1966.
• and Yehuda Benari: History of the revisionist movement. Hadar, Tel-Aviv 1970.

literature

• Antonio Ferrara: Eugene Kulischer, Joseph Schechtman and the Historiography of European Forced Migrations. In: Journal of Contemporary History 46 (2011), pp. 715-740.
• Mark Marzower: No Enchanted Palace. The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations . Princeton UP, Princeton 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mark Marzower: No Enchanted Palace. The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations . Princeton UP, Princeton 2009, pp. 117f.
2. ^ Karl Schlögel: Europe marshalling yard. Joseph B. Schechtmans and Eugene M. Kulischer's pioneering work . In: Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History , Online Edition, 2 (2005), No. 3, Section 1; Antonio Ferrara: Eugene Kulischer, Joseph Schechtman and the Historiography of European Forced Migrations. In: Journal of Contemporary History 46 (2011), p. 715.