In the Shadow of the Holocaust The Struggle Between Jews andZionists in the Aftermath of World War II
by
Yosef Grodzinsky Introduction by Michael Lerner
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Edition: Paperback, 288 pages
Dimensions: 5 x 7.62
Just in as of June 7 2005: a stunning interview on znet at
"A detailed and well-researched account of the struggle between the survivors of the Holocaust and the various Zionist agencies and emissaries who pressured them to immigrate to Palestine, regardless of the survivors' own wishes, through superior organizational skills and connections with the US military and civilian authorities." --Baruch Kimmerling, The Nation
The story of Jews in displaced Person Camps and their forced role in the founding of Israel.
This is the story of different Jewish national agendas in the 20th century, and how they came into conflict in the aftermath of the Second World War - between the end of the War and the establishment of the State of Israel. It exposes the plight of homeless Holocaust survivors and Displaced Persons trying to rebuild their lives, and their intricate relationship with the Zionist idea and the Zionist movement in Palestine.
Starting at war's end, the book describes the mass migration of Jewish refugees into Germany, the establishment of DP camps, and the impressive social structure that survivor leaders succeeded in implementing. It tells the touching story of the encounter between Jewish survivors and Zionist envoys, dispatched from Palestine to the camps in order to help in rehabilitation efforts, but also with a clear Zionist agenda: Their mission was to bring all the "Surviving Remnant" (She'erit ha-pleyta) to Palestine. Survivors were to be "the anvil upon which the revolt against the British [in Palestine] must be forged" (David Ben-Gurion); they were expected to keep knocking on the doors of Palestine (closed to immigration by the British), to populate the country, and during the 1948 war, fill the ranks of the Israeli army, dwindled by the fighting with the Arabs.
Using massive, newly unraveled archival material, the book describes life and the world of the Jewish DPs, up to the drama that took place as the Zionists tried to draft 'Good human material' for Palestine immigration, and thereby brought the conflict between Jewish and Zionist national agendas to its peak. Refugees and survivors were not always interested in Palestine immigration, and thus Zionists sometimes resorted to unusual steps in the european DP camps: In 1945, they forcefully prevented the rescue of child survivors; in 1948, they instituted there forced conscription to the Israel Defense Force.
Told with great empathy to the plight of Jewish survivors, the book exposes new facts on the establishment of the State of Israel, and raises new questions regarding the nature of national identity, and the writing of the history of Zionism.
Praise
"Yosef Grodzinsky has an important story to tell... His book...shows that Zionist arrogance was there even before it was directed at Palestinians-when it manifested in an insensitivity to the needs of the survivors of the Holocaust... For me, Grodzinsky's work reconfirms a basic understanding that human life is deeply flawed. May this book contribute to people getting off their high horses." --Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine
"It will be hard to deal with some of the most painful personal testimonies that echo through the book... It was not easy to read this book. If only some of the claims and facts are correct, we are a state based on the cynical exploitation of the survivors. The book shakes the foundations of the Hebrew Zionist education we all had since the beginnings of Israeli education....it is important to read this book in order to understand to some extent the pain, the loss, the despair and the trauma." --Avram Burg, Member of Knesset, Past Chairman, The Jewish Agency
"Written with passion and an obsession for accuracy." -- Ariana Melamed, Ha-'ir - the leading Tel Aviv weekly
AUTHOR BIO Yosef Grodzinsky is professor of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, and Professor and Canada Research chair in NeuroLinguistics at McGill University.
EXCERPT FROM ZNET INTERVIEW
I was interested in the relationship between Jews and Zionists at times of crisis, and focused on Jewish survivors in post-war Germany--on Displaced Persons' (DP) camps that the US Army and the UN set up after the War, to assemble and care for millions of civilian victims of the Nazi regime. Jews were quickly put in separate camps, and became the miserable dwellers of the Jewish DP camps, the main location of my story. I went there (I mean, to archival material about these places) in order to see what the Zionists, by now close to accomplishing their goal and establishing an independent Jewish state, did to help Jews in need. Jerusalem dispatched hundreds of trained envoys to post-war Europe. What did they want and do? Their goal was openly stated, expressed by Ben-Gurion: "to populate Palestine with multitudes of Jews." This translated into a plan to bring all the survivors to Palestine. Hence, survivors seeking Palestine immigration were dubbed "good material," whereas the others were viewed as weaklings. Here's an example: "The camps now house just the remainder of She'erit ha-pleyta [The Surviving Remnant]. The pioneering human material, that with human, Zionist awareness, has already left the camps on its way to Palestine through a variety of routes [É] What has now remained is that stuff that is glued to the old soil, like the remains of a meal stuck to the bottom of a burnt pot, which must be scrubbed and removed. No attempt at convincing them can work: "The homeland is on fire!" "Could a son not rush to save his home from the fire?" These words reach their ears, but leave their hearts untouched." I read these documents, much to my amazement, in the correspondence between envoys in Germany and their Jerusalem leadership, housed in the Central Zionist Archives. Now, when you read such expressions, you can't help but be reminded of the objectionable phrase "human dust," used by General Patton in reference to Holocaust survivors. It was such expressions that gained him his notoriety as an anti-Semite, and ultimately led him to lose the command of the US Army in Germany late summer 1945. Zionist envoys, you see, were not anti-Semitic, of course; nor were they hateful. But as the text shows, their attitude towards the survivors did not regard their value as human beings who had just been through horrific suffering, humiliation, exploitation, and loss; rather, those who could help the Zionist endeavor in Palestine were became good material, whereas others, who sought to rebuild their lives elsewhere, were despised.
"Yosef Grodzinsky has an important story to tell... His book...shows that Zionist arrogance was there even before it was directed at Palestinians-when it manifested in an insensitivity to the needs of the survivors of the Holocaust... For me, Grodzinsky's work reconfirms a basic understanding that human life is deeply flawed. May this book contribute to people getting off their high horses."