This ambitious work analyzes the absorption of
Holocaust survivors into the Yishuv/Israel from the end of the Second World War
until the early 1950's. Using letters of immigrants, protocols of meetings,
newspaper articles and surveys, as well as statistics from a variety of sources,
Yablonka describes the absorption process from the perspective of the immigrants
and those involved with their absorption. Although Israel is often understood to
be (and explains itself as) the one place Jewish refugees can always call
"home," many Israelis, especially in the era Yablonka describes, have
often considered themselves to be "new" or fully-emancipated Jews.
As a result of these
different understandings of the Jewish state, many sabras and immigrants who had
lived in Eretz Yisrael for some time were not accepting of the survivors,
especially as a group, even though Holocaust survivors were precisely the people
many supporters of Zionism had in mind when calling for the formation of the
Jewish state. The sabras and long-time immigrants' reluctance to accept the
survivors stemmed from the belief that the Holocaust proved that Jews could not
survive outside of Eretz Yisrael. Moreover, the perception common among Israelis
that most Holocaust victims died like "sheep being led to the
slaughter" may be understood as being influenced by the Zionist
understanding of the galut as inherently weak. The fact that many Holocaust
survivors were understandably physically weak after their ordeals only
contributed to the sense of superiority (albeit often mixed with genuine
sympathy) exhibited by many Israelis. This attitude, and Yablonka's sharp
rejoinder to it, is nicely encapsulated in title of the book's first chapter:
"Really, 'Human Dust?'"
It must be noted that this
book is written not as an indictment of Israeli culture, but rather as an
examination of the complex emotional and physical complexities involved in
Israel's attempts to absorb an extremely large amount of people as the country
itself went through the difficult period from the UN partition vote (in 1947) to
the declaration of the state (in 1948) and the ensuing War of Independence
(through 1949). The ambivalence and complexity is shown in various debates
discussed in the book: whether or not Holocaust survivors should be given
special privileges on kibbutzim, how they should be treated in the Army, whether
or not the Histadrut (the Israeli federation of labor unions) should offer them
cultural activities in their native tongues, rather than just in Hebrew. On a
more 'global' level, Yablonka offers the following quotation from Ben-Gurion:
"[Holocaust survivors] only demand and rightly so. History has put them
into a situation where they can only make demands, how can you ask anything of
someone whose wife was killed, his children exterminated, his parents? If they
come here and look upon us as suppliers and they as demanders, then we shall
have to accept that." (70)
To analyze the immigrants'
success in integrating themselves into the country and the country's ability to
absorb the immigrants, as well as to analyze Israeli attitudes to the
immigrants, Yablonka examines three areas: the immigrants' ability to be
absorbed into kibbutzim, the immigrants' ability to be absorbed into the army,
and the ability of the Histadrut to aid in immigrant absorption. Yablonka
chooses the kibbutzim and army because they are "elite sectors of Israeli
society" (2), arguing that the ability of Holocaust survivors to enter
these institutions is a barometer of their ability to be integrated into Israeli
society as a whole. Here we might ask why entrance into elite circles within in
the first few years of immigration should be used as a measure of absorption
into a country or society. By definition, we would expect most immigrants to be
unable to immediately enter the realm of the elites of their new state or
culture. A better indication of a group's strength might well be an examination
of the second and third generations' ability to enter a culture's elite.
Yablonka begins the main body
of her work with a survey of the Holocaust survivors, making some comparisons to
sabras and to the later wave of immigrants from Asia and North Africa (e.g., the
edot ha-mizrah, the Jews of Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, etc.). She finds the Holocaust
survivors to be literate and employed, although having a lower level of formal
education among youth than among sabra youth (whatever education might have been
received in Displaced Persons camps could not, by itself, make up for the lack
of education in the concentration camps). Yablonka also points out that many
survivors found housing in abandoned Arab villages, towns, or areas of cities
during Israel's War of Independence. While there was some debate about the
propriety of this (31-2), the question of whether the survivors were able to
turn the abandoned villages into agricultural areas was considered to have been
of greater importance. Here it must be remembered that most of Israel's
leadership was committed to a combination of statist and agrarian Zionism.
As Yablonka moves from her
survey of survivor absorption in general to survivor absorption into the Israeli
Defense Forces, the tensions between the immigrants and the natives becomes
clearer. In the eyes of the sabras, particularly the youth, the most prestigious
survivors were the partisans. While this was understandable in light of the fact
that many survivors arrived at a moment when fighters were needed most, it also
reflects the way the Holocaust was ideologically understood by many Israelis and
Zionists in general.
Further complicating the
survivors' integration into the army and the country as a whole were both the
logistics of the process and their interactions with other Israelis. Many
survivors' first encounters with Israelis came in the Displaced Persons camps of
Europe and Cyprus. There they met with representatives of the Yishuv or State
who made a personal connection with them and often raised their expectations of
what awaited them in their new country. Many survivors, however, entered the
country during the War of Independence and were drafted right away. Not only
that, they were often thrown in with sabras and others who had no idea what the
survivors had been through or what they were expecting. Here, too, of course,
the sabras's sense of superiority also interfered with the survivors' absorption
process (134). Moreover, Holocaust survivors were portrayed as cowardly soldiers
in works such as the play On the Plains of the Negev (147, 151). Yablonka
refutes such charges of cowardice by citing testimony of soldiers and citing
material from Z. Gilad's The Book of the Palmah (148, 150).
As noted at the beginning of
this review, Yablonka states that she wishes to examine the absorption of
Holocaust survivors into "elite sectors of Israeli society." Here we
might ask to what extent the Israeli army as a whole saw itself as elite
vis-a-vis other Israelis. Although units such as the Palmah may be said to have
had such an attitude, it is my impression that the army was no more elitist than
the rest of the country. In reading accounts of the early years of the state,
one generally finds most Israelis were willing to serve in the defense forces,
which indicates that army service per se is not an indication of elite status.
To be fair, Yablonka does show clearly the difficulties surrounding the
absorption of Holocaust survivors into the Israeli army. Given that many sabras
and long-time immigrants were skeptical, to say the least, of the ability of
survivors' ability to fight, the survivors' successes in absorption into the
Israeli Defense Force are certainly worth noting.
Yablonka's discussion of
survivor absorption into the kibbutz movement is one of the book's strongest
points. At the time of the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors, the
kibbutzim were facing a severe labor shortage, with many members in military
service. On one hand, the survivors seemed to be an ideal source of new members,
but on the other hand, many recruits had trouble being absorbed onto the
kibbutz, due to great differences between themselves and veteran residents of
the kibbutzim. One issue was the question of education: how much time off work
should young survivors get to make up for the education they were deprived of in
Europe? Another issue was that of material goods: how long should the new
volunteers/members have to wait for items like cupboards, etc.? Of course, the
terrible hardships of the Holocaust also had their effects: some survivors were
not in good health and many had trouble blending into a larger group which had
not experienced the concentration camps, especially when that larger group
consciously saw itself as rejecting the Jewish existence the survivors knew
before, and, particularly, during the Holocaust. Yablonka points out that for
some survivors, the very organization of kibbutz life was reminiscent of the
camps. As survivors had trouble adjusting to kibbutz life, veterans only felt
more distant from them, a dynamic that increased as many survivors 'dropped out'
of the kibbutzim. Yablonka documents the survivors' successful integration into
Kibbutz Yagur and, of course, Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot (the Ghetto Fighters'
kibbutz), whose original members were trained at Kibbutz Yagur.
The third institution that
Yablonka examines is the Histadrut, which in many ways appears to have been the
most effective institution in absorbing Holocaust survivors. Yablonka shows that
with the birth of the state, the Histadrut became involved with immigrant
absorption as well as functioning as the main force in Israel's heavily
organized labor union (There was, as Yablonka shows, an inherent conflict of
interest between the various roles of the Histadrut, especially because only
Histadrut members could use the Histadrut's sick fund). Despite some
paternalistic behavior, Yablonka's work shows that of the three institutions
Yablonka examines in this book, the Histadrut was the most open to allowing
Holocaust survivors autonomy. The Histadrut sick funds were aware of at least
some of the special needs of survivors, offering tattoo removal (p. 257). As
with the other institutions Yablonka surveys, the Histadrut was better at
dealing with a limited number of immigrants rather than the mass immigration
that came with the birth of the state; nonetheless, the Histadrut comes across
fairly well in this account.
The book concludes by
assessing both the survivors' expectations of veteran Israelis as well as the
impact of the mass immigration of the survivors on Israeli society. It is clear
that the survivors expected veteran Israelis to help them but that this was not
always done, for many reasons, chief among them being the lack of real planning
by Israeli authorities about how to deal with mass immigration as well as the
attitudes that many Israelis had about Diaspora Jews and survivors, in
particular. Although the survivors were more successful in integrating into
Israeli society than some of their contemporaries expected, Yablonka argues that
their successes were also less noticed than deserved. Here it must be remembered
that this book originally was written not only in Hebrew, but also as part of
the intra-Israeli debate on the early years of the state, in general, and the
issues surrounding the immigration of Holocaust survivors in particular.
(Unfortunately, the choice of a new title for the English translation Survivors
of the Holocaust: Israel after the War, rather than Foreign Brethren: Holocaust
Survivors in the State of Israel, 1948-1952 obscures both the chronological
scope of the book as well as its sociological-historical thrust).
This is an essential book for
anyone concerned with the study of Holocaust survivors or the early years of the
state of Israel. It is a well-researched work that discusses both the major
issues and the nuances of the subject. Given the continuous reinterpretations of
the Holocaust and the State of Israel -- an issue Yablonka points to on page 9
-- it may be said that this book not only contains a well-written discussion of
the struggles of Holocaust survivors in Israel, but also examines intra-Israeli
conflicts that occurred fifty years ago which, to a large extent, have yet to be
resolved.
Library of Congress call number:
DS102.95 .Y3313 1999
Subjects:
Holocaust
survivors--Israel
Kibbutzim
Social
integration--Israel
Citation: Richard Hoch . "Review of Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the
Holocaust: Israel after the War,"
H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews, May, 2000. URL:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=24042957813032.
Copyright © 2000, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for
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© Copyright Judy Cohen, 2001. All rights reserved.
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