The Palestinian Arabs were afraid that more and more Jews would be coming to Palestine since Germany was expelling them en masse. The Arabs especially their national religious leaders namely Amin al–Husayni, became alarmed by this turn of events. Their leaders called for a general strike in Palestine that began in the city of Nablus and spread to other cities. The strike was observed by the Arab sector while the Jewish sector ignored it. A National Committee was formed that led the strike^[1]. The strike soon led to a full fledged military revolt led by the Arab Higher Committee or AHC that was formed on 25 April 1936. The Committee insisted that 1. Jewish immigration be prohibited; 2. Arab land was not to be sold to Jews. 3 the establishment of a National Government responsible to a representative council elected by popular vote, primarily Arab dominated since they were the majority in Palestine.^[2]

The revolt took the British by surprise. Reinforcements had to be sent to Palestine. Slowly the British armed forces and police restored order. In the process they enlisted the help of the “Haganah” or Jewish underground military forces. The latter were provided with weapons and trainers. Special Jewish forces were trained to work with the Mandate Authorities in Palestine to restore order. The British forces broke the revolt that was basically aimed at them. Relative tranquility returned to Palestine.

The British government decided to reward the defeated Palestinian Arabs by granting them all their demands in spite of the fact that they just crushed their revolt in Palestine. We already mentioned that Britain started to limit Jewish immigration by various rules and regulations finally resulting in the publication In May, 1939 of the “White Paper” that in effect met the Arab demands. The Arab Higher Committee initially argued that the independence of a future Palestine Government would prove to be illusory, as the Jews could prevent its functioning by withholding participation, and in any case real authority would still be in the hands of British officials. Hajj Amin al–Husayni, the Mufti or Moslem religious leader plainly opposed the document.

The Palestinian Jews that helped Britain crush the revolt received some nebulous offer that they could continue to live in Palestine. The Palestinian Jews, the Zionist movements, and the Jewish world was dumbfounded. Britain sold the Jews down the river. In effect it scrapped the ‘Balfour Declaration.” Mass demonstrations were held in Palestine but to no avail. These protests would have assumed a more violent tone but World War Two started. The Palestinian Jewish leadership that supported Britain began to distance itself from England. In April of 1938, the Jewish Agency for Palestine met in secret sessions and created a special office named “Mossad” headed by Shaul Meirov, who later changed his name to Shaul Avigur^[3]. The latter was a military man who devoted himself to military matters since childhood. David Ben Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency, announced that the Agency would now assume full control of illegal immigration to Palestine. The Mossad or “Aliyah Bet” as it was popularly known began to buy ships and organize illegal transports of Jews to Palestine. The Revisionist Zionist led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky refused to abide by any agreements with the British and began to ship Jews illegally to Palestine. From abroad, he urged his followers to take action, namely to organize illegal ships to carry Jews to Palestine. Under the leadership of Moshe Galili (Kriboshein), a Palestinian Betar leader, the Irgun organized and shipped the first illegal ship named “Al Pi” or Despite with 15 illegal immigrants to Palestine. The boat reached the Holy Land on April 13, 1937. In September, 1937, an additional vessel reached Tantura (Dor) beach, Palestine and all 54 of its young passengers landed safely. Three months later a third group, consisting of 95 Betarim, also reached Palestine. In June. 1938, a convoy of three boats that carried 381 Betarim from Vienna, Austria disembarked at Tantura, where Irgun members loaded them onto buses and dispersed them throughout the country. Smaller illegal ships continued to bring illegal Jews to the shores of the Holy Land.

The Parita illegal ship along the beach of Tel Aviv

To counter the sharp rise in illegal immigration attempts, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reassigned the Mediterranean fleet in order to prevent illegal ships from reaching the Holy Land. Chamberlain's successor, Winston Churchill, continued this policy. In addition to fighting the German and Italian forces in the Mediterranean Sea, the British royal navy opened a second front aimed at preventing Jewish arrivals to Palestine. Now the hunt was on for the few illegal ships heading to the Holy Land. This British blockade of Palestine paid off, but sometimes with tragic consequences. We already mentioned the “ Patria” ship explosion that killed 260 Jewish refugees in Haifa, and 18 months later, February 24, 1942, the “Struma,” ship transporting Jewish refugees was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. All of the estimated 781 Jewish refugees and 10 crew members were killed, except for David Stoliar.

Stoliar was born October 31,1922 to Jacob Stoliar in Chișinău, Bessarabia, which at the time was part of Romania. The Stoliars lived in Chișinău until 1927, when David and his parents moved to France but returned to Romania in 1932. The parents divorced, the mother and David returned to France where David began his studies. He returned to Bucharest and continued his studies until he was expelled from school for being Jewish.

By the end of 1940, the Romanian authorities deported David to a forced labor camp at Poligon near Bucharest. In 1941 Jacob released David from the labor camp and bought him a ticket to travel on the Struma. On 12 December, 1941 David sailed from Constanța aboard the Struma, but her engine failed. Britain and Turkey played games until the Turks towed the ship out of port where the Russian torpedo hit her and sank her. David managed to survive by hanging on to a piece of wood. The news of the sinking of the ship provoked protests throughout Palestine. But the Mandate Palestine continued to abide by the “White Paper”.

The Palestinian Jews supported Britain in its war effort in spite of the fact that thousands of Jews were being killed in Europe according to the reports of Jan Karski who was the go between the Polish government in exile in London and the Polish underground in Poland. He reported to London that thousands of Jews in Europe were being forcibly removed from their homes and never heard from again. Jan Karski, was an eye–witness to Jewish persecution in Warsaw^[6]. But Britain ignored Karski's reports and instead pressured governments like Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria to prevent the departure of illegal ships to Palestine and in one case fully described earlier, actually led to the sinking of the Struma ship. The British blockade was successful; few Jews were able to enter Palestine during WWII.

The Palestinian Jewish reply was not long in coming. On February 1, 1944, posters were plastered all across Palestine by the “Irgun” Military Underground Organization to the effect that their cease fire in Palestine has ended. The poster was headed by the symbol of the Irgun.

The poster called for the cancellation of the “White Paper”. The Irgun was a break– away group of disappointed Haganah members who wanted military action. Many of them were Revisionist Zionists who followed Ze'ev Jabotinsky. The latter called for massive illegal immigration to Palestine, the formation of large military Jewish units and above all to end co–operation with the mandate authorities in Palestine. There were also some internal dissensions within the movement. Late 1943, Menachem Begin was chosen to head the group. He was one of the leaders of the Betar youth movement in Poland. He reached Palestine with the Polish Army of Anders. He was a capable leader and a fine orator. Under his leadership, the Irgun grew, expanded its activities and slowly began to attack the British administration in Palestine. One of its daring attacks was the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that lodged many British important officers^[7]. The story was carried by almost all press and radio media and gave the Irgun great publicity.

The emblem of the Lehi group– a half clenched fist and the Hebrew word Lehi.

The third group namely the “Haganah” nominally continued to fight with Britain but devoted its energies in Palestine to strengthen its forces, increase the weapon supply and help bring illegally Jews to the country.

The Haganah symbol. A sword entwined with an olive branch.

Haganah fighters guarding Migdal Tzedek, 1936

Haganah members in training (1947)

We already described the activities of the Mossad organization in Italy. But this country was the tail end of operations that began in Eastern Europe, namely former Polish areas and spread across Europe. The purpose of the organization was to transport the Jews from Eastern Europe to Germany, Austria and Italy. By 1945, Britain had approximately 50,000 soldiers in Palestine and their number was growing as the country slowly moved into a chaotic state that resulted in the death of 223 British soldiers fighting the Jewish underground in Palestine, with 478 wounded soldiers in action. These numbers were steadily growing.^[9]

To enforce its blockade of Palestine, the British foreign office applied pressure on countries, like Italy, France, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to close their borders to Jewish refugees. The idea was that by preventing the Jews from reaching the illegal ships the British could cut off the main conduit to Palestine. At the early stages of the embargo both the US State Department and the Pentagon supported this blockade policy even though US public opinion was strongly in favor of letting Jews enter Palestine. Pressure was building in the United States for the president to take action.

When Clement Attlee replaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of Britain in 1945, he vigorously pursued the “White Paper,” and the existing British policies in Palestine. But the Jewish survivors in the D.P. camps, and the Jews of Palestine, were determined to demolish the blockade regardless of human costs. The Jewish D.P.s were painfully aware they were unwanted and had had no place to go but to Palestine. David Ben Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, ordered the “Mossad” to step up the movements of Jewish refugees to Palestine. The press was invited aboard the illegal ships where the refugees told their life horror stories. The refugees had no illusions; after all they were survivors of the camps and forests. They were not interested in niceties and polite behaviour. This determination greatly exacerbated the armed conflict between Britain and the Jews in Palestine. The struggle spread enlisting the support of Jewish organizations in Jewish communities around the world, especially American Jewry.

We already mentioned that during the war, American Jewry had accepted the White House and Downing Street statements that nothing could be done on behalf of the Jews of Europe during the war. However, with the end of the war there was still no apparent solution to the problem of the Jewish Holocaust survivors in German, Austrian and Italian D.P. camps. American Jews were aware that many countries including the United States did not want to admit wholesale hordes of Jewish Holocaust survivors. What was clear to most Jewish communities was that the only place that wanted and was capable to admit masses of Jewish Holocaust survivors was Palestine.

American public opinion did not understand this British blockade policy, impatiently watching newsreels and reading stories of illegal ships filled with Jewish survivors seeking a to reach Palestine. Zionist organizations in the USA dramatized the stories of the Jewish Holocaust survivors and their living conditions in the European D.P. camps. Public opinion slowly shifted in favor of granting the refugees a state of their own. Congressmen and even US President Harry Truman, began to feel public pressure to act regardless of previous bilateral commitments.

In face of the pressure the British refused to budge, espousing the position that no Jewish problem existed in Europe. They pointed out that no Jews were in the British controlled occupation zones, and that the British dealt mostly with refugees from Poland or Hungary. The British also refused to acknowledge that the Poles and Hungarians were Jews. And, since they were not Jews, just Poles or Hungarians, there was no Jewish problem. Even British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin suggested that since there were no Jews there was no Jewish problem and therefore no need to discuss Palestine or Jewish refugees.

But there were Jews in the British zone mainly in the Bergen Belsen area. The British did everything possible to prevent Jewish refuges from entering their zone. Hundreds of Jews were pouring across the Polish border each day, approximately 1,500 a week. Most of them were directed to the American military zone in Germany. By the end of 1947, an estimated 250,000 Jewish refugees had made their way into the German and Austrian D.P. camps controlled by the Americans^[10]. The extraordinary number of Jewish refugees was the elephant in a swimming pool; a problem felt throughout Europe that could be neither ignored nor dismissed. The pressure on U.S. President Harry Truman by the Jews in America to recognize and deal with the problem of Jewish refugees wanting to emigrate to Palestine increased daily, irrespective of the State Department's position siding with the British. Following the April, 1946 “Anglo–American Committee of Inquiry,” a British and American attempt to agree upon a policy for admitting Jewish refugees to Palestine, US President Truman accepted the committee's recommendation to allow 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine. The British took exception to this recommendation and refused to implement it.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency's underground “Brichah” (escape) organization continued smuggling Jews across the Polish border intending eventually to place them on ships to Palestine. Most countries around the world limited entry of the Jewish refugees. With nowhere to go, the Jewish refugees found themselves waiting in refugee camps for some solution to their problem. As more refugees poured into the DP camps, more facilities were required, and camps had to be enlarged. Much of the burden fell on UNRRA or United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. This steady influx of Jewish refugees to central and western Europe terrified Britain, which saw refugees as potential illegal immigrants to Palestine. The British launched an energetic public relations campaign branding the Jewish refugees as communists, Soviet spies looking to undermine the free world.

At a conference in Frankfurt on January 3, 1946, the UNRRA director of European Operations, Lieutenant–General Sir Fredrick Morgan, held a press conference where he made several controversial comments. One was that “the mass exodus of Polish Jews was planned.” According to Gen. Morgan, those refugees he saw were “well–dressed, well–fed, rosy–cheeked and have plenty of money.” The outrageous statements that recently liberated concentration camp survivors already had money and rosy cheeks created a furor. Of course, the general, who was ostensibly in charge of helping poor and destitute refugees, Jewish and non–Jewish, attempted to soften the impact by claiming he was misquoted. He was certainly understood as representing British foreign policy concerning Jewish survivors in Europe^[11]. American Jewish organizations were furious with these anti–Semitic statements and demanded action. In London, British Jewry was pressuring their government to ease the restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.

After this uproar, Morgan struck back, making wild accusations, claiming that Zionists controlled UNRRA; or that UNRRA was in the service of the Soviets. Finally UNRRA decided to fire the general. But Morgan had strong supporters, namely British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who worried that Morgan would be replaced by a Jewish official. By the end of January 1946, Morgan was back in power. This re–instatement brought the American Jewish organizations back into the fray.

The British soon found another staunch supporter of their policies in the person of Mary Gibbons, Director of European regional office of the UNRRA organization. Gibbons released statements to the effect that people who leave where they were presently residing and head for Germany and Austria were not entitled to UNRRA support. The reference was clearly aimed at the Jews. Gibbons not only released press statements to this effect but decided to tour Europe and speak to numerous European officials. Gibbon's first stop was Czechoslovakia. She arrived in Prague on July 7, 1946 and remained until July 14, 1946, holding press conferences and meeting with Czech officials, reinforcing her position that UNRRA would not pay for refugees who left their postwar homes and headed to either Germany or Austria^[12].

The Jewish refugees who arrived in the D.P. camps in Germany and Austria were supported by UNRRA following the Morgan incident. Polish–persecuted Jews crossing Czechoslovakia were neither entitled to food nor transportation. The political motives were clear. Britain wanted the borders closed to keep refugees from finding their way to Palestine. Still, since the mass exodus of European Jews was in full swing, and the Czechs continued the transient program, the costs increased daily, and the expenses mounted like stacks of hay during a harvest.

The Czech press and radio carried the news of Gibbon's statements. Hearing that the Czech government was not to be reimbursed, many Czech officials panicked. The situation was exacerbated by the British embassy in Prague. There, embassy officials did their best to incite fear in the public's mind, the idea that the Czechs would be stuck paying all the bills for the refugee Jews, expenses the new government could ill–afford.

The theme espoused by the British embassy and UNRRA's Mary Gibbons was seized upon by the local press. The country was just starting to find some traction after years of Nazi occupation.

The Czech economy was struggling; the government nearly bankrupt, unemployment was high.

Clearly, the Czech people were opposed to the use of the little money they had going to help Jewish refugees who were not even Czech citizens. Most believed the country could ill afford these indulgences.

The fears, rumors and harsh criticisms soon reached the ears of government ministers. The government met on July 16, 1946, and a heated discussion ensued regarding the Polish Jewish refugees crossing through Czechoslovakia. Many ministers favored halting the program, but Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk threatened to resign if the cabinet stopped the Jewish refugee transit program^[13]. The cabinet was seriously divided on the issue. But Masaryk's intervention put a stop to the cabinet discussion. The issue was rescheduled for further discussion.

Meanwhile the borders stayed open and the flow of refugees increased hourly. Czechoslovakia was selected by the British since it was the lynchpin to the passage of Jews from Eastern Europe to Germany and Austria, then on to the ports where illegal ships waited to attempt the run to Palestine. If Czechoslovakia closed their borders the movement of illegal Jews would almost completely stop. Without illegal immigrants pressing to enter Palestine, the international attention, and bad press Britain was getting because of the blockade would drop off appreciably. So the British put together a well–orchestrated plan to sew panic among the Czech public^[14].

The plan almost succeeded except for the determination of the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk who opposed closing the gates of the country and Czech deputy–Minister of the Interior, Zdenek (Zoltan Goldberger) Toman, who controlled the border police. They kept the borders open as the Czech government discussed the refugee issue. With pressure from the JDC and influential circles in the USA, UNRRA eased the pressure on Prague. The Czech government continued to permit Jewish refugees to cross Czech borders but the number of days allowed for transit was severely restricted.

The D.P. issue created a burning controversy that bubbled over into the newspapers. An August 3, 1945 report on the treatment of DPs by Earl G. Harrison reverberated throughout the American government. Harrison was Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a former Commissioner of Immigration. He was commissioned by President Harry Truman as a special envoy to the Inter–Governmental Committee on Refugees. The report he wrote was published on August 3, 1945.

After inspecting thirty DP camps, then run by the US Army, Harrison called for separate Jewish DP camps. Harrison thought that Jews should be housed separately, in their own camps. Harrison also pointed out that Jewish DPs were still being housed in former concentration camps. He reported that conditions in these DPs camps was horrible. His report had an effect. By the end of 1945, the management of the DP camps was taken away from the army and put under the supervision of UNRRA. However, Harrison's suggestion to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees both into Palestine and the United States was ignored.

A JDC field representative named Jean Gafan, assigned to the Landsberg displaced persons camp, reported to New York headquarters that at the time the camp was so overcrowded that three people were forced to sleep together in one bed. Leo Srole, a sociology professor working for UNRRA, reported that sixty–two hundred Jews were living in Landsberg in substandard dwellings that normally accommodated forty–five hundred.

Srole, convinced of an imminent danger of a cholera epidemic in the camps, decided to resign his post to call attention to the “appalling conditions at the camp.” A copy of his resignation was sent to the press in Nuremberg. Within hours of Srole's resignation on December 5, 1945, General Walter Bedell Smith, the then Chief of Staff of the European Theater, and former chief of staff to General Eisenhower, was on his way to Landsberg.

General Smith took an impressive entourage with him. Accompanying him were General Albert Kenner, the surgeon general; General Lucian K. Truscott, who had replaced General Patton as commander of the Third Army; Judge Simon Rifkind; Major Irving Heymont, the former commander of the Landsberg camp; officials of both UNRRA and the JDC; and a contingent of newspaper reporters and photographers.

According to some, even before the train arrived on December 6, 1945, Smith had decided to go to Landsberg to deflect criticism from the army to the Jews. After the visit, he claimed that the Jewish inmates were to blame for the intolerable sanitary conditions. He told the camp committee it was their responsibility to clean up the feces found in the rooms. Smith claimed that while there was much overcrowding in the camp it was because of unauthorized Jewish refugees sneaking into the American zone from the Russian and British zones^[15].

Following the visit to the camp Judge Rifkind agreed with General Smith, who according to some sources had a Jewish mother, claiming that the morale in the camp was better than many others he had visited. He believed a far more constructive approach was needed,and commended the military for its accomplishments. He did admit more had to be done.

Not everyone agreed with Judge Rifkind's assessment. The World Jewish Congress reportedly thought that Rifkind was helping Smith and the United States army avoid responsibility for the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the camp. One comment was that the army could have done a lot of good lending a helping hand rather than treating the Jewish DPs like vermin. However, perhaps Judge Rifkind was attempting a diplomatic approach by offering a friendly hand to General Smith. When he returned to the United States, Judge Rifkind's confidential memo was “leaked” to the press. In it he was extremely critical of much of what he'd seen in the displaced persons camps, putting much of the blame on UNRRA.

As a result of Smith's visit, improvements in the conditions were made. New camps were opened up, camp residents were transferred out of the overcrowded ones, although many of the Jews were extremely frightened to board a transport to a new place after their terrifying experiences during the Nazi period. Rifkind then served Eisenhower's replacement, General Joseph T. McNarney. The judge stayed in Europe until March, 1946, shortly before Rabbi Herzog's arrival, researching the issues facing the Jewish refugees.

While the War Department tried to downplay Judge Rifkind's report as “only the personal views” of one man, they did admit Judge Rifkind was a “qualified observer on a matter in which there has been substantial public interest.”

Not long after Rifkind arrived in Europe, David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, arrived from Jerusalem on October 19, 1945, to visit the “saved remnants” of the Jewish people. He was greeted with great enthusiasm.

Upon his return to the United States in March, 1946, Judge Rifkind dropped a bombshell when his recommendation for a mass resettlement in Palestine of the 100,000 Jewish refugees remaining in Germany appeared in the press. Other scathing criticism in the report sent shockwaves through Washington. According to the Rifkind report, “No matter what the political or economic situation in their former homes, life there for them is impossible. They are in fact homeless through no choice of their own and cannot be repatriated.” 20The JTA followed the story with an April 18, 1946 article that quoted Rifkind as saying that the problem of displaced Jews “is actually insoluble without Palestine.”

Rifkind, the JTA article went on, believed that Palestine was the sole hope of the majority of Jews in Germany and Austria. He said that the residents of the DP camps were desperate. “Unless the world is prepared immediately to make a place for them, it will drive to despair and disaster this handful of a decimated people. All of them have but one earnest wish, to be quit of Europe, and most of them have one other compelling desire, to emigrate to Palestine.”

Rifkind's report was a precursor of events. In April, 1946, violent clashes broke out between the German police and the DPs, followed by riots in Stuttgart, Munich, and Landsberg. Time was running out to solve the problems of the DPs.

Rabbi Herzog had seen the same things as Rifkind. And he left Germany with a heavy heart. Although he had arrived in Germany after Judge Rifkind had returned to the United States, he agreed with the judge's conclusions. What had the Jews done to deserve being still treated as victims, behind wire once again, and then condemned for their hapless situation. Rabbi Herzog saw one solution to the problems of these poor refugees: Let them enter Palestine.

Footnotes

1. Morris, Benny “1948” Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 1978, pp27–29 Return
2. Ibid Return
3. Avriel, Ehud Open the Gates, published by Athenum, 1975, p 37 Return
4. Bauer, Amer, p.130 Return
5. Ibid., Return
6. Karski, Jan. One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust, by E.Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, publisher Return
7. Morris, p.35 Return
8. Morris, p29 Return
9. Michael Clodfelter, Warfare And Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference To Casualty Second Edition, published by McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002 Return
10. Bauer. Ashes, P. 132. Return
11. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was reliably informed today that UNRRA will dismiss Lt. Gen. Sir . Morgan; Official Announcement Expected Today Jan. 3 (JTA WASHINGTON,) Return
12. Gaynor Jacobson letter to NYC JDC office August 26, 1946 Return
13. Gaynor Jacobson letter to NYC JDC office August 26, 1946 Return
14. Szulc Return
15. Rekindling the Flame: American Jewish Chaplains and the Survivors of the European Jewry, 1944–1948, pp. 96. Return

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