The Illegals (Meir Levin, 1948), which was produced by Americans for the Haganah (AFH) is the only film to provide real-time documentation of these survivors' attempts to immigrate illegally to ...Palestine. However, despite the film's significance as a unique visual document, it was not screened when it most mattered, before the founding of the State of Israel, and over the years has been marginalized in the Zionist collective memory and in Zionist research. Based on primary and secondary historical sources, this article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the behind- the-scenes story of The Illegals and its post-production difficulties. It examines the disagreements, the misunderstandings, and the reasons why it failed to reach its potential audiences in time, all of which caused one of the most important documentaries in the history of Zionism to sink into oblivion.
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This text looks at the fluid intersection in the emergence and development of Zionism and the later Zionist-promoted emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel from what was the Spanish Protectorate zone ...in Morocco and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in the north of Sherifian state. This process has received less attention from scholars than similar events in the French zone. However, it has some particularities that merit specific attention. From the early years of contact between North Moroccan Jews and European Zionism, the strong cultural identity of the Sephardim in the region and the mobilization of a Spanish approach informed by philo-Sephardism marked an important difference with regard to the French zone in the reception of Zionism and the organization of emigration to Israel. Paradoxically, in the Spanish protectorate, such process resulted in the disappearance of important historic Sephardic centers like Tetouan, Larache, and Ksar-el-Kebir.
This article deals with the case of Greek Christian refugees who fled to Cyprus and to the Middle East during WWII in an effort to point out how their settlement was related in a way to the ...simultaneous movement of the Jewish refugees, mainly survivors of the Holocaust, who tried to reach Mandatory Palestine. The exodus was part of a general movement from many occupied countries, mainly Greece, Poland and Yugoslavia, towards safer areas under the control of the Allies in the Middle East and Africa. It has been estimated that more than 73,000 refugees from these countries had been established in these areas in 1944. The Greek Christian refugees were placed in Nuseirat and Moses Wells camps, while Atlit remained mainly a camp for the Jewish refugees. The majority of Greek Christian refugees were repatriated by UNRRA in Greece after the liberation of the country, in 1945 and 1946.
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The 1940s in Cyprus, was extremely sensitive to national movements and balances. That's why the people of the island were not indifferent to the sudden arrival of Jewish refugees. This article ...describes the history of the Cyprus camps, in which the British forcibly detained tens of thousands Holocaust survivors who had sought to brave the British naval blockade of Palestine, from the perspective of the Greek Cypriot press. Two main coverage prisms can be discerned: description of the British policy and its effects on the Jewish refugees, and the effects of the establishment of the camps for Cyprus's local population.
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This article focuses on the evacuation of the camps for Jewish detainees in Cyprus during the period between May 1948 and February 1949. While the British Mandate over Palestine ended on 15 May 1948 ...and the Israeli Provisional Government declared British immigration laws null and void, Jewish immigration to Israel was restricted after 1 June 1948 by UN Security Council Resolution 50. Consequently, over 10,000 internees remained on the island until the final evacuation. While Resolution 50 did not ban immigration per se but rather the military training of the immigrants, the British government nevertheless insisted on maintaining the camps in Cyprus and limiting the immigration of military aged men. The article draws upon archival material as well as press articles and published works on the subject. It undertakes to identify the chief obstacles to the immigration of the remaining detainees on the island in the backdrop of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Israeli path towards statehood and international recognition.
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Despite their common heritage, Jews born and raised on opposite sides of the Polish-Soviet border during the interwar period acquired distinct beliefs, values, and attitudes. Variances in civic ...commitment, school lessons, youth activities, religious observance, housing arrangements, and perceptions of security deeply influenced these adolescents who would soon face a common enemy. Set in two cities flanking the border, Grodno in the interwar Polish Republic and Vitebsk in the Soviet Union,Borderland Generation traces the prewar and wartime experiences of young adult Jews raised under distinct political and social systems. Each cohort harnessed the knowledge and skills attained during their formative years to seek survival during the Holocaust through narrow windows of chance. Antisemitism in Polish Grodno encouraged Jewish adolescents to seek the support of their peers in youth groups. Across the border to the east, the Soviet system offered young Vitebsk Jews opportunities for advancement not possible in Poland, but only if they integrated into the predominantly Slavic society. These backgrounds shaped responses during the Holocaust. Grodno Jews deported to concentration camps acted in continuity with prewar social behaviors by forming bonds with other prisoners. Young survivors among Vitebsk's Jews often looked to survive by posing under false identities as Belarusians, Russians, or Tatars. Tapping archival resources in six languages,Borderland Generation offers an original and groundbreaking exploration of the ways in which young Polish and Soviet Jews fought for survival and the complex impulses that shaped their varying methods.
For decades, Americans have heard their presidents, and even presidential candidates, support the State of israel with ubiquitous phrases such as calling israel "the only democracy in the Middle ...east" and "America's ally" and noting that israel's population has turned deserts into farmland and developed high tech industries. From all over europe, Jews who had reached the safe havens of the American Zones in the West, especially in Austria, found safety, rehabilitation and, if they desired, assistance in escaping to Palestine. Since nations worldwide had generally sealed their borders to noncitizen refugees, the Jewish DPs found no doors open for immediate entry.
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Historical events are reflected in asset prices. Based on a unique data-set, we analyse government bond prices of Germany and Austria traded on the Swiss bourse during the Second World War. Some war ...events generally considered crucial are clearly reflected in government bond prices; this holds, in particular, for the official outbreak of the war and the loss and gain of national sovereignty. Other events to which historians attach great importance are not reflected in bond prices, most prominently Germany's capitulation in 1945. The analysis of financial markets provides a fruitful method for evaluating the importance contemporaries attached to historical events.
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