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In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II
Working from newly unraveled archival material, Grodzinsky 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 Their mission was to bring all the “Surviving Remnant” to Palestine. Survivors were to be “the anvil upon which the revolt against the British [in Palestine] must be forged” (David Ben-Gurion). In 1945, Zionists forcefully prevented the rescue of child survivors; in 1948, they instituted forced conscription to the Israel Defense Force, dwindled by the fighting with the Arabs. ”Written with passion and an obsession for accuracy.”—Ariana Melamed, Ha-’Ir , the leading Tel Aviv weekly
279 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 14, 2010
This is a short book, a documentary of what happened to the displaced persons (DP's) who were Jewish in the aftermath of WW2. Jews were separated from other DP's and placed under the direction of their own, yet it was not death camp survivors but outsiders from Palestine who took over leadership of the Jewish DP camps.
The author achieves his purpose of setting the historical record straight using documentation from the 1945 to 1948 period. We are told of how Zionists (those who support the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine) successfully took camp control and with great dedication proceeded to eliminate from positions of power any who disagreed with them. This done, they then went on to make it either difficult or impossible for the camp inmates to choose any other destination than Israel for their new lives.
This book counters the commonly told story (still taught in Israel) of European Jews, who survived the Holocaust, acting with determination to go to Israel. In fact, most wanted to go to the United States and there were quite a few who believed in the "Bund" philosophy that Judaism was wherever Jews might be found - that it was not necessary to have a state at all.
When it suited the Zionists to present Jews as impoverished refugees being kept from Palestine, they placed such DP's on ships to generate world sympathy. Later, when Israel's war of independence was about to break out, it was only capable fighters that were wanted and Jewish DP's in poor health or of the wrong age were refused transportation to Palestine even if they wanted to go.
Zionists imposed taxes on Jewish DP's for Israel and after a voluntary draft of camp residents for soldiers to fight against the Arabs did not raise sufficient manpower, a mandatory draft began with physical violence, job loss and even denial of food rations used to force enlistment. All the while, the people who had survived the death camps were made to feel that they were traitors if they did not go to Palestine. Intimidated, they often responded to surveys with what Zionists wished them to say.
What country doesn't have shameful episodes in its history? How carefully national stories are created to protect an image. That's why books such as this one are so necessary. Just as was the case with the United States, where the facts of African-American and Native-American experience were silenced for so long, this story of the manipulation of refugees by zealots for a cause should be welcomed to the light of day.
The author achieves his purpose of setting the historical record straight using documentation from the 1945 to 1948 period. We are told of how Zionists (those who support the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine) successfully took camp control and with great dedication proceeded to eliminate from positions of power any who disagreed with them. This done, they then went on to make it either difficult or impossible for the camp inmates to choose any other destination than Israel for their new lives.
This book counters the commonly told story (still taught in Israel) of European Jews, who survived the Holocaust, acting with determination to go to Israel. In fact, most wanted to go to the United States and there were quite a few who believed in the "Bund" philosophy that Judaism was wherever Jews might be found - that it was not necessary to have a state at all.
When it suited the Zionists to present Jews as impoverished refugees being kept from Palestine, they placed such DP's on ships to generate world sympathy. Later, when Israel's war of independence was about to break out, it was only capable fighters that were wanted and Jewish DP's in poor health or of the wrong age were refused transportation to Palestine even if they wanted to go.
Zionists imposed taxes on Jewish DP's for Israel and after a voluntary draft of camp residents for soldiers to fight against the Arabs did not raise sufficient manpower, a mandatory draft began with physical violence, job loss and even denial of food rations used to force enlistment. All the while, the people who had survived the death camps were made to feel that they were traitors if they did not go to Palestine. Intimidated, they often responded to surveys with what Zionists wished them to say.
What country doesn't have shameful episodes in its history? How carefully national stories are created to protect an image. That's why books such as this one are so necessary. Just as was the case with the United States, where the facts of African-American and Native-American experience were silenced for so long, this story of the manipulation of refugees by zealots for a cause should be welcomed to the light of day.
January 5, 2018
Review of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II by Yosef Grodzinsky. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004. First published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, winter 2006.
Perhaps the most preeminent advocate of Holocaust remembrance in the United States, Elie Wiesel has long held that the sacred memory of the murdered Jewish millions ought not to be sullied by base, partisan political concerns. He held to this putatively apolitical view even when he was the leader of the process that led to the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
In this English version of an earlier work published in Hebrew, Yosef Grodzinsky shows how early on, Zionist politics collided with the needs of Holocaust survivors, those Jews who were gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps after World War II in Germany, Austria, and Italy. For the author, a professor at Tel Aviv University, this is not simply a detached work of scholarship; rather, it is a personal response to and revision of the way he was raised as a youth in Israel: “We were told that virtually all the survivor DPs immigrated to Palestine/Israel, after a courageous struggle against the British. Those who joined the army, we were told, registered for the draft upon their arrival in Palestine; we were also told that refugees and survivors arrived in Palestine eagerly, ready to join the forming Israeli society and assist in the war effort. But the real story was kept from us” (p. 231).
In the early chapters, Grodzinsky gives meticulous attention to the process of how the survivors of the Nazi extermination machinery came to be concentrated in Displaced Persons camps under Allied administration and organize themselves. Throughout, one sees clearly the author’s compassion for what the survivors had experienced, both during the war, and the chaos and poverty they faced afterwards.
What David Ben-Gurion and other Zionists needed for the project of statehood was, in their expression, “good human material” (Hebrew, chomer ‘enoshi tov), meaning persons able to fight for the Zionists against the British and the Arabs. By the end of the war, the Zionists turned to this physically weak, yet numerically strong concentration of the “Surviving Remnant” of the Holocaust (Hebrew, She’erith ha-pleyta).
Both Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish groups came to the camps to assist the survivors. Given their mission of establishing a Jewish state, the Zionist organizers worked assiduously to try to bring the survivors over to their side. Drawing on new archival records, the author points out that not all Jews in the DP camps were convinced of the personal need to go to Palestine. In fact, he refers to Bundist Jews who had other conceptions and convictions of Jewish identity than those of the Zionists.
Grodzinsky highlights two crises that reveal the priority of Zionist ideology over the needs of the survivors. One involved the opportunity to get Jewish children out of the camps and into Britain and France where they would be cared for. Due to Zionist pressure, particularly Ben-Gurion, the children remained in the camps. The author then concludes that the “value of human suffering for political bargaining was very clear to Ben-Gurion, who was quite willing to use it years before Arab leaders used the 1948 refugee problem in a similar vein” [97-98].
The second crisis occurred after the U.N. Partition Plan of November 29, 1947. The Haganah began to mobilize and needed all the person power it could get. The Zionist envoys and the leaders in the DP camps started a voluntary conscription drive. But when the numbers signing up proved to be disappointing, a compulsory draft was initiated. Intimidation, threats, and physical violence were used to impress upon survivors their duty to the Jewish people. One Bundist paper Unser Shtime (Our Voice) commented how unbelievable it was “that Jews, the standard victims of Fascism and terrorism, would be capable of the kinds of violence Zionists in the camps exercise toward their Bundist and other non-Zionist political rivals” (p. 207). The compulsory draft thus brought to Palestine/Israel men and youth who didn’t necessarily desire to come to Palestine, but ultimately had no choice. They became fighters in the first battles of the State of Israel.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust is part of the on-going project by Israelis and others to subject the Zionist movement and Israeli policies to demystification. Grodzinsky’s book shows how the Zionists subscribed to “might makes right” in the transcendent cause for Jewish statehood in Palestine. With Holocaust survivors, children and adults, treated in such a fashion, one might not be too surprised at the treatment to be meted out to the indigenous Palestinians.
Perhaps the most preeminent advocate of Holocaust remembrance in the United States, Elie Wiesel has long held that the sacred memory of the murdered Jewish millions ought not to be sullied by base, partisan political concerns. He held to this putatively apolitical view even when he was the leader of the process that led to the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
In this English version of an earlier work published in Hebrew, Yosef Grodzinsky shows how early on, Zionist politics collided with the needs of Holocaust survivors, those Jews who were gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps after World War II in Germany, Austria, and Italy. For the author, a professor at Tel Aviv University, this is not simply a detached work of scholarship; rather, it is a personal response to and revision of the way he was raised as a youth in Israel: “We were told that virtually all the survivor DPs immigrated to Palestine/Israel, after a courageous struggle against the British. Those who joined the army, we were told, registered for the draft upon their arrival in Palestine; we were also told that refugees and survivors arrived in Palestine eagerly, ready to join the forming Israeli society and assist in the war effort. But the real story was kept from us” (p. 231).
In the early chapters, Grodzinsky gives meticulous attention to the process of how the survivors of the Nazi extermination machinery came to be concentrated in Displaced Persons camps under Allied administration and organize themselves. Throughout, one sees clearly the author’s compassion for what the survivors had experienced, both during the war, and the chaos and poverty they faced afterwards.
What David Ben-Gurion and other Zionists needed for the project of statehood was, in their expression, “good human material” (Hebrew, chomer ‘enoshi tov), meaning persons able to fight for the Zionists against the British and the Arabs. By the end of the war, the Zionists turned to this physically weak, yet numerically strong concentration of the “Surviving Remnant” of the Holocaust (Hebrew, She’erith ha-pleyta).
Both Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish groups came to the camps to assist the survivors. Given their mission of establishing a Jewish state, the Zionist organizers worked assiduously to try to bring the survivors over to their side. Drawing on new archival records, the author points out that not all Jews in the DP camps were convinced of the personal need to go to Palestine. In fact, he refers to Bundist Jews who had other conceptions and convictions of Jewish identity than those of the Zionists.
Grodzinsky highlights two crises that reveal the priority of Zionist ideology over the needs of the survivors. One involved the opportunity to get Jewish children out of the camps and into Britain and France where they would be cared for. Due to Zionist pressure, particularly Ben-Gurion, the children remained in the camps. The author then concludes that the “value of human suffering for political bargaining was very clear to Ben-Gurion, who was quite willing to use it years before Arab leaders used the 1948 refugee problem in a similar vein” [97-98].
The second crisis occurred after the U.N. Partition Plan of November 29, 1947. The Haganah began to mobilize and needed all the person power it could get. The Zionist envoys and the leaders in the DP camps started a voluntary conscription drive. But when the numbers signing up proved to be disappointing, a compulsory draft was initiated. Intimidation, threats, and physical violence were used to impress upon survivors their duty to the Jewish people. One Bundist paper Unser Shtime (Our Voice) commented how unbelievable it was “that Jews, the standard victims of Fascism and terrorism, would be capable of the kinds of violence Zionists in the camps exercise toward their Bundist and other non-Zionist political rivals” (p. 207). The compulsory draft thus brought to Palestine/Israel men and youth who didn’t necessarily desire to come to Palestine, but ultimately had no choice. They became fighters in the first battles of the State of Israel.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust is part of the on-going project by Israelis and others to subject the Zionist movement and Israeli policies to demystification. Grodzinsky’s book shows how the Zionists subscribed to “might makes right” in the transcendent cause for Jewish statehood in Palestine. With Holocaust survivors, children and adults, treated in such a fashion, one might not be too surprised at the treatment to be meted out to the indigenous Palestinians.
May 18, 2023
This is prime quality historiographical work. Both the data retrieval and analysis are impeccable and really showed how post Holocaust displaced were politicized and coerced into the Zionist cause
March 19, 2025
I started this in good faith but became more and more impatient with its whitewashing. It is important to look into the beginnings of the “Jewish state”/Zionism given how much these myths have affected Americans’ relationship with Israel, etc… but these talks of coercion reek (to me) of white guilt. Like the only reason the genocide of Palestinians maintains any “nuance” to anyone is because the desire to establish a homeland after surviving a genocide yourself is immediately intelligible to anyone who has ever read or seen anything about the Holocaust. That is just obvious, which is why not many people question those figures about 80% of DPs having survived the camps in 1945 intending to go to Palestine.
I understand the desire to clean this up a bit and especially to engender a new Jewish narrative which complicates the “Israel is the homeland and we need to protect it” story - but white people have colonized far more for far less, and I think this does more to justify the genocide and absolve the guilty than it does to regard the new ethnic cleansees with sympathy.
I understand the desire to clean this up a bit and especially to engender a new Jewish narrative which complicates the “Israel is the homeland and we need to protect it” story - but white people have colonized far more for far less, and I think this does more to justify the genocide and absolve the guilty than it does to regard the new ethnic cleansees with sympathy.
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