Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (review)

The story of the Jewish displaced persons after World War II—both the liberated survivors of the concentration camps and those who joined them during 1946-1947 from Eastern Europe—has occupied center stage in Israeli historiography for almost a decade. Their treatment by the liberating Allies, their experiences in camps waiting for resettlement in Palestine or elsewhere, and especially the degree of their identification with Zionism have been the subject of furious debate. An inter-university research project spawned the publication of over a dozen books during the 1990s (with more to come) that examined in depth different aspects of the postwar Jewish experience in Europe and also North Africa. And this effort, in turn, led to the publication of a number of polemical works presenting different views of the management of the DP problem and its resolution. Most of this literature has only been published in Hebrew and remains inaccessible to American readers, but the publication of an English edition of Arieh Kochavi's research provides a view through a very broad window into the fruits of Israeli historical scholarship. This edition provides an expanded and updated rewriting of the Hebrew text originally published ten years ago, although Kochavi's conclusions remain the same.

The book has many merits. The author examines the history of the displaced persons problem in the widest context so far—British as well as American policies to the Jewish survivors in their respective zones of occupation in Germany and Austria, and the role of the various international organizations that dealt with sustaining the refugees in the DP camps and assisting their eventual resettlement. The broad scope of this work will ensure it a place in any bibliography of the subject ahead of the earlier studies by Leonard Dinnerstein, ¹ Abram Sachar, ² and others ³ in English.

The postwar refugee problem in general, and the Jewish DP problem in particular, were thorns in the sides of all the occupation authorities in Europe that exacerbated relations at every level. Disagreements over the best way of resolving the Jewish DP problem led to the failure to find common ground between London and Washington on the Palestine problem, with the result that neither of the major powers was capable of stopping the momentum toward statehood propelled by the very much weaker Jewish community there. Kochavi examines the Jewish refugee problem of 1945-1948 from two perspectives—explaining the different policies of the major allies to the Jewish Holocaust survivors as well as giving an account of the importance of the DP problem in American and British policies in the wider context of Middle Eastern politics and in relations with the Soviet Union.

Kochavi's account is multifaceted. Nevertheless, there are issues which deserve much closer attention. The Jewish survivors were not alone in their dealings with the occupation authorities. The DP problem galvanized the Jewish world after 1945 in the same way as did the struggle for Jewish independence in Palestine. This was particularly true of the American Jewish community, which mobilized and organized itself as a lobby of unprecedented effectiveness. The research reviewed here refers often to this fact but does not examine it in any detail. The relationship between the leading Jewish organizations, displaying rare unity, and the administration in Washington had a huge impact on many of the developments described in the book; yet it is not discussed. Similarly, the author rightly stresses the importance of the American decision not to close the borders of Germany in 1946 and again in 1947 to the infiltration of Jews from Eastern Europe. In a separate chapter, he discusses the ineffectiveness of the American attempts to curb the stateside fundraising for illegal immigration from the DP camps to Palestine. But these were not unrelated developments. In fact, U.S. military authorities in Germany and...