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325 55 Four Years (1943) - -’ Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir ( the Young Guard) is a socialist Zionist movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The movement was heavily influenced by the writings of Ber Borochov, who combined Zionism with a Marxist historical approach. Members of the movement first settled in Palestine in 1919; in 1927 they founded Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Artzi (the National Kibbutz Federation). By the start of the Second World War, the movement had 70,000 members worldwide, mostly in eastern Europe. This article, written during the war, examines the devastating impact of the war on the movement as well as the heroic fight that many members of the movement led against the Nazis. Occupying the leftist flank of the Zionist movement (many members of Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir supported the creation of a binational—Arab and Jewish—state in Palestine), other Zionist factions frequently criticized the movement and questioned its Zionist credentials. This article addresses these criticisms, as it asserts the commitment of the movement to the fate of the Jewish people. The article also raises the question of rescue operations by the Yishuv and the commitment of the Zionist movements in Palestine for their brethren in the Diaspora, an issue that has become quite controversial in recent historical writings on the Yishuv’s reaction to the Holocaust. After the creation of the state in 1948, Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir merged with Ahdut Ha-Avodah Po‘alei Tsion to form Mapam (Mifleget Ha-Poalim Ha-Me‘uhedet—The United Workers Party), a Marxist Zionist party with a pro-Soviet orientation, which won nineteen Source: Hedim: Le-She‘elot ha-Hevrah ha-Kibbutzit, vol. 8, 1943. Translated by Eran Kaplan. seats in the first Israeli Knesset; it was the second largest party after the ruling Mapai party. ❖ Four years have passed since that day, September 1, when the Second World War started. In the storm that ensued, the Nazi armies advanced from country to country, spreading death, destruction, poverty, and slavery. The entire European continent fell prey to the Nazi beast. And immediately the process of extermination began. They hoped to get rid of the Jews by diseases, plagues, starvation, by uprooting them. To that end they enslaved them, restricted their food rations, denied them medicines, crowded them in ghettoes, levied on them fines, and turned the local population against them. But all of these measures could not break the will and vitality of the Jewish masses. With the outbreak of the German–USSR war, the methods of the destruction were changed. The Nazis realized that they could not defeat this stubborn people. And then began the systematic killing of Jews by gases, electricity, mass poisoning, and machine guns. One region after another was emptied of Jews. Jewry is being burnt on the stake. In the extermination camps in Treblinka, Mejduk [sic], in the forests and roads, in the ghetto streets and basements, inside the train cars slowly making their way to the extermination camps—thousands are killed every day. Nothing like that has ever happened in the history of human misery. Only the mind of a beast in the guise of a human being could invent such a satanic plan to destroy an entire people. These four years were also the years of struggle for our right to save our brothers. Allies and foes alike erected a wall of alienation around us. We won’t ever forget that the declaration of war against Germany was accompanied by British policemen shooting at the ships bringing immigrants. . . . At the price of 129 casualties, the refugees aboard the Patria won the right to land on the shores of the Land of Israel.1 But the passengers of the Atlantic, which also docked at the port of Haifa, were turned back by the police and were shipped to the Island of Mauritius, a place where over 1,500 Jews are suffering under the harsh conditions of a concentration camp.2 And there was also the Struma,3 a ship of immigrants and pioneers from Bulgaria that docked in Istanbul, waiting for immigration permits from the British government in the Land of Israel. And when the government refused to issue the permits, it sailed away from shore, becoming easy prey for both the massive waves and submarines—all of the 300 people aboard were drowned. Even those who are trying to escape the Nazi horrors by small boats are turned away to...

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