In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

25 HANNA TOROK YABLONKA ______________ The Silent Partner: Holocaust Survivors in the IDF The birth of the State of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by two major dramas: the struggle of the War of Independence and the influx of tens of thousands of new immigrants in what came to be called the "Mass Aliyah." European Jews, most of whom were Holocaust survivors, were the first to come. The vast majority arrived during the War of Independence. In effect, there was a convergence of the process of immigrant absorption and a desperate struggle for national survival. The pressure of events did not allow for sentiments. The painful past of the newcomers was largely ignored as many became fighters with the army which provided their first home in Israel. How well did the army serve as an instrument of absorption? Did common military service become a social catalyst between veteran Israelis and new immigrants? Moreover, in view of the fierce fighting that took place during the War of Independence, how did Holocaust survivors perform despite their tragic life experiences and could their performance become part of the heroic myths that emerged from the War of Independence? These are only few of the questions raised by this unusual encounter between immigrants with a traumatized past and a promised land that first appeared in the shape of "a military car and a platoon"-to use the poet Natan Alterman's well-known phrase. The story of Holocaust survivors as soldiers can be told here only in part. Nevertheless, it illuminates the pains and hopes that were bound up in the creation of the State of Israel from its beginnings. By the term Holocaust survivors, sometimes called the "surviving remnant ," we refer to continental European Jews who suffered from Nazism both directly as in ghettos, concentration camps, or hiding places and indirectly as in losing all family members, escape, and expulsion from Nazi-occupied territories .1 Based on this definition, there were 22,274 Holocaust survivors recruited into the Israeli Defense Forces during the War of Independence.2 They constitute 10.7 percent of the total of Holocaust survivors during this most difficult period.3 Moreover, at the end of 1948, Zahal (the regular armyIsrael Defense Forces)4 totaled 88,033 soldiers, of whom 60,000 were in combat units.s Since we know for a certainty that recruits drawn from Holocaust survivors were concentrated in those units,6 it can be fairly claimed that towards the end of 1948 the surviving remnant constituted about one-third of 557 558 Hanna Torok Yablonka IDF's combat power. For these soldiers, the army was their first encounter with Israel both socially and institutionally. As will be seen, it was a harsh experience. Most of the people recruited abroad belonged to what was then called Gahal (Recruits from abroad).7 However, a conceptual framework distinguishing Gahal from Mahal (Volunteers from Abroad)8 had begun to be formulated in late 1948. This can already be seen in a report dealing with problems of draftees from abroad.9 In this report a distinction is made between volunteers arriving from Western countries and immigrants who, according the report, came from Eastern Europe. The distinction would eventually be formalized into an official document in February 1949.10 The purpose of this document was to distinguish between volunteers from abroad and soldiers who had also arrived from other countries and were drafted, but were not considered volunteers . Some suspected that such a separation contained an element of discrimination , based on party considerations, against East European immigrants as well as ethnic prejudice against immigrants from North Africa. The controversy in the press regarding the possibility of discrimination, caused David Ben-Gurion, as minister of defense, to demand an explanation. It was explained by military authorities that the so-called volunteers were persons who did not intend to settle in the country. In other words, they were not a part of the mass immigration.11 The above distinction was complemented by the formulation of a conception regarding the drafting of Holocaust survivors into the military: "To give them the feeling that they are already soldiers in the Israeli army [Zahal] ... it would be hoped that these people would view their immigration as a move within the military such as a move from one unit to another."12 Circumstances made the achievement of the this goal difficult. To begin with, it was not clear what role the immigrants would play in the military. Yisrael Galili...

Share