Displaced in the National Home: Jewish Repatriation from Palestine to Europe, 1945–48

At the end of World War II, thousands of European Jews who had found refuge in Palestine during the war sought to return to their countries of origin through a repatriation program launched by the Middle East office of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Their repatriation was a source of conflict between the Zionist leadership in Palestine and UNRRA. The former accused the latter of encouraging Jewish return to Europe, whereas UNRRA officials accused Zionists in the Yishuv of trying to prevent repatriation and of ostracizing those opting to return. The controversy derived from conflicting ideological and political considerations regarding the role of Jewish refugees in postwar reconstruction. Yet the positions of the quarreling parties were disconnected from those of repatriation applicants, who were determined to rebuild their lives outside Palestine but conceived of postwar reconstruction mainly in material and personal rather than ideological and political terms.