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  • Introduction
  • Tuvia Friling (bio)

In late November 1942, the Jewish Agency Executive, the leadership of the Yishuv (Jewish community in pre-state Israel), called a press conference and made the first-ever official announcement of the shocking truth: Nazi Germany was perpetrating the systematic, all-inclusive, industrial annihilation of European Jewry and the destruction of the Jewish people. This was not a pogrom of the type all too common in Jewish history, but a Holocaust.

The Yishuv comprised 475,000 Jews, mostly young people of European background, new immigrants who had arrived in Eretz-Israel over the last two decades. The European landscape, the names of the communities being devoured in flame, the families going up in smoke—all were a living, breathing, organic part of their flesh. Most were dedicated Zionists, whose dream was to close the Diaspora chapter in Jewish history and create the "New Jew", the Jew of the Land of Israel; nonetheless, the Diaspora was still an inseparable part of their lives. The Holocaust was present in the life of the Yishuv and later in the State of Israel—at least from the moment the official announcement was made. Thus began a long, convoluted, agonizing process of internalizing the Holocaust's meanings; of living in its shadow, along with the scars engraved in the flesh and embedded in the consciousness.

The answer to the question "Where do Israelis begin living the Holocaust?" can be found in the first official announcement of mass murder in Europe. The shocking official revelation was made not by the millions-strong Jewish communities in the free world; nor by powerful organizations such as the World Jewish Congress or the Bund, or the Ultra-Orthodox community, or by any of the hundreds of other Jewish organizations and subgroups of America's wealthy, proud Jewish community.

News of the catastrophic fate of Europe's Jews was already known to most of the leaders of these groups. Scores of Jewish organizations and movements, large and small, secular and religious, national, non-national, and anti-national invested all their efforts to attaining the highest position in the organizational hierarchy where they could submit their "solution" [End Page v] and leadership to the Jewish people. Between the two world wars some of these organizations engaged in large-scale aid programs for their European brethren. When Hitler rose to power they also began applying public, political, and economic pressure. Nevertheless, it was the small Zionist community in the Land of Israel that brandished the sword and distinguished past disasters and the latest developments, and recognized the need to prepare for the new challenges while the larger, more powerful organizations buckled under political pressure not to go public.

While the official publication from Eretz-Israel is well-known, its inherent, muted, symbolic meaning is generally left unmentioned, and seems to lie at the heart of this anthology: the Holocaust's presence in the lives of Israelis. The Yishuv, like other Jewish communities, also strove for centrality, for a preeminent position in the Jewish world. It was the freest Jewish community, even though it was living under the British Mandate authorities, who, by the time the war broke out, had nullified their commitment to the Balfour Declaration.

The small Jewish community lived tenuously alongside and in the midst of a large Arab population that had launched the "Arab Revolt" (1936–1939)—a violent uprising, which signaled Arab intentions regarding the Zionist enterprise. In effect, the Yishuv assumed the complex role of "vanguard of the Jewish people", with the enormity of responsibilities that this entailed, at least in the initial stage of the Zionist enterprise. This was due in part to the tasks it officially took upon itself with the establishment of the "Jewish Agency", the Yishuv's internationally recognized representative body.

The Holocaust and its multifarious meanings are, therefore, intrinsically linked to Israelis' feelings and the overt and covert roles they assumed, whether consciously or not, whether to the liking of all or only some of them, whether to the admiration or chagrin of world Jewry.

This anthology, marking Israel's 60th anniversary, depicts various encounters between the Holocaust, as a seminal event, and large sections of Israel's...

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