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JEWISH ISRAEL Illegal Immigration to Palestine Notebook names ships 1946 SCARCE:
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She\'erit Ha-Pleita. Illegal Immigration to Palestine. Notebook. (Registry) 1946.With names of ships, geographical places, names and numbers. In Polish and English.Handwritten. 24 filled pages, Size: 19 x 12cm.Some use wear, stains to first and last pages
Sh\'erit ha-Pletah is a Hebrew term for Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.
Sh\'erit ha-Pletah is a Hebrew term for Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, and the organisations they created to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. These were active between 27 May 1945 and 1950–51, when the last DP camps closed.[1][2]
Hebrew: שארית הפליטה, romanized: Sh\'erit ha-Pletah means surviving remnant, and is a term from the Book of Ezra and 1 Chronicles (see Ezra 9:14; 1 Chr 4:43).
A total of more than 250,000 Jewish survivors spent several years following their liberation in DP camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy, since they could not, or would not, be repatriated to their countries of origin. The refugees became socially and politically organized, advocating at first for their political and human rights in the camps, and then for the right to emigrate to the countries of their choice, preferably British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, the USA and Canada.
Formation of the DP camps
School children at Schauenstein DP camp in 1946In an effort to destroy the evidence of war crimes, Nazi authorities and military staff accelerated the pace of killings, forced victims on death marches, and attempted to deport many of them away from the rapidly shrinking German front lines. As the German war effort collapsed, survivors were typically left on their own, on trains, by the sides of roads, and in camps. Concentration and death camps were liberated by Allied forces in the final stages of the war, beginning with Majdanek, in July 1944, and Auschwitz, in January 1945; Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Mauthausen, and other camps were liberated in April and May 1945.[3]
At the time of Germany\'s unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945 there were some 6.5 to 7 million displaced persons in the Allied occupation zones,[4] among them an estimated 55,000 [5] to 60,000[6] Jews. The vast majority of non-Jewish DPs were repatriated in a matter of months.[7] The number of Jewish DPs, however, subsequently grew manyfold as Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Soviet occupation zone migrated westward. It is estimated that a total of more than 250,000 Jewish DPs resided in camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy[8] during the period from 1945 to 1952.[9]
In the first weeks after liberation, Allied military forces improvised relief in the form of shelter, food, and medical care. A large number of refugees were in critical condition as a result of malnutrition, abuse, and disease. Many died, but medical material was requisitioned from military stores and German civilian facilities. Military doctors as well as physicians among the survivors themselves used available resources to help a large number recover their physical health. The first proper funerals of Holocaust victims took place during this period with the assistance of Allied forces and military clergy.[citation needed]
Shelter was also improvised in the beginning, with refugees of various origins being housed in abandoned barracks, hotels, former concentration camps, and private homes.[citation needed]
As Germany and Austria came under Allied military administration, the commanders assumed responsibility for the safety and disposition of all displaced persons. The Allies provided for the DPs according to nationality, and initially did not recognize Jews as constituting a separate group. One significant consequence of this early perspective was that Jewish DPs sometimes found themselves housed in the same quarters with former Nazi collaborators.[10][11] Also, the general policy of the Allied occupation forces was to repatriate DPs to their country of origin as soon as possible, and there was not necessarily sufficient consideration for exceptions; repatriation policy varied from place to place, but Jewish DPs, for whom repatriation was problematic, were apt to find themselves under pressure to return home.[12]
General George Patton, the commander of the United States Third Army and military governor of Bavaria, where most of the Jewish DPs resided, was known for pursuing a harsh, indiscriminate repatriation policy.[13][14] However, his approach raised objections from the refugees themselves, as well as from American military and civilian parties sympathetic to their plight. In early July 1945, Patton issued a directive that the entire Munich area was to be cleared of displaced persons with an eye toward repatriating them. Joseph Dunner, an American officer who in civilian life was a professor of political science, sent a memorandum to military authorities protesting the order. When 90 trucks of the Third Army arrived at Buchberg to transport the refugees there, they refused to move, citing Dunner\'s memo. Based on these efforts and blatant antisemitic remarks, Patton was relieved of this command.[15]
Harrison reportMain article: Harrison ReportBy June 1945 reports had circulated back in the United States concerning overcrowded conditions and insufficient supplies in the DP camps, as well as the ill treatment of Jewish survivors at the hand of the U.S. Army. American Jewish leaders, in particular, felt compelled to act.[16][17] American Earl G. Harrison was sent by president Truman to investigate conditions among the \"non-repatriables\" in the DP camps. Arriving in Germany in July, he spent several weeks visiting the camps and submitted his final report on 24 August. Harrison\'s report stated among other things that:
Generally speaking... many Jewish displaced persons and other possibly non-repatriables are living under guard behind barbed-wire fences, in camps of several descriptions (built by the Germans for slave-laborers and Jews), including some of the most notorious of the concentration camps, amidst crowded, frequently unsanitary and generally grim conditions, in complete idleness, with no opportunity, except surreptitiously, to communicate with the outside world, waiting, hoping for some word of encouragement and action in their behalf.......While there has been marked improvement in the health of survivors of the Nazi starvation and persecution program, there are many pathetic malnutrition cases both among the hospitalized and in the general population of the camps... at many of the camps and centers including those where serious starvation cases are, there is a marked and serious lack of needed medical supplies......many of the Jewish displaced persons, late in July, had no clothing other than their concentration camp garb-a rather hideous striped pajama effect-while others, to their chagrin, were obliged to wear German S.S. uniforms. It is questionable which clothing they hate the more......Most of the very little which has been done [to reunite families] has been informal action by the displaced persons themselves with the aid of devoted Army Chaplains, frequently Rabbis, and the American Joint Distribution Committee......The first and plainest need of these people is a recognition of their actual status and by this I mean their status as Jews... While admittedly it is not normally desirable to set aside particular racial or religious groups from their nationality categories, the plain truth is that this was done for so long by the Nazis that a group has been created which has special needs......Their desire to leave Germany is an urgent one.... They want to be evacuated to Palestine now, just as other national groups are being repatriated to their homes... Palestine, while clearly the choice of most, is not the only named place of possible emigration. Some, but the number is not large, wish to emigrate to the United States where they have relatives, others to England, the British Dominions, or to South America......No other single matter is, therefore, so important from the viewpoint of Jews in Germany and Austria and those elsewhere who have known the horrors of the concentration camps as is the disposition of the Palestine question......As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops.[18]Harrison\'s report was met with consternation in Washington, and its contrast with Patton\'s position ultimately contributed to Patton being relieved of his command in Germany in September 1945.[citation needed]
Growth of the campsThe number of refugees in the DP camps continued to grow as displaced Jews who were in Western Europe at war\'s end were joined by hundreds of thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe. Many of these were Polish Jews who had initially been repatriated. Nearly 90% of the approximately 200,000 Polish Jews who had survived the war in the Soviet Union chose to return to Poland under the Soviet-Polish repatriation agreements [pl].[19] But Jews returning to their erstwhile homes in Poland met with a generally hostile reception from their non-Jewish neighbors. Between fall 1944 and summer 1946 as many as 600 Jews were killed in anti-Jewish riots in various towns and cities,[20] including incidents in Kraków, around August 20, 1945;[21] Sosnowiec, on October 25; and Lublin, on November 19. Most notable was the pogrom in Kielce on July 4, 1946, in which 42 Jews were killed.[22] In the course of 1946 the flight of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe toward the West amounted to a mass exodus that swelled the ranks of DPs in Germany and Austria, especially in the U.S. Zone.[23]
Although hundreds of DP camps were in operation between 1945 and 1948, the refugees were mostly segregated, with several camps being dedicated to Jews. These camps varied in terms of the conditions afforded to the refugees, how they were managed, and the composition of their population.[citation needed]
In the American sector, the Jewish community across many camps organized itself rapidly for purposes of representation and advocacy. In the British sector, most refugees were concentrated in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp and were under tighter control.[citation needed]
Humanitarian services in the DP campsThe Allies had begun to prepare for the humanitarian aftermath of the war while it was still going on, with the founding of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), on 9 November 1943. However, the beginnings of the agency were plagued by organizational problems and corruption.[24] The military authorities were, in any case, reluctant to yield significant responsibility for the DP assembly centers to a civilian organization, until it became clear that there would be a need to house and care for the DPs for an extended period of time.[24][25] At the point when it was supposed to begin its work the UNRRA was woefully understaffed in view of the larger than expected numbers of DPs, and additional staff that were hastily recruited were poorly trained.[26] The agency began to send staff into the field in summer 1945; its mission had been conceived mainly as a support to the repatriation process, including providing medical services, and assuring the delivery of adequate nutrition, as well as attending to the DPs\' needs for comfort and entertainment; however, it often fell short of fulfilling these functions.[27] As of 15 November 1945, the UNRRA officially assumed responsibility for the administration of the camps, while remaining generally subordinate to the military, which continued to provide for housing and security in the camps, as well as the delivery of food, clothing, and medical supplies. Over time the UNRRA supplemented the latter basic services with health and welfare services, recreational facilities, self-help programs, and vocational guidance.[28]
By the time that the UNRRA took the reins of administration of the camps, the Jewish DPs had already begun to elect their own representatives, and were vocal about their desire for self-governance. However, since camp committees did not yet have any officially sanctioned role, their degree of power and influence depended at first on the stance of the particular UNRRA director at the given camp.[29]
The UNRRA was active mainly through the end of 1946 and had wound down its operations by mid 1947. In late 1947 a new successor organization, the International Refugee Organization (IRO) absorbed some of the UNRRA staff and assumed its responsibilities, but with a focus turned toward resettlement, as well as care of the most vulnerable DPs, rather than repatriation.[30]
A number of other organizations played an active role in the emerging Jewish community in the DP camps. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (\"Joint\") provided financial support and supplies from American sources; in the British sector, the Jewish Relief Unit acted as the British equivalent to the Joint; and the ORT established numerous vocational and other training.[citation needed]
From representation to autonomyThe refugees who found themselves in provisional, sparse quarters under military guard soon spoke up against the ironic nature of their liberation, invoking an oft-repeated slogan \"From Dachau to Feldafing.\"[31] Working committees were established in each camp, and on July 1, 1945 the committees met for a founding session of a federation for Jewish DP camp committees in Feldafing. The session also included representatives of the Jewish Brigade and the Allied military administration. It resulted in the formation of a provisional council and an executive committee chaired by Zalman Grinberg. Patton\'s attempt at repatriating Jewish refugees had resulted in a resolve within the Sh\'erit ha-Pletah to define their own destiny. The various camp committees convened a General Jewish Survivors’ Conference a conference for the entire Sh\'erit ha-Pletah at the St. Ottilien camp attended by delegates representing Holocaust survivors from forty-six Displaced Persons camps in both the American and the British Zones of Occupied Germany and Austria. The delegates passed a fourteen-point program that established a broad mandate, including the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine with UN recognition, compensation to victims, participation in the trials against Nazi war criminals, archival of historical records, and full autonomy for the committees. However, the survivor organizations in the American and British Zones remain separate after the conference and the American and British sectors developed independent organization structures.[32][2][1]
The center for the British sector in Germany was at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, where Josef Rosensaft had been the primus motor for establishing what became the Central Committee for Displaced Persons in the British zone. In the American sector, Zalman Grinberg and Samuel Gringauz and others led the formation of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews, which was to establish offices first in the former Deutsches Museum and then in Siebertstrasse 3 in Munich.[citation needed]
The central organizations for Jewish refugees had an overwhelming number of issues to resolve, among them:
Ensuring healthy and dignified living conditions for the refugees living in various camps and installationsEstablishing political legitimacy for themselves by establishing a constitution with a political process with debates, elections, etc.Facilitating and encouraging religious, educational, and cultural expression within the campsArranging for employment for the refugees, though not in enterprises that would contribute to the German economySupporting the absorption in the camp infrastructure of \"new\" refugees arriving from Eastern EuropeResolving acrimonious and sometimes violent disputes between the camps and German policeManaging the public image of displaced persons, particularly with respect to black market activitiesAdvocating immigration destinations for the refugees, in particular to the British Mandate in Palestine, but also the United States, Australia, and elsewhere[citation needed]Military authorities were at first reluctant to officially recognize the central committees as the official representatives of the Jewish refugees in DP camps, though cooperation and negotiations carried characteristics of a de facto acceptance of their mandate. Eventually on September 7, 1946, at a meeting in Frankfurt, the American military authorities recognized the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews as a legitimate party to the issue of the Jewish displaced persons in the American sector.[citation needed]
Political activismWhat the people of the Sh\'erit ha-Pletah had in common was what had made them victims in the first place, but other than that they were a diverse group. Their outlook, needs, and aspirations varied tremendously. There were strictly observant Jews as well as individuals that had earlier been assimilated into secular culture. Religious convictions ran from the Revisionist group to Labor Zionists and even ideological communists. Although Yiddish was the common language within the community, individuals came from virtually every corner of Europe.[citation needed]
There was lively political debate, involving satire, political campaigns, and the occasional acrimony. The growth of Yiddish newspapers within the camps added fuel to the political culture.[citation needed]
The political environment of the community evolved during its years of existence. In the first year or two, it was predominantly focused on improving the conditions in the camps and asserting the legitimacy of the community as an autonomous entity. Over time, the emphasis shifted to promoting the Zionist goals of allowing immigration into the British Mandate in Palestine; political divisions within the Sh\'erit ha-Pletah mirrored those found in the Yishuv itself.[citation needed]
At every turn, the community expressed its opposition and outrage against British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the British sector, the protests approached a level of civil disobedience; in the American sector, attempts were made to apply political pressure to alleviate these restrictions. The relationship between Sh\'erit ha-Pletah and British authorities remained tense until the State of Israel was formed. This came to a head when Lieutenant General Sir Frederick E. Morgan – then UNRRA chief of operations in Germany – claimed that the influx of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe as \"nothing short of a skillful campaign of anti-British aggression on the part of Zion aided and abetted by Russia... [meaning] death to the British.\" (Morgan was allowed to remain in his post after this comment but was fired when making similar comments later).[citation needed]
In late 1945, the UNRRA conducted several surveys among Jewish refugees, asking them to list their preferred destination for emigration. Among one population of 19,000, 18,700 named \"Palestine\" as their first choice, and 98% also named \"Palestine\" as their second choice. At the camp in Fürth, respondents were asked not to list Palestine as both their first and second choice, and 25% of the respondents then wrote \"crematorium\".[33]
All the while, the Sh\'erit ha-Pletah retained close relationships with the political leadership of the Yishuv, prompting several visits from David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders. While officially detached from the committees, there was considerable support for clandestine immigration to Palestine through the Aliya Beth programs among the refugees; and tacit support for these activities also among American, UNRRA, Joint and other organizations. A delegation (consisting of Norbert Wollheim, Samuel Schlumowitz, Boris Pliskin, and Leon Retter flew to the United States to raise funds for the community, appealing to a sense of pride over \"schools built for our children, four thousand pioneers on the farms... thousands of youths in trades schools... self-sacrifice of doctors, teachers, writers... democratization... hard-won autonomy,\"[34] and also met with officials at the US War Department and Sir Raphael Salento over the formation of the International Refugee Organization.[citation needed]
Over time, the Sh\'erit ha-Pletah took on the characteristics of a state in its own right. It coordinated efforts with the political leadership in the Yishuv and the United States, forming a transient power triangle within the Jewish world. It sent its own delegation to the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in Basel.[citation needed]
A community dedicated to its own dissolutionWith the exception of 10,000–15,000 who chose to make their homes in Germany after the war (see Central Council of Jews in Germany), the vast majority of the Jewish DPs ultimately left the camps and settled elsewhere. About 136,000 settled in Israel, 80,000 in the United States, and sizeable numbers also in Canada and South Africa.[9]
Although the community established many of the institutions that characterize a durable society, and indeed came to dominate an entire section of Munich, the overriding imperative was to find new homes for the refugees. To make the point, many of the leaders emigrated at the first possible opportunity. Both overt lobbying efforts and underground migration sought to open for unrestricted immigration to Palestine. And the camps largely emptied once the state of Israel was established, many of the refugees immediately joining the newly formed Israel Defense Forces to fight the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.[citation needed]
The Central Committee in the American sector declared its dissolution on December 17, 1950 at the Deutsche Museum in Munich. Of the original group that founded the committee, only Rabbi Samuel Snieg remained for the dissolution. All the others had already emigrated, most of them to Israel. Rabbi Snieg had remained to complete the first full edition of the Talmud published in Europe after the Holocaust, the so-called Survivors\' Talmud.[citation needed]
The last DP camp, Föhrenwald, closed in February 1957, by then populated only by the so-called \"hardcore\" cases, elderly, and those disabled by disease.[citation needed]
LegacySuicide amongst survivors has been a subject of some disagreement amongst Israeli medical professionals. In 1947, Dr. Aharon Persikovitz, a gynecologist who had survived the Dachau concentration camp gave a lecture called \"The Psychological State Of the New Immigrant\" in which he said: \"Holocaust survivors do not commit suicide; they heroically prove the continuity of the Jewish people\". According to Professor Yoram Barak this statement became \"an accepted national myth\". Barak says \"The survivors themselves also did not want to be stigmatized as `sick, weak and broken;\' rather, they wanted to join in the myth of the heroic sabra who just recently fought a glorious War of Independence against the enemy.\"[35]
See alsoAftermath of World War IIBeni VirtzbergCyprus internment campsSam Dubbin
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are considered Holocaust survivors as well. The definition has evolved over time.
Survivors of the Holocaust include those persecuted civilians who were still alive in the concentration camps when they were liberated at the end of the war, or those who had either survived as partisans or had been hidden with the assistance of non-Jews, or had escaped to territories beyond the control of the Nazis before the Final Solution was implemented.
At the end of the war, the immediate issues faced by Holocaust survivors were physical and emotional recovery from the starvation, abuse, and suffering that they had experienced; the need to search for their relatives and reunite with them if any of them were still alive; rebuild their lives by returning to their former homes, or more often, by immigrating to new and safer locations because their homes and communities had been destroyed or because they were endangered by renewed acts of antisemitic violence.
After the initial and immediate needs of Holocaust survivors were addressed, additional issues came to the forefront. Examples of such included social welfare and psychological care, reparations and restitution for the persecution, slave labor and property losses which they had suffered, the restoration of looted books, works of art and other stolen property to their rightful owners, the collection of witness and survivor testimonies, the memorialization of murdered family members and destroyed communities, and care for disabled and aging survivors, to name just a few.
Definition
Children at Auschwitz concentration camp at the time of its liberation by Soviet forcesThe term \"Holocaust survivor\" applies to Jews who lived through the mass exterminations which were carried out by the Nazis. However, the term can also be applied to those who did not come under the direct control of the Nazi regime in Germany or occupied Europe, but were substantially affected by it, such as Jews who fled Germany or their homelands in order to escape the Nazis, and never lived in a Nazi-controlled country after Adolf Hitler came to power but lived in it before the Nazis put the \"Final Solution\" into effect, or others who were not persecuted by the Nazis themselves, but were persecuted by their allies or collaborators both in Nazi satellite countries and occupied countries.[1]
Yad Vashem, the State of Israel\'s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, defines Holocaust survivors as Jews who lived under Nazi control, whether it was direct or indirect, for any amount of time, and survived it. This definition includes Jews who spent the entire war living under Nazi collaborationist regimes, including France, Bulgaria and Romania, but were not deported, as well as Jews who fled or were forced to leave Germany in the 1930s. Additionally, other Jewish refugees are considered Holocaust survivors, including those who fled their home countries in Eastern Europe to evade the invading German army and spent years living in the Soviet Union.[2]
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a broader definition of Holocaust survivors: \"The Museum honors any persons as survivors, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who lived as refugees or people who lived in hiding.\"[3]
In the later years of the twentieth century, as public awareness of the Holocaust evolved, other groups who had previously been overlooked or marginalized as survivors began to share their testimonies with memorial projects and seek restitution for their experiences. One such group consisted of Sinti (Gypsy) survivors of Nazi persecution who went on a hunger strike at Dachau, Germany, in 1980 in order to draw attention to their situation and demand moral rehabilitation for their suffering during the Holocaust, and West Germany formally recognized the genocide of the Roma in 1982.[4][5] Another group that has been defined as Holocaust survivors consists of \"flight survivors\", that is, refugees who fled eastward into Soviet-controlled areas from the start of the war, or people were deported to various parts of the Soviet Union by the NKVD.[6][7]
The growing awareness of additional categories of survivors has prompted a broadening of the definition of Holocaust survivors by institutions such as the Claims Conference, Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum so it can include flight survivors and others who were previously excluded from restitution and recognition, such as those who lived in hiding during the war, including children who were hidden in order to protect them from the Nazis.[7]
Numbers of survivorsAt the start of World War II in September 1939, about nine and a half million Jews lived in the European countries that were either already under the control of Nazi Germany or would be invaded or conquered, either willingly or by force during the war.[8][9] Almost two-thirds of these European Jews, nearly six million people, were annihilated, so that by the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, about 3.5 million of them had survived.[1][10] As of January 2024, about 245,000 survivors were alive.[11]
Those who managed to stay alive until the end of the war, under varying circumstances, comprise the following:
Concentration camp prisonersBetween 250,000 and 300,000 Jews withstood the concentration camps and death marches, although tens of thousands of them were so weak or sick that even with post-liberation medical care, they died within a few months of liberation.[10][12]
Other survivorsOther Jews throughout Europe survived because the Germans and their collaborators did not manage to complete the deportations and mass-murder before Allied forces arrived, or the collaborationist regimes were overthrown before the Final Solution could be carried out. Thus, for example, in Western Europe, around three-quarters of the pre-war Jewish population survived the Holocausts in France and Italy, about half survived in Belgium, while only a quarter of the pre-war Jewish population survived in the Netherlands.[13] Around a third of Austrian Jews and 70% of German Jews who did not flee those countries by 1939 were killed.[14] In eastern and south-eastern Europe, most of Bulgaria\'s Jews survived the war,[15] as well as 60% of Jews in Romania[16] and nearly 30% of the Jewish population in Hungary.[17] Two-thirds survived in the Soviet Union.[18] Bohemia, Slovakia and Yugoslavia lost about 80% of their Jewish populations.[14] In Poland,[9] the Baltic states and Greece close to 90% of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their local Europe, a few thousand Jews also survived in hiding, or with false papers posing as non-Jews, hidden or assisted by non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews individually or in small groups. Several thousand Jews also survived by hiding in dense forests in Eastern Europe, and as Jewish partisans actively resisting the Nazis as well as protecting other escapees, and, in some instances, working with non-Jewish partisan groups to fight against the German invaders.[10]
Refugees
Jewish refugees arriving in London from Nazi Germany and Poland in February 1939The largest group of survivors were the Jews who managed to escape from German-occupied Europe before or during the war. Jews had begun emigrating from Germany in 1933 once the Nazis came to power, and from Austria from 1938, after the Anschluss. By the time war began in Europe, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany, and 117,000 had left Austria.[22]
Only 10% of Polish Jews survived the war.[21] The majority of survivors (around 300,000) were those who fled to Soviet-occupied Poland and the interior of the Soviet Union between the start of the war in September 1939 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.[21][20] The Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of them to Soviet Central Asia, Siberia and other remote parts to the country.[20] Some deportees endured forced labor, extreme conditions, hunger and disease. Nonetheless, most managed to survive, despite the harsh circumstances.[6][7]
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, more than a million Soviet Jews fled eastward into the interior. During the war, some European Jews managed to escape to neutral European countries, such as Switzerland, which allowed in nearly 30,000 but turned away some 20,000 others; Spain, which permitted the entry of almost 30,000 Jewish refugees between 1939 and 1941, mostly from France, on their way to Portugal, but under German pressure allowed in fewer than 7,500 between 1942 and 1944; Portugal, which allowed thousands of Jews to enter so that they could continue their journeys from the port of Lisbon to the United States and South America; and Sweden, which allowed in some Norwegian Jews in 1940, and in October 1943, accepted almost the entire Danish Jewish community, rescued by the Danish resistance movement, which organized the escape of 7,000 Danish Jews and 700 of their non-Jewish relatives in small boats from Denmark to Sweden. About 18,000 Jews escaped by means of clandestine immigration to Palestine from central and eastern Europe between 1937 and 1944 on 62 voyages organized by the Mossad l\'Aliyah Bet (Organization for Illegal Immigration), which was established by the Jewish leadership in Palestine in 1938. These voyages were conducted under dangerous conditions during the war, with hundreds of lives lost at sea.[10][20][23]
Immediate aftermathMain article: Aftermath of the HolocaustWhen the Second World War ended, the Jews who had survived the Nazi concentration camps, extermination camps, death marches, as well as the Jews who had survived by hiding in forests or hiding with rescuers, were almost all suffering from starvation, exhaustion and the abuse which they had endured, and tens of thousands of survivors continued to die from weakness, eating more than their emaciated bodies could handle, epidemic diseases, exhaustion and the shock of liberation. Some survivors returned to their countries of origin while others sought to leave Europe by immigrating to Palestine or other countries.[24][25]
Trauma of liberation
U.S. Army surgeon attends to a survivor in a sub-camp of Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after liberation.
A survivor, reduced by starvation to a living skeleton, photographed after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the BritishFor survivors, the end of the war did not bring an end to their suffering. Liberation itself was extremely difficult for many survivors and the transition to freedom from the terror, brutality and starvation they had just endured was frequently traumatic:
As Allied forces fought their way across Europe and captured areas that had been occupied by the Germans, they discovered the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In some places, the Nazis had tried to destroy all evidence of the camps to conceal the crimes that they had perpetrated there. In other places, the Allies found only empty buildings, as the Nazis had already moved the prisoners, often on death marches, to other locations. However, in many camps, the Allied soldiers found hundreds or even thousands of weak and starving survivors. Soviet forces reached Majdanek concentration camp in July 1944 and soon came across many other sites but often did not publicize what they had found; British and American units on the Western Front did not reach the concentration camps in Germany until the spring of 1945.[12][26]
When Allied troops entered the death camps, they discovered thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors suffering from starvation and disease, living in the most terrible conditions, many of them dying, along with piles of corpses, bones, and the human ashes of the victims of the Nazi mass murder. The liberators were unprepared for what they found but did their best to help the survivors. Despite this, thousands died in the first weeks after liberation. Many died from disease. Some died from refeeding syndrome since after prolonged starvation their stomachs and bodies could not take normal food. Survivors also had no possessions. At first, they still had to wear their concentration camp uniforms as they had no other clothes to wear.[12][27]
During the first weeks of liberation, survivors faced the challenges of eating suitable food, in appropriate amounts for their physical conditions; recuperating from illnesses, injuries and extreme fatigue and rebuilding their health; and regaining some sense of mental and social normality. Almost every survivor also had to deal with the loss of many loved ones, many being the only one remaining alive from their entire family, as well as the loss of their homes, former activities or livelihoods, and ways of life.[24][28]
As survivors faced the daunting challenges of rebuilding their broken lives and finding any remaining family members, the vast majority also found that they needed to find new places to live. Returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust proved to be impossible. At first, following liberation, numerous survivors tried to return to their previous homes and communities, but Jewish communities had been ravaged or destroyed and no longer existed in much of Europe, and returning to their homes frequently proved to be dangerous. When people tried to return to their homes from camps or hiding places, they found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others. Most did not find any surviving relatives, encountered indifference from the local population almost everywhere, and, in Eastern Europe in particular, were met with hostility and sometimes violence.[24][29][30]
Refugees and displaced personsFurther information: Sh\'erit ha-Pletah
A group of orphaned survivors of the Holocaust, at the Atlit detainee camp, Palestine in 1944Jewish survivors who could not or did not want to go back to their old homes, particularly those whose entire families had been murdered, whose homes, or neighborhoods or entire communities had been destroyed, or who faced renewed antisemitic violence, became known by the term \"Sh\'erit ha-Pletah\" (Hebrew: the surviving remnant). Most of the survivors comprising the group known as Sh\'erit ha-Pletah originated in central and eastern European countries, while most of those from western European countries returned to them and rehabilitated their lives there.[24]
Most of these refugees gathered in displaced persons camps in the British, French and American occupation zones of Germany, and in Austria and Italy. The conditions in these camps were harsh and primitive at first, but once basic survival needs were being met, the refugees organized representatives on a camp-by-camp basis, and then a coordinating organization for the various camps, to present their needs and requests to the authorities, supervise cultural and educational activities in the camps, and advocate that they be allowed to leave Europe and immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine or other countries.[25]
The first meeting of representatives of survivors in the DP camps took place a few weeks after the end of the war, on 27 May 1945, at the St. Ottilien camp, where they formed and named the organization \"Sh\'erit ha-Pletah\" to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. After most survivors in the DP camps had immigrated to other countries or resettled, the Central Committee of She\'arit Hapleta disbanded in December 1950 and the organization dissolved itself in the British Zone of Germany in August 1951.[25][31]
The term \"Sh\'erit ha-Pletah\" is thus usually used in reference to Jewish refugees and displaced persons in the period after the war from 1945 to about 1950. In historical research, this term is used for Jews in Europe and North Africa in the five years or so after World War II.
Displaced persons campsFurther information: Displaced persons camps in post-World War II EuropeAfter the end of World War II, most non-Jews who had been displaced by the Nazis returned to their homes and communities. For Jews, however, tens of thousands had no homes, families or communities to which they could return. Furthermore, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, many wanted to leave Europe entirely and restore their lives elsewhere where they would encounter less antisemitism. Other Jews who attempted to return to their previous residences were forced to leave again upon finding their homes and property stolen by their former neighbors and, particularly in central and eastern Europe, after being met with hostility and violence.[24][29][30][32][33]
Since they had nowhere else to go, about 50,000 homeless Holocaust survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Emigration to the Mandatory Palestine was still strictly limited by the British government and emigration to other countries such as the United States was also severely restricted. The first groups of survivors in the DP camps were joined by Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe, fleeing to the British and American occupation zones in Germany as post-war conditions worsened in the east. By 1946, an estimated 250,000 displaced Jewish survivors – about 185,000 in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy – were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and DP camps administered by the militaries of the United States, Great Britain and France, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).[27][24][25][32]
Survivors initially endured dreadful conditions in the DP camps. The camp facilities were very poor, and many survivors were suffering from severe physical and psychological problems. Aid from the outside was slow at first to reach the survivors. Furthermore, survivors often found themselves in the same camps as German prisoners and Nazi collaborators, who had been their tormentors until just recently, along with a larger number of freed non-Jewish forced laborers, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the Soviet army, and there were frequent incidents of anti-Jewish violence. Within a few months, following the visit and report of President Roosevelt\'s representative, Earl G. Harrison, the United States authorities recognized the need to set up separate DP camps for Jewish survivors and improve the living conditions in the DP camps. The British military administration, however, was much slower to act, fearing that recognizing the unique situation of the Jewish survivors might somehow be perceived as endorsing their calls to emigrate to Palestine and further antagonizing the Arabs there. Thus, the Jewish refugees tended to gather in the DP camps in the American zone.[12][33][34][35][36]
The DP camps were created as temporary centers for facilitating the resettlement of the homeless Jewish refugees and to take care of immediate humanitarian needs, but they also became temporary communities where survivors began to rebuild their lives. With assistance sent from Jewish relief organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in the United States and the Jewish Relief Unit in Britain, hospitals were opened, along with schools, especially in several of the camps where there were large numbers of children and orphans, and the survivors resumed cultural activities and religious practices. Many of their efforts were in preparations for emigration from Europe to new and productive lives elsewhere. They established committees to represent their issues to the Allied authorities and to a wider audience, under the Hebrew name, Sh\'erit ha-Pletah, an organization which existed until the early 1950s. Political life rejuvenated and a leading role was taken by the Zionist movement, with most of the Jewish DPs declaring their intention of moving to a Jewish state in Palestine.[7][24][32][33][37]
The slow and erratic handling of the issues regarding Jewish DPs and refugees, and the substantial increase of people in the DP camps in 1946 and 1947, gained international attention; public opinion resulted in increased political pressure to lift restriction on immigration to countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as on the British authorities to stop detaining refugees who were attempting to leave Europe for Palestine, and imprisoning them in internment camps on Cyprus or returning them to Europe. Britain\'s treatment of Jewish refugees, such as the handling of the refugee ship Exodus, shocked public opinion around the world and added to international demands to establish an independent state for the Jewish people. This led Britain to refer the matter to the United Nations which voted in 1947 to create a Jewish and an Arab state. Thus, when the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948, the State of Israel was established, and Jewish refugee ships were immediately allowed unrestricted entry. In addition, the United States also changed its immigration policy to allow more Jewish refugees to enter under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act, while other Western countries also eased curbs on emigration.[24][25][30]
The opening of Israel\'s borders after its independence, as well as the adoption of more lenient emigration regulations in Western countries regarding survivors led to the closure of most of the DP camps by 1952. Föhrenwald, the last functioning DP camp, closed in 1957. About 136,000 Displaced Person camp inhabitants, more than half the total, immigrated to Israel; some 80,000 emigrated to the United States, and the remainder emigrated to other countries, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina.[37][38]
Searching for survivorsAs soon as the war ended, survivors began looking for family members, and for most, this was their main goal once their basic needs of finding food, clothing and shelter had been met.[29]
Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. Parents sought the children they had hidden in convents, orphanages or with foster families. Other survivors returned to their original homes to look for relatives or gather news and information about them, hoping for a reunion or at least the certainty of knowing if a loved one had perished. The International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations set up tracing services to support these searches, but inquiries often took a long time because of the difficulties in communications, and the displacement of millions of people by the conflict, the Nazi policies of deportation and destruction, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe.[29][39][38]
Location services were set up by organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. This resulted in the successful reunification of survivors, sometimes decades after their separation during the war. For example, the Location Service of the American Jewish Congress, in cooperation with other organizations, ultimately traced 85,000 survivors successfully and reunited 50,000 widely scattered relatives with their families in all parts of the world.[40] However, the process of searching for and finding lost relatives sometimes took years and, for many survivors, continued until the end of their lives. In many cases, survivors searched all their lives for family members, without learning of their fates.[41][42][43][44]
In Israel, to where many Holocaust survivors immigrated, some relatives reunited after encountering each other by chance. Many survivors also found relatives from whom they had been separated through notices for missing relatives posted in newspapers and a radio program dedicated to reuniting families called Who Recognizes, Who Knows?[45]
Lists of survivorsSee also: List of Holocaust survivorsInitially, survivors simply posted hand-written notes on message boards in the relief centers, Displaced Person\'s camps or Jewish community buildings where they were located, in the hope that family members or friends for whom they were looking would see them, or at the very least, that other survivors would pass on information about the people whom they were seeking. Others published notices in DP camp and survivor organization newsletters, and in newspapers, in the hopes of reconnecting with relatives who had found refuge in other places. Some survivors contacted the Red Cross and other organizations that produced lists of survivors, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which established a Central Tracing Bureau to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps.[29][38]
Various lists were collated into larger booklets and publications, which were more permanent than the original notes or newspaper notices. One such early compilation, \"Sharit Ha-Platah\" (Surviving Remnant), was published in 1946 in several volumes with the names of tens of thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust, collected mainly by Abraham Klausner, a United States Army chaplain who visited many of the Displaced Persons camps in southern Germany and gathered lists of the people there, subsequently adding additional names from other areas.[46][47]
The first \"Register of Jewish Survivors\" (Pinkas HaNitzolim I) was published by the Jewish Agency\'s Search Bureau for Missing Relatives in 1945, containing over 61,000 names compiled from 166 different lists of Jewish survivors in various European countries. A second volume of the \"Register of Jewish Survivors\" (Pinkas HaNitzolim II) was also published in 1945, with the names of some 58,000 Jews in Poland.[48][49]
Newspapers outside of Europe also began to publish lists of survivors and their locations as more specific information about the Holocaust became known towards the end of, and after, the war. Thus, for example, the German-Jewish newspaper \"Aufbau\", published in New York City, printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, from September 1944 until 1946.[50]
Over time, many Holocaust survivor registries were established. Initially, these were paper records, but from the 1990s, an increasing number of records have been digitized and made available online.[51]
Hidden childrenFurther information: Hidden Children and Jewish orphans controversyFollowing the war, Jewish parents often spent months and years searching for the children they had sent into hiding. In fortunate cases, they found their children were still with the original rescuer. Many, however, had to resort to notices in newspapers, tracing services, and survivor registries in the hope of finding their children. These searches frequently ended in heartbreak – parents discovered that their child had been killed or had gone missing and could not be found. For hidden children, thousands who had been concealed with non-Jews were now orphans and no surviving family members remained alive to retrieve them.[39][33]
For children who had been hidden to escape the Nazis, more was often at stake than simply finding or being found by relatives. Those who had been very young when they were placed into hiding did not remember their biological parents or their Jewish origins and the only family that they had known was that of their rescuers. When they were found by relatives or Jewish organizations, they were usually afraid, and resistant to leave the only caregivers they remembered. Many had to struggle to rediscover their real identities.[39][52]
In some instances, rescuers refused to give up hidden children, particularly in cases where they were orphans, did not remember their identities, or had been baptized and sheltered in Christian institutions. Jewish organizations and relatives had to struggle to recover these children, including custody battles in the courts. For example, the Finaly Affair only ended in 1953, when the two young Finaly brothers, orphaned survivors in the custody of the Catholic Church in Grenoble, France, were handed over to the guardianship of their aunt, after intensive efforts to secure their return to their family.[53][54]
In the twenty-first century, the development of DNA testing for genealogical purposes has sometimes provided essential information to people trying to find relatives from whom they were separated during the Holocaust, or to recover their Jewish identity, especially Jewish children who were hidden or adopted by non-Jewish families during the war.[55][56]
Immigration and absorptionSee also: Aliyah Bet
Young Holocaust survivors aboard the refugee ship Mataroa arrive in Haifa port, July 1945After the war, anti-Jewish violence occurred in several central and Eastern European countries, motivated to varying extents by economic antagonism, increased by alarm that returning survivors would try to reclaim their stolen houses and property, as well as age-old antisemitic myths, most notably the blood libel. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom occurred in July 1946 in Kielce, a city in southeastern Poland, when rioters killed 41 people and wounded 50 more. As news of the Kielce pogrom spread, Jews began to flee from Poland, perceiving that there was no viable future for them there, and this pattern of post-war anti-Jewish violence repeated itself in other countries such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. Most survivors sought to leave Europe and build new lives elsewhere.[30][57][58][59]
Thus, about 50,000 survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy and were joined by Jewish refugees fleeing from central and eastern Europe, particularly Poland, as post-war conditions there worsened. By 1946, there were an estimated 250,000 Jewish displaced persons, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and about 20,000 in Italy. As the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948 and the State of Israel was established, nearly two-thirds of the survivors immigrated there. Others went to Western countries as restrictions were eased and opportunities for them to emigrate arose.[24][25]
RehabilitationMedical care[icon] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)Psychological careHolocaust survivors suffered from the war years and afterward in many different ways, physically, mentally and emotionally.[60]
Most survivors were deeply traumatized both physically and mentally and some of the effects lasted throughout their lives. This was expressed, among other ways, in the emotional and mental trauma of feeling that they were on a \"different planet\" that they could not share with others; that they had not or could not process the mourning for their murdered loved ones because at the time they were consumed with the effort required for survival; and many experienced guilt that they had survived when others had not. This dreadful period engulfed some survivors with both physical and mental scars, which were subsequently characterized by researchers as \"concentration camp syndrome\" (also known as survivor syndrome).
Nonetheless, many survivors drew on inner strength and learned to cope, restored their lives, moved to a new place, started a family and developed successful careers.[61]
Social welfare[icon] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)See also: MalbenRestitution and reparationsMain article: Holocaust restitutionSee also: Yossi Katz (geographer) § Holocaust survivor assets[icon] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)Memoirs and testimonies
Holocaust survivors light a memorial candle with a concentration camp liberator at a remembrance ceremony, Washington DC, 2013.
Holocaust survivor David Faber speaks in 2006 about his experiences in nine different concentration camps between 1939 and 1945.After the war, many Holocaust survivors engaged in efforts to record testimonies about their experiences during the war, and to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities. These efforts included both personal accounts and memoirs of events written by individual survivors about the events that they had experienced, as well as the compilation of remembrance books for destroyed communities called Yizkor books, usually printed by societies or groups of survivors from a common locality.[62][63][64]
Survivors and witnesses also participated in providing oral testimonies about their experiences. At first, these were mainly for the purpose of prosecuting war criminals and often only many years later, for the sake of recounting their experiences to help process the traumatic events that they had suffered, or for the historical record and educational purposes.[62][65]
Several programs were undertaken by organizations, such the as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, to collect as many oral history testimonies of survivors as possible.[66] In addition, survivors also began speaking at educational and commemorative events at schools and for other audiences, as well as contributing to and participating in the building of museums and memorials to remember the Holocaust.
MemoirsFurther information: Holocaust survivor memoirsSome survivors began to publish memoirs immediately after the war ended, feeling a need to write about their experiences, and about a dozen or so survivors\' memoirs were published each year during the first two decades after the Holocaust, notwithstanding a general public that was largely indifferent to reading them. However, many survivors felt that they could not describe their experiences to those who had not lived through the Holocaust. Those who were able to record testimony about their experiences or publish their memoirs did so in Yiddish.[1][62]
The number of memoirs that were published increased gradually from the 1970s onwards, indicating both the increasing need and psychological ability of survivors to relate their experiences, as well as a growing public interest in the Holocaust driven by events such as the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the existential threats to Jews presented by the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the broadcasting in many countries of the television documentary series \"Holocaust\" in 1978, and the establishment of new Holocaust memorial centers and memorials, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[62]
The writing and publishing of memoirs, prevalent among Holocaust survivors, has been recognized as related to processing and recovering from memories about the traumatic past.[65] By the end of the twentieth century, Holocaust memoirs had been written by Jews not only in Yiddish, but also other languages including Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian. They were written by concentration/death camp survivors, and also those who had been in hiding, or who had managed to flee from Nazi-held territories before or during the war, and sometimes they also described events after the Holocaust, including the liberation and rebuilding of lives in the aftermath of destruction.[62]
Survivor memoirs, like other personal accounts such as oral testimony and diaries, are a significant source of information for most scholars of the history of the Holocaust, complementing more traditional sources of historical information, and presenting events from the unique points of view of individual experiences within the much greater totality, and these accounts are essential to an understanding of the Holocaust experience.[1][62] While historians and survivors themselves are aware that the retelling of experiences is subjective to the source of information and sharpness of memory, they are recognized as collectively having \"a firm core of shared memory\" and the main substance of the accounts does not negate minor contradictions and inaccuracies in some of the details.[67][68]
Yizkor booksFurther information: Yizkor booksYizkor (Remembrance) books were compiled and published by groups of survivors or landsmanshaft societies of former residents to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities and was one of the earliest ways in which the Holocaust was communally commemorated. The first of these books appeared in the 1940s and almost all were typically published privately rather than by publishing companies. Over 1,000 books of this type are estimated to have been published, albeit in very limited quantities.[63][64][69]
Most of these books are written in Yiddish or Hebrew, while some also include sections in English or other languages, depending on where they were published. The first Yizkor books were published in the United States, mainly in Yiddish, the mother tongue of the landsmanschaften and Holocaust survivors. Beginning in the 1950s, after the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors to the newly independent State of Israel, most of the Yizkor books were published there, primarily between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. From the later 1970s, there was a decline in the number of collective memorial books but an increase in the number of survivors\' personal memoirs. Most of the Yizkor books were devoted to the Eastern European Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Hungary, with fewer dedicated to the communities of south-eastern Europe.[64]
Since the 1990s, many of these books, or sections of them have been translated into English, digitized, and made available online.[70][71]
Testimonies and oral historiesIn the immediate post-war period, officials of the DP camps and organizations providing relief to the survivors conducted interviews with survivors primarily for the purposes of providing physical assistance and assisting with relocation. Interviews were also conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence about war crimes and for the historical record.[72] These were among the first of the recorded testimonies of the survivors Holocaust experiences.
Some of the first projects to collect witness testimonies began in the DP camps, amongst the survivors themselves. Camp papers like Undzer Shtimme (\"Our Voice\"), published in Hohne Camp (Bergen-Belsen), and Undzer Hofenung (\"Our Hope\"), published in Eschwege camp, (Kassel) carried the first eyewitness accounts of Jewish experiences under Nazi rule, and one of the first publications on the Holocaust, Fuhn Letsn Khurbn, (\"About the Recent Destruction\"), was produced by DP camp members, and was eventually distributed around world.[7][33]
In the following decades, a concerted effort was made to record the memories and testimonials of survivors for posterity. French Jews were amongst the first to establish an institute devoted to documentation of the Holocaust at the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.[33] In Israel, the Yad Vashem memorial was officially established in 1953; the organization had already begun projects including acquiring Holocaust documentation and personal testimonies of survivors for its archives and library.[73][74]
The largest collection of testimonials was ultimately gathered at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which was founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 after he made the film Schindler’s List. Originally named the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, it became a part of the University of Southern California in 2006. The foundation’s mission was to videotape the personal accounts of 50,000 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, a goal which it achieved in 1999 and then surpassed.[75]
In 2002, a collection of Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivor testimonies opened at the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg, Germany.[75]
Organizations and conferences
Warsaw Ghetto and Concentration Camps Survivors’ meeting rally in Tel Aviv, 1968A wide range of organizations have been established to address the needs and issues of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Immediately following the war, \"Sh\'erit ha-Pletah\" was established to meet the immediate physical and rehabilitation needs in the Displaced Persons camps and to advocate for rights to immigrate. Once these aims had largely been met by the early 1950s, the organization was disbanded. In the following decades, survivors established both local, national and eventually international organizations to address longer term physical, emotional and social needs, and organizations for specific groups such as child survivors and descendants, especially children, of survivors were also set up. Starting in the late 1970s, conferences and gatherings of survivors, their descendants, as well as rescuers and liberators began to take place and were often the impetus for the establishment and maintenance of permanent organizations.
SurvivorsIn 1981, around 6,000 Holocaust survivors gathered in Jerusalem for the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.[76][77]
In 1988, the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, was established to as an umbrella organization of 28 Holocaust survivor groups in Israel to advocate for survivors\' rights and welfare worldwide and to the Government of Israel, and to commemorate the Holocaust and revival of the Jewish people. In 2010 it was recognized by the government as the representative organization for the entire survivor population in Israel. In 2020, it represented 55 organizations and a survivor population whose average age was 84.[78]
Child survivorsSee also: Children in the Holocaust
A Jewish Brigade soldier and nurses of the Jewish Agency taking care of Jewish refugee children in Florence, Italy, 1944Child survivors of the Holocaust were often the only ones who remained alive from their entire extended families, while even more were orphans. This group of survivors included children who had survived in the concentration/death camps, in hiding with non-Jewish families or in Christian institutions, or had been sent out of harm\'s way by their parents on Kindertransports, or by escaping with their families to remote locations in the Soviet Union, or Shanghai in China. After the war, child survivors were sometimes sent to be cared for by distant relatives in other parts of the world, sometimes accepted unwillingly, and mistreated or even abused. Their experiences, memories and understanding of the terrible events they had suffered as child victims of the Nazis and their accomplices was given little consideration.[79]
In the 1970s and 80s, small groups of these survivors, now adults, began to form in a number of communities worldwide to deal with their painful pasts in safe and understanding environments. The First International Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors took place in 1979 under the auspices of Zachor, the Holocaust Resource Center. The conference and was attended by some 500 survivors, survivors’ children and mental health professionals and established a network for children of survivors of the Holocaust in the United States and Canada.[80]
The International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held its first international conference in New York City in 1984, attended by more than 1,700 children of survivors of the Holocaust with the stated purpose of creating greater understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world and establishing contacts among the children of survivors in the United States and Canada.[81]
The World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants was founded in 1985 to bring child survivors together and coordinate worldwide activities. The organization began holding annual conferences in cities the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. Descendants of survivors were also recognized as having been deeply affected by their families’ histories. In addition to the annual conferences to build community among child survivors and their descendants, members speak about their histories of survival and loss, of resilience, of the heroism of Jewish resistance and self-help for other Jews, and of the Righteous Among the Nations, at schools, public and community events; they participate in Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies and projects; and campaign against antisemitism and bigotry.[79]
Second generation of survivorsSee also: Children of Holocaust survivorsThe \"second generation of Holocaust survivors\" is the name given to children born after World War II to a parent or parents who survived the Holocaust. Although the second generation did not directly experience the horrors of the Holocaust, the impact of their parents\' trauma is often evident in their upbringing and outlooks, and from the 1960s, children of survivors began exploring and expressing in various ways what the implications of being children of Holocaust survivors meant to them.[1] This conversation broadened public discussion of the events and impacts of the Holocaust.[82]
The second generation of the Holocaust has raised several research questions in psychology, and psychological studies have been conducted to determine how their parents\' horrendous experiences affected their lives, among them, whether psychological trauma experienced by a parent can be passed on to their children even when they were not present during the ordeal, as well as the psychological manifestations of this transference of trauma to the second generation.[83]
Soon after descriptions of concentration camp syndrome (also known as survivor syndrome) appeared, clinicians observed in 1966 that large numbers of children of Holocaust survivors were seeking treatment in clinics in Canada. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were also over-represented by 300% among the referrals to a child psychiatry clinic in comparison with their representation in the general population.[84]
A communication pattern that psychologists have identified as a communication feature between parents who experienced trauma and their children has been referred to as the \"connection of silence\". This silent connection is the tacit assent, in the families of Holocaust survivors, not to discuss the trauma of the parent and to disconnect it from the daily life of the family. The parent\'s need for this is not only due to their need to forget and adapt to their lives after the trauma, but also to protect their children\'s psyches from being harmed by their depictions of the atrocities that they experienced during the Holocaust.
Awareness groups have thus developed, in which children of survivors explore their feelings in a group that shares and can better understand their experiences as children of Holocaust survivors. Some second-generation survivors have also organized local and even national groups for mutual support and to pursue additional goals and aims regarding Holocaust issues. For example, in November 1979, the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors was held, and resulted in the establishment of support groups all over the United States.[1]
Many members of the \"second generation\" have sought ways to get past their suffering as children of Holocaust survivors and to integrate their experiences and those of their parents into their lives. For example, some have become involved in activities to commemorate the lives of people and ways of life of communities that were wiped out during the Holocaust. They research the history of Jewish life in Europe before the war and the Holocaust itself; participate in the renewal of Yiddish culture; engage in educating others about the Holocaust; fight against Holocaust denial, antisemitism and racism; become politically active, such as with regard to finding and prosecuting Nazis, or by taking up Jewish or humanitarian causes; and through creative means such as theater, art and literature, examine the Holocaust and its consequences on themselves and their families.[1]
In April 1983, Holocaust survivors in North America established the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants; the first event was attended by President Ronald Reagan and 20,000 survivors and their families.[85][86][87]
Amcha, the Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation was established in Jerusalem in 1987 to serve survivors and their families.[88]
Survivor registries and databases
The Arolsen Archives-International Center on Nazi Persecution in Bad Arolsen, Germany, a repository of information on victims of Nazi persecution, including survivorsOne of the most well-known and comprehensive archives of Holocaust-era records, including lists of survivors, is the Arolsen Archives-International Center on Nazi Persecution founded by the Allies in 1948 as the International Tracing Service (ITS). For decades after the war, in response to inquiries, the main tasks of ITS were determining the fates of victims of Nazi persecution and searching for missing people.[51][89]
The Holocaust Global Registry is an online collection of databases maintained by the Jewish genealogical website JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust; it contains thousands of names of both survivors trying to find family and family searching for survivors.[51]
The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, maintained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, contains millions of names of people persecuted under the Nazi regime, including concentration camp or displaced persons camp lists that can be searched by place name or keywords.[51]
The Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, created in 1981 by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to document the experiences of survivors and assist survivors and their families trying to trace missing relatives and friends, includes over 200,000 records related to survivors and their families from around the world.[90][91]
In partnership with the Arolsen Archives, the family history website Ancestry began digitizing millions of Holocaust and Nazi-persecution records and making them searchable online in 2019. Two distinct databases included in the records are the \"Africa, Asia and European passenger lists of displaced persons (1946 to 1971)\" and \"Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Individuals Persecuted (1939–1947)\".[92]
The Holocaust Survivor Children: Missing Identity website addresses the issue of child survivors still hoping to find relatives or people who can tell them about their parents and family, and others who hope to find out basic information about themselves such as their original names, dates and place of birth, and parents’ names, based on a photograph of themselves as a child.[51][52]
See alsoAftermath of the HolocaustArmenian genocide survivors
Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. A \"displaced persons camp\" is a temporary facility for displaced persons, whether refugees or internally displaced persons. Two years after the end of World War II in Europe, some 850,000 people lived in displaced persons camps across Europe, among them Armenians, Czechoslovaks, Estonians, Greeks, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Yugoslavs, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and Belarusians.[1][2]
At the end of the Second World War, at least 40 million people had been displaced from their home countries, with about eleven million in Allied-occupied Germany.[3][4][5][6] Among those, there were around 1.5 million people who refused to return to their countries of origin.[7] These included former prisoners of war, released slave laborers, and both non-Jewish and Jewish concentration-camp survivors. The Allies categorized the refugees as “displaced persons” (DPs) and assigned the responsibility for their care to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).
Background
Class portrait of school children at Schauenstein DP camp, about 1946Combat operations, ethnic cleansing, and the fear of genocide uprooted millions of people from their homes over the course of World War II. Between 40 million and 60 million people were displaced.[3][4][8][9][6][10] A large number were inmates of Nazi concentration camps, labor camps and prisoner-of-war camps that were freed by the Allied armies.[11] In portions of Eastern Europe, both civilians and military personnel fled their home countries in fear of advancing Soviet armies, who were preceded by widespread reports of mass rape, pillaging, looting, and murder.[12]
As the war ended, these people found themselves facing an uncertain future. Allied military and civilian authorities faced considerable challenges resettling them. Since the reasons for displacement varied considerably, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force classified individuals into a number of categories: evacuees, war or political refugees, political prisoners, forced or voluntary workers, Organisation Todt workers, former forces under German command, deportees, intruded persons, extruded persons, civilian internees, ex-prisoners of war, and stateless persons.
In addition, displaced persons came from every country that had been invaded and/or occupied by German forces. Although the situation of many of the DPs could be resolved by simply moving them to their original homes, this could not be done, for example, where borders changed to place the location in a new country. Additionally, many could not return home for fear of political persecution or retribution for perceived (or actual) collaboration with Axis powers.
Establishing a system for resolving displacement
A DP Camp football team; Hirsch Schwartzberg, Berlin DP Camps Central Committee president, is second from rightThe original plan for those displaced as a result of World War II was to repatriate them to their countries of origin as quickly as possible. Throughout Austria and Germany, American, French, British, or Soviet forces tended to the immediate needs of the refugees located within their particular Allied Occupation Zone and set in motion repatriation plans.
Nearly all of the displaced persons were malnourished, a great number were ill, and some were dying. Shelter was often improvised, and there were many instances of military personnel sharing from their own supplies of food, medicine, clothing, etc. to help the refugees.
Initially, military missions of the various Allied nations attached to the British, French and U.S. army commands assisted in the sorting and classifying the DPs of their own nationality. For example, during 1945 and 1946 there were several dozen Polish liaison officers attached to individual occupation army units.[13] On October 1, 1945, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which had already been running many of the camps, took responsibility for the administration of displaced persons in Europe,[14] though military authorities continued to play a role for several years to come, in providing transportation, supplies and security.
Those who were easily classified and were willing to be repatriated were rapidly sent back to their country of origin. By the end of 1945, over six million refugees had been repatriated by the military forces and UNRRA. (The term displaced persons does not typically refer to the several million ethnic Germans in Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands etc.) who were expelled and repatriated in Germany.) British authorities made June 30, 1946 the cutoff for accepting further displaced persons in their sector of occupation, and the American sector set it at August 1, with the exception of those persecuted for race or religion, or who entered the zone in \"an organized manner.\" The American sector ceased receiving new arrivals on April 21, 1947. An unknown number of displaced persons rejected by authorities were left to find their own means of survival.
CampsDisplaced persons began to appear in substantial numbers in the spring of 1945. Allied forces took them into their care by improvising shelter wherever it could be found. Accommodation primarily included former military barracks, but also included summer camps for children, airports, hotels, castles, hospitals, private homes, and even partly destroyed structures. Although there were continuous efforts to sort and consolidate populations, there were hundreds of DP facilities in Germany, Austria, Italy, and other European countries by the end of 1945. One camp was even set up in Guanajuato in Mexico. Many American-run DP camps kept Holocaust survivors in horrific conditions, with insufficient food and inmates living under armed guard, as revealed in the Harrison Report.[15][16][17]
The UNRRA moved quickly to field teams to take over administration of the camps from the military forces.
A number of DP camps became more or less permanent homes for these individuals. Conditions were varied and sometimes harsh. Rations were restricted, and curfews were frequently imposed. Camps were shut down as refugees found new homes and there was continuous consolidation of remaining refugees into fewer camps.
By 1952, all but two DP camps were closed. The last two DP camps, Föhrenwald closed in 1957 and Wels in 1959.
The needs of displaced persons
Jewish DPs at a camp in Linz after 1946All displaced persons had experienced trauma, and many had serious health conditions as a result of what they had endured.
The immediate concern was to provide shelter, nutrition and basic health care. Most DPs had subsisted on diets of far less than 1,500 calories a day. Sanitary conditions had been improvised at best, and there had been minimal medical care. As a result, they suffered from malnutrition, a variety of diseases, and were often unclean, lice-ridden, and prone to illness.
In addition, most of the refugees suffered from psychological difficulties. They were often distrustful and apprehensive around authorities, and many were depressed and traumatized.
Displaced persons were anxious to be reunited with families they had been separated from in the course of the war. Improvised efforts to identify survivors became formalized through the UNRRA\'s Central Tracking Bureau and facilities of the International Red Cross. The organization collected over one million names in the course of the DP era and eventually became the International Tracing Service.
Displaced persons often moved from camp to camp, looking for family, countrymen, or better food and accommodation. Over time, ethnic and religious groups concentrated in certain camps.
Camp residents quickly set up churches, synagogues, newspapers, sports events, schools, and even universities. Among these were the Technical University in Esslingen set up by the Polish Mission, the Free Ukrainian University, the Ukrainian Technical-Agricultural Institute of Prodebrady, the Baltic University and the short-lived UNRRA University. German universities were required to accept a quota of DP students.
The Allies were faced with the repatriation of displaced persons. The initial expectation of the Allies was that the prisoners of concentration camps would simply be sent back to their countries of origin, but in the aftermath of the war, this soon became impossible (Berger, 2008). In February 1945, near the end of the war, the heads of the Allied powers, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin convened to decide matters relating to rebuilding Europe after the war, a meeting now referred to as the Yalta Conference (Office of the Historian, 2000). This meeting resulted in a series of decisions, but a specifically important decision made resulted in forced repatriation, where displaced persons were forced back to their countries of origin, and this use of force resulted in acts of antisemitic violence against the survivors of the war. Studies conducted years after the closure of these camps found that forced displacement has a direct link to “elevated risk for PTSD and somatoform symptoms and lowered health related quality of life” (Freitag et al., 2012). To overcome the disastrous nature of the Yalta Conference, Displaced Persons Camps were established, and quickly it was understood that the conditions in these camps were a result of the improvised manner of their establishment. Commissioned by the US government, Earl G. Harrison documented the conditions of these camps. The Harrison Report documents crowded living spaces, a lack of necessary medical supplies, “pathetic malnutrition” of concentration camp prisoners, and a general lack of proper care for displaced persons (Berger, 2008). Another revelation to come from this report was that Jewish refugees were forced to intermingle with others who had collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews (Yad Vashem, 2020). The information detailed in this report resulted in President Truman appointing military advisors to oversee the camps and restore humanity and sanitation to them as well. Food rations were increased, and conditions soon improved.
A number of charitable organizations provided significant humanitarian relief and services among displaced persons - these include the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Friends Relief Service, the Lutheran World Federation, Catholic Charities, several national Red Cross organizations, Polish American Congress and Ukrainian American Relief Committee.
The difficulties of repatriationOver one million refugees could not be repatriated to their original countries and were left homeless as a result of fear of persecution. These included:
Ethnic or religious groups that were likely to be persecuted in their countries of origin. These included many Jews (see Sh\'erit ha-Pletah), and others.Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and some Czechs - who feared persecution by the communist regimes installed in their home countries by the Soviet Army, in particular those from provinces (Galicia, West Belarus etc.) that had been recently incorporated into the Soviet Union.Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians whose homelands had been invaded by the Soviet Union (1940) and remained occupied after the war.Croats, Serbs and Slovenes who feared persecution by the communist government set up by Josip Broz Tito.Citizens of Free City of Danzig, annexed by Poland (1945).In a portent of the Cold War, individuals who simply wanted to avoid living under a communist regime.The agreement reached at the Yalta Conference required in principle that all citizens of the allied powers be repatriated to their home country. The Soviet Union insisted that refugees in the American, British, and French sectors who were or at some point had been Soviet citizens be sent back to the Soviet Union. Many refugees resisted this, fearing that their fleeing Soviet rule had condemned them as traitors.
American, British, and French military officials, as well as UNRRA officials, reluctantly complied with this directive, and a number of Soviet citizens were repatriated. Many of these met with the hardship they feared, including death and confinement in the Gulags. There were also cases of kidnapping and coercion to return these refugees. Many avoided such repatriation by misrepresenting their origins, fleeing, or simply resisting. Rejecting claimed Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states, allied officials also refused to repatriate Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian refugees against their will.
Similarly, many refugees who were repatriated to Yugoslavia were subjected to summary executions and torture.
Many Poles, who later agreed to be repatriated, did in fact suffer arrest and some were executed, particularly those that had served in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, or in the Polish Resistance against the Nazis.
Jewish survivors of the death camps and various work camps refused to return to their countries of origin, starting instead an extensive underground movement to migrate to the British Mandate of Palestine. Jewish Holocaust survivors typically could not return to their former homes because these no longer existed or had been expropriated by former neighbors; the few Eastern European Jews who returned often experienced renewed antisemitism. In 1945, most Jewish Holocaust survivors had little choice but to stay in the DP camps; most Jews who wanted to could not leave Europe because Britain had severely limited legal Jewish immigration to Palestine and illegal immigration was strongly curtailed. Jewish refugees hoping to reach other countries, including the United States, were also met with restrictions and quotas.[18]
Many Hungarians in Austria, fearing communist repression or war crimes charges, were reluctant to be repatriated. Relief workers were resistant to pressuring the Hungarians, and invoked recent UN and government statements against forced repatriation.[19]
Resettlement of DPsOnce it became obvious that repatriation plans left many DPs who needed new homes, it took time for countries to commit to accepting refugees. Existing refugee quotas were completely inadequate, and by the fall of 1946, it was not clear whether the remaining DPs would ever find a home.
Between 1947 and 1953, the vast majority of the \"non-repatriables\" would find new homes around the world, particularly among these countries:[20]
Belgium was the first country to adopt a large-scale immigration program when it called for 20,000 coal mine workers from the DP ranks, bringing in a total of 22,000 DPs near the end of 1947. The program met with some controversy, as critics viewed it as a cynical ploy to get cheap labor.[citation needed]The United Kingdom accepted 86,000 DPs as European Voluntary Workers as part of various labor import programs, the largest being \"Operation Westward Ho\". These came in addition to 115,000 Polish army veterans who had joined the Polish Resettlement Corps and 12,000 former members of the Waffen SS Ukrainian Halychyna Division.Canada first accepted a number of refugees through Orders in Council and then implemented a bulk-labor program to accept qualified labor and a close-relatives plan, that ultimately took the form of a sponsorship plan. By the end of 1951, Canada had accepted 157,687 refugees.Australia had initially launched an immigration program targeting refugees of British stock, but expanded this in late 1947 to include other refugees. Australia accepted a total of 182,159 refugees, principally of Polish and Baltic origins.[21]By the time Israel was established in 1948, as many as 50,000 refugees had entered the country legally or illegally. Completely opening its doors to all Jewish refugees regardless of age, work ability, health, etc., Israel accepted more than 652,000 refugees by 1950.France accepted 38,157 displaced persons.In Latin America, Venezuela accepted 17,000 DPs; Brazil 29,000; and Argentina 33,000.French Morocco accepted 1,500 immigrants; Iraq extended an invitation to ten unmarried medical doctors.Norway accepted about 492 Jewish refugees, largely based on their ability to perform manual labor. These were scattered throughout the country, and most left as soon as they could, primarily to Israel.The United States was late to accept displaced persons, which led to considerable activism for a change in policy. Earl G. Harrison, who had previously reported on conditions in the camps to President Harry S. Truman led the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons that attracted dignitaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt, David Dubinsky, Marshall Field, A. Philip Randolph, and others. Meeting considerable opposition in the United States Congress with a bias against Central and Eastern European intellectuals and Jews, The American program was the most idealistic and expansive of the Allied programs but also the most notoriously bureaucratic.After World War II ended in 1945, there were 7 to 11 million displaced people, or refugees, still living in Germany, Austria and Italy. To have some of these refugees come to the United States, Truman asked Congress to enact legislation. Truman’s administration, along with a lobbying group for refugees, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, favored allowing European refugees from World War II to enter the United States. Truman signed the first Displaced Persons Act on June 25, 1948. It allowed 200,000 displaced persons to enter the country within the next two years. However, they exceeded the quota by extending the act for another two years, which doubled the admission of refugees into the United States to 415,000. From 1949 to 1952, about half the 900,000 immigrants that entered the United States were displaced persons.[22] In order to qualify for American visas, only those that were in internment camps by the end of 1945 were eligible. The displaced persons that were trying to come to America had to have a sponsor and a place to live before their arrival, a guarantee that they would not displace American workers and, even more preferable, was that they had a relative that is an American citizen. Voluntary social service agencies, created by religious and ethnic groups, helped the refugees settle into American life.[23] Of the DPs the US admitted from eastern Europe between 1941 and 1957, 137,450 were European Jews.[24]
By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled. Some European countries accepted these refugees on a humanitarian basis. Norway accepted 200 refugees who were blind or had tuberculosis, and Sweden also accepted a limited number. In the end most of them were accepted by Germany and Austria for their care and ultimately full resettlement as citizens.
Reappraisal of DP historyThe building of the former mikvah in camp Föhrenwald now houses the museum Erinnerungsort Badehaus. It provides detailed information about the history of the camp, including interviews with contemporary witnesses.[25] The association that runs the museum offers guided tours of the museum and the former camp in English.
See alsoRefugee campScouting in displaced persons campsInternally displaced personTent cityThe Truce, an autobiographical story by Primo Levi, depicts the life of displaced persons in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II.Hirsch SchwartzbergErinnerungsort BadehausInternment of refugees in the Soviet Union during World War II
Mandatory Palestine[a][4] was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
After an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire arose during the First World War in 1916, British forces drove Ottoman forces out of the Levant.[5] The United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Jewish \"national home\" in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was then established in 1920, and the British obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922.[6]
During the Mandate, the area saw successive waves of Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both the Jewish and Arab communities. Competing interests of the two populations led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine to divide the territory into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, was passed in November 1947. The 1948 Palestine war ended with the territory of Mandatory Palestine divided among the State of Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which annexed territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Kingdom of Egypt, which established the \"All-Palestine Protectorate\" in the Gaza Strip.
Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate, based on its social, political, and economic development. This classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest capacity for self-governance.[7] All Class A mandates other than mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946.[8]
EtymologySee also: Timeline of the name \"Palestine\"The name given to the Mandate\'s territory was \"Palestine\", in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage[9][10][11][12] and with European tradition.[b] The Mandate charter stipulated that Mandatory Palestine would have three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.
In 1926, the British authorities formally decided to use the traditional Arabic and Hebrew equivalents to the English name, i.e. filasţīn (فلسطين) and pālēśtīnā (פּלשׂתינה) respectively. The Jewish leadership proposed that the proper Hebrew name should be ʾĒrēts Yiśrāʾel (ארץ ישׂראל, Land of Israel). The final compromise was to add the initials of the Hebrew proposed name, Alef-Yod, within parenthesis (א״י), whenever the Mandate\'s name was mentioned in Hebrew in official documents. [14] The Arab leadership saw this compromise as a violation of the mandate terms. Some Arab politicians suggested \"Southern Syria\" (سوريا الجنوبية) as the Arabic name instead. The British authorities rejected this proposal; according to the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations\' Permanent Mandates Commission:
Colonel Symes explained that the country was described as \"Palestine\" by Europeans and as \"Falestin\" by the Arabs. The Hebrew name for the country was the designation \"Land of Israel\", and the Government, to meet Jewish wishes, had agreed that the word \"Palestine\" in Hebrew characters should be followed in all official documents by the initials which stood for that designation. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called \"Southern Syria\" in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State.[15]
The adjective \"mandatory\" indicates that the entity\'s legal status derived from a League of Nations mandate; it is not related to the word\'s more commonplace usage as a synonym for \"compulsory\" or \"necessary\".[16]
HistoryFor the background to the creation of the mandate, see Mandate for Palestine.For the period of Palestine\'s history between the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917–18 and the beginning of British civil administration in July 1920, see Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.1920s
Palestinians in Jaffa in the 1920sFollowing the arrival of the British, Arab inhabitants established Muslim-Christian Associations in all of the major towns.[17] In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem.[18] It was aimed primarily at representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration.[19] Concurrently, the Zionist Commission formed in March 1918 and actively promoted Zionist objectives in Palestine. On 19 April 1920, elections took place for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community.[20]
In March 1920, there was an attack by Arabs on the Jewish village of Tel Hai. In April, there was another attack on Jews, this time in Jerusalem.
In July 1920, a British civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner replaced the military administration.[21] The first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July. Samuel established his headquarters and official residence in part of the Augusta Victoria Hospital complex on Mount Scopus on what was then the northeastern edge of Jerusalem, a building that had been constructed for the Germans circa 1910.[22] Damaged by an earthquake in 1927, this building served as the headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners until 1933.[22] In that year, a new, purpose-built headquarters and official residence for the High Commissioner was completed on what was then the southeastern edge of Jerusalem.[22] Referred to as Armon HaNetziv by the Jewish population, this building, located on the \'Hill of Evil Counsel\' on the ridge of Jabel Mukaber, remained in use as the headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners until the end of British rule in 1948.[22]The formal transfer of Jerusalem to British rule, with a \"native priest\" reading the proclamation from the steps of the Tower of David
The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel. From left to right: T. E. Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond, Sir Wyndham Deedes and others
An Arab \"protest gathering\" in session, in the Rawdat el Maaref hall, 1929. From left to right : unknown – Amin al-Husayni – Musa al-Husayni – Raghib al-Nashashibi – unknownOne of the first actions of the newly installed civil administration was to begin granting concessions from the Mandatory government over key economic assets. In 1921 the government granted Pinhas Rutenberg – a Jewish entrepreneur – concessions for the production and distribution of electrical power. Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organisations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favour Zionism. The British administration claimed that electrification would enhance the economic development of the country as a whole, while at the same time securing their commitment to facilitate a Jewish National Home through economic – rather than political – means.[23]
In May 1921, following a disturbance between rival Jewish left-wing protestors and then attacks by Arabs on Jews, almost 100 died in rioting in Jaffa.
High Commissioner Samuel tried to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included Jewish participation.[24] When Kamil al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and Muslim leader. As Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role in violent opposition to Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been established by Samuel in December 1921.[25][26] The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds,[27] and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency\'s annual budget.[28] In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint teachers and preachers.
The 1922 Palestine Order in Council[29] established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner.[30] Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, and two Jews.[31] Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was unfair.[31] Elections took place in February and March 1923, but due to an Arab boycott, the results were annulled and a 12-member Advisory Council was established.[30]
At the First World Congress of Jewish Women which was held in Vienna, Austria, 1923, it was decided that: \"It appears, therefore, to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country.\"[32]
In October 1923, Britain provided the League of Nations with a report on the administration of Palestine for the period 1920–1922, which covered the period before the mandate.[33]
In August 1929, there were riots in which 250 people died.
1930s: Arab armed insurgencyIn 1930, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived in Palestine from Syria, then part of the French-ruled Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, and organised and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organisation. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. They used bombs and firearms against Zionist settlers and vandalised settlers\' orchards and British-built railway lines.[34] In November 1935, two of his men engaged in a firefight with a Palestine Police patrol hunting fruit thieves and a policeman was killed. Following the incident, British colonial police launched a search and surrounded al-Qassam in a cave near Ya\'bad. In the ensuing battle, al-Qassam was killed.[34]
The Arab revolt
Arab revolt against the BritishMain article: 1936–1939 Arab revolt in PalestineThe death of al-Qassam on 20 November 1935 generated widespread outrage in the Arab community. Huge crowds accompanied Qassam\'s body to his grave in Haifa. A few months later, in April 1936, the Arab national general strike broke out. The strike lasted until October 1936, instigated by the Arab Higher Committee, headed by Amin al-Husseini. During the summer of that year, thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed. Jewish civilians were attacked and killed, and some Jewish communities, such as those in Beisan (Beit She\'an) and Acre, fled to safer areas.[35] The violence abated for about a year while the British sent the Peel Commission to investigate.[36]
During the first stages of the Arab Revolt, due to rivalry between the clans of al-Husseini and Nashashibi among the Palestinian Arabs, Raghib Nashashibi was forced to flee to Egypt after several assassination attempts ordered by Amin al-Husseini.[37]
After the Arab rejection of the Peel Commission recommendation, the revolt resumed in autumn 1937. Over the next 18 months, the British lost Nablus and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police,[38] suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. The British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons[39]) organised Special Night Squads of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as Yigal Alon; these \"scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley\"[40] by conducting raids on Arab villages.[41] Irgun, a Jewish militia group, used violence also against Arab civilians as \"retaliatory acts\",[42] attacking marketplaces and buses.
By the time the revolt concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded.[43] In total, 10% of the adult Arab male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled.[44] From 1936 to 1945, while establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated 13,200 firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.[45]
The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting effects: firstly, they led to the formation and development of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah, which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of the Second World War, even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper policy itself radicalised segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer cooperate with the British.
The revolt had also a negative effect on Palestinian Arab leadership, social cohesion, and military capabilities, and it contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because \"when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all.\"[46]
Partition proposals
Jewish demonstration against White Paper in Jerusalem in 1939In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed a partition between a small Jewish state, whose Arab population would have to be transferred, and an Arab state to be attached to the Emirate of Transjordan, this emirate also being part of the wider Mandate for Palestine. The proposal was rejected outright by the Arabs. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to equivocally approve the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[47][48][49][50][51] In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to \"possession of the land as a whole\".[52][53][54] The same sentiment was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938,[55] as well as by Chaim Weizmann.[54][56]
Following the London Conference in February and March 1939, the British Government published a White Paper which proposed a limit to Jewish immigration from Europe, restrictions on Jewish land purchases, and a programme for creating an independent state to replace the Mandate within ten years. This was seen by the Yishuv as betrayal of the mandatory terms, especially in light of the increasing persecution of Jews in Europe. In response, Zionists organised Aliyah Bet, a programme of illegal immigration into Palestine. Lehi, a small group of extremist Zionists, staged armed attacks on British authorities in Palestine. However, the Jewish Agency, which represented the mainstream Zionist leadership and most of the Jewish population, still hoped to persuade Britain to allow resumed Jewish immigration and cooperated with Britain during the Second World War.
Second World WarAllied and Axis activity
Australian soldiers in Tel Aviv in 1942On 10 June 1940, during the Second World War, the Kingdom of Italy declared war on the British Empire and sided with Nazi Germany. Within a month, the Italians attacked Palestine from the air, bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa,[57] inflicting multiple casualties.
In 1942, there was a period of great concern for the Yishuv, when the German forces of General Erwin Rommel advanced east across North Africa towards the Suez Canal, raising a fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the \"200 days of dread\". This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach[58] – a highly trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (a paramilitary group composed mostly of reserves).
As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents in the Second World War. A number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Even though Arabs were not highly regarded by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support as a counter to British hegemony.[59] On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1943, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent telegrams of support for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to read out for a radio broadcast to a rally of supporters in Berlin.[c][60][61] On the other hand, as many as 12,000 Palestinian Arabs, with the endorsement of many prominent figures such as the mayors of Nablus and Gaza and media such as \"Radio Palestine\"[d] and the prominent Jaffa-based Falastin newspaper[e], volunteered to join and fight for the British, with many serving in units that also included Jews from Palestine. 120 Palestinian women also served as part of the \"Auxiliary Territorial Service\". However, this history has been less studied, as Israeli sources put more focus in studying the role played by Jewish soldiers, and Palestinian sources \"were not eager to glorify the names of those who cooperated with Britain not so many years after the British put down the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, and thereby indirectly helped the Jews establish a state.\"[62]
Mobilisation
Jewish Brigade headquarters under the Union Flag and Jewish flagOn 3 July 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade within the British Army, with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official communiqué by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Jewish Brigade then was stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Austria, where it played a key role in the Berihah\'s efforts to help Jews escape Europe for Palestine, a role many of its members would continue after the brigade was disbanded. Among its projects was the education and care of the Selvino children. Later, veterans of the Jewish Brigade were to play a major role in the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
From the Palestine Regiment, two platoons, one Jewish, under the command of Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, and another Arab, were sent to join Allied forces on the Italian Front, having taken part in the final offensive there.
Besides Jews and Arabs from Palestine, in total by mid-1944 the British had assembled a multiethnic force consisting of volunteer European Jewish refugees (from German-occupied countries), Yemenite Jews and Abyssinian Jews.[63]
The Holocaust and immigration quotas
Jewish State ship, one of several Haganah ships that carried Jewish immigrants from Europe, mostly illegal, at the Haifa Port, Mandatory Palestine, 1947[64]In 1939, as a consequence of the White Paper of 1939, the British reduced the number of immigrants allowed into Palestine. The Second World War and the Holocaust started shortly thereafter and once the 15,000 annual quota was exceeded, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were interned in detention camps or deported to places such as Mauritius.[65]
Starting in 1939, a clandestine immigration effort called Aliya Bet was spearheaded by an organisation called Mossad LeAliyah Bet. Tens of thousands of European Jews escaped the Nazis in boats and small ships headed for Palestine. The British Royal Navy intercepted many of the vessels; others were unseaworthy and were wrecked; a Haganah bomb sunk the SS Patria, killing 267 people; two other ships were sunk by Soviet submarines: the motor schooner Struma was torpedoed and sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 with the loss of nearly 800 lives.[66] The last refugee boats to try to reach Palestine during the war were the Bulbul, Mefküre and Morina in August 1944. A Soviet submarine sank the motor schooner Mefküre by torpedo and shellfire and machine-gunned survivors in the water,[67] killing between 300 and 400 refugees.[68] Illegal immigration resumed after the end of the Second World War, especially by the Haganah, who carried mostly illegal Jewish immigrants in the period 1945-47.[64]
After the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of the U.S. President, Harry S. Truman, and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately granted entry to Palestine, the British maintained the ban on immigration.
Beginning of Zionist insurgency
Jerusalem on VE Day, 8 May 1945The Jewish Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and Irgun (National Military Organisation) movements initiated violent uprisings against the British Mandate in the 1940s. On 6 November 1944, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri (members of Lehi) assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East and the assassination is said by some to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. After the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun (\"The Hunting Season\"), and the Jewish Agency Executive decided on a series of measures against \"terrorist organisations\" in Palestine.[69] Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a civil war.
After the Second World War: Insurgency and the Partition PlanMain articles: 1947 UN Partition Plan and 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory PalestineThe three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the Jewish Resistance Movement and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the southern wing of which was the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Following the bombing, the British Government began interning illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. In 1948, the Lehi assassinated Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator, in Jerusalem. Yitzak Shamir, a future Prime Minister of Israel, was one of the conspirators.The UN Partition PlanThe negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain itself and caused the United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. The British Labour Party had promised before its election in 1945 to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British Jewish militancy increased, and the situation required the presence of over 100,000 British troops in the country. Following the Acre Prison Break and the retaliatory hanging of British sergeants by the Irgun, the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and to withdraw by no later than the beginning of August 1948.[21]
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 was a joint attempt by Britain and the United States to agree on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision. The Committee approved the American recommendation of the immediate acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It also recommended that there be no Arab, and no Jewish, State. The Committee stated that \"in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine\". U.S. President Harry S. Truman angered the British Government by issuing a statement supporting the 100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committee\'s findings. Britain had asked for U.S assistance in implementing the recommendations. The US War Department had said earlier that to assist Britain in maintaining order against an Arab revolt, an open-ended US commitment of 300,000 troops would be necessary. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants would almost certainly have provoked an Arab uprising.[70]
These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The UN created UNSCOP (the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a general survey of the situation in Palestine and issued its report on 31 August. Seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. Three members (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.[71]
Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History[72]
On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly, voting 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union as Resolution 181 (II),[73][74] while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant full civil rights to all people within their borders, regardless of race, religion or gender. The UN General Assembly is only granted the power to make recommendations; therefore, UNGAR 181 was not legally binding.[75] Both the US and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines changed their votes at the last moment after concerted pressure from the US and from Zionist organisations.[76][77][78] The five members of the Arab League, who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan.
The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news.
The partition plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population.[f][g] Meeting in Cairo on November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict.
Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan, but refused to enforce it, arguing it was not accepted by the Arabs. Britain also refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN Palestine Commission during the transitional period. In September 1947, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would end at midnight on 14 May 1948.[81][82][83]
Some Jewish organisations also opposed the proposal. Irgun leader Menachem Begin announced, \"The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.\"[84]
Termination of the mandateSee also: End of the British Mandate for Palestine
British troops leaving Haifa in 1948When the United Kingdom announced the independence of the Emirate of Transjordan as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946, the final Assembly of the League of Nations and the General Assembly both adopted resolutions welcoming the news.[85] The Jewish Agency objected, claiming that Transjordan was an integral part of Palestine, and that according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, the Jewish people had a secured interest in its territory.[86]
During the General Assembly deliberations on Palestine, there were suggestions that it would be desirable to incorporate part of Transjordan\'s territory into the proposed Jewish state. A few days before the adoption of Resolution 181 (II) on 29 November 1947, US Secretary of State Marshall noted frequent references had been made by the Ad Hoc Committee regarding the desirability of the Jewish State having both the Negev and an \"outlet to the Red Sea and the Port of Aqaba\".[87] According to John Snetsinger, Chaim Weizmann visited President Truman on 19 November 1947 and said it was imperative that the Negev and Port of Aqaba be within the Jewish state.[88] Truman telephoned the US delegation to the UN and told them he supported Weizmann\'s position.[89] However, the Trans-Jordan memorandum excluded territories of the Emirate of Transjordan from any Jewish settlement.[90]
Immediately after the UN resolution, civil war broke out between the Arab and Jewish communities, and British authority began to break down. On 16 December 1947, the Palestine Police Force withdrew from the Tel Aviv area, home to more than half the Jewish population, and turned over responsibility for the maintenance of law and order to Jewish police.[91] As the civil war raged on, British military forces gradually withdrew from Palestine, although they occasionally intervened in favour of either side. Many of these areas became war zones. The British maintained strong presences in Jerusalem and Haifa, even as Jerusalem came under siege by Arab forces and became the scene of fierce fighting, though the British occasionally intervened in the fighting, largely to secure their evacuation routes, including by proclaiming martial law and enforcing truces. The Palestine Police Force was largely inoperative, and government services such as social welfare, water supplies, and postal services were withdrawn. In March 1948, all British judges in Palestine were sent back to Britain.[92] In April 1948, the British withdrew from most of Haifa but retained an enclave in the port area to be used in the evacuation of British forces, and retained RAF Ramat David, an airbase close to Haifa, to cover their retreat, leaving behind a volunteer police force to maintain order. The city was quickly captured by the Haganah in the Battle of Haifa. After the victory, British forces in Jerusalem announced that they had no intention of overseeing any local administration but also that they would not permit actions that would hamper the safe and orderly withdrawal of their forces; military courts would try anybody who interfered.[93][94][95] Although by this time British authority in most of Palestine had broken down, with most of the country in the hands of Jews or Arabs, the British air and sea blockade of Palestine remained in place. Although Arab volunteers were able to cross the borders between Palestine and the surrounding Arab states to join the fighting, the British did not allow the regular armies of the surrounding Arab states to cross into Palestine.
The British had notified the UN of their intent to terminate the mandate not later than 1 August 1948.[96][97] However, early in 1948, the United Kingdom announced its firm intention to end its mandate in Palestine on 15 May. In response, President Harry S. Truman made a statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that \"unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means... unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result\".[98] The British Parliament passed the necessary legislation to terminate the Mandate with the Palestine Bill, which received Royal assent on 29 April 1948.[99]Hoisting of the Yishuv flag in Tel Aviv, 1 January 1948By 14 May 1948, the only British forces remaining in Palestine were in the Haifa area and in Jerusalem. On that same day, the British garrison in Jerusalem withdrew, and the last High Commissioner, General Sir Alan Cunningham, left the city for Haifa, where he was to leave the country by sea. The Jewish leadership, led by the future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel,[100] on the afternoon of 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), to come into effect at the moment of termination of the Mandate at midnight.[101][102][103] Also on the 14th, the Provisional Government of Israel asked the US Government for recognition, on the frontiers specified in the UN Plan for Partition.[104] The United States immediately replied, recognizing \"the provisional government as the de facto authority\".[105]
At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired, and the State of Israel came into being. The Palestine Government formally ceased to exist, the status of British forces still in the process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign territory, the Palestine Police Force formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of Palestine was lifted, and all those who had been Palestinian citizens ceased to be British protected persons, with Mandatory Palestine passports no longer giving British protection.[94][106] The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight took place both before and after the end of the Mandate.[107][108]
Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian troops crossed over the borders into Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.[109] Around 4,500 Transjordanian troops, commanded partly by 38 British officers who had resigned their commissions in the British Army only weeks earlier, including overall commander, General John Bagot Glubb, entered the Corpus separatum region encompassing Jerusalem and its environs (in response to the Haganah\'s Operation Kilshon)[110] and moved into areas designated as part of the Arab state by the UN partition plan. The war, which was to last until 1949, would see Israel expand to encompass about 78% of the territory of the former British Mandate, with Transjordan seizing and subsequently annexing the West Bank and the Kingdom of Egypt seizing the Gaza Strip. With the end of the Mandate, the remaining British troops in Israel were concentrated in an enclave in the Haifa port area, through which they were being withdrawn, and at RAF Ramat David, which was maintained to cover the withdrawal. The British handed over RAF Ramat David to the Israelis on 26 May and on 30 June, the last British troops were evacuated from Haifa. The British flag was lowered from the administrative building of the Port of Haifa and the Israeli flag was raised in its place, and the Haifa port area was formally handed over to the Israeli authorities in a ceremony.[111]
PoliticsPalestinian Arab communityFurther information: Arab Higher Committee
Front cover
Biographical pagesPassports from the British Mandate eraThe resolution of the San Remo Conference contained a safeguarding clause for the existing rights of the non-Jewish communities. The conference accepted the terms of the Mandate with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the memorandum a legal undertaking by the Mandatory Power that it would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine.[112] The draft mandates for Mesopotamia and Palestine, and all of the post-war peace treaties, contained clauses for the protection of religious groups and minorities. The mandates invoked the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice in the event of any disputes.[113]
Article 62 (LXII) of the Treaty of Berlin, signed on 13 July 1878,[114] dealt with religious freedom and civil and political rights in all parts of the Ottoman Empire.[115] The guarantees have frequently been referred to as \"religious rights\" or \"minority rights\". However, the guarantees included a prohibition against discrimination in civil and political matters. Difference of religion could not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil or political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and honours, or the exercise of the various professions and industries, \"in any locality whatsoever\".
A legal analysis performed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) noted that the Covenant of the League of Nations had provisionally recognised the communities of Palestine as independent nations. The mandate simply marked a transitory period, with the aim and object of leading the mandated territory to become an independent self-governing State.[116] Judge Higgins explained that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State.\"[117] The Court said that specific guarantees regarding freedom of movement and access to the Holy Sites contained in the Treaty of Berlin (1878) had been preserved under the terms of the Palestine Mandate and a chapter of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.[118]
According to historian Rashid Khalidi, the mandate ignored the political rights of the Arabs.[119] The Arab leadership repeatedly pressed the British to grant them national and political rights, such as representative government, over Jewish national and political rights in the remaining 23% of the Mandate of Palestine which the British had set aside for a Jewish homeland. The Arabs reminded the British of President Wilson\'s Fourteen Points and British promises during the First World War. The British, however, made acceptance of the terms of the mandate a precondition for any change in the constitutional position of the Arabs. A legislative council was proposed in The Palestine Order in Council, of 1922, which implemented the terms of the mandate. It stated that: \"No Ordinance shall be passed which shall be in any way repugnant to or inconsistent with the provisions of the Mandate.\" For the Arabs, this decree was unacceptable, akin to \"self murder\".[120] As a result, the Arabs boycotted the elections to the Council held in 1923, which were subsequently annulled.[121] During the interwar period, the British rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give Arabs control of the government.[122]
The terms of the mandate required the establishment of self-governing institutions in both Palestine and Transjordan. In 1947, the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, admitted that, during the previous twenty-five years, the British had done their best to further the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish communities without prejudicing the interests of the Arabs, but had failed to \"secure the development of self-governing institutions\" in accordance with the terms of the Mandate.[123]
Palestinian Arab leadership and national aspirationsMain articles: Palestinian Nationalism and Arab nationalism
A 1930 protest in Jerusalem against the British Mandate by Arab women. The sign reads \"No dialogue, no negotiations until termination of the Mandate.\"
The Palestinian Arab Christian-owned Falastin newspaper featuring a caricature on its 18 June 1936 edition showing Zionism as a crocodile under the protection of a British officer telling Palestinian Arabs: \"don\'t be afraid!!! I will swallow you peacefully....\"[124]Under the British Mandate, the office of \"Mufti of Jerusalem\", traditionally limited in authority and geographical scope, was refashioned into that of \"Grand Mufti of Palestine\". Furthermore, a Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) was established and given various duties, such as the administration of religious endowments and the appointment of religious judges and local muftis. In Ottoman times, these duties had been fulfilled by the Imperial bureaucracy in Constantinople (Istanbul).[125] In dealings with the Palestinian Arabs, the British negotiated with the elite rather than the middle or lower classes.[126] They chose Hajj Amin al-Husseini to become Grand Mufti, although he was young and had received the fewest votes from Jerusalem\'s Islamic leaders.[127] One of the mufti\'s rivals, Raghib Bey al-Nashashibi, had already been appointed Mayor of Jerusalem in 1920, replacing Musa Kazim, whom the British removed after the Nabi Musa riots of 1920,[128] during which he exhorted the crowd to give their blood for Palestine.[129] During the entire Mandate period, but especially during the latter half, the rivalry between the mufti and al-Nashashibi dominated Palestinian politics. Khalidi ascribes the failure of the Palestinian leaders to enroll mass support to the fact that they had been part of the ruling elite and accustomed to their commands being obeyed; thus, the idea of mobilising the masses was unknown to them.[130]
On the Husseini-Nashashibi rivalry, an editorial in the Arabic-language Falastin newspaper in the 1920s commented:[131]The spirit of factionalism has penetrated most levels of society; one can see it among journalists, trainees, and the rank and file. If you ask anyone: who does he support? He will reply with pride, Husseini or Nashasibi, or ... he will start to pour out his wrath against the opposing camp in a most repulsive manner.
There had already been rioting and attacks on and massacres of Jews in 1921 and 1929. During the 1930s, Palestinian Arab popular discontent with Jewish immigration grew. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, several factions of Palestinian society, especially from the younger generation, became impatient with the internecine divisions and ineffectiveness of the Palestinian elite and engaged in grass-roots anti-British and anti-Zionist activism, organised by groups such as the Young Men\'s Muslim Association. There was also support for the radical nationalist Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal), which called for a boycott of the British in the manner of the Indian Congress Party. Some took to the hills to fight the British and the Jews. Most of these initiatives were contained and defeated by notables in the pay of the Mandatory Administration, particularly the mufti and his cousin Jamal al-Husseini. A six-month general strike in 1936 marked the start of the great Arab Revolt.[132]
Jewish communityFurther information: Jewish National CouncilSee also: History of Zionism and History of IsraelThe conquest of Ottoman Syria by British forces in 1917 found a mixed community in the region, with Palestine, the southern part of Ottoman Syria, containing a mixed population of Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze. In this period, the Jewish community (Yishuv) in Palestine was composed of traditional Jewish communities in cities (the Old Yishuv), which had existed for centuries,[133] and the newly established agricultural Zionist communities (the New Yishuv), established since the 1870s. With the establishment of the Mandate, the Jewish community in Palestine formed the Zionist Commission to represent its interests.
In 1929, the Jewish Agency for Palestine took over from the Zionist Commission its representative functions and administration of the Jewish community. During the Mandate period, the Jewish Agency was a quasi-governmental organisation that served the administrative needs of the Jewish community. Its leadership was elected by Jews from all over the world by proportional representation.[134] The Jewish Agency was charged with facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine, land purchase and planning the general policies of the Zionist leadership. It ran schools and hospitals and formed the Haganah. The British authorities offered to create a similar Arab Agency but this offer was rejected by Arab leaders.[135]
In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organisation, was formed on 15 June 1920 to defend Jewish residents. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921 (see Jaffa riots), 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews – see 1929 Hebron massacre) and 1936–1939. Beginning in 1936, Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted campaigns of violence against British military and Arab targets.
Jewish immigrationMain article: Aliyah
Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine from 1920 to 1945During the Mandate, the Yishuv grew from one-sixth to almost one-third of the population. According to official records, 367,845 Jews and 33,304 non-Jews immigrated legally between 1920 and 1945.[136] It was estimated that another 50–60,000 Jews and a marginal number of Arabs, the latter mostly on a seasonal basis, immigrated illegally during this period.[137] Immigration accounted for most of the increase of Jewish population, while the non-Jewish population increase was largely natural.[138] Of the Jewish immigrants, in 1939 most had come from Germany and Czechoslovakia, but in 1940–1944 most came from Romania and Poland, with an additional 3,530 immigrants arriving from Yemen during the same period.[139]
Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase markedly. Combined with the growth of Arab nationalism in the region and increasing anti-Jewish sentiments the growth of the Jewish population created much Arab resentment. The British government placed limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial, particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and Jews disliked the policy, each for their own reasons.
Jewish immigrants were to be afforded Palestinian citizenship:
Article 7. The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.[140]
Jewish national homeIn 1919, the general secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organisation, Nahum Sokolow, published History of Zionism (1600–1918). He also represented the Zionist Organisation at the Paris Peace Conference.
Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism[141]
One of the objectives of British administration was to give effect to the Balfour Declaration, which was also set out in the preamble of the mandate, as follows:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[142]
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine said the Jewish National Home, which derived from the formulation of Zionist aspirations in the 1897 Basle program has provoked many discussions concerning its meaning, scope and legal character, especially since it had no known legal connotation and there are no precedents in international law for its interpretation. It was used in the Balfour Declaration and in the Mandate, both of which promised the establishment of a \"Jewish National Home\" without, however, defining its meaning. A statement on \"British Policy in Palestine\", issued on 3 June 1922 by the Colonial Office,[143] placed a restrictive construction upon the Balfour Declaration. The statement said the British government did not contemplate \"the disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, language or customs in Palestine\" or \"the imposition of Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole\", and made it clear that in the eyes of the mandatory Power, the Jewish National Home was to be founded in Palestine and not that Palestine as a whole was to be converted into a Jewish National Home. The Committee noted that the construction, which restricted considerably the scope of the National Home, was made prior to the confirmation of the Mandate by the Council of the League of Nations and was formally accepted at the time by the Executive of the Zionist Organisation.[144]
In March 1930, Lord Passfield, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had written a Cabinet Paper[145] which said:
In the Balfour Declaration there is no suggestion that the Jews should be accorded a special or favoured position in Palestine as compared with the Arab inhabitants of the country, or that the claims of Palestinians to enjoy self-government (subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory as foreshadowed in Article XXII of the Covenant) should be curtailed in order to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.\" ... Zionist leaders have not concealed and do not conceal their opposition to the grant of any measure of self-government to the people of Palestine either now or for many years to come. Some of them even go so far as to claim that that provision of Article 2 of the Mandate constitutes a bar to compliance with the demand of the Arabs for any measure of self-government. In view of the provisions of Article XXII of the Covenant and of the promises made to the Arabs on several occasions that claim is inadmissible.
The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission took the position that the Mandate contained a dual obligation. In 1932 the Mandates Commission questioned the representative of the Mandatory on the demands made by the Arab population regarding the establishment of self-governing institutions, in accordance with various articles of the mandate, and in particular Article 2. The chairman noted that \"under the terms of the same article, the mandatory Power had long since set up the Jewish National Home\".[146]
In 1937, the Peel Commission, a British Royal Commission headed by Earl Peel, proposed solving the Arab–Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two states. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[47][48][49][147] The US Consul General at Jerusalem told the State Department that the Mufti had refused the principle of partition and declined to consider it. The Consul said that the Emir Abdullah urged acceptance on the ground that realities must be faced, but wanted modification of the proposed boundaries and Arab administrations in the neutral enclave. The Consul also noted that Nashashibi sidestepped the principle, but was willing to negotiate for favourable modifications.[148]
A collection of private correspondence published by David Ben Gurion contained a letter written in 1937 which explained that he was in favour of partition because he did not envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. Ben Gurion wrote \"What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish.\" He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit Zionists to settle in the rest of the country with or without the consent of the Arabs.[149] Benny Morris said that both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine.[150] Former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Schlomo Ben Ami writes that 1937 was the same year that the \"Field Battalions\" under Yitzhak Sadeh wrote the \"Avner Plan\", which anticipated and laid the groundwork for what would become in 1948, Plan D. It envisioned going far beyond any boundaries contained in the existing partition proposals and planned the conquest of the Galilee, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.[151]
In 1942, the Biltmore Program was adopted as the platform of the World Zionist Organisation. It demanded \"that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth\".
In 1946 an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry noted that the demand for a Jewish State went beyond the obligations of either the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate and had been expressly disowned by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as recently as 1932.[152] The Jewish Agency subsequently refused to accept the subsequent Morrison-Grady Plan as the basis for discussion. A spokesman for the agency, Eliahu Epstein, told the US State Department that the Agency could not attend the London conference if the Grady-Morrison proposal was on the agenda. He stated that the Agency was unwilling to be placed in a position where it might have to compromise between the Grady-Morrison proposals on the one hand and its own partition plan on the other. He stated that the Agency had accepted partition as the solution for Palestine which it favoured.[153]
Land ownershipSee also: Jewish land purchase in Palestine
Map of Palestinian land ownership by sub-district (1945) originally published in the Village Statistics, 1945
Palestinian index of villages and settlements, showing land in Jewish possession as of 31 December 1944After transition to the British rule, much of the agricultural land in Palestine (about one third of the whole territory) was still owned by the same landowners as under Ottoman rule, mostly powerful Arab clans and local Muslim sheikhs. Other lands had been held by foreign Christian organisations (most notably the Greek Orthodox Church), as well as Jewish private and Zionist organisations, and to lesser degree by small minorities of Baháʼís, Samaritans and Circassians.
As of 1931, the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine was 26,625,600 dunams (26,625.6 km2), of which 8,252,900 dunams (8,252.9 km2) or 33% were arable.[154] Official statistics show that Jews privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunams (1,393.53 km2), or 5.23% of Palestine\'s total in 1945.[155][156] The Jewish owned agricultural land was largely located in the Galilee and along the coastal plain. Estimates of the total volume of land that Jews had purchased by 15 May 1948 are complicated by illegal and unregistered land transfers, as well as by the lack of data on land concessions from the Palestine administration after 31 March 1936. According to Avneri, Jews held 1,850,000 dunams (1,850 km2) of land in 1947, or 6.94% of the total.[157] Stein gives the estimate of 2,000,000 dunams (2,000 km2) as of May 1948, or 7.51% of the total.[158] According to Fischbach, by 1948, Jews and Jewish companies owned 20% percent of all cultivable land in the country.[159]
According to Clifford A. Wright, by the end of the British Mandate period in 1948, Jewish farmers cultivated 425,450 dunams of land, while Palestinian farmers had 5,484,700 dunams of land under cultivation.[160] The 1945 UN estimate shows that Arab ownership of arable land was on average 68% of a district, ranging from 15% ownership in the Beer-Sheba district to 99% ownership in the Ramallah district. These data cannot be fully understood without comparing them to those of neighbouring countries: in Iraq, for instance, still in 1951 only 0.3 per cent of registered land (or 50 per cent of the total amount) was categorised as \'private property\'.[161]
Land ownership by districtThe following table shows the 1945 land ownership of mandatory Palestine by district:
Land ownership of Palestine in 1945 by districtDistrict Sub-district Arab-owned Jewish-owned Public / otherHaifa Haifa 42% 35% 23%Galilee Acre 87% 3% 10%Beisan 44% 34% 22%Nazareth 52% 28% 20%Safad 68% 18% 14%Tiberias 51% 38% 11%Lydda Jaffa 47% 39% 14%Ramle 77% 14% 9%Samaria Jenin 84% <1% 16%Nablus 87% <1% 13%Tulkarm 78% 17% 5%Jerusalem Hebron 96% <1% 4%Jerusalem 84% 2% 14%Ramallah 99% <1% 1%Gaza Beersheba 15% <1% 85%Gaza 75% 4% 21%Data from the Land Ownership of Palestine[162]Land ownership by corporationThe table below shows the land ownership of Palestine by large Jewish Corporations (in square kilometres) on 31 December 1945.
Land ownership of Palestine by large Jewish Corporations (in square kilometres) on 31 December 1945Corporations AreaJNF 660.10PICA 193.70Palestine Land Development Co. Ltd. 9.70Hemnuta Ltd 16.50Africa Palestine Investment Co. Ltd. 9.90Bayside Land Corporation Ltd. 8.50Palestine Kupat Am. Bank Ltd. 8.40Total 906.80Data is from Survey of Palestine (vol. I, p. 245).[163][164]Land ownership by typeThe land owned privately and collectively by Jews, Arabs and other non-Jews can be classified as urban, rural built-on, cultivable (farmed), and uncultivable. The following chart shows the ownership by Jews, Arabs and other non-Jews in each of the categories.
Land ownership of Palestine (in square kilometres) on 1 April 1943Category Arab / non-Jewish ownership Jewish ownership TotalUrban 76.66 70.11 146.77Rural built-on 36.85 42.33 79.18Cereal (taxable) 5,503.18 814.10 6,317.29Cereal (not taxable) 900.29 51.05 951.34Plantation 1,079.79 95.51 1,175.30Citrus 145.57 141.19 286.76Banana 2.30 1.43 3.73Uncultivable 16,925.81 298.52 17,224.33Total 24,670.46 1,514.25 26,184.70Data is from Survey of Palestine (vol. II, p. 566).[164][165] By the end of 1946, Jewish ownership had increased to 1624 km2.[166]List of Mandatory land laws
Land classification as prescribed in 1940Land Transfer Ordinance of 19201926 Correction of Land Registers OrdinanceLand Settlement Ordinance of 1928Land Transfer Regulations of 1940In February 1940, the British Government of Palestine promulgated the Land Transfer Regulations which divided Palestine into three regions with different restrictions on land sales applying to each. In Zone \"A\", which included the hill-country of Judea as a whole, certain areas in the Jaffa sub-District, and in the Gaza District, and the northern part of the Beersheba sub-District, new agreements for sale of land other than to a Palestinian Arab were forofferden without the High Commissioner\'s permission. In Zone \"B\", which included the Jezreel Valley, eastern Galilee, a parcel of coastal plain south of Haifa, a region northeast of the Gaza District, and the southern part of the Beersheba sub-District, sale of land by a Palestinian Arab was forofferden except to a Palestinian Arab with similar exceptions. In the \"free zone\", which consisted of Haifa Bay, the coastal plain from Zikhron Ya\'akov to Yibna, and the neighborhood of Jerusalem, there were no restrictions. The reason given for the regulations was that the Mandatory was required to \"ensur[e] that the rights and positions of other sections of the population are not prejudiced\", and an assertion that \"such transfers of land must be restricted if Arab cultivators are to maintain their existing standard of life and a considerable landless Arab population is not soon to be created\"[167]
DemographicsMain article: Demographic history of Palestine (region) § British Mandate eraBritish censuses and estimations
Street in As-Salt in the 1920s
Population distribution near the end of the MandateIn 1920, the majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census[168] and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who accounted for some 11% of the total) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Somalis, Circassians, Egyptians, Copts, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs:
The first census of 1922 showed a population of 757,182, of whom 78% were Muslim, 11% Jewish and 10% Christian.The second census, of 1931, gave a total population of 1,035,154 of whom 73.4% were Muslim, 16.9% Jewish and 8.6% Christian.A discrepancy between the two censuses and records of births, deaths and immigration, led the authors of the second census to postulate the illegal immigration of about 9,000 Jews and 4,000 Arabs during the intervening years.[169]Arab Christian Palestinian boys at the Jerusalem YMCA, 1938There were no further censuses but statistics were maintained by counting births, deaths and migration. By the end of 1936 the total population was approximately 1,300,000, the Jews being estimated at 384,000. The Arabs had also increased their numbers rapidly, mainly as a result of the cessation of the military conscription imposed on the country by the Ottoman Empire, the campaign against malaria and a general improvement in health services. In absolute figures their increase exceeded that of the Jewish population, but proportionally, the latter had risen from 13 per cent of the total population at the census of 1922 to nearly 30 per cent at the end of 1936.[170]
Some components such as illegal immigration could only be estimated approximately. The White Paper of 1939, which placed immigration restrictions on Jews, stated that the Jewish population \"has risen to some 450,000\" and was \"approaching a third of the entire population of the country\". In 1945, a demographic study showed that the population had grown to 1,764,520, comprising 1,061,270 Muslims, 553,600 Jews, 135,550 Christians and 14,100 people of other groups.
Year Total Muslim Jewish Christian Other1922 752,048 589,177(78%) 83,790(11%) 71,464(10%) 7,617(1%)1931 1,036,339 761,922(74%) 175,138(17%) 89,134(9%) 10,145(1%)1945 1,764,520 1,061,270(60%) 553,600(31%) 135,550(8%) 14,100(1%)Average compounded populationgrowth rate per annum, 1922–1945 3.8% 2.6% 8.6% 2.8% 2.7%By district
Map of the municipalities in Mandatory Palestine by population count (1945) 150,000 and more 100,000 50,000 20,000 10,000 5,000 2,000 1,000 500 less than 500 Nomadic regions in the Negev desertThe following table gives the religious demography of each of the 16 districts of the Mandate in 1945.
Demography of Palestine in 1945 by district[171]District Sub-District Muslim Jewish Christian TotalNumber % Number % Number %Haifa Haifa 95,970 38% 119,020 47% 33,710 13% 253,450Galilee Acre 51,130 69% 3,030 4% 11,800 16% 73,600Beisan 16,660 67% 7,590 30% 680 3% 24,950Nazareth 30,160 60% 7,980 16% 11,770 24% 49,910Safad 47,310 83% 7,170 13% 1,630 3% 56,970Tiberias 23,940 58% 13,640 33% 2,470 6% 41,470Lydda Jaffa 95,980 24% 295,160 72% 17,790 4% 409,290Ramle 95,590 71% 31,590 24% 5,840 4% 134,030Samaria Jenin 60,000 98% negligible <1% 1,210 2% 61,210Nablus 92,810 98% negligible <1% 1,560 2% 94,600Tulkarm 76,460 82% 16,180 17% 380 1% 93,220Jerusalem Hebron 92,640 99% 300 <1% 170 <1% 93,120Jerusalem 104,460 41% 102,520 40% 46,130 18% 253,270Ramallah 40,520 83% negligible <1% 8,410 17% 48,930Gaza Beersheba 6,270 90% 510 7% 210 3% 7,000Gaza 145,700 97% 3,540 2% 1,300 1% 150,540Total 1,076,780 58% 608,230 33% 145,060 9% 1,845,560Government and institutions
Jerusalem City Hall, 1939Under the terms of the August 1922 Palestine Order in Council, the Mandate territory was divided into administrative regions known as districts and were administered by the office of the British High Commissioner for Palestine.[172]
Britain continued the millet system of the Ottoman Empire whereby all matters of a religious nature and personal status were within the jurisdiction of Muslim courts and the courts of other recognised religions, called confessional communities. The High Commissioner established the Orthodox Rabbinate and retained a modified millet system which only recognised eleven religious communities: Muslims, Jews and nine Christian denominations (none of which were Christian Protestant churches). All those who were not members of these recognised communities were excluded from the millet arrangement. As a result, there was no possibility, for example, of marriages between confessional communities, and there were no civil marriages. Personal contacts between communities were nominal.
Apart from the Religious Courts, the judicial system was modelled on the British one, having a High Court with appellate jurisdiction and the power of review over the Central Court and the Central Criminal Court. The five consecutive Chief Justices were:
Sir Thomas Haycraft (1921–1927)[173]Sir Michael McDonnell (1927–1936)[173]Sir Harry Trusted[174] (1936–1941; knighted in 1938) (afterwards Chief Justice of the Federated Malay States, 1941)Frederick Gordon-Smith (1941–1944)[175]Sir William Fitzgerald (1944–1948)[176]The local newspaper The Palestine Post was founded in 1932 by Gershon Agron. In 1950, its name was changed to The Jerusalem Post. In 1923, Pinhas Rutenberg founded the Palestine Electric Company (to become the Israel Electric Corporation in 1961).
EconomyMain article: Economy of Mandatory Palestine
1927 Mandatory Palestine postage stamp
1941 Mandatory Palestine coin
1927 Mandatory Palestine revenue stamp
1927 Mandatory Palestine coin\"Palestine\" is shown in English, Arabic (فلسطين) and Hebrew; the latter includes the acronym א״י for Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel).Between 1922 and 1947, the annual growth rate of the Jewish sector of the economy was 13.2%, mainly due to immigration and foreign capital, while that of the Arab was 6.5%. Per capita, these figures were 4.8% and 3.6% respectively. By 1936, Jews earned 2.6 times as much as Arabs.[177] Compared to Arabs in other countries, Palestinian Arabs earned slightly more.[178]
The Jaffa Electric Company was founded in 1923 by Pinhas Rutenberg, and was later absorbed into a newly created Palestine Electric Corporation; the First Jordan Hydro-Electric Power House was opened in 1933. Palestine Airways was founded in 1934, Angel Bakeries in 1927, and the Tnuva dairy in 1926. Electric current mainly flowed to Jewish industry, following it to its nestled locations in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Although Tel Aviv had by far more workshops and factories, the demand for electric power for industry was roughly the same for both cities by the early 1930s.[179]
The country\'s largest industrial zone was in Haifa, where many housing projects were built for employees.[180]
On the scale of the UN Human Development Index determined for around 1939, of 36 countries, Palestinian Jews were placed 15th, Palestinian Arabs 30th, Egypt 33rd and Turkey 35th.[181] The Jews in Palestine were mainly urban, 76.2% in 1942, while the Arabs were mainly rural, 68.3% in 1942.[182] Overall, Khalidi concludes that Palestinian Arab society, while overmatched by the Yishuv, was as advanced as any other Arab society in the region and considerably more than several.[183]
EducationUnder the British Mandate, the country developed economically and culturally. In 1919, the Jewish community founded a centralised Hebrew school system, and the following year established the Assembly of Representatives, the Jewish National Council and the Histadrut labour federation. The Technion university was founded in 1924, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925.[184]
There were several attempts by the Arab Palestinians to establish an Arab higher education institution, starting from the 1920s, but it did not materialise. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé attributed this to \"Zionist pressure, British anti-Arab racism, and lack of resources.\" He added that \"the colonial mentality of the British authorities who deemed the Palestinians yet another colonized people who had to be oppressed, while regarding the Zionist settlers as fellow colonialists, feared that such a university would enhance the Palestinian national movement.\"[185]
Literacy rates in 1932 were 86% for the Jews compared to 22% for the Palestinian Arabs, but Arab literacy rates steadily increased thereafter. By comparison, Palestinian Arab literacy rates were higher than those of Egypt and Turkey, but lower than in Lebanon.[186]
GalleryGeneral Sir Edmund Allenby\'s final attacks of the Palestine Campaign gave Britain control of the area.General Sir Edmund Allenby\'s final attacks of the Palestine Campaign gave Britain control of the area.General Allenby entering Jerusalem with British troops on 11 December 1917 (Allenby was later created a field marshal, in April 1919)General Allenby entering Jerusalem with British troops on 11 December 1917 (Allenby was later created a field marshal, in April 1919)Brigadier-General Watson meeting with Hussein al-Husayni, the Mayor of Jerusalem, in December 1917Brigadier-General Watson meeting with Hussein al-Husayni, the Mayor of Jerusalem, in December 1917The surrender of Jerusalem by the Ottomans to the British on 9 December 1917 following the Battle of JerusalemThe surrender of Jerusalem by the Ottomans to the British on 9 December 1917 following the Battle of JerusalemMain post office, Jaffa Road, JerusalemMain post office, Jaffa Road, JerusalemThe Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM; known since 1967 as the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum), built in Jerusalem during the British MandateThe Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM; known since 1967 as the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum), built in Jerusalem during the British MandateMain post office, JaffaMain post office, JaffaThe Anglo-Palestine BankThe Anglo-Palestine BankThe Western Wall, 1933The Western Wall, 1933Supreme Military Tribunal of the British Mandate, Kiryat Shmuel, JerusalemSupreme Military Tribunal of the British Mandate, Kiryat Shmuel, JerusalemYMCA in Jerusalem, built during the British MandateYMCA in Jerusalem, built during the British Mandate\"Bevingrad\" in Jerusalem, Russian Compound behind barbed wire\"Bevingrad\" in Jerusalem, Russian Compound behind barbed wireMandate-era pillar box, JerusalemMandate-era pillar box, Jerusalem1941 currency coin1941 currency coinMovement and curfew pass, issued under the authority of the British Military Commander, East Palestine, 1946Movement and curfew pass, issued under the authority of the British Military Commander, East Palestine, 1946See alsoErnest BevinHerbert Dowbiggin (1880–1966) – police expertFaisal–Weizmann Agreement (1919)Haavara Agreement (1933)High Commissioners for Palestine and TransjordanIsraeli Declaration of IndependenceList of post offices in the British Mandate of PalestineMandatory Palestine passportMuseum of Underground PrisonersPalestinian Citizenship Order, 1925Palestine CommandPalestine poundPostage stamps and postal history of PalestineRussian CompoundCharles Tegart (1881–1946) – police expert. The Tegart police forts are named after him.Tegart\'s WallThe Sergeants affairLiberal Party (Mandatory Palestine)NotesDuring its existence the territory was officially known simply as Palestine, but, in later years, a variety of other names and descriptors have been used, including Mandatory or Mandate Palestine, the British Mandate of Palestine and British Palestine. (Arabic: فلسطين الانتدابية Filasṭīn al-Intidābiyah; Hebrew: פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) Pāleśtīnā (E.Y.), where \"E.Y.\" indicates ’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl, the Land of Israel)Historian Nur Masalha describes the \"British preoccupation with Palestine\" and the large increase in European books, articles, travelogues and geographical publications during the 18th and 19th centuries.[13]From Himmler:The National Socialist movement of Greater Germany has, since its inception, inscribed upon its flag the fight against the world Jewry. It has therefore followed with particular sympathy the struggle of freedom-loving Arabs, especially in Palestine, against Jewish interlopers. In the recognition of this enemy and of the common struggle against it lies the firm foundation of the natural alliance that exists between the National Socialist Greater Germany and the freedom-loving Muslims of the whole world. In this spirit I am sending you on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour declaration my hearty greetings and wishes for the successful pursuit of your struggle until the final victory.
From Ribbentrop:I am sending my greetings to your eminence and to the participants of the meeting held today in the Reich capital under your chairmanship. Germany is linked to the Arab nation by old ties of friendship, and today we are united more than ever before. The elimination of the socalled Jewish national home and the liberation of all Arab countries from the oppression and exploitation of the Western powers is an unchangeable part of the Great German Reich policy. Let the hour not be far off when the Arab nation will be able to build its future and find unity in full independence.
For example, Radio Palestine broadcast the comments of an Egyptian writer who said, \"The war is between the lofty and humane values represented by England and the forces of darkness represented by the Nazis.\"[62]A British recruiting poster in Arabic, published in the Falastin newspaper in January 1942, read: \"She couldn\'t stop thinking about contribution and sacrifice, she felt ongoing pride and exaltation of spirit – when she did what she saw as her sacred duty for her nation and its sons. When your country is crying out to you and asking for your service, when your country makes it plain that our Arab men need your love and support, and when your country reminds you of how cruel the enemy is – when your country is calling you, can you stand by and do nothing?\"[62]p. 50, at 1947 \"Haj Amin al-Husseini went one better: he denounced also the minority report, which, in his view, legitimized the Jewish foothold in Palestine, a \"partition in disguise\", as he put it.\"; p. 66, at 1946 \"The League demanded independence for Palestine as a \"unitary\" state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews. The AHC went one better and insisted that the proportion of Jews to Arabs in the unitary state should stand at one to six, meaning that only Jews who lived in Palestine before the British Mandate be eligible for citizenship\"; p. 67, at 1947 \"The League\'s Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16–19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called \"aggression\", \"without mercy\". The League promised them, in line with Bludan, assistance \"in manpower, money and equipment\" should the United Nations endorse partition.\"; p. 72, at Dec 1947 \"The League vowed, in very g
Palestine[i] is a geographical region in West Asia. Situated in the Southern Levant, it is usually considered to include Israel and the State of Palestine, though some definitions also include parts of northwestern Jordan. Other historical names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land.
The first written records referring to Palestine emerged in the 12th-century BCE Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, which used the term Peleset for a neighboring people or land. In the 8th century BCE, the Assyrians referred to a region as Palashtu or Pilistu. In the Hellenistic period, these names were carried over into Greek, appearing in the Histories of Herodotus in 5th century BCE as Palaistine. The Roman Empire conquered the region and in 6 CE established the province known as Judaea, then in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina.[1] In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established. While Palestine\'s boundaries have changed throughout history, it has generally comprised the southern portion of regions such as Syria or the Levant. It also conceptually overlaps with several terms of Judeo-Christian tradition, including Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, and the Holy Land.
As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. In the Bronze Age, it was inhabited by the Canaanites; the Iron Age saw the emergence of Israel and Judah, two related kingdoms inhabited by the Israelites. It has since come under the sway of various empires, including the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Achaemenid Empire. Revolts by the region\'s Jews against Hellenistic rule brought a brief period of regional independence under the Hasmonean dynasty, which ended with its gradual incorporation into the Roman Empire (later the Byzantine Empire).
In the 7th century, Palestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, ending Byzantine rule in the region; Rashidun rule was succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Fatimid Caliphate. Following the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established through the Crusades, the population of Palestine became predominantly Muslim. In the 13th century, it became part of the Mamluk Sultanate, and after 1516, part of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, it was captured by the United Kingdom as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Between 1919 and 1922, the League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine, which directed the region to be under British administration as Mandatory Palestine. Tensions between Jews and Arabs escalated into the 1947–1949 Palestine war, which ended with the remaining territory of the former British Mandate post the creation of Transjordan in 1946 divided between Israel vis-à-vis Jordan (in the West Bank) and Egypt (in the Gaza Strip); later developments in the Arab–Israeli conflict culminated in Israel\'s occupation of both territories, which has been among the core issues of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[2][3][4]
History of the name \"Palestine\"For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the name Palestine.The name is found throughout recorded history. Examples of historical maps of the region that contain the name Palestine are shown above: (1) Pomponius Mela (Latin, c. 43 CE); (2) Notitia Dignitatum (Latin, c. 410 CE); (3) Tabula Rogeriana (Arabic, 1154 CE); (4) Cedid Atlas (Ottoman Turkish, 1803 CE)Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of Hebrew Pelesheth. The term \"Peleset\" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c. 1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the temple at Medinet Habu which refers to the Peleset among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III\'s reign,[5][6] and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset\'s Statue. Seven known Assyrian inscriptions refer to the region of \"Palashtu\" or \"Pilistu\", beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to a treaty made by Esarhaddon more than a century later.[7][8] Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.[ii]
The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BCE ancient Greece,[iii][iv] when Herodotus wrote of a \"district of Syria, called Palaistinê\" (Ancient Greek: Συρίη ἡ Παλαιστίνη καλεομένη)[9] in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.[10][v] Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition for the region in Meteorology, in which he included the Dead Sea.[11] Later Greek writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Romano-Jewish writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.[12][13] The term was first used to denote an official province in c. 135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, renamed the province of Judaea \"Syria Palaestina\". There is circumstantial evidence linking Hadrian with the name change,[14] but the precise date is not certain.[14]
The term is generally accepted to be a cognate of the biblical name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth, usually transliterated as Philistia). The term and its derivates are used more than 250 times in Masoretic-derived versions of the Hebrew Bible, of which 10 uses are in the Torah, with undefined boundaries, and almost 200 of the remaining references are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel.[7][8][12][15] The term is rarely used in the Septuagint, which used a transliteration Land of Phylistieim (Γῆ τῶν Φυλιστιείμ), different from the contemporary Greek place name Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη).[16] It also theorized to be the portmanteau of the Greek word for the Philistines and palaistês, which means \"wrestler/rival/adversary\". [17] This aligns with the Greek practice of punning place names since the latter is also the etymological meaning for Israel.[18][19][20]
The Septuagint instead used the term \"allophuloi\" (άλλόφυλοι, \"other nations\") throughout the Books of Judges and Samuel,[21][22] such that the term \"Philistines\" has been interpreted to mean \"non-Israelites of the Promised Land\" when used in the context of Samson, Saul and David,[23] and Rabbinic sources explain that these peoples were different from the Philistines of the Book of Genesis.[vi]
During the Byzantine period, the region of Palestine within Syria Palaestina was subdivided into Palaestina Prima and Secunda,[24] and an area of land including the Negev and Sinai became Palaestina Salutaris.[24] Following the Muslim conquest, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic.[7][25] The use of the name \"Palestine\" became common in Early Modern English,[26] was used in English and Arabic during the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem[27][28][vii] and was revived as an official place name with the British Mandate for Palestine.
Some other terms that have been used to refer to all or part of this land include Canaan, Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael or Ha\'aretz),[30][viii][ix] the Promised Land, Greater Syria, the Holy Land, Iudaea Province, Judea, Coele-Syria,[x] \"Israel HaShlema\", Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Zion, Retenu (Ancient Egyptian), Southern Syria, Southern Levant and Syria Palaestina.
HistoryMain article: History of PalestineFor a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Palestine region.OverviewFor a more comprehensive list, see Time periods in the Palestine region.Situated at a strategic location between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region has been controlled by numerous peoples, including Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Achaemenids, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sasanians, Byzantines, the Arab Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates, Crusaders, Ayyuoffers, Mamluks, Mongols, Ottomans, the British, and modern Israelis and Palestinians.[citation needed]
Ancient periodSee also: Canaan, History of ancient Israel and Judah, and Philistines
Kingdoms of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age (c. 830 BCE)The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization.[34] During the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550 and 1400 BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse.[35] The Israelites emerged from a dramatic social transformation that took place in the people of the central hill country of Canaan around 1200 BCE, with no signs of violent invasion or even of peaceful infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group from elsewhere.[36][xi] During the Iron Age, the Israelites established two related kingdoms, Israel and Judah. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Israel\'s southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th or 9th century BCE and later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire before a revolt against the latter led to its destruction in 586 BCE. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c. 740 BCE,[37] which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c. 627 BCE.[38]
In 587/6 BCE, Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II,[xii] who subsequently exiled the Judeans to Babylon. The Kingdom of Judah was then annexed as a Babylonian province. The Philistines were also exiled. The defeat of Judah was recorded by the Babylonians.[39][40]
In 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Hebrew Bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder, the exiled Jews were eventually allowed to return to Jerusalem.[41] The returned population in Judah were allowed to self-rule under Persian governance, and some parts of the fallen kingdom became a Persian province known as Yehud.[42][43] Except Yehud, at least another four Persian provinces existed in the region: Samaria, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, in addition to the Phoenician city states in the north and the Arabian tribes in the south.[44] During the same period, the Edomites migrated from Transjordan to the southern parts of Judea, which became known as Idumaea.[45] The Qedarites were the dominant Arab tribe; their territory ran from the Hejaz in the south to the Negev in the north through the period of Persian and Hellenistic dominion.[46][47]
Classical antiquity
Caesarea Maritima, also known as Caesarea Palestinae, built under Herod the Great at the site of a former Phoenician naval station, became the capital city of Roman Judea, Roman Syria Palaestina and Byzantine Palaestina Prima provinces.[48]In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region, which changed hands several times during the wars of the Diadochi and later Syrian Wars. It ultimately fell to the Seleucid Empire between 219 and 200 BCE. During that period, the region became heavily hellenized, building tensions between Greeks and locals. In 167 BCE, the Maccabean Revolt erupted, leading to the establishment of an independent Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. From 110 BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, including Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea.[49] The Jewish control over the wider region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea, a term that had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judaean Mountains.[xiii][50] During the same period, the Edomites were converted to Judaism.[45]
Between 73 and 63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War. Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BCE, splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. In around 40 BCE, the Parthians conquered Palestine, deposed the Roman ally Hyrcanus II, and installed a puppet ruler of the Hasmonean line known as Antigonus II.[51][52] By 37 BCE, the Parthians withdrew from Palestine.[51]
Palestine is generally considered the \"Cradle of Christianity\".[53][54][55] Christianity, a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, arose as a messianic sect from within Second Temple Judaism. The three-year Ministry of Jesus, culminating in his crucifixion, is estimated to have occurred from 28 to 30 CE, although the historicity of Jesus is disputed by a minority of scholars.[xiv]Model of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, after being rebuilt by Herod. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE during the First Jewish-Roman War.[56]In the first and second centuries CE, the Province of Judea became the site of two large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. During the First Jewish-Roman War, which lasted from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple.[57] In Masada, Jewish zealots preferred to commit suicide than endure Roman captivity. In 132 CE, another Jewish rebellion erupted. The Bar Kokhba revolt took three years to put down, incurred massive costs on both the Romans and the Jews, and desolated much of Judea.[58][59] The center of Jewish life in Palestine moved to the Galilee.[60] During or after the revolt, Hadrian joined the province of Iudaea with Galilee and the Paralia to form the new province of Syria Palaestina, and Jerusalem was renamed \"Aelia Capitolina\". Some scholars view these actions as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland,[61][62] but this theory is debated.[16]
Between 259 and 272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire. Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil wars of the Tetrarchy, the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine\'s mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction. In 614 CE, Palestine was annexed by another Persian dynasty; the Sassanids, until returning to Byzantine control in 628 CE.[63]
Early Muslim period
The Dome of the Rock, the world\'s first great work of Islamic architecture, constructed in 691.
Minaret of the White Mosque in Ramla, constructed in 1318Arab architecture in the Umayyad and Mamluk periodsPalestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, beginning in 634 CE.[64] In 636, the Battle of Yarmouk during the Muslim conquest of the Levant marked the start of Muslim hegemony over the region, which became known as the military district of Jund Filastin within the province of Bilâd al-Shâm (Greater Syria).[65] In 661, with the Assassination of Ali, Muawiyah I became the Caliph of the Islamic world after being crowned in Jerusalem.[66] The Dome of the Rock, completed in 691, was the world\'s first great work of Islamic architecture.[67]
The majority of the population was Christian and was to remain so until the conquest of Saladin in 1187. The Muslim conquest apparently had little impact on social and administrative continuities for several decades.[68][xv][69][xvi] The word \'Arab\' at the time referred predominantly to Bedouin nomads, though Arab settlement is attested in the Judean highlands and near Jerusalem by the 5th century, and some tribes had converted to Christianity.[70] The local population engaged in farming, which was considered demeaning, and were called Nabaț, referring to Aramaic-speaking villagers. A ḥadīth, brought in the name of a Muslim freedman who settled in Palestine, ordered the Muslim Arabs not to settle in the villages, \"for he who aofferes in villages it is as if he aofferes in graves\".[71]
The Umayyads, who had spurred a strong economic resurgence in the area,[72] were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. Ramla became the administrative centre for the following centuries, while Tiberias became a thriving centre of Muslim scholarship.[73] From 878, Palestine was ruled from Egypt by semi-autonomous rulers for almost a century, beginning with the Turkish freeman Ahmad ibn Tulun, for whom both Jews and Christians prayed when he lay dying[74] and ending with the Ikhshidid rulers. Reverence for Jerusalem increased during this period, with many of the Egyptian rulers choosing to be buried there.[xvii] However, the later period became characterized by persecution of Christians as the threat from Byzantium grew.[75] The Fatimids, with a predominantly Berber army, conquered the region in 970, a date that marks the beginning of a period of unceasing warfare between numerous enemies, which destroyed Palestine, and in particular, devastating its Jewish population.[76] Between 1071 and 1073, Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire,[77] only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098.[78]
Crusader/Ayyuoffer period
The Hospitaller fortress in Acre was destroyed in 1291 and partially rebuilt in the 18th century.The Fatimids again lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099. The Crusaders set up[79] the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291).[80] Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until their defeat by Saladin\'s forces in 1187,[81] after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyuoffers,[81] except for the years 1229–1244 when Jerusalem and other areas were retaken[82] by the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem, by then ruled from Acre (1191–1291), but, despite seven further crusades, the Franks were no longer a significant power in the region.[83] The Fourth Crusade, which did not reach Palestine, led directly to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, dramatically reducing Christian influence throughout the region.[84]
Mamluk periodThe Mamluk Sultanate was created in Egypt as an indirect result of the Seventh Crusade.[85] The Mongol Empire reached Palestine for the first time in 1260, beginning with the Mongol raids into Palestine under Nestorian Christian general Kitbuqa, and reaching an apex at the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut, where they were pushed back by the Mamluks.[86]
Ottoman periodFurther information: History of Palestine § Ottoman periodIn 1486, hostilities broke out between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire in a battle for control over western Asia, and the Ottomans conquered Palestine in 1516.[87] Between the mid-16th and 17th centuries, a close-knit alliance of three local dynasties, the Ridwans of Gaza, the Turabays of al-Lajjun and the Farrukhs of Nablus, governed Palestine on behalf of the Porte (imperial Ottoman government).[88]The Khan al-Umdan, constructed in Acre in 1784, is the largest and best preserved caravanserai in the region.In the 18th century, the Zaydani clan under the leadership of Zahir al-Umar ruled large parts of Palestine autonomously[89] until the Ottomans were able to defeat them in their Galilee strongholds in 1775–76.[90] Zahir had turned the port city of Acre into a major regional power, partly fueled by his monopolization of the cotton and olive oil trade from Palestine to Europe. Acre\'s regional dominance was further elevated under Zahir\'s successor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar at the expense of Damascus.[91]
In 1830, on the eve of Muhammad Ali\'s invasion,[92] the Porte transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Acre. According to Silverburg, in regional and cultural terms this move was important for creating an Arab Palestine detached from greater Syria (bilad al-Sham).[93] According to Pappe, it was an attempt to reinforce the Syrian front in face of Muhammad Ali\'s invasion.[94] Two years later, Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Ali\'s Egypt,[92] but Egyptian rule was challenged in 1834 by a countrywide popular uprising against conscription and other measures considered intrusive by the population.[95] Its suppression devastated many of Palestine\'s villages and major towns.[96]
In 1840, Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations.[97] The death of Aqil Agha marked the last local challenge to Ottoman centralization in Palestine,[98] and beginning in the 1860s, Palestine underwent an acceleration in its socio-economic development, due to its incorporation into the global, and particularly European, economic pattern of growth. The beneficiaries of this process were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who emerged as a new layer within the Arab elite.[99] From 1880 large-scale Jewish immigration began, almost entirely from Europe, based on an explicitly Zionist ideology.[100][better source needed] There was also a revival of the Hebrew language and culture.[xviii]
Christian Zionism in the United Kingdom preceded its spread within the Jewish community.[101] The government of Great Britain publicly supported it during World War I with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.[102]
British Mandate periodMain article: Mandatory PalestineFurther information: Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, and United Nations Partition Plan for PalestinePalestine passport and Palestine coin. The Mandatory authorities agreed a compromise position regarding the Hebrew name: in English and Arabic the name was simply \"Palestine\" (\"فلسطين\"), but the Hebrew version \"(פלשתינה)\" also included the acronym \"(א״י)\" for Eretz Yisrael (Land of of Palestine 1942–1958 1–100,000 Topographical maps. Click on each blue link to see the individual original maps in high resolution.The British began their Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1915.[103] The war reached southern Palestine in 1917, progressing to Gaza and around Jerusalem by the end of the year.[103] The British secured Jerusalem in December 1917.[104] They moved into the Jordan valley in 1918 and a campaign by the Entente into northern Palestine led to victory at Megiddo in September.[104]
The British were formally awarded the mandate to govern the region in 1922.[105] The Arab Palestinians rioted in 1920, 1921, 1929, and revolted in 1936.[106] In 1947, following World War II and The Holocaust, the British Government announced its desire to terminate the Mandate, and the United Nations General Assembly adopted in November 1947 a Resolution 181(II) recommending partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.[107] A civil war began immediately after the Resolution\'s adoption. The State of Israel was declared in May 1948.[108]
Arab–Israeli conflictFurther information: History of Israel and History of the State of PalestineIn the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israel captured and incorporated a further 26% of the Mandate territory, Jordan captured the regions of Judea and Samaria,[109][xix][110] renaming it the \"West Bank\", while the Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt.[111][112] Following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, also known as al-Nakba, the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes were not allowed to return following the Lausanne Conference of 1949.[113]
In the course of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel captured the rest of Mandate Palestine from Jordan and Egypt, and began a policy of establishing Jewish settlements in those territories. From 1987 to 1993, the First Palestinian Intifada against Israel took place, which included the Declaration of the State of Palestine in 1988 and ended with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority.
In 2000, the Second Intifada (also called al-Aqsa Intifada) began, and Israel built a separation barrier. In the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, Israel withdrew all settlers and military presence from the Gaza Strip, but maintained military control of numerous aspects of the territory including its borders, air space and coast. Israel\'s ongoing military occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues to be the world\'s longest military occupation in modern times.[xx][xxi]
In 2008 Palestinian hikaye was inscribed to UNESCO\'s list of intangible cultural heritage; the first of four listings reflecting the significance of Palestinian culture globally.[124][125]
In November 2012, the status of Palestinian delegation in the United Nations was upgraded to non-member observer state as the State of period
Satellite image of the regionThe boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history.[xxiii][xxiv] The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah, the Dead Sea and River Jordan) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories.[129] At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period, territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the Arab Caliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and the northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun, while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq, which during the 9th century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filastin.[130]
The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to the coast north of Mount Carmel. Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt.[131] Pliny, writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was \"formerly called Palaestina\" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.[132]
Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, \"First Palestine\", and Palaestina Secunda, \"Second Palestine\"), have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn (\"Jordan\" or Jund al-Urdunn).[7]
Modern periodNineteenth-century sources refer to Palestine as extending from the sea to the caravan route, presumably the Hejaz-Damascus route east of the Jordan River valley.[133] Others refer to it as extending from the sea to the desert.[133] Prior to the Allied Powers victory in World War I and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, which created the British mandate in the Levant, most of the northern area of what is today Jordan formed part of the Ottoman Vilayet of Damascus (Syria), while the southern part of Jordan was part of the Vilayet of Hejaz.[134] What later became Mandatory Palestine was in late Ottoman times divided between the Vilayet of Beirut (Lebanon) and the Sanjak of Jerusalem.[29] The Zionist Organization provided its definition of the boundaries of Palestine in a statement to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.[135][136]
The British administered Mandatory Palestine after World War I, having promised to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. The modern definition of the region follows the boundaries of that entity, which were fixed in the North and East in 1920–23 by the British Mandate for Palestine (including the Transjordan memorandum) and the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement,[30] and on the South by following the 1906 Turco-Egyptian boundary agreement.[137][138]
Modern evolution of Palestinevte
1916–1922 various proposals: Three proposals for the post World War I administration of Palestine. The red line is the \"International Administration\" proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, the dashed blue line is the 1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference, and the thin blue line refers to the final borders of the 1923–48 Mandatory Palestine.
1937 British proposal: The first official proposal for partition, published in 1937 by the Peel Commission. An ongoing British Mandate was proposed to keep \"the sanctity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem\", in the form of an enclave from Jerusalem to Jaffa, including Lydda and Ramle.
1947 UN proposal: Proposal per the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), 1947), prior to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The proposal included a Corpus Separatum for Jerusalem, extraterritorial crossroads between the non-contiguous areas, and Jaffa as an Arab exclave.
1947 Jewish private land ownership: Jewish-owned lands in Mandatory Palestine as of 1947 in blue, constituting 7.4% of the total land area, of which more than half was held by the JNF and PICA. White is either public land or Palestinian-Arab-owned lands including related religious trusts.
1949 armistice lines: The Jordanian-annexed West Bank (light green) and Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip (dark green), after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, showing 1949 armistice lines.
1967 territorial changes: During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, together with the Sinai Peninsula (later traded for peace after the Yom Kippur War). In 1980–81 Israel annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Neither Israel\'s annexation nor the PLO claim over East Jerusalem gained international recognition.
1995 Oslo II Accord: Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian National Authority was created to provide a Palestinian interim self-government in the West Bank and the interior of the Gaza Strip. Its second phase envisioned \"Palestinian enclaves\".
2005–present: After the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and clashes between the two main Palestinian parties following the Hamas electoral victory, two separate executive governments took control in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
Ethnic majority by settlement (present): The map indicates the ethnic majority of settlements (cities, villages and other communities).Current usageFurther information: Palestinian territories, State of Palestine, Palestinian National Authority, and Palestinian enclavesSee also: Borders of IsraelThe region of Palestine is the eponym for the Palestinian people and the culture of Palestine, both of which are defined as relating to the whole historical region, usually defined as the localities within the border of Mandatory Palestine. The 1968 Palestinian National Covenant described Palestine as the \"homeland of the Arab Palestinian people\", with \"the boundaries it had during the British Mandate\".[139]
However, since the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the term State of Palestine refers only to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This discrepancy was described by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as a negotiated concession in a September 2011 speech to the United Nations: \"... we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.\"[140]
The term Palestine is also sometimes used in a limited sense to refer to the parts of the Palestinian territories currently under the administrative control of the Palestinian National Authority, a quasi-governmental entity which governs parts of the State of Palestine under the terms of the Oslo of administration and sovereignty in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Golan HeightsThis box: viewtalkeditArea Administered by Recognition of governing authority Sovereignty claimed by Recognition of claimGaza Strip Palestinian National Authority (de jure) Controlled by Hamas (de facto) Witnesses to the Oslo II Accord State of Palestine 139 UN member statesWest Bank Palestinian enclaves (Areas A and B) Palestinian National Authority and Israeli militaryArea C Israeli enclave law (Israeli settlements) and Israeli military (Palestinians under Israeli occupation)East Jerusalem Israeli administration Honduras, Guatemala, Nauru, and the United States China, RussiaWest Jerusalem Russia, Czech Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, Nauru, and the United States United Nations as an international city along with East Jerusalem Various UN member states and the European Union; joint sovereignty also widely supportedGolan Heights United States Syria All UN member states except the United StatesIsrael (proper) 164 UN member states Israel 164 UN member states
DemographicsMain article: Demographic history of PalestineEarly demographicsYear Jews Christians Muslims TotalFirst half 1st century CE Majority – – ~2,5005th century Minority Majority – >1st CEnd 12th century Minority Minority Majority >22514th century before Black Death Minority Minority Majority 22514th century after Black Death Minority Minority Majority 150Historical population table compiled by Sergio DellaPergola.[141] Figures in thousands.Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two methods – censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settlement.
The Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE saw a major shift in the population of Palestine. The sheer scale and scope of the overall destruction has been described by Dio Cassius in his Roman History, where he notes that Roman war operations in the country had left some 580,000 Jews dead, with many more dying of hunger and disease, while 50 of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. \"Thus,\" writes Dio Cassius, \"nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate.\"[142][143]
According to Israeli archaeologists Magen Broshi and Yigal Shiloh, the population of ancient Palestine did not exceed one million.[xxvii][xxviii] By 300 CE, Christianity had spread so significantly that Jews comprised only a quarter of the population.[xxix]
Late Ottoman and British Mandate periodsIn a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman rule of Palestine, Bernard Lewis reports:
[T]he first half century of Ottoman rule brought a sharp increase in population. The towns grew rapidly, villages became larger and more numerous, and there was an extensive development of agriculture, industry, and trade. The two last were certainly helped to no small extent by the influx of Spanish and other Western Jews.
From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.[144]
Year Jews Christians Muslims Total1533–1539 5 6 145 1571690–1691 2 11 219 2321800 7 22 246 2751890 43 57 432 5321914 94 70 525 6891922 84 71 589 7521931 175 89 760 1,0331947 630 143 1,181 1,970Historical population table compiled by Sergio DellaPergola.[141] Figures in thousands.According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 was about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews.[145]
According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of whom 94% were Arabs.[146] In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.[147] McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882; 737,389 in 1914; 725,507 in 1922; 880,746 in 1931; and 1,339,763 in 1946.[148]
In 1920, the League of Nations\' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine described the 700,000 people living in Palestine as follows:[149]Of these, 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850, there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years, a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.
Current demographicsSee also: Demographics of Israel and Demographics of the Palestinian territoriesAccording to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2015, the total population of Israel was 8.5 million people, of which 75% were Jews, 21% Arabs, and 4% \"others\".[150] Of the Jewish group, 76% were Sabras (born in Israel); the rest were olim (immigrants)—16% from Europe, the former Soviet republics, and the Americas, and 8% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.[151]
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics evaluations, in 2015 the Palestinian population of the West Bank was approximately 2.9 million and that of the Gaza Strip was 1.8 million.[152] Gaza\'s population is expected to increase to 2.1 million people in 2020, leading to a density of more than 5,800 people per square kilometre.[153]
Both Israeli and Palestinian statistics include Arab residents of East Jerusalem in their reports.[154][better source needed] According to these estimates the total population in the region of Palestine, as defined as Israel and the Palestinian territories, stands approximately 12.8 million.[citation needed]
Term of biblical origin. After the war, the term \"She’arit Hapleta\" was used torefer to the Jewish survivors and refugees who refused to begin life again inHolocaust-devastated Europe -- especially in eastern Europe, which wasinfected with anti-Semitism. Most of them gathered in the DP camps andorganized and demanded to leave Europe, mainly in order to immigrate toPalestine. In this sense, the term \"She’arit Hapleta\" describes a group thatdistinguished itself from the remnants of European Jewry after the war. Theterm is usually used in reference to the period after the war from 1945 to thedismantling of the Central Committee of She’arit Hapleta in December 1950.After the Allies\' victory over Germany in May 1945, there were about eightmillion DPs in Europe, including 200,000 Jews: survivors of the concentrationcamps, the death camps and the death marches. Several thousand Jewswere in a state of collapse at liberation and died from weakness, disease andthe shock of liberation. Thousands returned to their lands of origin asrepatriates, or travelled to southern Europe in order to immigrate to Palestine.About 50,000 were left, gathered in DP camps in the occupied zones inGermany and Austria. They were joined by many Jewish refugees who arrivedfrom eastern Europe, particularly Poland, with the help of the Berichaorganization; there were also survivors, repatriates, who returned to the west,and refugees from Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. It has beenestimated that the number of Jewish DPs stood at 250,000 in 1946: 185,000of them were living in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and about 20,000 in Italy.Most of the members of She’arit Hapleta came from eastern Europe, whilemost of the survivors from western countries returned to their countries oforigin and renewed their lives there.
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