Between memory and history: the evolution of Israeli historiography of the Holocaust, 1945-1961

Between Memory and History: The Evolution of Israeli Historiography of the Holocaust, 1945–1961 Orna Kenan

PETER LANG

Between Memory and History

Studies in Modern European History

Frank J. Coppa General Editor Vol. 49

PETER LANG

New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Orna Kenan

Between Memory and History The Evolution of Israeli Historiography of the Holocaust, 1945–1961

PETER LANG

New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kenan, Orna. Between memory and history: the evolution of Israeli historiography of the Holocaust, 1945–1961 / Orna Kenan. p. cm. — (Studies in modern European history; vol. 49) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Historiography. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Public opinion. 3. Public opinion—Israel. 4. Memory. 5. Yad òva-shem, rashut ha-zikaron la-Sho’ah òvela-gevurah. I. Title. D804.348.K46 2003 940.53'18'07205694—dc21 2003006208 ISBN 0-8204-5805-8 ISSN 0893-6897

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2003 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 275 Seventh Avenue, 28th Floor, New York, NY 10001 www.peterlangusa.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America

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To my sons, Gil and Amir () &'

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Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii Part One: Different Perceptions of the Holocaust: The Yishuv, the Survivors and the Jewish Fighters— during and following the War Years Chapter One: In the Yishuv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Chapter Two: The Survivors and the Jewish Fighters in the DP Camps, 1945–1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Part Two: Politics of Memory and Historiography Chapter Three: The Israeli Representation of the Holocaust in the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Chapter Four: Israel’s “Pantheon” and the “Silence” of the Survivors during the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Chapter Five: The Turning Point, 1961 to the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137

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Acknowledgments

I owe a great intellectual debt to my mentor and dear friend, Saul Friedländer. Without his attentive guidance and support, this work would not have been accomplished. I would also like thank my former teachers, David N. Myers and Arnold J. Band of UCLA, for their valuable insights and years of intellectual inspiration. I am grateful for the fellowship support and research grants I received from the Monkarsh Foundation, the history department at UCLA and, most of all, the 1939 Club. A special salute to the members of the 1939 Club, for their dedicated work in keeping the memory and lessons of the Holocaust alive. This work benefitted immensely from the generous assistance and good advice I received in Israel’s many historical archives. My thanks go especially to the librarians and archivists at the Jewish National and University Library Archives, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish people, the Yad Vashem Archives and the archive at Beit Lohamei Hagetaot. I have also greatly profited from the energizing atmosphere in the reading rooms of the National and University library in Jerusalem and of the Wiener Library at Tel Aviv University. In Israel, I am also greatly indebted to Ms. Ella Klein for doing a wonderful job in transliterating and translating documents and texts from Yiddish to English. A special thanks to my parents, Moshe and Ahuva Meron. Their love and support is vital to everything that I do. My deepest gratitude is directed to my sons, Gil and Amir, my towers of strength. Both have accompanied me throughout the difficult moments of writing. It is to them that I dedicate this work.

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Preface By Saul Friedländer Orna Kenan’s study investigates a new domain in the historiography of the Holocaust. It starts with the early development of memorialization and historiography among its direct victims, in the camps of post-war Europe, then in the new state of Israel during the years prior to the Eichmann Trial; the study closes with an interpretation of later developments that carry the analysis to the present. This work achieves a coherent synthesis between the earliest shaping of a collective memory of the Shoah and the roots of its historiography. It is among the surviving remnants in the Displaced persons (DP) camps that we can trace both the initial efforts at memorialization and the basis for a historiography of sorts, three years before the creation of the state of Israel. Within this context, the author underscores a dichotomy which has never been stressed so forcefully and in such detail: the opposition between the self perception of the “ordinary” survivors and that of a self-appointed elite of survivors from the ghetto revolts and the armed partisan groups. Before addressing her initial major theme, the author evokes its silent background, a paradoxical situation which developed in the Yishuv during the Shoah and immediately afterwards: the almost complete silence regarding the events in Europe of the leading figures of Jewish historical science, all belonging to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Thus, we are confronted both with the tragic inability of leading intellectuals in Jewish Palestine to address the Shoah, on the one hand, and the determination, on the other, among broken remnants gathered in the camps of liberated Europe to record every possible detail of the immediate past.

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The main emphasis of Orna Kenan’s study is upon the evolution of these various strands of early memorialization and historiography under the new conditions created by the existence of the state of Israel and the endeavor, within this new context, to create an “official” representation of events which in the minds of many did not tally with the dominant Zionist ideology of the 1950s. The political struggle for the “correct memory” and the “correct historiography” within the official institutions destined to foster them and also between these institutions and competing centers in Israel and in the Diaspora is a particularly fascinating part of Orna Kenan’s study. The complexity of the issue was reinforced by the fact that these politics of memory and historical writing became enmeshed with powerful traditions in Jewish historiography, opposing a Western analytic school and an East-European tradition of chronicling that mainly arose during World War One and immediately afterwards. All through, the author shows how the evolution of the memorialization and the historiography of the Shoah in Israel were intimately related to the ideological climate of the new state and, specifically, to the central tenet of Zionism: the negation of Exile. Most of this dominant trend started to change with the Eichmann Trial. Nonetheless, some of the most basic inhibitions regarding the writing of the history of the Jewish catastrophe among professional historians remained, as an echo of the attitude adopted by the scholars of the “Jerusalem School” in the late 1930s and the 1940s. The last and equally important part of Orna Kenan’s study addresses the transformation undergone by the Israeli approach to the Shoah from the 1970s onwards. A generational change among the leading historians of these years may have been of the essence, but the author shows that deeper forces were involved, such as the decline of the traditional Zionist ideology and with it the negation of Exile. It is in this new context that Israeli historiography of the Shoah came into its own. It has been mentioned at times that, for opposed reasons, followed partly similar stages in the land of the perpetrators and in that of the victims. It is not the least aspect of this paradox that the present study is being published at the verysame time when the first candid and thoroughly documented history of the early phase of the central research institute established in Munich after the war to study the Nazi period, is coming to light.

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Introduction

Between History and Memory: The “Twilight Zone” In the past two decades or so, the relations between historical understanding and collective memory have received considerable attention. Some historians, such as Pierre Nora and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, who based their conceptual frameworks upon Maurice Halbwachs’s path-breaking La Mémoire Collective (1941),1 contend that there exists an unbridgeable gap between historiography and memory.2 Collective memory, according to them, belonged to pre-modern societies where tradition was strong and memory was a social practice, whereas the discipline of history, emerging in the nineteenth century, belonged to modern society in which tradition declined and relations to the past were cut off by the “acceleration of history.”3 According to Yerushalmi, it was collective memory which sustained the Jews’ understanding of the past in the pre-modern period. Although the Bible abounds with historical narratives, once the canon was established, Jewish historical consciousness remained “locked” between the remembered biblical past and the anticipated messianic redemption: “For the rabbis the Bible was not only a repository of past history, but a revealed pattern of the whole of history, and they had learned their scriptures well...Above all, they had learned from the Bible that the true pulse of history often beat beneath its manifest surfaces, an invisible history that was more real than what the world, deceived by the more strident outward rhythms of power, could recognize.”4 Apart from a few exceptions, such as “Yosiphon” in the tenth centu-

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ry and the spate of historical chroniclers in the sixteenth century, from the second to the mid-nineteenth century the biblical narrative had yielded a mythical memory that could serve all future events. Every enemy was a manifestation of Amalek; every persecution an echo of the destruction of the Temple. According to Yerushalmi, the ruptures in Jewish collective memory, brought about by the erosion in faith in the modern era, cannot be substituted by critical historical scholarship. This is because “Memory and modern historiography, by virtue of their nature, stand in radically different relations to the past.”5 While collective memory is selective, emotional and pedagogical, continuously changing in response to society’s shifting needs, historiography, the product of a scholarly research, is essentially detached from the constraints of the immediate present.6 Other historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Amos Funkenstein, do not subscribe to this sharp division between history and memory, mainly as far as modern history is concerned.7 Hobsbawm, for example, recognizes a “twilight zone” between history and memory—“between the past as a generalized record which is open to relatively dispassionate inspection, and the past as part of, or background to one’s own life.”8 Although critical historical scholarship is bound by rules of evidence and verification, the historian, contends Funkenstein in agreement with Hobsbawm, does not write in a vacuum; rather, his story often reflects the collective historical consciousness shared by the society within which he lives.9 The nineteenth century, for example, saw the professionalization of history; yet even the most professional studies clearly reflected the identity problems of the nation state and its societal aspirations. Hence, for instance, “de Tocqueville’s attempt to prove the continuum between the ancien regime and the [French] Revolution (and thus to restore the Revolution to French history)—or...even, the meta-theoretical debate over the limits and unique means of cognition of the humanities—empathetic ‘understanding’ as opposed to causal-rational ‘explanation’—also reflected the assumption that only a national can write the history of his nation faithfully.”10 The interaction between memory and historical writing in shaping Israel’s historiography of the Holocaust period is another case in point. The destruction of a major part of European Jewry, followed shortly thereafter by the establishment of the state of Israel, started an ongoing process of engagement between a past that continues to influence the life and identity of the nation and a present in which the nation’s changing sense of self leads to successive transformations in the perception of that past. In this process, historical narration and collective memory often seem interwoven. Indeed, as we shall see, for each changing phase in the memory

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of the Holocaust, a related move in its historiography also took place. () In Eretz Yisrael as well as throughout the West, during the two decades following the war, professional historians—whether they were Jewish historians or not—did not address the history of the Jewish catastrophe in Europe. If we take the most illustrious Jewish historians of the 1940s, such as Felix Gilbert, Hans Rosenberg, Lewis Namier, Eugen Taeubler (in the Anglo-Saxon world), and, in Jerusalem, Joseph Klausner, Yitzhak Baer, Gershom Scholem and even Ben-Zion Dinur, who served in the 1950s as Chairman of Yad Vashem, the newly created Israeli institution devoted to Holocaust research and commemoration, none of them turned to the history of the Shoah.11 It is true that most of these historians were not specialists of the history of the twentieth century, but several among them turned to twentieth century history and even to the history of Nazi policies in the wake of the Second World War (Felix Gilbert and Lewis Namier, for example).12 No one, however, as already mentioned, thought of dealing with the extermination of the Jews of Europe.13 This “global” reticence is a question that has never been explored and that demands an inquiry in itself. In the next few paragraphs I shall examine possible explanations for the silence of the scholars in Israel, primarily of the founding generation of professional Jewish historical research in Palestine, members of the so-called “Jerusalem School”—Joseph Klausner, Yitzhak Baer, Gershom Scholem and Ben-Zion Dinur—all of whom emigrated to Palestine from Eastern and Central Europe in the second and third decades of this century out of a deep Zionist commitment14 and all of whom held positions at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and dealt with Jewish history or related fields of study. The Silence of Post-War Historiography The fact that before the late 1960s the complex history of the Holocaust received but a meager representation in Israel’s intellectual discourse was likely the result of the close proximity in time to the event itself. The emotional involvement was too strong, the correct perspective was missing and it was too early to research the period academically, even by an act of will.15 As the Jewish historian Salo W. Baron remarked in 1960: “A generation that has gone through that extraordinary traumatic experience cannot completely divorce itself from its own painful recollections and look upon the Holocaust from an Archimedean standpoint outside its own turbulent arena.”16 In his article, “Judaic Studies” (1961), Gershom Scholem, the

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Jerusalem scholar of Jewish mysticism, concurred: We are still incapable—due to the short distance in time between us and those events—to understand the significance of all that we have lived through and suffered, to grasp it in the intellectual and scientific sense. It is simply impossible yet to draw conclusions. When in 1492 came the great holocaust of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and suddenly one of the greatest, most thriving, most spiritually important branches of the Jewish tree of life was cut off, the people needed a long time until they were able to reach a true assessment, to confront what had happened to them. In the 16th century it took two generations until they reached this stage, and certainly it will not be much different this time. I don’t believe that we, the generation who lived through this experience,...that we are already capable today of drawing conclusions. But the impact of all that has happened, the image of the Holocaust will, of necessity, dominate the agenda of Jewish studies...17

In addition to the proximity of the trauma, it may be possible to claim that, for the Jerusalem scholars, the lack of critical historical study of the Holocaust period may have other explanations that have to do with their specific ideological/intellectual evolution. After a period of ambiguity in which the aspirations for a Zionist-oriented historiography were “weighed” against European-Jewish tradition (which imposed a pattern of continuity), the aim of Israeli historiography became the revival of a national identity within the context of Zionist ideology. Naturally, each of the historians under consideration expressed the influence of Zionism on his research in a different way according to his individual concerns, interests and sensibilities as well as the social, cultural and intellectual milieu from which he came. However, the basic tenet of Zionist ideology, namely, that there always has been a Jewish nation and that only through its return to its ancient homeland could this nation overcome the debilitating physical and spiritual constraints that marked Jewish existence in exile, became the basic assumption in the scholars’ writings of Jewish history.18 As for antisemitism, despite it being the major argument in favor of the Zionist solution to the “Jewish Question,” its study was not, in and of itself, the focus of these scholars’ historical investigations. This may have been a consequence of their rather simplistic/nationalistic view of the phenomenon as a mere reflection of a certain historical situation: the Jewish exilic condition, that would disappear with the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state.19 It is not surprising, therefore, that the Jewish catastrophe found little resonance in their writings. For the most part, the Holocaust was interjected, in their mainly programmatic essays and popular articles, into their Zionist outline of Jewish history and presented as undisputed proof of its validity.20

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For example, like his colleagues at the Hebrew University, Joseph Klausner’s writings during the war years expressed his steadfast belief in the Zionist way as the only solution to the “Jewish Question,” yet avoided any direct analysis or discussion of the unfolding tragedy as such. Klausner felt most deeply that the young people of his own day needed the inspiration of the noble past and, therefore, wrote more about heroism than about suffering. His view was based on the premise that “we are permitted, even obligated [emphasis in the original], to probe into history for what is similar and almost equal in all times, lands, and circumstances...For there is no doubt: he who writes the history of the past writes, at the same time, the history of his present.”21 And Klausner’s present “dictated” the celebration of the era of ancient Israel’s struggle to achieve sovereignty over Palestine, an era which had the most to say to his own generation.22 And “what was the hope of the [Hasmoneans] rebels?...There are moments in history in which the nation does not vacillate but rules that it is better to die as a human being than to live as a dog.”23 The relation of Klausner’s words, published in the Revisionists’ paper, Herut, in December 1945, to the recent catastrophe and to the ongoing struggle to achieve sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael, was clear. Given the role attributed by Klausner to the writing of history, it is not surprising that he chose to devote his time and energy during the war years to rewriting and updating The History of the Second Temple, a five volume series, which he first published as The History of Israel in Odessa in 1909–1924/25.24 Although, during the war, he did join a short-lived, small, spontaneous protest group of intellectuals who called themselves Al Domi (“do not keep silent”), the few articles devoted to the unfolding tragedy in Europe were written by Klausner with the intention of providing explicit Zionist lessons. In “The Balance of Accounts” (1942), for example, Klausner dealt with the question of the uniqueness of the present Jewish situation in Europe. Klausner, who viewed antisemitism as an inevitable part of life in exile, argued, that the current Jewish catastrophe was no exception but an extreme manifestation of antisemitism. “There is indeed hardly one peaceful period of ten years in the entire history of Jewish exile. The mass murder of Jewry and the letting of the blood of its individual members have become the common order of its daily life. The mass butchery of the Crusades and the mobs of Chmelniecki (1648) were merely among the most prominent episodes in Jewish history but were far from being exceptional; they were the rule rather than the exception to it.” The current venom of antisemitism, disseminated by the Germans, “will not disappear with the end of the war” because “thousands of years of wandering have

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convinced us of the truth of the Biblical statement: ‘But amongst these nations thou shalt find no peace’ (Deuteronomy, xxiii, 65).”25 According to Yitzhak Baer too, the source of the unfolding tragedy of European Jewry remained, as in previous epochs, the Israelites’ exilic condition. The refusal of the majority of European Jewry, despite their increasingly grave situation following the Nazi rise to power, to draw the necessary (Zionist) conclusion frustrated Baer, especially after he visited Germany in the summer of 1933 and again in the summer of 1938. The Jerusalem scholar felt particularly distraught after meeting with relatives and friends, especially his aunt, the wife of the German-Jewish philosopher, Hermann Dessau, who refused to consider leaving Germany.26 Baer expressed his growing anguish in his work, Galut (Exile), first published in German in 1936. In the introduction to the Hebrew version in the 1950s, Baer acknowledged his overwrought state of mind while writing the book: “I wrote this little work of mine in a state of emotional turmoil, although, at the time, I could not imagine the events to come and the eventual destruction of millions of our people by the German Nazis.”27 Unlike his previous works, marked by the author’s mastery of historical research and of the sources, Galut is characterized by its brevity and lack of footnotes. It seems as if Baer was in a haste to finish his work in time, with the hope that its central message: the “enormous tragedy of the Galut situation”28 may deepen the historical and national consciousness of European and especially German Jewry and encourage them and western European leaders to take an active stance toward redemption (from Galut) which, as he contended, especially at this moment in history, is an absolute necessity: There was a short period when the Zionist could feel himself a citizen of two countries...Now that the Jews have been denied the right to feel at home in Europe, it is the duty of the European nations to redeem the injustice committed by their spiritual and physical ancestors by assisting the Jews in the task of reclaiming Palestine and by recognizing the right of the Jews to the land of their fathers.29

Galut examines the idea of Exile among Jewish and some antisemitic authors from the Hellenistic era to the early modern period. Noting the historical and psychological circumstances in which leading explanations for the concept of Galut emerged, Baer distinguished between Jewish authors who interpreted and sought to transcend the tragedy of exile, such as Yehudah Ha-Levi, and Jewish skeptics, particularly of the early modern period, such as Baruch Spinoza. Baer’s harshest words were reserved for the assimilationists’ explanations of Galut in the modern period: All modern views of the Galut, from whatever orientation they arise, are inade-

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quate: they are unhistorical; they confuse cause and effect; they project the nineteenth century into the past...This is true equally of the anti-Semitic conception of the Galut as a symbol of political decay and general disintegration and exploitation and of the assimilationist idea that the Galut serves as an instrument for progress and the spread of culture...All modern interpretations of the Galut fail to do justice to the enormous tragedy of the Galut situation and to the religious power of the old ideas that centered around it....The Galut has returned to its starting point. It remains what it always was: political servitude, which must be abolished completely.30

Baer concluded his book with a quotation (with which he obviously identified) from the great sixteenth-century Rabbi Judah Liwa ben Bezalel of Prague (“Maharal”): For the Galut is the abolition of God’s order. God gave to every nation its place, and to the Jews he gave Palestine. The Galut means that the Jews have left their natural place...The dispersion of Israel among the nations is unnatural. Since the Jews manifest a national unity, even in a higher sense than the other nations, it is necessary that they return to a state of actual unity. Nor is it in accord with the order of nature that one nation should be enslaved by the others, for God made each nation for itself. Thus, by natural law, the Galut cannot last forever.31

Despite his sincere concern with the plight of his brethren in Europe, all in all Baer’s view of antisemitism and, following the war, of the Holocaust, as a natural manifestation of Jewish life in exile, did not change. Antisemitism constituted a major part of Jewish history in exile but did not pose an intellectual challenge. For Baer, who tended to emphasize the immanent factor in Jewish history, exile and antisemitism were seen as aberrations, external components, which twisted the path of Jewish history. Now, following the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel, Jewish history was returning to its due course.32 Hence Baer’s harsh criticism of his student and later colleague, Shmuel Ettinger, for his absorption, in the 1960s, in the study of antisemitism. He would have preferred Ettinger to deal with the internal life of the Jews, meaning, with the essential, and not with an external phenomenon such as antisemitism that was necessarily marginal, from his point of view.33 As has been noted by Ettinger himself, Baer’s and the other Jerusalem historians’ often bitter and sharp indictment of their contemporaries for not doing enough to save European Jewry was more an expression of searing pain in the face of the immense catastrophe and loss and an attempt at hasty soul-searching than a sober, systematic analysis.34 Like the other Jerusalem scholars, Ben-Zion Dinur found little reason to recall the Holocaust beyond its direct link to the Jews’ exilic condition or, conversely, to the new state. According to Dinur, Jewish communal life in the Diaspora followed a set pattern of destruction and regeneration. In

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his view, the Holocaust, despite its scope, was yet another expression of this dialectic process. Only with the establishment of a strong and sovereign Jewish state, he argued, would this pattern be broken.35 In his article “Diaspora Communities and their Destruction,” for example, which was written in 1944, under the immediate influence of the Holocaust, Dinur argued that the current Jewish catastrophe is not unique since hatred and destruction of the Jewish people have always been a part of European history: In the ancient Greco-Roman world, millions of Jews were presumably annihilated during the transition to the Middle Ages; later, Jews were persecuted and killed during the Black Death, in the Chmielnicki massacres, and, in the modern era, toward the end of World War I, in the Ukraine. According to Dinur, the Jewish catastrophe of our time, although more radical and systematic, is yet another manifestation of that murderous hatred of Jews.36 In a sketch from that period, “Five Beginnings from the Day of Mourning and Outcry,” Dinur introduces us to a group of discussants, which includes a philosopher, a Hassid, a historian, a writer and a soldier. The group debates whether the Holocaust was a unique phenomenon in Jewish history or a mere stage in the evolution of antisemitism, albeit an extreme one. The historian in the group clearly expresses Dinur’s opinion: Did this evil really come upon us suddenly? Have we not for generation after generation been sitting upon smoking volcanos, and every time the earth quakes beneath us and the volcanos spew forth flames which destroy us, we stand shocked and dumbfounded, because we shut our eyes to seeing and proclaim loudly again and again that the volcanos are long extinct, that it is not smoke issuing from their craters but rather the morning mists which cover them and are no danger at all? ‘Suddenly!’ Is this the first frightful holocaust which has come upon us in the thousands of years of our exile and wanderings? Did not great Jewish centers fall ‘suddenly’ and cover with their ruins hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews, old and young, women and children—who became as if they had never been? Did not these centers, by their fall, seal the chapter off of the life’s works and soulful tribulations of tens of Jewish generations who entombed their bodies and souls in the walls of ‘Pithom and Ramses’ throughout the world?...37

Even long after the magnitude of the Jewish catastrophe in Europe had been fully realized, Dinur’s views remained intact. In a memorial service, which took place on the eve of the “Day of Destruction”—(Nissan 27, 1955)—in the Martyrs’ Forest in the Judean Hills, he stated: “It is our duty to remember the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust...which is that Exile is not only a misfortune and adversity but also is a transgression and a sin. ‘Exile’ and ‘destruction’ are not two separate categories for exile always includes destruction. We must continually, therefore, repeat to ourselves: a nation must not be dispersed and splintered or its factions will eventu-

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ally unite in a march of death.” 38 The sense of self-evidence, which characterized these scholars’ presentation of the Holocaust as an inevitable outcome of the Jewish exilic situation and of the return to Eretz Yisrael as the ultimate act of redemption was prevalent also in Gershom Scholem’s few references to the Shoah. “The great historical catastrophe of the Jewish people and redemption are inseparably connected, dialectically intermeshed,” Scholem wrote in “Israel and the Diaspora” (1969). “...‘Redemption’...always terminates in the restitution of the destroyed central focal point: a restitution drawing its strength not only from the intercession of a supernatural, divine power, but also from the depth of the catastrophe itself, from the experience of exile, which was the experience of Israel’s homelessness in the world of history.”39 In another article, Scholem clearly integrated the Holocaust and the rebirth of the state of Israel into his above mentioned “formula” of catastrophe and redemption in Jewish history: “...The establishment of the state of Israel,” Scholem wrote in 1961, “is, for now, the first positive consequence of the Shoah...Both events are, after all, two sides of one immense historical process.”40 On the emotional/ideological level, a deep sense of guilt and shame at their inability to come to the aid of European Jewry may have contributed to the Jerusalem scholars’ sustained silence. Although there was hardly a family which had not suffered some personal loss, the overall prevailing spirit in the Yishuv was that of normalcy: The Yishuv continued to invest its best energies in political-partisan problems and to allocate most of its meager resources to building a state.41 At the end of 1942, greatly shaken by the near annihilation of European Jewry and the Yishuv’s inaction, Dinur, like Klausner, joined and became an active member of Al-Domi. The group’s expressed purpose was to rouse the Yishuv and the free world to action against the Nazi menace. AlDomi consisted of no more than twenty intellectuals holding to diverse political and ideological perspectives, such as Fischel Schneerson, Joseph Klausner, Shmuel-Yosef Agnon, Martin Buber, Judah Leib Magnes, and others. The motivation for joining Al-Domi was evidently shock over reports of the unfolding Nazi genocide and a need to respond. Its objective was to incite the institutions of the organized Yishuv to act. During its two years of activity, Al-Domi’s many suggestions, such as a nationwide mourning— one day a week for a year, the establishment of an institute for propaganda to counter the effects of Germany’s Ministry of Propaganda, or the establishment of a central institution “that would deal exclusively with urgent rescue activities,” received little sympathy from the organized Yishuv.42

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That, beyond rhetoric and memorial assemblies, the Holocaust had not affected the Yishuv’s way of life frustrated and infuriated the Al Domi members. In 1945, Fischel Schneerson, a psychologist and one of the leaders of Al Domi, evaluate of the Yishuv’s behavior during those years. “There is a very paradoxical psychology at work here,” he observed. “We have here some mysterious power that lies behind our national consciousness and which does not allow us to observe the calamities we have experienced.” This, in his mind, is an “historic phenomenon,” in accordance with traditional Jewish behavior for coping with catastrophe: “...after a massacre there is day of fasting, [we set up] a pogrom relief committee, and then we go on with our business.”43 As an active member of the majority Mapai party,44 Dinur also voiced his criticism against the Yishuv’s apathy during those years in countless political forums, articles and radio interviews.45 Unlike Schneerson, however, Dinur blamed the Zionists’ failure to act upon their earlier observation and prediction of a looming catastrophe. “And who is to blame that the Holocaust had found us so unprepared?” charges Dinur in a lecture he gave at the Teachers’ Conference in 1945: We cannot, in my mind, find solace in the answer: Zionism predicted the destruction...and, therefore, should not be blamed because it was the Jews who paid no attention to her warnings. Zionism also laid the foundation for the rebuilding of the House of Israel that served, and is serving, as a refuge haven for the surviving remnants...And if rescue attempts were minimal, again, this is not Zionism’ fault but that of the Yishuv’s apathy, the weakness of its leaders...It seems to me, however, that there is nothing in these facts, which are in and of themselves true, to provide us with an answer. After all, although the vision was there the actions were not. Our guilt, therefore, lies in the fact that the rate of the Zionist realization never corresponded to the Zionist prognosis. This is a grievous historical sin...There is no doubt, that the judgement of history will be severe, just as its judgement will be harsh on everything that is being done in Eretz Yisrael today [emphases in the original].46

Despite their rhetoric and outcry, however, the Jerusalem scholars themselves could offer little practical and spiritual assistance. This awareness may have, eventually, evoked a “protective numbing,” or unconscious distancing.47 To this first generation of Zionist historians in Eretz Yisrael, who viewed themselves as the forerunners, the vanguard, whose main task was to prepare the Jewish people for its eternal salvation in the land of its fathers, the failure of Zionism in the face of the extermination of European Jewry meant an impossible confrontation with the basic tenets of their predominantly ideologically-dominated historiography. Dinur, for example, concluded the above mentioned 1945 lecture with the following solemn words: “We knew how to be the forerunners for the

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building of the land but we have not managed to be the pioneers in rescuing the nation” [emphases in the original].48 The Jerusalem scholars’ silence may have been further reinforced by their common German-educational background: Yitzhak Fritz Baer (1888–1980) was a graduate of Freiburg University; Ben-Zion Dinur (Dinaburg) (1884–1973), who was born in the Ukraine, graduated from the universities of Bern and Petrograd.49 Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), was educated at the University of Berlin; and Joseph Klausner (1874–1958), who was born in a little village near Vilna, was educated in Heidelberg. It is possible to assume that the Jerusalem scholars found it difficult to turn their backs completely on the German part of their intellectual heritage.50 The Holocaust placed them under paralyzing contrary pressures of empathy to the plight of their Jewish brethren, on the one hand, and loyalty to the German intellectual tradition, on the other. Indeed, what had happened in Europe was viewed by this group of scholars as a European rather than as a particularly German phenomenon. In “In the Absence of God” (1944), for example, Klausner explained the Germans’ unparalleled cruelty as a consequence of the general European revocation of God: From where comes this horrendous cruelty of the Germans? We are told that it comes from Nietzsche and his theory of the Super Man. “Yet Nietzsche, despite his objection to the ‘slave morality’ of the prophets and of Socrates, thought highly of the Jews as a nation, commended and praised the Holy Scripts of Israel as compared to the New Testament. And where is this positive influence on the Germans? I think, therefore, that the answer to the question (How can a civilized people commit such atrocities?) is different. The majority of the German people—and not only the Germans—were left without God; and in His absence everything is permissible, everything allowed51 [emphasis in the original].

If there is no God, Klausner contended, all is permissible because all is relative. The tragedy of our generation derives from this sophist view that everything is relative, that there is no absolute truth and there is no absolute justice. Indeed, for the Germans, the State and the Führer came to replace God; not only did they not forbid horrendous acts, they demanded them.52 Klausner’s colleagues at the Hebrew University concurred. Unlike Klausner, however, all found the seeds of the recent disaster in the optimistic illusions of the Age of Enlightenment and its consequence: Jewish emancipation. For example, the Holocaust had proven to Scholem his pre-war assertions that Jewish existence in the Diaspora was an existence that was based on the principle of accommodation and self-delusion on the Jewish part, and complete rejection of the Jew, and especially the “assimilated” Jew, on the part of the Gentiles. Scholem’s disdain for Jewish

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assimilation and accommodation was influenced by his own experiences as a German Jew. The bourgeois values of his parents’ generation, who believed that they had achieved a harmonic symbiosis with German culture and society, were based, he argued, on total self-delusion.53 “For it was precisely this desire on the part of the Jews to be absorbed by the Germans,” Scholem asserted in a lecture he delivered at the World Jewish Congress in Brussels in 1966, “that hatred understood as a destructive maneuver against the life of the German people.”54 Even in circles “where Germans ventured on a discussion with Jews in a humane spirit, such a discussion...was always based...on the progressive atomization of the Jews as a community in a state of dissolution.”55 Interestingly, and perhaps related to the above mentioned phenomenon, no German-Jew chose to pursue the history of the Holocaust as a subject of research during the immediate post-war period.56 With the establishment of historical commissions in the DP camps, whose explicit aim was “documentation per se, documentation to embrace all...historical features during the Nazi regime...”57, none of the surviving German Jews chose to enlist in this enterprise, a fact that drew sharp criticism from Jews of East-European background. “We, the Jews of Eastern Europe,” wrote Moshe Feigenbaum, a founder of the Central Historical Commission in the Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Munich and later a researcher at Yad Vashem, “initiated this historical activity in a foreign land, with no authorization as well as without any help from the remnants of German Jewry who exhibited no interest in this work...The Jewish community in Germany...did not share the dynamics that characterized the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. It was hard to imagine that German Jews, instilled with total obedience,...would, under the Nazi regime, especially in its final years, participate in conspiracy actions, hide or conceal written notes.”58 When the Central Historical Committee in Munich requested the members of the various Landsmanschaften in the DP camps to fill out a questionnaire as to their personal memories from before and during the war, the Committee received detailed answers from the various Polish and Lithuanian Jewish organizations. Although the questionnaire was especially translated into German in order to encourage German-speaking Jews to participate, not one completed questionnaire was returned by this group of survivors.59 Even the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) of Jews from Germany, founded in 1954 in Jerusalem, New York and London, set out to record Jewish life in Germany only up until the war years. In the introduction to the first volume of the Institute’s Yearbook (1956), the chairman of its board, Dr. Siegfried Moses, stated: “Primarily, but not exclusively, the Institute would

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like to concern itself with the history of German Jewry since the Emancipation. The factual events leading to the catastrophe under the Nazi regime, however, will not be included, as various other institutions have undertaken the collection and description of material on the murderous actions of the Nazis.”60 Indeed, during the first three decades of its existence, the LBI continued to follow this policy, publishing only studies that dealt with the inner development of German Jewry in the fields of philosophy, historiography, religion, science, economy and art. This conspicuous exclusion of the Holocaust period in its publications lasted up until the mid 1980s. Finally, the domination of Holocaust research in the state of Israel by East-European Jews, who came from a different intellectual tradition, may have deterred the Jerusalem scholars from participating in this enterprise.61 The survivors’ historiographical methods mainly followed the Dubnowian-Anskian tradition of the mass accumulation of primary sources, with the assumption that the gathered documents, once arranged according to a chronology of events, would “speak for themselves.” This popular tradition continued in underground conditions during the war years,62 in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Europe, and, later, was applied to the study of the Shoah also in the state of Israel.63 The Jerusalem scholars’ approach to the study of history was the inverse of that tradition. The accumulation of documentary and testimonial material, the stepping-stone of any historical work, served them as a means rather than as an end in itself. Their objective was not the accumulation of popular documents per se, but rather their reformulation, in adherence with their Zionist objectives, within the framework of critical scholarship. Even Dinur, who was intimately familiar with the work of documentary compilation from his days in Russia and was later engaged in his own work of Kinus of the history of Jews in the various European countries and in Palestine, continuously argued, in his role as chairman of Yad Vashem, for a greater emphasis on historical analysis rather than on the mere accumulation of historical documents, and for a greater cooperation between the Institute for Holocaust research at Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University.64 Gershom Scholem, who was a member of the World Council of Yad Vashem, made similar comments during the one recorded meeting of the Council in which he participated.65 Up until the late 1960s, however, the Jerusalem scholars’ suggestions fell on deaf ears. Given this reticence on the part of the Jerusalem historians to partake in the writing of the history of the Holocaust,66 the development of the early “historiography” of the Shoah has been largely determined by factors that are independent of any systematic historiographical endeavor: The early

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history of the Shoah was either written by survivors who became chroniclers and historians of sorts or by a few historians trained in pre-war Eastern Europe (mainly in Warsaw and in Vilna). Once these chroniclers and “historians” moved to Eretz Yisrael, the work started in the DP camps and other European frameworks found its major hold at Yad Vashem, the state created institute for the commemoration and study of the Holocaust period. At the state-run Yad Vashem, the early writing of the history of the Shoah was influenced by a common ideological ground: Zionism, with its specific relation to the diaspora and its particular vision of Jewish history from catastrophe to redemption. As we shall see, this ideological framework directly impinged upon the formation of a “dominant school” of history writing by the systematic exclusion of those researchers that did not fit the pre-established framework. In fact we will witness an extreme form of politics of memory and historiography during this early period. Although professional historiography was never directly involved in the early writing of the history of the Shoah, nonetheless, a series of interactions, “negotiations” and common endeavors between Yad Vashem and academic historiography evolved during these early years, mainly due to the influence in those various fields of Ben-Zion Dinur, who served in the 1950s as both Chairman of Yad Vashem and as Minister of Culture and Education. Following this early period, we witness the uncertain stages of the establishment of an increasingly professional historiography of the Shoah in Israel mainly via the study of modern antisemitism and its consequences (Jacob Katz, Shmuel Ettinger, Jacob Talmon). It is on this basis that a synthesis between the predominantly non-professional historical writing of the Shoah in the 1940s and the 1950s converges with the new professional studies just mentioned as well as with work done in the US and partly in various European countries and leads to an authentic Israeli historiography of the Shoah, from the mid-1960s onwards (Dov Kulka, Yehuda Bauer, Yisrael Gutman, Uriel Tal, Saul Friedländer and others). This study will be divided into three main interrelated parts. In the first part (chapters one and two), I shall analyze the Zionist-oriented perception of the Holocaust in the Yishuv, during and following the war years and up until the early 1950s. I shall also focus on the intertwining of memory and history in the survivors’ representation of the Shoah in the DP camps, from 1945 to 1948: I shall, first, examine the survivors’ initial attempts at memorializing the recent catastrophe. These attempts, as we shall see, compelled them, at the same time, to face and confront the agonizing

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memories of their recent past. I will then discuss the beginning of their historical writings and the nature of the historical commissions which sprang throughout the Displaced Persons (DP) camps. Finally, I shall distinguish between the collective memory of the majority of survivors and the much smaller group of Jewish fighters. Besides the shared harrowing memory, the latter’s ideological orientation and distinct collective experience during the war, evolved, in time, into a collective memory markedly different from that harbored by the majority of survivors. In the second part of my work (chapters three and four), I shall examine the politics of Israeli historiography and memory of the Holocaust period during the 1950s: the establishment of Yad Vashem and its struggle for hegemony over the memory and historiography of the Shoah; the attacks on Mapai, the ruling socialist party, by parties in the opposition, from the left and from the right, who latched on to the Holocaust as a convenient issue on which to attack the establishment. I shall also observe the reactions and activities during that period of both groups of survivors: the Jewish fighters and the “ordinary” survivors—the unorganized majority of survivors who, unlike the Jewish fighters, did not belong to any ideological movements (Zionist or non-Zionist) in Europe before and during the war. In the final part (chapter five), I will offer a brief overview of the evolution and changes that occurred in Israeli historiography of the Holocaust, following the Eichmann trial to the present.

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Different Perceptions of the Holocaust: the Yishuv, the Survivors and the Jewish Fighters—during and following the War Years

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The following two chapters will lay out the groundwork for understanding the various and distinct memories of the Holocaust among the three groups: the Yishuv, Jewish fighters and “ordinary” survivors, who, from the early 1950s onwards, would find themselves living side by side in the State of Israel. Their often competing memories, the result of their different backgrounds and experiences, would (as we shall see in chapter 5), from the 1960s onwards, converge and create a synthesis that would constitute a distinct Israeli interpretation of the Holocaust period. As this and following chapters will demonstrate, Zionist collective memory in the Yishuv and, later, in the state of Israel represented the political elite’s construction of the past, serving its ideological goals and promoting its political agenda. Inspired by the nationalist credo that called for a revival of national culture and life in the ancient Jewish homeland, the Yishuv constructed a negative image of the exilic past, an image which served as a necessary counter-model to the two national periods, the one experienced in the pre-exilic period, in biblical times, and the one beginning to take shape in Eretz Yisrael. The negative perception of Exile not only repudiated life in exile but often the people who live in the Diaspora. According to this view, life in Exile turned the Jews into submissive, acquiescent and cowardly people. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the socialist Zionist leader who later became Israel’s second President, expressed the view of many in the Yishuv when he stated: “The spirit of heroism and courage disappeared in the Jewish ghetto.” Instead, he argued, the Jews adapted “a sharp mind..., submissiveness toward others...cowardice and timidity in their relation with neighbors and rulers.” This Jewish behavior, “resulted in a tendency to rely on miracles, since the Jews lacked both confidence or self-motivation.”1 Yet, although Zionist collective memory emphasized a wide “qualitative” gap between the “new” Jews in Eretz Yisrael and the exilic Jews, it presented the former as the transformation of the latter. That is, although the Zionists accentuated their disassociation from Jewish tradition, they relied on this tradition as their legitimizing framework. As the historian Shmuel Almog points out, a complete break with the Jewish tradition would have undermined the Zionist claim for historical continuity between the national period in Antiquity and the present, between the ancient Hebrews and contemporary Jews.2 The Yishuv’s approach to Exile and to the Jews living in the Diaspora became more salient during and following the Holocaust.3 Indeed, it was only with the Holocaust, due to its magnitude, that Zionism was able to draw a clear line indicating the end of viable life in exile: The fate of European Jewry sealed the period of persecution and repression and val-

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idated the Zionist contention in favor of a Jewish national life in Eretz Yisrael.4 The survivors, especially the “ordinary” survivors’ memory, constituted a countermemory,5 one that stood in oppositional and subversive relation to the hegemonic Zionist memory. Although it was limited to a single past event, it was highly subversive precisely because the implication of its claim tended to go beyond the memory of the Jewish catastrophe, challenging, in fact, the dominant Zionist memory in general. The Zionists, as mentioned before, held to an activist approach to history, deliberately using Exile and its spirit as counter-model to the construction of a new Hebrew identity. Hence, for example, for them, the concept of “martyrdom,” upheld by the survivors, represented the exilic Jews’ failure to actively defend themselves.6 As we shall see, for the most part, the much smaller group of Jewish fighters fueled and often surpassed the Yishuv’s harsh criticism of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. In fact, it was this group of young men and women, many of whom were associated with non-Zionist and Zionist movements before the outbreak of the war, who first used the Biblical term for martyrdom “like sheep to the slaughter,” turning it into a contemptuous epithet for the “ordinary” Jews, whom they accused of going to death without resisting.7 At the same time, they also criticized the Yishuv leadership for its conspicuous lack of empathy to the Jews in occupied Europe as a whole, exemplified by the Yishuv’s failure to come to the aid of the victims during the Shoah and to the survivors in the months following the war. When Yishuv emissaries did arrive in Europe, they came as representatives of quarreling parties and completely disregarded the survivors’ thrust for unity (this point will be discussed further on in this chapter). However, and for reasons that will be explored in chapter 3, upon their arrival to Eretz Yisrael the Jewish fighters opted to “surrender” their criticism of the Yishuv’s behavior during and following the Holocaust years. Henceforth, their story of Jewish resistance came to accentuate and magnify their role as the bearers of Zionist ideology.

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In the Yishuv

The Yishuv’s approach to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was affected, from the outset, by the Zionist attitude toward Diaspora Jewry prior to the war years. The prevalent myth was that of the “new Jew”: independent, brave and strong. Conversely, European Jewry became, as mentioned, a symbol of Diaspora passivity, meekness and humility.1 In 1943, for example, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a leading member of the Jewish Agency Executive, echoed this negative image of Diaspora Jewry in a Memorial gathering for the national Hebrew poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik: And this is the most terrible curse of the Diaspora, this is its very essence: loss of the capacity for self-defense, an intensified desire to live under any conditions, to maintain a totally empty life, a life of debased bondage and humiliation. To overcome the Diaspora means not only to leave it and to build the homeland. A member of the Diaspora...lacks the strength to seize for himself a life of liberty in the homeland, [a life] which is based on the readiness to sacrifice one’s life in order to defend it.2

This negative image, expressed in insensitivity and indifference towards Jewish tradition and the Jewish diaspora led, during the 1940s and 1950s, to the emergence of “Canaanism” (or “Young Hebrews,” as they called themselves): an anti-Zionist and, in a sense, “non-Jewish” cultural movement that wanted to bring back into life the mythical biblical (Canaanite) people in Eretz Yisrael and “do away” with Jewish exilic history.3 Although the movement consisted of a small group of intellectuals, most of whom came from the extreme right, some of its nihilistic ideas found their way into Israeli literature and, at times, the press, and became widespread, particularly among the younger generation.”4

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Indeed, the arguments in Hayyim Hazaz’s well-known short story, “The Sermon” (“Ha-derashah”), first published in the fall of 1942, are markedly similar to those of the Canaanites. Yudke, the protagonist, denounces Jewish history, characterizing the period between the destruction of the Temple and the modern return to Israel as a one of misery and shame that should be forgotten: I would like to state...that I object to Jewish history...I have no respect for it...What’s in it?...persecutions, libel stories, prohibitions and martyrology...and once again and again and again ad infinitum...Jewish history is boring, uninteresting. It contains no tales and plots, no heroes and world conquerors...only a community of eroded mourners who sigh and cry for mercy...I would completely forbid teaching Jewish history to our children. What an evil to teach them their fathers’ disgrace...5

Yudke’s dismissive depiction of exilic Jewish history reflected the Yishuv’s feeling of dissociation from the “diaspora.”6 Exilic Jewish history was significant for many only so far as it pointed to a Zionist lesson: To overcome the Diaspora, its “persecutions, libel stories, prohibitions and martyrology...,” Jews have to emigrate to Eretz Yisrael and establish a state. The Holocaust too was viewed through the same lense: Without a state and the power to defend their survival, Jews would always be vulnerable to this kind of a catastrophe.7 In the words of Evyatar Friesel: “Considered alongside the establishment of the Jewish State, the Holocaust represented the other side of Jewish history—the side of darkness and extermination against the side of creation and continuity.”8 The establishment of a causal link between extermination and creation, between the Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel, clearly repeated the sequence of catastrophe and redemption that is deeply embedded in Jewish tradition. According to tradition, every catastrophe is understood as a link in a chain that leads back to the first major catastrophe, the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans and the exile of the Israelites from their land. Even this catastrophe is connected in turn with the destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity. In this traditional perspective the destruction of European Jewry too has been linked to the archetypal catastrophe and to redemption at the end of days.9 The secular Zionists’ interpretation too sought to explain the extermination of European Jewry by means of a general historical interpretive pattern, that of modern antisemitism, which brought about a series of ever more severe persecutions. These persecutions, directly linked to Jewish existence in exile, found their most extreme form in the extermination poli-

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cies of Nazi Germany, thereby reaching their final stage, which, of necessity, would lead to deliverance, to the founding of a Jewish state. Yet, while the orthodox view catastrophic events as divine punishment and redemption as dependent on God’s will, in the secular Zionists’ interpretation the emphasis shifted from a passive acceptance of catastrophe to redemptive struggle for the Yishuv, later for the state.10 However, by linking the rebirth of Israel to the Holocaust, the pre-state Yishuv and later the state of Israel thereby also located the Jewish tragedy at the center of national identity. In the words of James E. Young: Israel came to be a nation “condemned to defining itself in opposition to the very event that made it necessary.”11 This essential dichotomy was expressed as early as March 18, 1943, in a speech given by the leader of the Yishuv and the future Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, at a commemorative gathering for Yosef Trumpeldor, the hero of Tel Hai and one of the mainstays of the Yishuv’s mythology.12 On this occasion, Ben-Gurion made the distinction between the majority of European Jewry who did not know how to live and how to die as free men and between the few who had decided to defend themselves and to die in a different way. They had done this since “they had learned the new manner of dying which the defenders of Tel Hai and Sejera established for us—a courageous death.”13 Later, Israel would “appropriate” the Warsaw ghetto fighters’ heroism as its own.14 The Yishuv’s arrogant and contemptuous attitude towards European Jewry was combined, however, with a strong sense of commitment. This was an a priori commitment, rooted in the Yishuv’s self-image as the driving force of the Jewish people, the chosen vanguard of the Jewish nation. It stemmed from the fundamental Zionist tenet that the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel would ultimately bring salvation to the entire Jewish people. Ironically, this “future-oriented” ideology served many from among the Yishuv’s leadership as a moral justification for concentrating on domestic problems to the point of disregarding other urgent problems in the Jewish world at large.15 In December 1942, for example, upon hearing of the mass killing of Jews in Radom, Poland, Yitzhak Tabenkin, leader of Hakibbutz Hameuchad movement, stated: “We have nothing more valuable to give to the Diaspora than the Yishuv. We can retreat from every territory in the world—but we may not retreat from this one. The entire Jewish people needs to see its central concern in defense of the settlement in Palestine.”16 Thus, when the war broke out, the Yishuv’s main concern was to return its delegates in Europe safely back to Palestine. While many among the leaders of the ghetto revolts, such as Zivia Lubetkin, Frumke Plotnicka

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and others, refused, when given the choice, to desert their comrades and go to Palestine, Yishuv emissaries in Europe were called to return home immediately.17 Late in grasping the dimension and the significance of the Holocaust-in-progress, the Yishuv was immersed in its own problems. “We were never really shaken to the roots,” wrote Moshe Braslavsky, of Hakibbutz Hameuchad. “True, we did have sleepless nights. That was when the danger appeared to be at our very doorstep and the whole country trembled under the impact of impending catastrophe. During that time, a small window was opened onto the great tragedy, opened and then shut.”18 Indeed, before October 1942, Eretz Yisrael seemed to have been threatened by the Axis Armies and this threat overshadowed the news from occupied Europe. After the victory at El-Alamein, in October of that year, the life in the Yishuv returned to normalcy, marked by a sense of vibrant renewal, rebuilding and economic prosperity.19 There were some in the Yishuv, especially from among the Zionist right-wing Revisionist movement headed by Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, who regarded the rescue of the Jews from a threatening holocaust as the primary historic purpose of the Zionist movement.20 Already in 1940 Jabotinsky called for the speedy evacuation of a million Polish Jews and their resettlement in Palestine within one year. In the Revisionist interpretation of Zionism, the Evacuation Plan was regarded as the most profound and ambitious manifestation of “humanitarian Zionism”21 (in contrast to the socialist parties who preferred, at least until the magnitude of the Holocaust became known, a gradual and selective absorption of Diaspora Jewry). This mass emigration scheme was rejected by leaders of the majority socialist party, Mapai, as unrealistic.22 Following the Holocaust, the Revisionists repeatedly argued that with this plan they would have been able to save many Jews, if only they had led the Zionist movement. This claim became the subject of historical myths which, from the 1940s onwards, were cultivated by the younger Revisionist generation, adding fuel to the already bitter Revisionist accusations about Mapai’s behavior during the Holocaust.23 Such accusations could also be heard, although to a lesser extent, from members of the left-wing socialist parties. For example, at the Hakibbutz Hameuchad movement’s Fourteenth Conference in the fall of 1943, numerous speakers, particularly former emissaries, addressed the issue of rescue attempts, or, better put, the lack of it. Nahum Benari, who served in the 1920s as an emissary of his movement to Hehalutz in Poland, said: I am here...and they remain there, abandoned. I am obligated to examine myself on this point: perhaps all the good things I spoke about with them were nothing

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but idle talk if I was unable to do the main thing: to save as many Jews as possible from the abyss.24

Feelings of guilt and shame were also expressed over the petty political squabbling, which, in 1944, split Mapai at a time when the Jews in Europe were being exterminated.25 Enzo Sereni, for example, insisted that “our split today...would not have been possible if we were all living the calamity which has struck us.”26 And, in one of his most quoted statements against the glaring lack of proportion between the undisturbed life of the Yishuv and the suffering in Europe, the historian Ben-Zion Dinur charged: “Try juxtaposing the dates of reports about the destruction of thousands of Jewish communities...with reports on the splits and disagreements within the parties and factions, and you will appreciate the full horror that these facts imply for our future...We forget that future generations will closely examine everything we did during these times...and I very much fear that the judgment of the generation closest to us, the judgment of our children, will be very harsh.”27 Contacts between Yishuv members and Holocaust survivors in Europe and in Israel drew a further rift between She’erit Hapletah (the surviving remnant) and the Yishuv. The different worldviews and experiences of Yishuv Jews and Holocaust survivors produced an element of alienation which led to disagreements and tensions that surfaced almost immediately upon the survivors’ arrival. Toward the end of 1944, when the first immigrants began to reach the country, complaints could be heard about the kind of people arriving. “Are these the kind of immigrants you’re sending us?...We want haluzim [pioneers], people like us, the kind of people we are used to.”28 Even earlier, in May 1942, three months after meeting with refugees who arrived in Eretz Yisrael via Teheran, Eliahu Dobkin, deputy head of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration Department and a leading figure in Mapai, complained: “The majority of the refugees are of broken spirit, despairing, lacking in hope to one degree or another, and it is they who confront us with a new and very serious problem. How are we to approach this new oleh [immigrant]? According to all past criteria we would never have agreed to approve them for aliyah [immigration]...”29 The first major encounter between the survivors and delegates from the Yishuv took place in Europe. Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade who had fought under British command and, months after liberation, emissaries from the Yishuv, met the survivors in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.30 Before long, this encounter took on a critical tone, reflecting the deep-seated negative attitude to all the Jews in the Diaspora that had already been in existence in Eretz Yisrael for several

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decades. Soldiers and emissaries’ reports described the survivors as “human dust,” damaged not only physically and psychologically but also morally.31 In a letter to his family, one soldier described his first impression of the Jewish survivors in the camps as unscrupulous and unwilling to work. “Although there are some honest men among them,” he added, “most Jews here live off of the German black market. In all European countries Jewish livelihood is colored in black....Is it a wonder that the whole world hates us so?”32 Haim Yahil (Hoffman), the head of the Jewish Agency delegation in Germany, had a similar impression. The survivors have no desire to engage in any kind of work. They strongly feel that they “deserve” to live for a while at the expense of the German market, UNRRA, or American Jewry, represented by the “Joint.” This kind of behavior, he concluded, “desecrates the honor of Israel.”33 The emissaries attributed these negative characteristics not only to the survivors’ horrendous experience in the camps during the war but also to the survivors’ life in Exile before the Holocaust. A few years after the war, Yahil wrote and published a detailed review on the DP camps in Germany in which he recognized that “we never perceived the surviving remnants and Eretz Yisrael to be one. We felt that they [the surviving remnants] will have to undergo a tremendous mental and physical change in order to unite with Eretz Yisrael. We situated the Israeli essence and the Israeli new man against the diaspora essence and the diaspora man.”34 In contrast, the encounter between the soldiers of the Brigade and emissaries from the Yishuv with Jewish partisans, Brichah activists and ghetto fighters—many of whom belonged before the war to Zionist Youth movements—was very different.35 The Jewish fighters’ heroic activities coincided with the worldview of native Israelis, affirming the notion that Zionist values generated active and heroic behavior, different from the one exhibited by the survivors as a whole.36 One soldier described the first meeting of soldiers from the Jewish Brigade with ghetto fighters and partisans in northern Italy in a letter he sent to his kibbutz, on July 17, 1945: Yesterday we participated in a very interesting meeting in the DP camp next to the Brigade. Some of the survivors were from among the fighters of ghetto Vilna...One of them, Kovner his name,...read from his diary...There were also young women among them whose endless heroic deeds, we were told, included transferring information and arms as well as maintaining contacts between the various underground groups in the camp. Names and more names were mentioned of men, heroes, who succeeded sometimes more than once and eventually died a heroic death. Those who survived, survived by a miracle. We set listening for hours fascinated by their stories. This handful of people are the sole survivors of thousands like them, and this is the saddest thing of all.37

The special status of the Jewish fighters was officially “stamped” later

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that year in the World Zionist Convention in London where Yitzhak Zuckerman and Chaika Grossman, leaders of the Warsaw ghetto revolt, were invited and delivered speeches as representatives of She’erit Hapleta as a whole.38 The arrival to Eretz Yisrael of some of the more charismatic and outspoken leaders of the Jewish fighters (Ruzka Korczak and Abba Kovner in 1945, Zivia Lubetkin in 1946, Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman in 1947) only widened the gulf between the heroic image of the ghetto fighters and the partisans and the image of the “ordinary” survivors in general. In the fighters’ many speeches and testimonies, the everyday struggles and dilemmas facing the “ordinary” Jew in the ghettos served merely as background to tales of their own heroic deeds, accentuating the historical uniqueness of their revolts or, in Kovner’s words, “the miracle of heroism in the midst of extinction [‘Hidalon’ in Hebrew].”39 To this deepening chasm was added the fact that in 1946 and 1947 most of the Zionist leaders from among the Jewish fighters had already emigrated to Palestine with the assistance of their various party comrades in the Yishuv, while the majority of the “ordinary” survivors were still residing in camps in Europe and their “helpless” image was largely shaped by the emissaries’ reports.40 The reference to the partisans and the ghetto fighters as the “Zionist” or “Hebrew” youth, while referring to other Holocaust victims as “Jews,” reinforced this attitude.41 Dan Horowitz, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University, described in his memoirs the sharp distinction made in the Yishuv’s public opinion between the larger Jewish population which went to death unresistingly, according to the traditional Jewish pattern of behavior, and the minority, members of the youth movements who rebelled: “The first news of the Holocaust—a horror story that penetrates the consciousness but which remains incomprehensible on the emotional level, alien, not from our familiar world...The ghetto uprising was easier to understand, closer to the associational frameworks of a member of a youth movement in Palestine, and therefore more easily accepted as an object of identification.”42 The arrival of Ruzka Korczak to Palestine in 1945 and, a year later, the publication of her book, Lehavot Ba-efer (“Flames amidst the Ashes”), greatly perpetuated the Jewish-fighters’ heroic image. The very notion that a girl fighter who was one of the leaders of the Vilna ghetto uprising had arrived in Eretz Yisrael stirred emotions of pride and excitement. While still living in the Atlit immigration camp, Ruzka was visited by many of the Yishuv leaders.43 Her book, the first to be published in Eretz Yisrael on the subject of the Holocaust, introduced into the Yishuv’s consciousness the

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names of Abba Kovner, Chaika Grossman, Vitka Kempner, Tosia Altman and other Jewish fighters, exalting and aggrandizing their heroic deeds during the Holocaust.44 The receptivity to the stories of the Jewish fighters in Israel found its greatest support in the kibbutzim, where many of them initially settled and where their heroism became inextricably tied to the kibbutzim’s same ideals. One of the ideological fundament of this approach was the claim that a person’s worldview and ideological education determine his or her behavior even in extreme events such as the Holocaust. As a result, it was the fighters’ memoirs and testimonies which were published under the imprint of the kibbutz publishing houses and put at the disposal of the Israeli public, almost to the exclusion of the memoirs of the “ordinary” survivors.45 The one exception was Ka-Tzetnik’s book, Salamandrah, published in Eretz Yisrael in 1946. The book told the story of the Holocaust in harsh language from the perspective of an “ordinary” survivor.46 There were no tales of heroic acts in Ka-Tzetnik’s story, but rather an emphasis on Jewish helplessness in the face of the Nazis’ sadistic acts, which he described in great detail.47 However, the descriptions of total Jewish helplessness under Nazi oppression, at a time when the Yishuv was involved in a struggle for statehood, reinforced the Yishuv’s identification with those who attempted to revolt, on the one hand, and diminished its ability to empathize with those who did not, on the other.48 Yet even the Jewish fighters were viewed with suspicion by some Yishuv leaders. Their common bond and short lived attempt, in Lublin in June 1945, to unite the various Zionist factions were considered as posing a threat to the accepted ways of the Yishuv. The partisans, in particular, were regarded by some Yishuv leaders as unruly elements who tend to disregard authority. Describing his encounter with Jewish partisans in Romania, Y.Nussbaum, member of the Histadrut Executive stated: “Morally speaking, they are different from the workers’ movement in Palestine in that they don’t think twice about drawing their guns and shoot.” If these partisans would not be provided with suitable guidance in Palestine, he added, “this immigration will provide us with terrorism.”49 The most vocal critic of the Jewish fighters among the Yishuv leaders was Meir Ya’ari of Hashomer Hatsair. “When it comes to dying a heroic death,” he told a group of newly arrived partisans in a meeting held at Kibbutz Evron in November 1945, “in this we have much to learn from you. But when it comes to living a heroic life—allow us, if you please, to teach you.”50 Ya’ari’s comment, although extreme in its articulation, reflected the attitude of others among the Yishuv leadership toward the Jewish fighters.

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Criticism of the “ordinary” survivors’ Galut mentality and fear of the “unruly” and combatant spirit of the Jewish fighters stemmed, in part, from the Yishuv veterans’ attempts to forge a collective national character and a homogeneous collective memory, based on their interpretation of Zionist goals and aspirations. But it also derived from the veterans’ own partisan squabbling over the social construct and the political credo of the Yishuv. The disputes between the Yishuv leadership and its delegates in Europe and between the survivors over “unity” versus political separation and sectarianism, a dispute that was initiated, as mentioned, by the Jewish fighters drive for unity, clearly illustrates the widening gulf between the two worlds. To many survivors the obvious conclusion drawn from the Holocaust was for the Jews to unite. Political divisiveness should be set aside for the sake of national unity. In fact, the first resolution passed by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bavaria in the Feldafing DP camp, on July 1, 1945, called upon “the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, upon the whole Jewish people to unite and forget the partisan struggles that had deprived the Jews so much of their strength and blood so that together we may build a Jewish state!...When we arrive in Palestine, we intend with all our strength to support the sacred work of unification!”51 In contrast, Yishuv emissaries arrived in Europe as representatives of a wide variety of parties and movements who had been intensely quarreling with each other. As a dynamic society undergrowing growth and development, the Yishuv was split into ideological camps competing with one another for power. In general, the various political factions agreed on the division of influence, establishing proportional allocations among movements. But the prospect of mass immigration to Eretz Yisrael was liable to disrupt the existing social and political status quo. Hence, one of the main objectives of the Yishuv emissaries in assisting the surviving remnants in Europe was to recruit them to whatever faction or movement the emissaries belonged to in Eretz Yisrael.52 In her study on the relationship between the survivors and the Yishuv, Anita Shapira goes so far as to state that “had it not been for the inter-movement competition for the souls of the survivors, had it not been for the fear of each and every movement that it would somehow lose out and find itself without manpower reserves, it is difficult to imagine that they could have been motivated to mobilize themselves as they, in fact, did.”53 The bitter struggle among the three leading political parties in the Yishuv: Mapai (the center-left party, which emerged in the 1930s as the dominant political force in the Yishuv), Achdut Ha’avodah (which formed as a result of a split within Mapai in 1944), and Hashomer Hatsair (the far left-wing socialist party), led these movements to attach critical importance

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to the recruitment to their own ranks of as many of the potential new immigrants as possible.54 Thus the drive for unity among the survivors was viewed by the different Yishuv parties as a potential danger to the existing balance of power. The leaders of Hashomer Hatsair (who were ideologically close to the Soviet Union) were especially apprehensive and alarmed. The survivors’ drive to unity, they feared would undermine the movement’s singular social outlook and its alliance with progressive Europe.55 Moreover, Ya’ari viewed the negative image of the Soviet Union by members of the movement who spent the war years in Russia as divisive and dangerous. A revision in the attitude toward the Soviet Union, the leader of the socialist world, may result in a disillusionment with socialism as a political system.56 On their part, the leaders of Achdut Ha’avodah suspected that the call for unity served the interests of the largest Mapai party. And, although Mapai’s views most closely resembled that of the majority of the survivors, members of Mapai, who won by a slim margin in the Histadrut election of August 1944, feared that the new immigrants would be swayed by the ardent enthusiasm and dedication of the emissaries from the other parties, whose number far exceeded their Jewish Agency and Histadrut quotas.57 Furthermore, fate yielded that the leadership of parties affiliated with Mapai in Poland before the war was almost completely eradicated during the Holocaust, while some of the most outstanding leaders associated with Hashomer Hatsair and Hakibbutz Hameuchad movements, such as Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin, survived the war, giving Mapai’s rival parties a clear advantage in their efforts to recruit survivors to their ranks.58 According to Yahil’s own testimony a few years after the war’s end: Our attitude toward the surviving remnant was not based on humanitarian objectives only but, first and foremost, on the evaluation of the role that they were to play in our own struggle. For that reason we were not always compassionate but often demanding. Despite our recognition of and identification with the unique goals and demands of the surviving remnant, preoccupation with our own objective goal effected a distance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ [my emphasis]—a distance which was greatly criticized by the survivors but which allowed us to keep focused on our objective goal.59

The “distance between ‘them’ and ‘us’“ was conspicuously expressed in the first few years following the war in the absence of any significant commemoration of the Shoah in the Yishuv and, after 1948, by the long delay in establishing a national memorial day in memory of the victims (“The Law of Remembrance of Shoah and Heroism -Yad Vashem,” was passed by the Israeli Knesset five years after the establishment of the State,

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on August 19, 1953).60 During the first few years following the war, two opposite approaches to the commemoration of the Holocaust existed in Eretz Yisrael. The first approach, held by the political elite, the Zionist left, emphasized the centrality of active heroism. Although, as we have seen, the Jewish fighters’ early independent ways animated some suspicion and disaffection, as a group, they came to symbolize the “new Jew,” their heroic deeds directly linked to the heroism of the ancient Hebrews and their successors, the Zionist community in Eretz Yisrael. Hence, between 1946 and 1948, numerous assemblies were held on April 19th—commemorating the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In these commemoration services there was little mention of the Shoah itself, the persecutions, Jewish existence in the shadow of death in the extermination camps, or the killings. Instead, the focus on armed struggle, especially the Warsaw ghetto uprising, was decisive.61 The second approach was introduced by the chief Rabbinate in Eretz Yisrael and by the relatively small group of religious Zionists. These groups opposed the distinction made in Israeli public thought in the 1950s between the Jewish fighters and the “ordinary” survivors, between the uprising and the other types of ‘Jewish response’ during the Holocaust. Zerah Warhaftig, for example, a leading Religious Zionist spokesman, completely objected to criticism of the Jews for not exhibiting physical resistance, considering a value distinction between the path of rebellion and other Jewish reactions as blasphemous.62 Already in the spring of 1946, the chief Rabbis in Israel met to discuss the form and manner in which to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. In a proclamation published in the summer of that year “to our brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisrael,” the Rabbis stated that “the chief Rabbinate had decided to commemorate the memory of the martyrs in accordance with the laws of the Torah and the spirit of the Jewish tradition.” This would include the kindling of “a national memorial candle” in memory of the victims in holy sites in Israel, the reading of “Tehilim,” and Kaddish prayers.63 In this plan, no distinction was made between the Shoah and the Gvurah. All the Jewish victims, those who were led to their death without resisting and the Jewish fighters, were described in the Rabbinate proclamation as “martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the name of the nation’s God.”64 The tenth of Tevet was suggested by the chief Rabbinate as the appropriate date for the commemoration of the Shoah. On this date began the first siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and, in Jewish tradition, the beginning of the sequence of catastrophes marked by repeated destruction and exile.65

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The Chief Rabbinate, however, did not object to having a separate day of commemoration to the Warsaw ghetto revolt. On April 19, 1948, following a request from Zvi Lurye, Mapam’s representative at the National Committee of the Jewish Agency, the chief Rabbis, Yitzhak Herzog and Ben Zion Uziel, declared the tenth of Nissan (April 19th in 1948) as a memorial day to the ghetto fighters.66 It seems that the chief Rabbis did not see any contradiction in their decision to declare the tenth of Tevet as a memorial day for the Shoah and their endorsement of the tenth of Nissan as a memorial day for the Jewish fighters in Warsaw. Henceforth, memorial services to the Holocaust were taking place on both dates. While the tenth of Tevet was marked as a day of mourning the Jewish victims in general, with no regard to the manner in which they died, the tenth of Nissan became a day for the commemoration of the heroic deeds of the ghetto fighters and the partisans. In early 1950, representatives of Mapam in the Knesset (the far-left socialist party, formed in 1948)67 worried that, in time, the tenth of Tevet would become a state-recognized memorial day for the Holocaust while April 19 (which falls around the mid Hebrew month of Nissan) would be commemorated by left Zionism only. Therefore, they proposed to enact a law that would recognize April 19 as a unifying national Holocaust memorial day.68 In turn, Rabbi Mordecai Nurok, a member of the Knesset representing the National Religious party, proposed that memorial services to the Jewish fighters be included as part of the general Kaddish day that falls on Tevet tenth.69 On March 21, 1951 a compromise was reached. The Knesset would pass a law marking “Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and the Revolt in the Ghettos,” (later amended to “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day”)70 The date chosen, Nissan 27, was as close as Jewish law would allow to the date of the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto revolt, which occurred on Passover night. It was also the date in which the massacres of Jews by the Crusaders, “ancestors of the Nazis, destroyed so many holy [Jewish] communities.”71 Thus was laid the foundation for the main element in the collective Israeli consciousness of the Holocaust: the juxtaposition between the Holocaust, evoking the passivity of the majority of European Jewry who “went like sheep to the slaughter” (Katso’n latevah), and between the “heroism” (gevurah) of the few, in the ghettos and in the forests, who took to arms. For the next several years, memorial ceremonies were held annually by various organizations of survivors, including the kibbutzim established by Jewish fighters and partisans, by municipalities and political parties. All in all, however, the majority of participants in these ceremonies were sur-

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vivors themselves. In the rest of the country the memorial day was rarely observed. “Places of entertainment are wide open on this day,” objected Rabbi Nurok. “The radio plays cheerful music, dances and humor, and the display windows glow. Joyfulness and happiness instead of sorrow and mourning.” In June 1958, Rabbi Nurok proposed enforcing the mourning by law—closing stores, for example, initiating commemorative ceremonies in schools and synagogues and requiring radio programs and movie theaters to accord with the solemnity of the day.72 In 1961, three years after Nurok’s proposal, the Knesset decided to implement the law. From then on, observance begins with a two minutes siren sounding, at which time the Israeli flag is lowered to half-mast and all work and traffic stop; all places of entertainment and amusement close down; schools, radio and television programs dedicate the day to the study and remembrance of the Holocaust; commemorative ceremonies and assemblies are held in all army camps and educational institutions; workers are given time-off to participate in memorial services.73

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() CHAPTER TWO &'

The Survivors and the Jewish Fighters in the DP Camps, 1945–1948 In dealing with the memory of their recent past, the survivors’ recollection of the events often became intertwined with their historical representation of the Shoah period. This chapter will focus on the “twilight zone” between memory and history in the survivors’ representation of the Shoah in the DP camps, from 1945 to 1948. I shall, first, examine the survivors’ initial attempts at memorializing the recent catastrophe. These attempts, as we shall see, compelled them to confront and publically debate some sensitive issues of the past. As we shall see, quite astonishingly and in stark contradistinction to their total silence following their immigration to Israel three years later, the “ordinary” survivors chose to deal openly and candidly with all aspects of the past. In the second part of this chapter, we will observe a distinction between the collective memory of the majority of “ordinary” survivors and the much smaller group of Jewish fighters. Besides the shared traumatic memory, the latter had lived through a unique collective experience that, in time, evolved into a collective memory different from that of the majority of survivors. The term She’erit Hapletah (the surviving remnant)1 applies to all surviving Jews in Europe but came to be associated in particular with the some 300,000 survivors who concentrated in the Occupied Zones of Germany, Austria and Italy between 1945 and 1952.2 By 1946, over 80 percent of the surviving remnants in these three countries concentrated in Germany and, of those, 78 percent lived in the American zone of occupation, 14 percent in the British zone (primarily in Belsen), and the rest resided in the French zone and in Berlin.3 Ironically then, Germany, the land of the perpetrators of the Jewish tragedy, became, after the war, the

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largest and safest sanctuary for Jewish refugees waiting in DP camps for the opportunity to emigrate. Immediately after liberation, survivors residing in the DP camps thought it would be in the best interest of She’erit Hapletah if they themselves organized and took responsibility for shaping their own future. Hence, already in the early summer of 1945, self-help committees and groups were formed in a number of camps. The major task of these committees and groups was to improve the living conditions of the camps’ inmates and prepare them for life outside the camps.4 Kibbutz Buchenwald, a pioneer youth agricultural training farm, was the first of its kind to be established and, soon, other such kibbutzim were organized throughout the camps. And, with the help of the World Jewish Congress, the first Conference of Displaced Persons in the American zone of occupation met in the latter part of 1945 in Landsberg am Lech (the town where Adolf Hitler had written a large part of Mein Kampf) to address the hopes and aspirations of the Jewish survivors as a whole.5 Beginning in May 1945, a Jewish press developed. Tkhies-hameysim (“Resurrection”) was the first survivors’ newspaper to be published in Buchenwald, Germany; it was followed by others who were issued first in Germany and, soon after, in all other camps in Austria and Italy. 6 All in all, some 75 newspapers appeared throughout the DP camps.7 Given the fact that paper was rationed and typewriters and other equipments were hard to come by, the publication of such a large number of newspapers was quite impressive. Besides the imminent prospect of emigration, most of these publications limited themselves to camp news, remembrances of those who had perished and to lists of missing persons. Camp residents frequently contributed articles and the editors reprinted reports from the international press. The most important camp newspapers of this type were: Oyf der fray, Dos fraye vort, Der nayer moment, Aheym, Tkhies-hameysim, and Undzer hofenung.8 The various political parties also published their own newspapers and there were even special interest magazines, including sports magazines, that were written mainly in Yiddish and Hebrew but also in Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian, Italian, English and German.9 By 1946, the everyday life of the survivors was governed by central committees, whose members were elected by the DPs, according to their party affiliation. The largest and most influential of these representative bodies was the Central Committee of the liberated Jews in the American zone of occupation in Germany, founded in June 1945. In most camps, Jewish DP police departments were established, whose main task was maintaining law and order in the camps. And, although the Jews were subject to American military courts, Jewish courts were appointed to settle civil

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disputes and deal with cases in which former kapos10 and ghetto policemen were accused of brutality against Jews. Also in every major camp, cultural committees organized numerous cultural and educational programs, including the establishment of kindergartens and schools, libraries and reading halls, drama classes, theaters, music orchestras and choruses, youth and sports clubs.11 The survivors’ many activities, imbued with energy, vitality and initiative, seemed to have grown as they recuperated and recovered, signaling their obsessive will to live normally again, to reclaim their full rights as free men. Some, however, saw in these feverish activities a natural reaction to the trauma that they had suffered during the war years. At the liberation concert which took place in St. Ottilien on May 27, 1945, Zalman Grinberg, chief physician of the Hospital for ex-political prisoners in Germany, observed: “...I found our brothers full of energy and cheerful. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in this cheerfulness...the main element is a frantic desire to suppress the past, the urge not to confront one own’s memories to one’s self...because otherwise, if one constantly looked into the abyss,...the only way out would be suicide.12 Indeed, for the survivors, living with the memory of the past constituted, first and foremost, dealing with a horrifying personal experience. The trauma of the Holocaust stamped deep scars that left their marks on their minds and bodies.13 Leo Srole, a social psychologist who served as an UNRRA Welfare Officer in Landsberg, found that many among the camp’s survivors suffered, in various degrees of severity, from what psychiatrists define as “war shock,” the result of “exposure to catastrophic danger in situations of individual helplessness.” This kind of trauma induces overwhelming anxiety and tension, impaired memory, changes of mood and more.14 All in all, he concluded, “the camp communal organizations have been a vital counterforce without which there would have been mass psychological disintegration.”15 Despite the difficult personal grappling with the memory of the recent catastrophe, the past found a range of public expressions: During the first year after liberation, between May 1945 and May 1946, various Landsmanschaften within She’erit hapletah held private memorial services to their dead. These services were held on different dates and took various forms, according to the customs and history of each particular community.16 In the different camps Yizkor bulletin-boards were installed in public locations.17 At Landsberg, one of the largest of the DP camps in Germany, an impressive memorial was constructed, consisting of a waist-high red brick wall, adjoined by two pylons. Set into one of the pylons was a memorial tablet to the six million Jewish dead, and, onto the other, a

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tablet expressing Jewish aspirations for the future. Crowning the pylons were a statue of the Jew in exile, bent by the Torah scrolls on his back and of the halutz (pioneer)—standing upright, with a shovel on his shoulder.18 Towards the end of the first year after liberation, some survivors began to request the establishment of a general memorial day. The separate commemorations held by each and every community, they argued, created a situation in which one memorial day followed the other. Moreover, it was imperative to determine a unified date of remembrance so that Kadish could be said for the many whose date of death was unknown. The survivors’ desire to establish a unified date of remembrance was first addressed in Munich on May 5, 1946, by members of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Occupied Germany who met to discuss, among other topics on their agenda, the character and form of a day to commemorate the first anniversary of their liberation by the Allied armies in the spring of 1945 (einheitlicher gedenk-tog fun der bafreiung).19 The meeting was conducted by the President of the Central Committee, Zalman Grinberg, and included representatives of the J.D.C. (“Joint”), Leo Schwarz and Sylvia Weinberg, the editor of the Zionist newspaper, Undzer veg, Levi Shalitan, as well as the cultural delegation of the World Jewish Congress, which included the famous Yiddishist poet Leyvik Halpern, the scholar Israel Efrat and the singer Emma Shaver. A representative of the Yishuv delegation to She’erit Hapletah, Ernest Frank, also participated in the discussion.20 One of the main questions debated was whether the liberation anniversary should be commemorated as a day of mourning and suffering or of redemption.21 All agreed that the martyred dead, “their mass grave, degraded and desecrated, will, on this day, be transformed into a monument of the holy martyrdom of a nation.”22 As for the celebration of the liberation, a marked difference of emphasis between the representatives was expressed. Some felt that the day should combine grieving for the dead with the celebration of life and liberation, while others argued that, due to the magnitude of the catastrophe, mourning is the only appropriate form of commemoration.23 It was the former’s opinion which eventually prevailed; the participants agreed that the day of remembrance should include both themes. They asserted that although a new world was not yet born, antisemitism still abounded and Jews were still suffering, one had to be careful not to lose the overall historical perspective: Without the Allies, who payed a high price to wipe out the Nazis, the civilized world would have been destroyed and with it any chance for Jewish survival—and this should be noted and celebrated.24 Furthermore, She’erit Hapletah constituted a living bridge

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between the periods of catastrophe and of redemption, of death and of resurrection; as such, it was only appropriate that their day of remembrance would address both motifs.25 In the following “Proclamation of the First Anniversary of Liberation,” which was published in Germany and in a matter of days was sent to the Jewish press and to Jewish organizations all over the world, the fourteenth of Iyar, the day of Liberation (which fell on the 15th of May in 1946), was proclaimed as the official Day of Remembrance and Liberation.26 On May 15, the new commemorative day was celebrated throughout Germany in the DP camps, kibbutzim and schools of She’erit Hapletah. The largest commemorative meeting was held in an auditorium at Munich University and indeed combined mourning for the dead with the celebration of survival and hope for a coming redemption in the form of the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. “She’erit Hapletah,” announced Grinberg in his opening speech in front of thousands of survivors, “wishes to institute one day a year that would serve as a monument to the marked and unmarked graves of our brothers and sisters, a day in which we shall also remember and commemorate the miracle of our survival and liberation...Out of deep sorrow and admiration for our holy martyrs and with a spirit of resilience indicating the end of Exile and the beginning of redemption, I hereby open the gathering of this memorial day.”27 Following two minutes of silence and the reading of Yizkor, the speakers all emphasized the need to establish a Jewish home in Eretz Yisrael. Said Abraham Reisman, a Treblinka survivor: “No other people has shed as much blood as Israel. Hence we demand a secure home for our future generations, and it can only be in Eretz Yisrael.”28 For many survivors, however, the yearning for Eretz Yisrael displayed, more than anything else, their sense of disillusionment with the situation in Europe after the war, rather than a “pure” Zionist commitment. Indeed, the displaced Jews were of different social and ideological backgrounds. Before the war, Eretz Yisrael was a personal choice for relatively few of them and, according to a survey, conducted by the American Authorities at Dachau immediately following their liberation, the wish of the overwhelming majority of survivors was to return to their home countries or emigrate to the United States or elsewhere overseas.29 This trend, however, soon weakened as a result of the survivors’ disappointing encounter with the often hostile post-war European world. Despite the recent catastrophe, many survivors discovered that antisemitic sentiments in Europe had lingered on. Between the second half of 1945 and 1946 tens of thousands of Jews from East-European countries poured into Germany, fleeing waves of antisemitic outbursts, including assaults

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and murders that swept over liberated Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Notwithstanding their antisemitism, many in these countries were also fearful that they would be pressed to return confiscated property to its Jewish owners. This context, combined with the general state of insecurity in these countries, created a psychosis of fear which drove those Jews to start on the harrowing trek to the DP camps in Germany with the hope of eventual migration to Palestine or to some other non-European country.30 The stories of antisemitic outburst against Jews that the East-Europeans had brought with them to the DP camps were widely circulated and often published in the local papers. These, in turn, heightened the survivors’ conviction that their future lies elsewhere, most commonly in Palestine. Indeed, in new surveys conducted in the fall of 1945, 80 percent of young people between the ages of 12 and 25 stated that, given the chance, they would emigrate to Palestine.31 For many survivors their new found Zionism was more than “party Zionism.” It was a symbol of a defiant affirmation of life. In the words of the German-Jewish lawyer and president of the Congress and Council of Liberated Jews in Germany, Samuel Gringauz: to the survivors “it is a historical-philosophical Zionism felt as an historical mission, as a debt to the dead, as retribution toward the enemy, as a duty to the living. It is, moreover, a Zionism of warning, because the She’erit Hapletah feels that the continuation of Jewish national abnormality means the danger of a repetition of the catastrophe.”32 “Should we help in the rebuilding of Europe so that Europe in time will erect new crematories for us?” Asked Zalman Grinberg in early 1946.33 Other survivors too expressed their pain and disappointment with the Jewish situation in Europe. As one Landsberger expressed it: “We Jews in Galut have always been insecure, but we never suspected the potentialities of that insecurity until we saw them written out in the blood and ashes of our wives, children and brothers. We have learned the lesson. We want no more of Galut.”34 In one of the last issues of Undzer veg, another survivor expressed the same sense of disappointment: “We believed that it was time to conquer evil and inhumanity,” he wrote, “that it would be a long time before bestiality would again be able to surmount the idea of freedom.” Instead, he found shortly after the war’s end that hatred and the forces advocating destruction and murder emerged freely and openly to attack the democracies they so hated.35 These and many other survivors’ conclusion was that there seemed to be no future for them on European soil.36 The renunciation of Europe was often brought up in discussions and articles written by survivors throughout their years in the DP camps. For

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example, in a letter to Nizoz, written in December of 1945, one survivor insisted that refraining from the use of European languages was a question of honor: “On our lips we bear the shame of Exile...An elementary sense of dignity should move us to overcome this blemish, the blemish of assimilation..., especially today in view of the horrors we have experienced.”37 The most intense feelings of resentment and hatred were directed against Germany, the heart of European culture before the war and the ‘birthplace’ of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” “How was it possible,” wrote Gringauz, in December 1947, “that professors and writers, priests and philosophers, artists and judges—how was it possible that almost the entire intellectual elite of Germany rapturously cheered on the blood-drunk murderers? And if it was possible once, where is the assurance that it won’t happen tomorrow...?”38 “For me,” wrote Jean Amery, the Jewish-essayist and Auschwitz survivor who was born in Vienna as Hans Mayer, “the potato-field and war-ruins Germany was a lost area of the globe. I avoided speaking it, my, language and chose a pseudonym with a Romance ring.”39 The repudiation of Europe did not necessarily imply, especially for those from central Europe, the rejection of European culture. As Gringauz, reiterated in a series of essays in the years 1946 to 1948: “Our resolve to quit Europe is based precisely on the conviction that Europe itself has betrayed the legacy of European culture and that European culture must be carried on outside of Europe. We have been too much part of European culture to abandon it now. As we once expressed it: ‘We leave Europe because Europe has injured us in our very quality as Europeans.’”40 At the same time, it is the duty of the surviving remnants, because they had experienced the depth of evil, to help elevate western civilization back to its finest ideals and values. And this, according to Gringauz, is indeed the main task of She’erit Hapletah in the new post-war world: “the moral and social perfection of humanity.” This “neo-humanism,” as he termed it, would contribute to mankind’s wider moral development by helping it bridge the gap between its moral development and modern technological advances, so that mankind would be able to “resist the pressure of its instincts...and follow its conscience only,...cast evil aside and make the good prevail.”41 Since this, however, could no longer be achieved on European soil, Gringauz hoped that Zionism would go beyond the necessary return of the Jewish people to its homeland and would also involve a commitment to universal ideals. She’erit Hapletah could then leave Europe while the legacy of European culture would be carried with them to where a new Jewish history was being acted out.42 It was partially for this reason, that the survivors’ official memorial day:

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the fourteenth of Iyar, was rejected by Zionist organizations in Palestine and abroad. In fact, for the most part, they chose to ignore the survivors’ proposal altogether: In public debates in the US and in Palestine over a possible date and the manner in which to commemorate the recent tragedy, there was no mention of the survivors’ declaration.43 The survivors’ emphasis on the universal celebration of victory over the Nazis had no bearing on the particular Zionist emphasis on the struggle and resilience of the Jewish fighters, perceived to be the carriers of the Zionist ethos. The survivors’ attempt to formulate the meaning of liberation and the public reflections over the breakdown of western, particularly European, ethics and morality also compelled the survivors to confront some sensitive issues of their own “culpability,” such as the question of Jewish behavior during the Shoah, mainly in relation to Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, but also in regard to accusations that the majority of the victims went to their death like “sheep to the slaughter.” In regard to Jewish collaboration, its agents were hated, despised and reviled by the Jewish populace at large. The Jewish Councils (Judenräte) and their executive arm, the Jewish ghetto police in particular, were portrayed unequivocally by the survivors as traitors who betrayed millions of Jews, letting them go into the gas chambers in order to save their own skin. The local newspapers reported from time to time about Kapos who were identified, beaten and turned over to the military authorities44 and, already in the latter part of 1945, local Courts of Honor in Germany, Austria and Italy were set up to deal with Jewish collaborators.45 Each defendant was judged in accordance with standards set for the prosecution’s presentation of sufficient evidence and for the defendant’s rights, including appeal. In October 1946, for example, in the camp at Föbernwald, the local Court of Honor, presided over by five judges, found a Jewish ex-Kapo guilty of torturing Jewish inmates in the concentration camp of Görlitz in Silesia. However, as with other cases in which the local courts actually imposed prison sentences (in this case, five months), the US military authorities refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the local court and forced the camp Jewish authorities to release the man from prison.46 The subject of Jewish collaborators became openly debated in March of 1946 following the publication of an article in Undzer veg, written by the poet Leyvik Halpern. In the article, Leyvik demanded to put an end to the trials and public discussions of this matter. Practically, he suggested, testimonies on the matter of Jewish collaboration “should be written down but ‘stashed’ in a separate part of our atrocious national diary, to be forgotten and left behind in a corner.” It was imperative to ‘conceal’ the deeds of the Jewish collaborators, lest the guilt of the few would shift the blame

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from the Nazis and their local collaborators.47 Most of those who responded to Leyvik’s article strongly felt, on the contrary, that it was necessary to deal openly and candidly with all aspects of the past, not only because it would help the survivors to face the challenges of the future but mainly because it would help “exonerate” the dead martyrs’ honor. According to one survivor, for example, those who lost their dearest cannot and wish not to ignore the devastating existence of some “criminal ‘Kapos,’ cowards, informers, and other villains.” Another argued that the distinguished poet, himself not a survivor, could not understand how much the martyrs’ honor was tied up to that of those who survived. It was, therefore, not only wise but imperative to open old wounds and act against those who collaborated with the Nazis and defiled their brethren’s honor.48 The question of honor was also tied to the survivors’ definition of resistance. Unlike for the Jewish fighters, for the majority of “ordinary” survivors, especially those of East- European background, martyrdom, the traditional concept of dying for one’s Jewishness (“Kiddush ha-Shem”), remained as in previous generations, a form of heroism.49 For survivors mostly of Central and Western European background who, as a group, assimilated the basic tenets of modern European culture, preserving their humanity in the face of inhumanity served as a parallel response to the traditional Jewish response of martyrdom.50 Interestingly, the emphasis of survivors of Central European background on the preservation of humanism as a form of heroism reveals, indirectly, their views regarding the roots of the recent catastrophe: the breakdown of morality and the desertion of a commitment to universal concerns in modern European society as a whole.51 As for the survivors’ definition of resistance, in the memoirs and testimonies, written mostly in the DP camps in the years immediately following the war years, there was no apparent tension between the component of Shoah (or churbn) and that of heroism. In their writings and discussions of churbn and heroism, what the “ordinary” survivors wished to convey, above all, was that notwithstanding the inhumane suffering that they had endured the Jews did manage to maintain life, against all odds. The traditional Jewish commitment to the sanctification of life, expressed in the ghettos in the fight against cold, hunger, disease and dehumanization, was their model and source of inspiration.52 The subject of armed resistance, however, did receive attention and admiration. The majority of survivors saw in the Jewish fighters a group that fought for all of them, a symbol worthy of reverence and admiration. In conquered Europe, theirs was the only resistance movement which ini-

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tiated open warfare with no hope of success nor any chance of receiving outside help. And yet, the Warsaw ghetto fighters were not necessarily portrayed by the “ordinary” survivors as an anomaly within the overall Jewish population. In fact, stated one, “they were made of the ‘same dough’ as the millions of other Jews who lived under different objective conditions, which made it impossible for them to stage an open revolt.53 Unlike most other places, the Jews in Warsaw were numerous and had a tradition of political activism. But even there the revolt did not break out until the spring of 1943, when only 20,000 men and women of the over 400,000 Jews who originally inhabited the ghetto were left and the only thing they could hope to achieve was to exact a high price for their lives.54 One has to remember, however, that, against all reasonable expectations, underground resistence movements were organized in many ghettos and that revolts, on a smaller scale, did break out. For many survivors the explanation for these out of the ordinary and brave reactions was clear. In the final analysis, the armed revolt was possible because the fighters drew on their Jewish moral/spiritual heritage. Without the spiritual dimension, which allowed the Jews to fight against hunger, disease and the depression born from the horrendous conditions in the ghetto, the fighters would not have been able to resist or sustain their resistance for as long as they did. However, the growing emphasis set on the celebration of armed resistance, especially in commemoration services held by Jewish fighters, angered some survivors who warned against a distortion of the past. Every survivor knows, claimed the editor of the Landsberger Lager Cajtung, Yosef Gar, that he survived by pure chance and that this had nothing to do with either wisdom or heroism. Although the Jews who took to arms should be commended, these were few and far between and their role should not be overstated.55 Other survivors concurred. If we are to learn from the past, some argued, we must present the facts as they were. On the whole, the objective conditions did not give the Jews the possibility of an armed revolt. Moreover, Jewish heroism was not in the main the heroism of the armed fighter but of the martyrs: of the woman who spat in the face of a Nazi in the streets of Lwow; of ghetto and camp inmates who, under possible death penalty for their actions, gathered, in secret, for prayers on holidays and celebrated the Sabbath; of the mother who would not abandon her children and, voluntarily, chose to die with them.56 In fact, the distinction between martyrs and heroes encapsulated the wide gap between the majority of survivors and the small group of Jewish fighters. The latter, be they Zionists, Bundists or Communists, held to an activist approach to history. Hence, in their discussions and writings about Jewish

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behavior during the war years, the dichotomies of acquiescence and resistance, of the Jewish Councils and the Jewish ghetto fighters and partisans were dominant. In these discussions, armed resistance was generally marked as “heroic,” while all other aspects of the Jewish experience were lumped under the label “churbn” (meaning destruction or catastrophe by Yiddish speakers). The “ordinary” survivors’ concern with martyrology found widespread expression in the work and writings of Jewish historical commissions for the study of the Holocaust, which began to spring up as the war drew to a close and during the first post-war years, in France, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia, in neutral countries such as Switzerland and Sweden and, in the DP camps, in Germany, Austria and Italy. During the Second World Congress of Jewish Studies, which took place in Jerusalem in the summer of 1957, the historian Philip Friedman, the director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw after the war and, later, the Yiddish Scientific Institute’s (YIVO} most renown historian of the Holocaust,57 defined the aims of these Jewish historical commissions and appraised their work and contributions. According to Friedman, the aim of the Jewish historical Institutes was “documentation per se, documentation to embrace all historical features during the Nazi regime, including the internal life of the Jewish community at that time, its social, cultural, religious, artistic, and literary activities.”58 Yet, Friedman asserted, the spirit of Martyrology (Leidensgeschichte), expressed in excessive emotionalism and the passionate desire that their work would serve, in effect, as an eternal monument in honor of the victims, greatly affected the quality of their work. As a result of this approach, their material is mainly of one kind, namely, “of descriptions of the suffering and acts of cruelty inflicted by the Nazis.”59 Similar criticism was voiced even earlier by Samuel Gringauz. In an article he wrote in 1950, Gringauz described the survivors’ tendency to focus on their personal suffering as “judeocentric, logocentric and egocentric.” In his view, most of their memoirs were one-sided, based on unqualified rumors and assumed an apologetic tone.60 The methodology employed by these historical commissions was in line with the established tradition of historical research that began in Eastern Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Under the guidance and influence of the Jewish historians and writers Simon Dubnow and, during and following the First World War, S. Anski, it concentrated mainly on the establishment of “folk” archives—the accumulation of vast amounts of primary source material for the construction of a chronology of events.61 This tradition continued in underground conditions during the war years.62 The same kind of methodology was applied, following the war,

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in the work of the historical commissions in the DP camps and, later, with the enlisting of survivors of mainly East-European background to the study of the Shoah, also in the State of Israel. Indeed, under the survivors’ influence, Yad Vashem’s publications have been primarily documentary in character, focusing mainly on the memorialization of the catastrophic events of the war years, “if only in their bare detail, in their heart-rending repetitiveness.”.63 Among the historical commissions in the DP camps, the first, and, subsequently, the largest and most important to be established, was the Central Historical Commission, founded in Munich in December 1945 by the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Zone of occupation in Germany.64 Its founders, Moshe Joseph Feigenbaum, the historian Israel Kaplan, the archivist, S. Gluber and others, began with the recording of personal testimonies, hoping that these would eventually constitute the foundation for historical research of the extermination of European Jewry.65 For the same reason, the Commission set out to investigate the internal life of Jewish communities under Nazi occupation. Already in December 1945, Kaplan composed a questionnaire, using a linguistic-anthropological method, that aimed at penetrating the subjective Jewish experience during the Shoah by uncovering the distinct linguistic expressions that had developed in the ghettos, forests and concentration camps. These expressions reflected the attitude of these Jews toward their tormentors and their collaborators, the Judenräte and the Jewish police; they depicted the victims’ struggle with hunger, forced labor and disease. The questionnaire also requested the survivors to describe their hopes, dreams and prayers, as well as those stories, songs, anecdotes and parables that affected them most during those trying days—all of which, Kaplan believed, would ensure that the Jewish struggle for life in the midst of destruction would be forever immortalized.66 Despite scant material resources, the Central Historical Commission created during its three years of operation 37 active local committees throughout the DP camps in Germany, of which the most important were in Bamberg, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart and Landsberg. Between 1947 and 1948, it extended its activities to the British, French and Russian zones.67 With the assistance of these sub-committees, the Commission managed to collect some 2,550 personal testimonies about the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust in twelve countries. Most of these testimonies were written in Yiddish, although a few were written in Hebrew, Polish, Hungarian and German.68 Close to 5000 statistical questionnaires on communities that had been destroyed had also been completed. Additional questionnaires about the fate of children, resistance and popular culture

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were also circulated. The Commission also managed to obtain a large number of documents from the Munich municipality relating to the Jews of the city, as well as to the Dachau camp administration. Material published by She’erit Hapletah in the DP camps was also documented. These included collecting and archiving all printed materials in the camps, including newspapers, posters and photographs, 195 short descriptions of survivors communities, as well as material describing the survivors’ cultural, educational and political activities in the DP camps.69 This wealth of material was then archived in the Commission’s Munich headquarter and in various of its branch offices.70 At the outset, the Central Historical Commission did not intend to publish the material it had gathered, mainly due to the small number of professional scholars capable of undertaking such an assignment, but also for technical reasons (lack of typewriters and linotypes); soon, however, it discovered that a publication was imperative in order to prompt more survivors to contribute to the documentation project.71 Furthermore, it could encourage the ‘local-patriotism’ of the various Landsmanschaften— each one of them wanting the name of its town or community to appear in print in the paper.72 In consequence, and following some assistance from the “Joint” which donated a Linotype machine and Israel Kaplan’s willingness to serve as the paper’s editor, the first issue of Fun letstn khurbn (“From the Last Catastrophe”) was published in August 1946 and soon reached a circulation of 10,000–12,000 copies.73 Most of the published testimonies related to the destruction of various communities and only a small number dealt with resistance. As editor, Kaplan’s approach was quite unprofessional. He frequently omitted parts of or made stylistic and even contextual changes in the witnesses depositions, thereby limiting their future historical value. Nevertheless, according to Philip Friedman, the paper was the best of its kind and credit should be given to its editor and staff for their diligence and resourcefulness in collecting primary sources.74 Each issue also carried original Nazi documents in translation together with photographs of Nazi atrocities and poems that had been written in the concentration camps and ghettos, as well as personal records of work done in the ghetto schools and other facilities.75 Particularly moving were the written recollections of children in which they described their experiences during the war. In 1949, Leo Schwarz published excerpts from these recollections in his book, The Root and the Bough.76 In contrast to the “ordinary” survivors’ main concern with martyrology, the Jewish fighters in the DP camps wished to amend the former’s historical account, to balance the record of Jewish suffering with a record of

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active heroism. This desire was expressed immediately following the war with the establishment of their own organizations, separate from those of the “ordinary” survivors.77 The Jewish fighters held their own memorial services and ignored frequent requests from the Central Historical Commission to participate in various documentary and testimonial gatherings. For example, a questionnaire relating to the activities of the partisans, the identity of the various underground organizations in the ghettos and its relations with the surrounding society was sent out by the Commission to different resistance organizations but received little response. None of the pioneer Kibbutzim chose to participate in the survey and only nineteen questionnaires sent to all members of the various partisan organizations were filled out.78 Instead, the Jewish fighters established their own historical commissions in the DP camps in Germany and in Italy in order to document and publish the heroic story of the Jewish war against the Nazis in the ghettos and forests of Europe.79 The separation between the activities of the “ordinary” survivors and the Jewish fighters established a pattern that would continue and, in fact, intensify in the state of Israel. Although the Jewish fighters in the ghettos and in the forests were of diverse ideological orientations (mainly Communists, Bundists or Zionists), for the most part, those of them who remained in the DP camps upon liberation were young committed Zionists. Fighters within the camps who remained communists or Bundists were almost completely silenced (except for a small group in Feldafing); others joined the communist parties in their respective countries and, since a Jewish national and socialist solution in the style of the Jewish-Polish Bund was no longer possible, its members largely joined the communist party or one of the Zionist movements.80 As a result, in the Jewish fighters speeches and writings, their heroism is often attributed to the awakening to historical responsibility that Zionism generated: The background to the revolt, its leaders and its meaning were, they insisted, essentially Zionist.81 Although there were some voices who exalted the part taken by the Bund in the rebellions against the Nazis and the social militancy from which it drew its inspiration, these voices were few and far between and remained marginal.82 Despite their loyalty to Zionism, however, many of the Jewish fighters resented, even blamed the Yishuv for its detachment from the Jews of Europe during the war and in the months that followed. In a letter sent from Warsaw in December 1940 by Zivia Lubetkin (later one of the commanders of the Warsaw ghetto revolt) she wrote: “More than once, I have decided not to write to you anymore...I will not recount here what I am going through but I want you to know that even one word of comfort from you

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would have sufficed...To my regret, however, I have to accept your silence, but I will never forgive it.83 In 1946 she said: “...There were moments in which we felt that the whole world, including the Jewish world had forgotten us. Many Jews died with a curse on their lips for Jews,—for the Jews in neutral countries, in countries overseas: why the silence? we hoped that the Yishuv was doing all that it could to come to our aid, have they?”84 “And, in a letter sent to the Ichud Olami “Poale-Zion-Hitachdut” in Tel Aviv in October 1945, Moshe Schweiger complained: “Was it really impossible to come? Was it impossible at least to send newspapers and textbooks?...I live in fear and anxiety that people don’t understand us, and that we, should we ever get to Palestine, will not understand you.”85 The accusations of Jewish activists from among the Brichah86 founders—Yitzhak Zuckerman, Abba Kovner, Eliezer Lidovsky, Chaika Klinger, and many others—were especially harsh. The Yishuv emissaries, they charged, had left Poland at the beginning of the war and were not heard from again during and immediately following the Shoah period, leaving the Zionist activists in Poland feeling abandoned and isolated.87 Speaking at a Zionist conference in London in August 1945, Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman, who had been the deputy to Mordecai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, complained that even after the war’s end, months had passed by before Yishuv emissaries arrived in Poland. “I will forgive you everything,” he said, but, “I won’t forgive that for those last eight months you did not reach us.”88 Upon their arrival to Eretz Yisrael, however, the Jewish fighters opted to refrain from criticizing the Yishuv’s neglect to come to the survivors’ aid upon liberation. The Yishuv’s struggle for statehood and the Jewish fighters’ wish to assimilate into a society who viewed them as symbols of Jewish heroism, impelled them to repress their sense of betrayal. Instead, in their speeches and in their writings, the Jewish fighters mainly emphasized the impact of Zionist ideology on their choices during the war years. The largest and most important of the Jewish fighters’ organizations in the DP camps was: “Pahah” (Hebrew acronym for Partisans, Soldiers, Pioneers).89 It was Yitzhak Zuckerman who, in 1945, initiated the establishment of this Zionist-oriented organization. Its members included ghetto fighters, partisans and, shortly thereafter, Jewish soldiers from the Polish and Red Armies.90 Initially, Pahah’s main center was in Lodz and branches were established in other major areas of Jewish concentration in Poland, such as Lublin, Byalistok and Krakow.91 Following the Bricha thousands of Pahah members found themselves residing in the various DP camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.92 Pahah’s Central Historical Commission was established with the move-

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ment’s inception in Poland in 1945; it later moved to Austria and from there to Italy (Milan and Rome), which became its main place of operation.93 At the first conference organized by the Historical Commission of Pahah in Bad Reichenhal, Germany, on October 3, 1947, one of its main organizers, laid out the Commission’s main goals: “Our movement holds, and rightly so, that the accumulation of documents and testimonies pertaining to the heroic portion of the recent atrocious past has an invaluable historical value:” The documentation would serve as a memorial to those who were killed in action; it would keep alive the memory of Nazi crimes; it would open the way to national accounting of why the Shoah was possible and how its recurrence could be prevented and, finally, it would serve to inspire and strengthen those who were to stand at the forefront of the continuing Jewish struggle for life and freedom.94 “...Therefore,” he continued, “each story of a Jewish partisan is of the greatest importance for us and a response from each Jewish partisan to the questionnaire which we have distributed among our members is of great necessity. Let us make it our goal to collect the testimonies of each and every one of the Jewish fighters.”95 Indeed, the Central Historical Commission of Pahah in Italy collected some 700 biographical reports on Jewish fighters; information on about 25 partisan units; about a 100 first-hand depositions from Jewish fighters, as well as eyewitness records, diaries and other material. In 1948, the Commission published a book, written by its chairman, Moshe Kaganovitch on the Jewish role in the partisan movement in Soviet Russia. And, during that same year, local branches affiliated with Pahah in Germany managed to publish the accumulated testimonies in a collection entitled “Through Fire and Blood: The Partisans and Ghetto Fighters Almanac.”96 As we have seen, in contrast to the “ordinary” survivors’ emphasis on “Martyrology”, the historical commissions founded in the DP camps by surviving members of the underground and youth movements emphasized the acts of resistance during the Holocaust. However, as mentioned, the method of collecting evidence, or, in fact, of chronicling those events was similar in both types of commissions. Moreover, despite the wide gap in the description and interpretation of the Holocaust between these two “schools of thought,” the Jewish fighters’ work too “sinned against the principles of scholarly research by adopting a romantic approach and accepting unverified stories at their face value, without checking their authenticity.” This approach greatly contributed to the establishment of the new myth of heroism, which, according to Philip Friedman in 1957, “had already struck deep roots in our historical consciousness” and would be extremely difficult for historians to defuse, in years to come.97

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In 1948, shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jewish historical commissions in the DP camps, including Pahah’s, were dissolved, primarily because of mass Jewish emigration, mainly to Israel but also to the United States, which had liberalized its immigration laws that same year.98 In the majority of cases, the commissions’ documentary collections were transferred to the newly established archive at kibbutz Beit Lohamei Ha-Getaot or, primarily, to the committee newly established by the World Zionist Organization for the purpose of setting up “Yad Vashem”—the Martyrs and Heroes Remembering Authority—in Jerusalem.99

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() PART TWO &'

Politics of Memory and Historiography

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As we have seen, the early history of the Shoah was written by survivors in the DP camps who largely chronicled the events and by a few historians trained in pre-war Eastern Europe. With the immigration of the majority of She’erit Hapletah to Eretz Yisrael, the work that had started in the DP camps and other European frameworks continued, mainly, at Yad Vashem, the state created institute for the commemoration and study of the Holocaust period. However, before the establishment of Yad Vashem in 1953, two kibbutz movements, affiliated with the left-wing Mapam party: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Hakibbutz Ha’artzi (Hashomer Hatsair), established centers for the study of the Shoah. It was within these two movements that survivors—members of Zionist youth movements and Jewish fighters— were largely absorbed; and it was there that the first writings and publications of survivors’ memoirs and diaries took place. Mapam, the left-wing faction of Mapai that seceded to form its own party in 1948, sought to make the uprisings the focus of the memorialization and research of the Holocaust. The party identified with the Jewish fighters, particularly those of the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish fighters, Mapam leaders persistently argued, were largely members of pioneer youth movements whose ideology most closely resembled its own pioneering and socialist values (although during the war years Mapam was Mapai’s partner in running the Yishuv, under the British Mandate).1 The main center for the study and memorialization of the Shoah in the early 1950s was The Ghetto Fighters’ House at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot of Hakibbutz Hameuchad movement. The Kibbutz was founded by survivors of the camps and ghettos, many of them partisans and members of the Halutz and the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. The proclaimed goal of the House (as it was called in short) was the memorialization and study of both the Shoah and the Gvurah,2 although its research projects concentrated mainly on the history of Jewish resistance in Poland and elsewhere in conquered Europe. The House included a temporary museum, a library, and a growing archive, as well as two periodicals: Yediot Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, edited by Zvi Shner, and Dapim Leheker HaShoah ve-Hamered, edited by the historian Nahman Blumental. Among the House’s first publications (published in the its periodicals or in conjunction with the publishing house of Hakibbutz Hameuchad) were: Jostina’s Diary (1951), which tells the story of the Jewish Fighters’ organization in Cracow; Yitzhak Katzenelson’s writings, Ktavim Akhronim (Last Writings) which includes his poetry, written in the Warsaw ghetto (1953);3 and Gad Rosenblatt’s, Esh ahaza ba-ya’ar (The Wood’s on Fire), first published in 1957, which describes the activities of a group of

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Jewish partisans during the days of the “Aktzia” in a small town in Volin (Volhynia).4 During those early years the House also published a variety of memoirs and diaries that were written during the Holocaust or immediately thereafter by active participants in the fighters’ movements, such as Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamrof’s Dapim min ha-delekah (Pages from the Inferno), published in 1947,5 Tuvia Bozikovski’s Ben kirot noflim (Within Falling Walls) (1950),6 and Batia Temkin-Berman’s Underground Diary (1955). In 1954, the House published Sefer Milchamot Hagetaot (The Fighting Ghettos)—a large volume containing documents written by eyewitnesses and participants in the Jewish resistance movements in Eastern Europe during the war.7 Hakibbutz Ha’artzi of Hashomer Hatsair movement was the second center dealing with the memorialization of the Shoah. The memoirs of Ruzka Korczak on Ghetto Vilna were published already in 1946;8 in 1950 it published Chaika Grossman’s memoirs on the activities of the Jewish underground in Ghetto Byalistok—an exposition with a clear party ideological orientation.9 And, in the first volume of Sefer Hashomer Hatsair (Book of Hashomer Hatsair), published in 1956,10 major parts of the book are dedicated to the heroic deeds of the Jewish fighters, their ideological orientation clearly described as being in line with that of Hashomer Hatsair. Two years later, “Sifriat Hapoalim” published The Book of Jewish Partisans in two volumes; there too the authors identify the descriptions of Jewish resistance with the activities of Hashomer Hatsair. These publications, as well as the prevalent “negation of Exile” ideology of the Yishuv, on the one hand, while exalting the spirit of activism and heroism of the Zionist few who resisted, on the other, all lay the foundation for the domination of Mapam’s left-wing militant-ideological approach to the history of the Shoah in Israel in the early 1950s. The ruling labor party, Mapai, resented Mapam’s ‘monopoly’ on the linkage between its ideology and Jewish armed resistance. On the questions of Jewish honor and of going to death unresistingly, the two parties held identical views; the assumption that the Jewish fighters salvaged theirs and Israel’s honor was agreed upon. Redeeming their honor meant, according to this assumption, physical resistence. However, in the name of mamlakhtiut (“statehood”), David Ben-Gurion’s campaign to grant the state dominant institutional authority in the life of the community and also a normative value in its own right,11 the link between Jewish heroism during the Holocaust and Zionist ideology in general, had to be maintained. Hence, despite Ben Gurion’s initial reluctance to memorialize the Holocaust(as late as 1952 he stated that the only fit monument for European Jewry was the State of Israel), Mapam’s attempts to link Jewish

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heroism with its own ideology convinced him that a national center for the commemoration of the recent catastrophe was imperative. Mamlakhtiut also implied the right of the Jewish state to represent and speak in the name of world Jewry, including those who died in the Holocaust. In the early 1950s, for example, referring to the debate over Israel-German relations, Ben-Gurion stated that if the Holocaust victims could express their opinion they would have insisted that “what is good for the state of Israel is good for the entire Jewish people.”12 The plans of Jews in the early 1950s to establish memorials abroad were seen by BenGurion and his party as a threat to Israel’s status as the legitimate representative of the Jewish victims.13 Thus, a central commemoration and research center would also serve as an answer to those who doubted Israel’s exclusive right to speak in the name of the six million Jews who perished in Europe. This ideological framework directly impinged upon the formation and orientation of Yad Vashem in 1953. Henceforth, the commemoration and writings on the history of the Shoah in Israel were dominated by a common ideological ground: Zionism, with its specific relation to the diaspora and its particular vision of Jewish history from catastrophe to redemption. Within the newly created national institution, this ideology affected the formation of a “dominant school” of history writing. In fact, during this early period we will witness an extreme form of politics of memory and historiography, manifested by a mounting tension and rivalry between the formulators of Israel’s historiography and memory of the Shoah within Yad Vashem, mainly Ben-Zion Dinur, and between other ideologically oriented institutions in Israel and abroad. As we shall see, it also resulted in the systematic exclusion of those researchers within Yad Vashem who did not fit the pre-established framework.

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The Israeli Representation of the Holocaust in the 1950s

The proposal to establish a national institution to commemorate the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was first voiced at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), in September 1942, soon after the first reports of the extermination reached the Yishuv. Mordechai Shenhabi from Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek (of the Hashomer Hatsair movement) proposed to commemorate both what he called the “Shoah of the Diaspora” and the participation of Jewish fighters in the Allied armies.1 Shenhabi suggested that the site be called “Yad Vashem” (literally, a monument and a name), after a quotation from Isaiah (56:5), in which God declares how those who keep his covenant will be remembered: “I will give them, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name, better than sons and daughters. I will give them an ever lasting name that will never be effaced.”2 Despite Shenhabi’s persistence, the establishment of the memorial was delayed time and time again. In 1942, the Yishuv itself was under Nazi threat and, although Shenhabi’s plan was approved three years later at the 1945 Zionist conference in London, the struggle for statehood delayed the proposal’s enactment for a few more years. Shenhabi’s main achievement during this pre-state years was the convocation in Jerusalem, on July 13 and 14, 1947, of an international conference of Jewish historical commissions,3 under the auspice of the Jewish Studies Institute of the Hebrew University. The conference itself, with some 200 participants, was convened as the second part of a conference on Jewish Studies. It was at this conference that Yad Vashem defined its goals: the creation in Jerusalem of a world center for the gathering of all historical material relating to the Jewish catastrophe and to Jewish hero-

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ism; the establishment of a monument to the six million victims, to the Jewish heroes who resisted and took to arms, as well as to those brave individuals from among the nations who risked their lives to save Jews. The conference concluded with the election of members, from the Yishuv and abroad, to the newly established administrative and working committees and councils, including a World Council for Documentation, comprising of representatives of 31 different organizations from all over the world.4 Following the 1948 War of Independence, Shenhabi proposed a bill that would turn Yad Vashem into a national memorial authority. Although in principle no one raised any objections, neither did any of the new state’s leaders do much to promote the legislation. Not only were there more urgent tasks but the plan itself was the subject of political and ideological power struggles among the parties, especially among the two major ones: Mapai and Mapam—each of which exploited the Holocaust for its own ideological ends. As mentioned before, Mapam leaders wished to emphasize that it was the merger of Zionism and socialism that produced the heroism of the ghetto fighters; in the name of Mamlakhtiut, Mapai leaders, on the other hand, aimed to foster a sense of commemorative unity by presenting the Holocaust as the decisive argument in favor of Zionism in general and the establishment of Israel in particular. “The Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Law—Yad Vashem” finally came up for consideration in the Knesset and was passed on August 19, 1953.5 The Law stated that the aim of the newly founded national institution would be to commemorate the martyrs and heroes of the Jewish Holocaust.6 The Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Law also stated that one of the institution’s tasks would be “to gather, investigate, and publish all evidence about the Holocaust and heroism.”7 While presenting the Law before the Knesset, Education and Culture Minister, Ben-Zion Dinur explained that the ultimate goal of the Nazis was “to obliterate the name of Israel.”8 As has been pointed out by Tom Segev, Dinur’s use of the term ‘Israel’ rather than the “Jewish people” clearly meant to link the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.9 Indeed, Yad Vashem was authorized to grant citizenship to the Jewish victims.10 Dinur then praised the heroism of the Jewish fighters in Europe and linked it to the heroism of the Yishuv in 1948. “The War of Independence, he maintained, was a “direct continuation” of the war of the partisans and the underground fighters, as well as that of more than a million and a half of our soldiers who had fought the Nazis during World War II...Jewish heroism is all one.”11 Dinur’s speech meant not only to reiterate the link between Holocaust and statelessness, between heroism and national rebirth, but also to serve

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as an answer to those who doubted Israel’s exclusive right to speak in the name of the Jews who perished in Europe. His words were probably directed in particular against Yitzhak Shneurson, a French Jew and the founder and director of the “Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris” (Centre de documentation juive contemporaine). The archival and research work of the French Center grew out of the activities of French Jewish underground groups. It was created in Grenoble in 1943 and eventually became the repository of all the archives of Vichy’s Commissariat General aux Questions Juives. Within the first five years, the Center managed to raise funds and establish Friends Associations in France, England and Holland that helped support the rapidly developing institute. In fact, the Center’s representative to the Jerusalem international conference of 1947, was the only foreign delegate who refused to relinquish the Center’s collection of documents to Yad Vashem. “The compounded work of the Center,” said the delegate, “the support and blessing it receives in different circles..., give hope that it will become central to Europe as a whole....We should work in cooperation but I have not been authorized to give all the documents in French that we have gathered to the world center in Jerusalem. The people of the French Center wish to keep this material in France.”12 Some four months later, in November 1947, the Center initiated a conference of all the Jewish historical committees in Europe on the subject of the Holocaust, as well as, a few months later, with the active support of the historical committees and of renowned Jewish historians, such as Philip Friedman, the first international exhibition on the extermination of European Jewry. In 1952, when reparation funds became available, Shneurson proposed the establishment of a world center for the memorialization and research of the Holocaust, to be built by the Center and the French government, in Paris.13 To Dinur, the proposed world center in Paris reflected the “Diaspora impulse” to question Israel’s primacy in this and all other Jewish matters and “give Paris the place of Jerusalem.”14 Ultimately, the Israeli government reached an agreement with Shneurson whereby the Paris project would be given a lump sum of $500,000 to build a monument in return for relinquishing its original plan to establish a world center for the commemoration of the Holocaust.15 The “threat” of a Paris world center for the commemoration of the Holocaust persisted for a few more years. In 1956, when the monument in Paris was about to be officially unveiled in the presence of world and Jewish leaders, members of Yad Vashem Executive Board debated whether to accept Shneurson’s invitation to participate in the ceremony. Dinur said: “. .symbolic ties with the French documentation center are not to my lik-

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ing. I thought that the French Center will be a branch [of Yad Vashem] but Shneurson does not want that.”16 Yosef Weitz, representative of the Jewish Foundation Fund (Keren Kayemet le’Israel) raised another objection: “I would like to ask: should Dr. [Nachum] Goldmann be there? He is the President of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the World Jewish Congress; should he give legitimacy to this ceremony? I think not. It is a disgrace moreover because he is also a member of Yad Vashem’s World Executive Board! In case Dr. Goldmann decides not to attend and Ambassador [Yaakov] Zur does attend,...then, when he delivers his speech he should be advised to emphasize the Jewish world’s debt to the state of Israel and that the main center for the memory of the Holocaust is in Jerusalem, in the state of Israel.”17 The issue of Israel versus the Diaspora arose also when Yad Vashem’s cornerstone was laid. The debate among the members of Yad Vashem’s Executive Board centered around the question whether to invite Nahum Goldmann, Chairman of the World Jewish Congress, to speak at the ceremony alongside Israel’s President, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. “The country’s President unites world Jewry,” said one participant in the debate. Another disagreed: “The President of Israel is not the leader of all Jews. Diaspora Jewry participates in Yad Vashem. It is therefore proper and fitting that the Diaspora be represented.” A third member contended: “The president of the country is enough. We must do away, once and for all, with the separation between the State of Israel and the People of Israel.” Ultimately, the board decided, by a vote of six to five, to invite Goldmann to the ceremony. However, President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi objected to there being another speaker.18 Even within Israel, Yad Vashem wanted a monopoly on the memory of the Holocaust period. Although the law requested that Yad Vashem should cooperate and eventually assist in coordinating the activities of all other institutions dealing with the memorialization or research of the Shoah, in Europe and in Israel,19 Yad Vashem’s Executive Board viewed any such institution as a threat to its hegemony. Yad Vashem’s reluctance to share center stage with other institutions was articulated time and time again by members of the Executive Board, from their first meeting on December 2, 1953 and throughout the end of the 1950s. Among the first institutions with which Yad Vashem became embroiled in a lengthy struggle over its hegemony was the “Chamber of the Holocaust” on Mount Zion, outside Jerusalem’s old city walls. The Chamber was built in 1948 during the War of Independence on the initiative of Rabbi S.Z. Kahana, a department director at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In 1948, after the Old City and the Western Wall were conquered

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by the Jordanians, the Chamber became an element in a wider plan by Rabbi Kahana to turn Mount Zion, and especially the area near King David’s tomb, to a memorial center to Europe’s destroyed religious communities. According to the Jewish tradition, Mount Zion is the burial place of King David, one of whose descendants was to be the Messiah. Hence, in Jewish tradition, the site is a symbol of redemption. In December 1949, ashes of Jews burned in death camp crematoria were transferred to Israel and buried, alongside torn fragments of Torah scrolls saved from the Nazis, in the “Chamber of the Holocaust” on Mount Zion.20 By linking the Jewish catastrophe in Europe to the redemption of Israel, Kahana, along with other religious Zionists could both reiterate the link between catastrophe and redemption in Jewish tradition, as well as remain loyal to the Zionist lesson of the Holocaust (In contrast, for ultra-Orthodox Jews “redemption” remained outside of the process of historical time).21 The religious expression of memory in the “Chamber”, however, was unacceptable to the secular Zionist founders of Yad Vashem. From the outset, Yad Vashem was meant to be an integral component of the national emblem of the state, sharing and reinforcing Israel’s secular ideals and self definition. “We are obligated to perpetuate the memory of the century’s greatest catastrophe within the framework of our Zionist enterprise,” Shenhabi stated in 1954. The sanctuary would teach the lesson of “a thousand years of trying to live in countries that are not ours.”22 In fact, the founders of Yad Vashem actively rejected the import of any religious connotation and meanings.23 Memorial sculptures built later on at the site of Yad Vashem are in breach of Jewish religious law and most readings in remembrance of the dead are from secular Israeli poets. Often read, for example, is a poem by Haim Guri which affirms that the ultimate monument to the dead is the State of Israel.24 Hence, for example, when, in 1958, a proposal was made by leaders of “Hamizrahi,” the orthodox Zionist party, to link the commemoration activities at Mount Zion with those of Yad Vashem, the members of Yad Vashem’s Executive Board were infuriated. Yosef Weitz who, along with other members of the Board, had just returned from a visit to the site on Mount Zion, expressed the members outrage: “The suggestion made by the Mount Zion Association to connect...‘traditional commemoration’ with Yad Vashem is out of the question because of the form of commemoration [on Mount Zion] and its orientation...the creation of fables and dates that have no historical base...and the establishment there of cult-like rituals.”25 Other members of the Board concurred. Dinur added that “...the commemoration at Mount Zion borders on idol worship. Everything that is done there is a disgrace which is backed by the Ministry of Religion.”26

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Yad Vashem also opposed Kahana’s attempts during the 1950s, to expand the activities and spectrum of the “Chamber” by conducting annual memorial services for destroyed Jewish communities and by proposing a plan to build 50 chambers for their commemoration, in accordance with the Jewish tradition.27 These activities were viewed by Yad Vashem as an attempt to sabotage the existence of one central national-memorial site. However, pressure from the Rabbinate and “Hamizrahi” and from other orthodox groups in Israel and abroad forced Yad Vashem to reluctantly accept Kahana’s plan and even to allocate some funds for its implementation.28 The “Chamber of the Holocaust” on Mount Zion, however, did not pose a major “threat” to Yad Vashem’s hegemony. After all, The “Chamber’s” religious orientation was geared toward a relatively small segment of the population. The real “threat” to the hegemony of the new Authority was perceived to be the The Ghetto Fighters’ House at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta’ot. The proclaimed goal of the House was the memorialization and study of both the Shoah and the Gvurah,29 although, as mentioned earlier, its research projects concentrated mainly on the history of Jewish resistance. The existence of an independent institution which was working in parallel to Yad Vashem raised fears that this would limit Yad Vashem’s authority, diminish its achievements and hinder its activities. The members of the Ghetto Fighters’ House were equally concerned (also because in early 1954, two of their most renowned historians, Nahman Blumental and Yosef Kermisz decided to join the Yad Vashem staff). Shortly after the law of Yad Vashem passed in the Knesset, Moshe Zuckerman and Moshe Kaplan of The Ghetto Fighters’ House wrote to the Executive Committee of the General Labor Federation (Histadrut): “Let it be known that “the Authority is not starting its operation in a vacuum...the House was and is the only institution in this country that actively commemorates the memory of the Shoah and the uprising...we demand a full moral and financial support for the House—the founding father of all memorial institutions in Israel” .30 The House’s insistence on remaining independent irritated and worried the members of Yad Vashem Executive Board, as is evident from the frequency and the length of the debates dedicated to the subject in their weekly meetings. The contexts of these debates demonstrate not only Yad Vashem’s reluctance to cooperate with any other institution dealing with the memorialization of the Holocaust but also the ambiguous attitude of Yad Vashem’s leadership toward the Jewish fighters, whom they revered as a symbol of the renewed Jewish spirit of heroism but whose independent activities were viewed as an obstacle to the creation in Israel of a united collective memory of the Holocaust period. As we shall see, this attitude

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was also “reserved” for survivors who worked within the framework of Yad Vashem but who, until the late 1950s, had no representatives in its Executive Board. Already during its first session, on July 17, 1954, the Executive Board protested the existence of an independent House, and attempted to formulate strategies that would limit its field of research and achieve control over its activities. Moshe Kol, representative of the Jewish Agency to the Board, stated that although Yad Vashem was established relatively late, there should be only one memorial authority. “We do not want to terminate the activities of the House but there can be no two parallel authorities.”31 Zalman Shazar, also a representative of the Jewish Agency (and, years later, Israel’s third President), suggested to accept, on principle, the existence of one central authority with affiliated branches. “The House has to become an integral part of Yad Vashem,” he proposed, “so that they can deal with the ghetto resistance and not with all forms of resistance, as they suggest.”32 Only Yitzhak Gruenbaum, Minister of the Interior, objected: “The Knesset did not declare Yad Vashem to be a monopolistic authority....we cannot order an existing institution to join us in exchange for our support. There is no law about a monopoly.” The members, however, overwhelmingly accepted the other position and concluded the meeting by deciding not to collaborate with institutions who refused to accept the central authority of Yad Vashem.33 The House’s reluctance to relinquish its independence continued to occupy the members of Yad Vashem’s Executive Board throughout the 1950s. On November 15, 1955, for example, Mordechai Shenhabi complained: “We offered them the Warsaw Ghetto and [Yitzhak] Katzenelson, but not the whole resistance...yet they insist that Yad Vashem is not the leading institution of either world or Israeli Jewry, but an organization that the state established. Therefore, one should encourage and strengthen any of its counterparts in Israel and abroad. Their attitude is that dispersion is a blessing, while our attitude is that diffusion is a catastrophe. Only when they realized that we have the support of the Knesset...did they suggest the following division: To us the Shoah, to them—the Gvurah.”34 Four months later, on March 2, 1956, Dinur informed the members of the Board that he received a letter from Zivia Lubetkin of The Ghetto Fighters’ House in which she requests that Yad Vashem allocate some funds for an exhibition and a memorial service on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Yad Vashem Board members reacted angrily to her request. “I don’t know if we can do that,” Judge Shalom Kasan, representative of the Claims Conference, said, “We tried to establish a committee that will work in cooperation with the

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House, we tried to establish ties, but they reject all of our efforts. Not long ago, I met with Lubetkin and again attempted to initiate relations. She promised to write back but I never heard from her again.” Another member added: “...We have encountered an incomprehensible stance on their part. They will not sit with us at the same table. They came to us with an offer to publish all of [Emmanuel] Ringelblum’s writings but on the condition that the money for this project should not come from the shilumim [reparation money from Germany]...Now, not only do they demand that we partake in funding them but they plan the memorial service on the same day as ours and without our participation...They do not want to be tainted by money from Germany nor to have any direct contact with Yad Vashem. They do not want partnership, they only want money. Besides, we have none to give.”35 Dr. Mark Dworzecki warned the participants that rejecting the House’s request would make a bad impression on the public. Dinur, in turn, suggested a compromise. Yad Vashem will agree to help the House on principle, and ask Lubetkin to come to Yad Vashem and speak to the members of the Board.36 The following week, on March 13, 1956, Shenhabi reported to the members about the failure of the attempted negotiations with the House: “The House held and is holding on, unyieldingly, to one principle: independence, and they are not ready to give it up. On my own initiative, I ventured to offer them one hundred percent funding if they let us oversee their activities...Even this offer was angrily rejected on the spot...We have to seriously consider what to do with an institution that chooses such a course of action.”37 The tension and rivalry between the two institutions eventually subsided in the early 1960s. By that time, Yad Vashem established itself as the main commemorative institution in Israel and felt more secure. The Eichmann trial, in a sense, too, contributed to a greater opening and willingness for cooperation among researchers of the Holocaust in Israel and abroad. The ideological orientation of Yad Vashem also resulted, during the 1950s, in constant attempts to limit, or, at times, outwardly ban, the work of survivors, whose academic background as well as their vision of the Institute’s aims, were often at odds with that of its founders, most notably with that of Ben- Zion Dinur. Funded by money paid by West Germany as collective indemnity to the Jews, Yad Vashem was obligated by its contractual arrangements to employ Holocaust survivors.38 For that reason, and because no Israeli historian of the postwar era chose to study the Holocaust,39 the majority of researchers at Yad Vashem were East-European Jews, survivors themselves, with lit-

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tle academic training, or who came from a different intellectual tradition. For the most part, they wished to turn Yad Vashem into a folsky enterprise, to strengthen the Institute’s ties with the Landsmanschaften and to increase the volume of publications of survivors’ memoirs and testimonies.40 As already mentioned, the methodological approach of this group of East-European Jews owed much to the pioneering work of the Jewish historians and writers Simon Dubnow and S. Anski. To compensate for the lack of Jewish municipal and national archives, Dubnow started a popular movement amongst thousands of Jews in the Tsarist empire who, following his guidance, accumulated for him great numbers of documentary sources for the construction of a chronology of events in Russian and Polish Jewish history. Dubnow’s final legacy when he was seized by the Germans in Riga on December 8, 1941 was to urge his brethren to continue and chronicle the unfolding events: “Brothers,” he is said to have called out, “write down everything you see and hear. Keep a record of it all.”41 S. Anski too signed a call for historical chronicling during World War I. In a longwinded manifesto, issued on new Year’s Day 1915 he warned his readers: “Woe to the nation whose history is written by foreign hands and whose own writers are left to later compose only songs of lament, penitential prayers and threnodies.”42 The Dubnowian/Anskian tradition was kept alive during the Holocaust. Many of the Jewish victims made great efforts, often at considerable risk, to record the life, the suffering and the deaths of their fellow Jews under German rule. In the Warsaw ghetto, for example, Emmanuel Ringelblum, inspired by Anski’s most important Jewish chronicle from the Great War, Khurbm Galitsye (The Destruction of Galicia), organized a team of archivists (in what came to be known as the “Oneg Shabbat” underground archive) “who collected, evaluated and preserved the record of perfidy and martyrdom in the very midst of total destruction”;43 in Auschwitz and other camps too, records were kept by individual inmates; the Labor-Zionist underground and the Bund kept records, as did many Judenräte.44 As we have seen, after the war, this urge to record what had happened led to the creation of historical commissions in many of the DP camps. This tradition was later transmitted by the survivors to Yad Vashem.45 Some of the survivors who were now employed by the Jerusalem center were formally associated with the work of the underground archives in the ghettos of Europe;46 others were involved in the work of the Jewish historical commissions in the DP camps or with the Historical Institute of Warsaw, which had been formed in 1944 in order to gather documentary evidence of German war-crimes against the Jews.47 At Yad Vashem, too, much of their work concentrated on what Yehuda Bauer termed “factog-

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raphy,”48 on collecting raw data, functioning, in fact, as chroniclers rather than historians. Among the researchers of the Holocaust who adhered to this methodology were H.G. Adler, who worked mainly on Theresienstadt, and Lucjan Dobroszycki, the specialist on Lodz. Both Adler and Dobroszycki made extensive use of full texts, replicating documents with brief explanations that did not distort the records in their original form.49 Indeed, under their influence and that of the other East-European survivors, Yad Vashem’s publications in the 1950s have been primarily documentary, focusing mainly on the conservation and memorialization of the Holocaust years, “if only in their bare detail, in their heart-rending repetitiveness,”50 As noted earlier, for the Israeli scholars the study of history did not mean the accumulation of documents per se, but critical analysis of historical facts, based, at the same time, and, in a sense, in contradiction to, on their Zionist goals and aspirations. Even Dinur, despite his own work of Kinus of the history of Jews in the various European countries and in Palestine, advocated greater emphasis on historical analysis. “Teaching the lesson [of the Shoah] to the nation,” Dinur asserted during a meeting of the Executive Board in 1959, “means deriving conclusions based on researching and analyzing the facts. It is not enough to collect all the evidence...The way to fulfill this requirement is through constant and systematic research work on the Holocaust and heroism, its extent, roots and consequences.”51 Another, perhaps more complex, element which enhanced the tension between the survivors and the Israeli scholars derived from the “formula” at the base of the Yad Vashem Law. The Law, as mentioned earlier, stated that the national institution was to fulfill the two (related but not always compatible) functions, that of preservers of memory and that of historians. Mark Uveeler, representative of the Claims Conference at the Board described the confusion: “...There is the opinion that Yad Vashem should cater to the public and there is the other that its work should be intended to a certain strata that can receive and ‘digest’ a more scientific approach.” In his (previously mentioned) report to the “Claims Conference” in 1960, Jacob Robinson explained that this unnatural symbiosis was at the root of the difficulties facing Yad Vashem. In reality, he argued, both functions are not fully fulfilled because of the different approaches that each demands.52 Dinur, on the other hand, saw no contradiction between the two aims. In his resignation speech to the members of the Executive Board on March 11, 1959, he reiterated his conviction that a strong, in fact, unbreakable link exists between memory and history: “A few words on the term “memory”

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and its significance. Memory in Hebrew does not means simply the past; memory means recalling and keeping in one’s heart all that was and analyzing the past in order to learn about the future: ‘Remember that we are but dust’; ‘And Jerusalem did not remember its fate.’The purpose of the Memorial Authority is both to preserve the past and to determine its lessons for the future...Only by espousing both interwoven meanings of the term can we discuss Yad Vashem’s aim...The aim of Yad Vashem is to study the past in order to teach its lesson to the people, for, otherwise, what is the purpose of remembering?”53 In his scholarly work, Dinur defined this “symbiosis” between memory and history as “historical consciousness.” In his article on “The Historical Consciousness of the People and Problems of Its Study,” Dinur defined historical consciousness (hakarat he-avar) as “an acquired knowledge which confers emotional confidence.” And, since historical and national consciousness were, for Dinur, interchangeable,54 he saw in the study of history not only a scholarly pursuit but, even more so, a historical calling. Not only did he, as an ardent Zionist, actively participate in changing the course of Jewish history, but his historical writings neatly corresponded to his ideological convictions.55 Also based on his historiographical stance that the Holocaust, despite its magnitude, was yet another manifestation of the dialectic process of destruction and regeneration that characterized Jewish life in exile,56 Dinur believed that it was imperative to study this period within the overall context of Jewish history. Such a task could only be undertaken by researchers with a broad historical overview in general, and expertise in Jewish history in particular. Hence, already at the end of 1954, he appointed the historian Israel Halperin of the Hebrew University, whose field of research was early modern Jewish history, as the scientific advisor to Yad Vashem and he nominated Joseph Melkman, whose dissertation dealt with the Jewish poet of the seventeenth century, David (Franco) Mendez, as manager of the scientific branch and as General Director of the Institute.57 Dinur also worked relentlessly to involve renowned Israeli historians, such as Gershom Scholem, Efraim Urbach, Jacob Talmon and others, in the work of Yad Vashem. Moreover, he attempted to encourage young researchers who had a university training to deal with the Shoah period and become involved in the scientific work at Yad Vashem, although with little result.58 He did manage to enlist his student, Shaul Esh, to research the period. With Dinur’s encouragement and support, Esh became, until his death in the late 1960s, one of the leading Israeli scholars of the Shoah and of Nazism, as well as Chief Editor of Yad Vashem’s publications. Due to the influence of Dinur, who viewed the lack of qualified

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researchers willing to work in this field as one of the major obstacles facing the Jerusalem institute, a series of interactions, “negotiations” and common endeavors between Yad Vashem and academic institutions evolved during these early years.59 Dinur believed that the way to attract young scholars to the subject would be through the establishment of an academic institute in conjunction with the Hebrew University. The new institute, in fact an extension of the University, would be located in the Yad Vashem building at Har Hazikaron and would concentrate on a scientific study of the Shoah, its roots and its consequences.60 Some members of the Board, including Yad Vashem’s General Director, Joseph Melkman, anticipated that the establishment of such an institute would also help solve the major difficulty facing Yad Vashem since its inception: operating as a memorial center, on the one hand, and as a center of scientific research, on the other. They hoped that the proposed institute, directed by the University, would deal with the academic study of the Shoah period while the other existing departments at Yad Vashem would focus on memorialization and documentation.61 Dinur suggested to call the new academic center the “Institute for the Study of the Destruction of European Jewry—Yad Vashem” and to consider the destruction as beginning with racial antisemitism and not with Hitler.” This, he argued, is also in accordance with the spirit of the Law of Yad Vashem: “The Law states that our task is ‘to commemorate the communities destroyed, to gather, research and publish all testimonies of the Holocaust and to teach the nation its lesson.’ In order to teach its lesson we have to ask ourselves, when was this plan born and who prepared it? These questions can only be tackled by persons with a wide knowledge in modern history...By expanding the period of research we have a better chance of attracting young scholars to the subject.”62 Haim Yahil, a member of the Board and a senior official at the Foreign Ministry, concurred. It is important to study the roots of the destruction, he said, even though there is a good chance that young researchers will deal, primarily, with the Dreyfus Affair or the emergence of antisemitism and less with what happened in the ghettos. Yet, restricting the period of research will dissuade historians and lock the door before any scientific study of the Shoah period itself.63 Dinur’s plan evoked a series of debates above and beyond the most “vociferous” one concerning the survivors’ role in the study of the Shoah. These included heated discussions about whether the Shoah, as the survivors within and outside Yad Vashem, along with some public figures, argued, should be viewed as an extreme event whose study, therefore, requires a different approach than the one usually applied by historians?

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Or, should it, as Dinur and most other academics involved with the Institute maintained, be described and interpreted according to the conceptual and representational categories commonly applied in history? Should research in this domain deal exclusively with the Nazi period or, should it, in order to better understand its roots, also include the study of antisemitism? Some members of the Board sternly objected to the idea of expanding the period of research. Yosef Weitz, for example, argued that such an expansion will diminish Hitler’s responsibility. Moreover, he added, we know that for hundreds of years there were many Hitlers but if we deal with the antisemitism of two thousand years ago we will never get to the modern period and to the Holocaust. Therefore, he concluded, the institute should deal exclusively with the period commencing with Hitler’s ascendance to power to the end of the war in 1945.64 Avraham Harman, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry, concurred, insisting that the Holocaust years should suffice as a subject of research, since they themselves are infinite in scope.65 Mark Dvorzecki too voiced his disagreement: “Indeed,” he said, “what happened in Nazi Germany was the result of historical developments that began thousands of years ago. However, we are witnessing a sad phenomenon in Israel where young intellectuals abstain from dealing with the Holocaust period and I am afraid that scholars at the proposed institute will, if given the choice, concentrate for the rest of their lives on the history of the past century and will never reach our period. We are obligated to study the Shoah period first, and, maybe later, expand backwards.66 Eventually, the majority of participants embraced Dinur’s position: Yad vashem will deal exclusively with the Shoah period while the proposed academic institute will commence its investigation with the inception of modern antisemitism.67 Professors Halperin, Mazar and Urbach, representatives of the Hebrew University in its negotiations with Yad Vashem, doubted, at first, the wisdom of pursuing such a joint enterprise. They found it difficult to enlist scholars to deal with this field and refused to participate in financing the new academic center.”68 It was Dinur’s relentless efforts and talent for persuasion that tilted the scales and brought them around. Yad Vashem, he promised, will finance the new center and “recruited” scholars will conduct “a directed and guided research of European Jewish history from the 1870s, with an emphasis on the history of the Shoah and the uprising (1933–1945), its roots and its consequences in Europe and elsewhere.”69 In accordance, the proposed academic center was renamed and hence called: “The Hebrew University and Yad Vashem Institute for the Study of

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the European Jewish Catastrophe.”70 At the same time, Dinur rejected attempts made by survivor organizations, mainly the organizations of the Jewish fighters, to influence the policies of Yad Vashem, on the basis of their conviction that Holocaust survivors were the rightful heirs and spokespersons of the victims who perished in Europe. For example, Nathan Eck, a survivor who worked as a researcher at the Institute, insisted that “the task of Yad Vashem is not to assure the Holocaust period its place in Jewish historiography; there is no need for that. Rather, it has to fulfill a unique, and not necessarily academic, national/educational mission. This mission should have nothing to do with glorifying science; it should aim at endowing its lesson to those who need it..., first and foremost to those of our generation and to the younger generation who grow up in its still looming shadow. The object of Holocaust research at Yad Vashem is to find scholarly answers [underlined in the original] to questions and problems that arise regarding the Holocaust. There are questions and problems that should be addressed but many of them cannot be scholarly expressed and defined in scholarly terms because they are gnawing at and piercing our very souls.”71 Most members of the Board, however, supported Dinur’s view.72 Yosef Weitz, for example, said: “I cannot imagine that the sick can deliberate about their own sickness. Among the surviving remnants there are no scientists and no researchers.”73 The survivors, on their part, refused to accept the Institute’s attitude and harsh debates among representatives of survivors’ organizations and members of the Executive Board followed. Jacob Robinson, a historian, an international lawyer and member of the World Council of Yad Vashem, described the essence of the controversy in a special report on the activities of Holocaust research institutes prepared for the “Claims Conference” (an organization that had been formed to represent Jewish material claims against Germany) in 1960: “Can only those who experienced the Holocaust describe it? On the one hand, there are those who hold that only survivors of Nazi persecutions possess the ability to do so. On the other hand, there are others who claim that it is impossible for survivors to be objective; objectivity can only be attained by those who were not direct victims of the Nazi regime, although the latter lack a major advantage, i.e., comprehension of the period’s ambiance...”74 Four survivors in particular led the confrontation with the Board: Rachel Auerbach, one of only two survivors of Emmanuel Ringelbaum’s circle in the Warsaw ghetto,75 Nahman Blumental and Joseph Kermisz, who, along with Auerbach, were among the founding members of the first Jewish Historical Institute for the research and study of the Holocaust,

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established in Poland in 1944 (Zydowski Instytut Historyczny);76 and, Nathan Eck who was active in the Polish Jewish underground movement and Principal of the underground Hebrew secondary school, “Tarbut,” in the Warsaw ghetto.77 They complained that their work was being ignored or undermined in an attempt to push them to resign. They especially criticized the Institute’s efforts to foster greater cooperation with the Hebrew University. Its scholars, they claimed, should learn from the experience gathered by survivors who were working relentlessly already during the war and in the DP camps on documenting the Jewish Holocaust. Some such qualified survivors, as Moshe Joseph Feigenbaum and Israel Kaplan, founders of the Central Historical Commission in Munich after the war, expressed their wish to work for the Institute but were rejected. The fact that they experienced the Shoah, the four persons argued, should be considered as an “advantage” rather than an obstacle.78 During the spring months of 1958, the four survivors decided to voice their grievances publicly. Along and with the support of several survivors’ organizations and a few journalists, they published letters in the daily papers, Davar and Ma’ariv, in which they accused Yad Vashem of attempting to curtail the work of survivors at the Institute and called for a fundamental revision of its policies. An illustration of the accusations against Yad Vashem in the papers is the one which appeared in Ma’ariv on June 18: “Several historians who were employed by the Ghetto Fighters’ House were invited to work for Yad Vashem. They accepted the Institute’s invitation willingly and enthusiastically. They assumed that they would be given every opportunity to demonstrate their ability. They came with plans and awaited for a go-ahead. They are waiting—to this day...”79 As a result of these publications, Nathan Eck, Nahman Blumental and Joseph Kermisz were temporarily dismissed from their work at the Institute. A few weeks prior to their dismissal, Rachel Auerbach had already been suspended from her work as the manager of the testimonies gathering department of Yad Vashem in Tel Aviv.80 On May 22, 1958, the Executive Board met to discuss the “organized defamation campaign against us in the papers.”81 The question on the agenda was whether to negotiate with the four “insurgents” or turn their temporary dismissal into a permanent one, a difficult choice in light of the widening public support for the plight of the four employees.82 Moshe Kol, representative of the Jewish Agency, was against the proposed dismissal: “It is natural that whoever went through the Shoah finds it difficult to get used to working in a set framework...Yet, we shouldn’t dismiss them. No one will understand that, even if the chairman and [Joseph] Melkman appear in countless news conferences and attempt to explain it...One of

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these men, Mr Kermisz [Director of Yad Vashem’s Archive] came to see me and said some very harsh words. He feels that he is being deprived, that his work is being diminished, that we try to turn him into a tiny cog in the machine, he feels hounded....Moreover according to Kermisz, although he is a member of the editorial board, he gets access to the material only after it is published. Since the public has deep feelings for these people,” Kol concluded, “their dismissal may haunt Yad Vashem forever.”83 Avraham Harman concurred: “We have to come to terms with these people even if it is not in the interest of the Institution, because as things stand now, not to do so would be worse for us.”84 Doubts arose especially about the removal of Nahman Blumental from his senior position as Director of Yad Vashem’s library. “Publicly,” Harman said “we will not be able to dismiss him [Blumental] even if we wanted to. He is known to the public as a man who dedicates his time and effort to the subject of the Shoah. The question is, does he have a place with us? Maybe not. Even so it is our duty to secure for him a place of employment and let everyone know that this place was found thanks to our efforts. In fact, there is nothing wrong in asking the Ghetto Fighters’ House to rehire him.”85 The General Director of Yad Vashem, Joseph Melkman, denied any connection between the publications in the papers against Yad Vashem and the four’s dismissal: “From the moment I began my work,” he argued, “I was asked to dismiss some people in order to increase efficiency. And, anyway,” he added, contradicting his previous statement, “unlike the others, Blumental was not exactly dismissed and we have to talk about him separately.” Interestingly, Melkman, a scholar whose field of research was Hebrew literature in Holland, was himself a survivor who spent the last two war years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Following the war, he was active in numerous educational and cultural frameworks of the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency in the Netherlands. In 1957, he was invited by Dinur to head the scientific department at Yad Vashem and, a few months later, he was appointed as its General Director.86 His nomination was meant, above all, to counterbalance the prevailing tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on researching the fate of East-European Jewry in general and of Poland’s Jewry in particular and to give more weight to the study of the plight of West-European Jewry during the Holocaust.87 Melkman’s position that the work of the four survivors at the Institute was terminated in order to “increase efficiency” was embraced by most members of the Board who went on to discuss in detail the inadequacies of each of them. Dinur, for example, accused Blumental of receiving a

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salary yet doing nothing in return but lying and threatening Yad Vashem in the papers: “He continues to reside in Tel Aviv...and here [in Jerusalem] there is nothing...,” Dinur said, and added: “Furthermore, he signed a contract about his book which he did not fulfil. He promised to finish his work within ten months but finished it after twenty, and even then handed in material that is not worthy of publication.” Melkman, in turn, denied Kermisz and Eck’s accusations that their work was being minimized and, along with other members of the Board, attributed their excessive sensitivity to their experiences during the war years. “One has to remember,” said Yehudah Leib Bialer, representative of the Ministry of Religion, “that their sensitivity is much more acute because they are survivors of the Holocaust.” The harshest words were directed toward Rachel Auerbach, Director of the Collection of Testimonies Department. Dinur described her methods of gathering testimonies as flawed and her attitude in general as insulting and uncompromising: “I invited professors Eisenstadt and Talmon and two more experts to evaluate her way of gathering testimonies...,” he told the members. “They said that her methods are erroneous because she influences the witnesses’ accounts: she incites them to talk by bringing up memories and she spends too much time with each witness; in a year and a half she managed to interview only some fifty survivors. And, when these men [the professors] met with her to discuss the matter, she insulted them by saying that she is willing to talk only with people who understand what it takes to interview survivors. Furthermore, she writes all of her defamation letters to the press from the Yad Vashem office!....She wants to be the administrator even though she understands nothing about administrative work. Moreover, we invited a lawyer from Yugoslavia to assist her in collecting testimonies from Yugoslavs, yet she refused to accept him because, according to her, he does not speak Yiddish. Why does he need to speak Yiddish to get testimonies from his fellow Yugoslavs? Obviously, she sees the whole thing as her own private enterprise. The partisans, for example, asked us to gather testimonies from their comrades. We requested that they send some people to assist us in this task. They sent many but Mrs. Auerbach rejected all of them with the argument that they were not intelligent enough. She turned to the press and defamed us. What should we do in order to please her short of nominating her as our General Director...?”88 Despite the general criticism, some members of the Board expressed their sympathy and even admiration for this group of survivors and its achievements. Yehudah Leib Bialer praised Kermisz’s work and reminded the members that it was he who saved and brought thousands of docu-

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ments and other priceless material from Europe to Eretz Yisrael. Mark Dworzecki, himself a survivor who spent the war years in the Vilna ghetto, described the group of four as “living monuments,” and “my brothers who are revered by all.” Moreover, he himself felt that Dr. Eck was mistreated and, as for Rachel Auerbach, he stated: “I read the exchange of letters between her and Dr. Melkman and I have to declare that had I received such letters from Dr. Melkman, I would probably have reacted much stronger than she did.89 Indeed, furious and hurt, Auerbach continued to publically criticize Yad Vashem’s orientation and its Executive Board, well into October. Following her dismissal, she sent an open letter to the Davar newspaper, titled “What the Struggle within Yad Vashem is All About.”90 “Our struggle,” she wrote, “aims at returning the national Institute to the mission and roles for which it was created.” The original goal, she maintained, was to establish a creative and dynamic Memorial House, “with the people and for the people, not an aloof scientific Institute...and certainly, not a bureaucratic fortress void of content.” The Institute’ strayed from its original design, mainly because of the composition of the Executive Board, all of whose members, she wrote, are highly influential people who are, nonetheless, distant and removed from the concrete work on which they have to deliberate and decide. Except for one member who is also a survivor [Mark Dworzecki], all members of the Executive Board are veterans of the Yishuv, heads of different organizations, politicians or senior administrators who are busy, head over heels, with other matters. “Researchers like us, who are not part of the ‘in-circle,’ receive no kind of support, monetary or otherwise...In fact, every effort has been made to dismiss us, one by one, so as to ensure the veterans’ total control over the course and management of Yad Vashem.”91 Support for the Executive Board in its confrontation with the survivors came from an unexpected source. In 1958, the State Controller’s annual report found the financial management of the Institute to be in disarray. The following year the criticism of the State Controller, Siegfried Moses, was even harsher, yet he put the blame on the survivors. “The administrative management of Yad Vashem,” he reported, “suffers since 1958 as a result of personal tension that was and is present at the Institute and which affects all practical matters.” The Controller went on to explain the root and cause of the paralyzing situation: “Severe transgression of discipline occurred, that should not have happened in a state-run institution: disgruntled employees turned with their complaints not to the Executive Board but to the public.”92 Following the State Controller’s first report and the articles in the

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press, members of the World Council of Yad Vashem also expressed their desire to investigate the problems at the Institute. On June 17, 1958, the Fourth World Council of Yad Vashem convened at Har Hazikaron in Jerusalem. The members elected a Committee to study the Executive Board’s activities in detail and make recommendations for improvement. On November, 9, based on the Committee’s conclusions, the World Council established the following points: “The ‘Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Act—Yad Vashem’—passed by the Knesset on August 19, 1953—imposed on Yad Vashem two functions, the kind of which were never forced upon any other institution. The Law states that the aim of the newly founded national institution is to commemorate the martyrs and heroes of the Jewish Holocaust and, at the same time, “to gather, investigate, and publish all evidence of the Holocaust and heroism.” Yet, the Executive Board failed to elicit the public’s interest or support in its commemorative efforts. Therefore, The Council determines that the Executive Board should put a greater emphasis on the commemorative side of its activities and diligently work to increase the public’s awareness of the Jewish tragedy. This would be better achieved if Yad Vashem were to include members of She’erit Hapletah and the Jewish fighters in these efforts. Hence the World Council demanded that adequate representation be provided to organizations who represented the surviving remnants and the Jewish fighters. The Council, therefore, recommended the nomination to the Executive Board of five new members from among the survivors that would participate as observers in its meetings.93 On November 11, 1958, in view of the mounting public pressure and the World Council’s recommendations, the Executive Board convened in a compromising mood to conclude its discussions on the matter. It announced that although the Institute regretted the wrongful actions of its employees, the four would be reinstated under certain conditions: Blumental would move to Jerusalem and return the compensation money which he received upon the termination of his work. As for Auerbach, the department for the collection of testimonies would be divided in two: the first, under her supervision, would deal exclusively with the collection of testimonies from Polish Jews; the second, for whom Yad Vashem would nominate another supervisor, would collect testimonies from people of all other countries. Nathan Eck and Joseph Kermisz would resume their previous positions and, in addition, Kermisz and Blumental would also be included as members of the Editorial Board.94 Each of them, except for Auerbach, accepted Yad Vashem’s proposals.95 It is at this conjunction, in the late 1950s, that the politics of memory and historiography of the Shoah assumed a clearer, less contentious

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path. Yad Vashem was recognized as the leading Institute for the commemoration and study of the Shoah and the Gvurah in Israel and abroad; it resolved the problematic “division of labor” with competing institutions, mainly The Ghetto Fighters’ House, and also lent an increasingly greater role to survivors in its research work as well as in its policy making, mainly in their new role as members of the Executive Board.96 This trend was enhanced following Dinur’s resignation as head of the memorial foundation, on March 11, 1959, and his replacement by Aryeh Leon Kubovy, a much gentler, compromising figure. Kubovy declared, shortly after his nomination: “There is nothing...more dangerous for our future than turning Yad Vashem into an ivory tower, distanced from the life of the nation and detached from its feelings and demands, especially from those who experienced the Holocaust first hand.”97

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Israel’s “Pantheon” and the “Silence” of the Survivors during the 1950s The Yad Vashem Museum was constructed so that it leads from destruction to rebirth, from the Holocaust to the establishment of the Jewish state. The exhibition begins with the Nazi rise to power in 1933 Germany and ends not with the war’s end in 1945 but with the creation of Israel in 1948. The museum itself is divided into three main sections: The first section is dedicated to the evolution of Nazi anti-Jewish laws and policies between 1933 and 1939. The struggle to survive during the first three years of war (1939–1941) is presented as an extension of the first phase. The next section is devoted entirely to the exterminating process, between 1941 and 1945. The third section is dedicated to Jewish attempts to resist the Nazis and concludes with the establishment of the state of Israel, thus linking death and resurrection, catastrophe and redemption—conceptually and ritually.1 The division of the museum into three equal parts, in accordance with the Zionist narrative, came to reflect and perpetuate the myth of active heroism, exalting and magnifying the Jewish fighters’ role as vindicators of Zionist ideology. At the same time, it implied the rejection of Exile and the exilic Jews, perceived to have gone to the their death unresistingly. In fact, one of the early plans for the site, discussed and debated at length during the 1947 International Conference organized by Yad Vashem, would have visibly accentuated the difference between the passivity of the majority of Jewish victims and the heroism of the Jewish fighters. The idea was to build two commemorative houses on one of the hills surrounding Jerusalem. The first would have been dedicated to the six million Jewish

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victims of Nazism and would have include their names according to the towns and countries from which they came. On the opposite side of the hill would stand the “Hall of Heroism,” where the names and deeds of the ghetto fighters and partisans, of the more than one and a half million Jewish soldiers who had fought the Nazis during World War II, of individuals who risked their lives to save Jews, as well as of volunteers from the Yishuv who fought to free European Jewry and died in battle, would have been commemorated.2 During this conference, Abba Kovner, the leader of the Vilna ghetto resistance movement, a partisan and a major Hebrew poet, even demanded that in the construction and orientation of the two commemorative Houses a special emphasis be put on the differences between the two groups. The “victims’ House” was to point to the visitor that the tragedy of the Shoah was neither in the defeat of European Jewry nor in the magnitude of its suffering, nor in the fact that it was left isolated and alone. Rather, the tragedy lied in its loss of capacity to defend itself. Skeptic, individualistic, nihilistic and assimilatory, this generation of Jews had lost its spiritual foundation and remained empty and hollow, “without the devotion of the believer and the primitive boldness of the partisan.” Indeed, “the spirit of the nation was nullified before the nation itself was annihilated.” And this, according to Kovner, should be the main lesson taught to the visitor in the “victims’ Commemorative House.” Only then should he enter the “hall of heroism” where Resistance would be revealed to him in its true character: a Jewish revolt, carried out by young men and women with strong spiritual and ideological convictions. “This revelation may not always be consoling....but it will allow the visitor to understand the revolt not as an act of desperation but of great choice [emphasis in the original].3 During the 1950s, this perception was also reflected in the educational domain. The main goal of Zionist education was to forge a “new Jew”— a national Jew,4 one, that could not develop in the Diaspora, but which existed in the pre-exilic past. This perception also shaped the image of the “new Jew,” defined as the very opposite of the rejected exilic Jew.5 Hence, Zionist educators put great emphasis on Bible studies rather than on the major corpus of Jewish literature that developed in exile, with the explicit purpose of undermining 2,000 years of Jewish history in the Diaspora, on the one hand, while establishing a direct link between the people of modern Israel and the exalted archetype of the ancient Hebrews, on the other. Moreover, under Ben-Gurion’s inspiration and Dinur’s guidance (in his role as Minister of Culture and Education in the early 1950s), the Bible was “secularized” and “nationalized,” as a means to derive a contemporary lesson. Indeed, considered from a secular and national point

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of view, the Bible provided many images with which the nation could identify: an independent state inhabited by free and courageous people, historically “active” biblical heroes, such as Joshua and King David.6 Second, and connected to the former, great emphasis was put in Israel’s national schooling on Moledet studies (the study of one’s homeland). The study of Moledet enhanced the symbolic use of the Bible, their common purpose being “to root the children in Eretz Yisrael, the land of our fathers, the birthplace of the Hebrew nation,” in order to nurture “the consciousness that [the Moledet] is our national home, the basis for the creation of our material and spiritual culture.”7 Third, in history teaching, the submission of Jewish history to the dictates of Zionist historiography denoted not only an emphasis on the inevitability of Zionism but on the rejection of exile, which was increased by the shock of the Holocaust.8 According to Aryeh (Arik) Carmon, for example, during the 1950s, 33 out of 39 topics in the section on modern Jewish history presented the Zionist viewpoint in a positive light and the Diaspora experience negatively.9 The interpretation of Jewish history in the spirit of Zionist ideology was provided for the authors of textbooks, who were mostly high school teachers, by Ben-Zion Dinur. Rabbi Abraham Hacohen Kook helped the authors of textbooks geared for the nationalorthodox schools to formulate this interpretation in religious terms.10 For Dinur, ideas and deeds were interwoven. A “renewed historical consciousness,” to be determined by way, among others, of school curricula, was for him “a first condition for great historical deeds which fate tossed upon us forcefully and which move us forward, willingly or not.”11 Given the role attributed to historical consciousness by Dinur, it is not surprising that the emphasis on the Zionist message in Israeli textbooks was expressed by detailed discussions about ‘Heroism’ under the Nazis while the Shoah as such was given only secondary attention. In fact, until the late 1970s, there was not one textbook available on the subject of the Shoah.12 Instead it was incorporated into study subjects, in different chapters, within the framework of general history lessons. The main issues dealt with in these chapters were: the atrocities of the Nazis, the indifference of the free world and the heroism of the few who revolted, described as bearers of that national spirit out of which Zionism emerged.13 The Nazis were described as “blood-thirsty beasts,” their murderous conduct “the devil’s design.”14 The demonization of Nazism and its mythologization served the writers as a means to enhance the Zionist lesson. If the Nazis’ incensed hatred was an expression of “dark-evil forces,” spread among the nations with “demonic efficacy,” rational-historical explications of this irrational phenomenon were unnecessary. The obvious implication

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of such an approach was that the only “counter-force,” the only “salvation” for the Jewish people, the only place where their safety could be guaranteed, was in the state of Israel.15 The relation between Israel and the nations, too, was characterized by the latter’s irrational and permanent hatred of the Jews.16 Thus, the silence of the free world in the face of Jewish extermination was described as the history of inaction and indifference: Jews were refused refuge, Allied governments rejected rescue suggestions and the railway line to Auschwitz was not bombed. This account, too, highlighted the prevailing notion that, as long as the nation was in exile, antisemitism was a universal and permanent fixture. Little was written in history textbooks about the widespread perception in Israel that the majority of Jews went to their death “like sheep to the slaughter.” Yet the long descriptions of Jewish resistance were often set in contrast to the passivity of those who perished without attempting to resist, lacking in personal and national dignity.17 According to one author, for example, “the heroic stand of the Jews in the ghetto provided a compensation of sorts for the shameful surrender of those led to the extermination camps.”18 The fighters, wrote another, “preferred an honorable death to a disgraced and dreaded life;”19 and yet another declared that “within the deep ugliness in which the Nazis attempted to drown them [the Jews], there were also sons of Israel who were determined to act against a certain death and wished, at least, to die with weapons in hand.”20 According to the usual Zionist “formula,” the heroic deeds of Jewish fighters, particularly in the Warsaw ghetto, were described as rooted in Zionist ideology. The Jewish fighters themselves were referred to as “Hebrews” or “Defenders of Masada,”—labels that were usually “reserved” to describe the heroic early Israelites and their heirs, the Zionist-pioneers.21 Identification with the Jewish fighters was further strengthen by referring to them as “the youth,” or as members of “youth movements,” terms which were often used in Israel to describe the new, proud and brave generation of young Israelis, the majority of which belonged to one Zionist youth movement or the other.22 In most textbooks, the Jewish catastrophe in Europe was used as a proof of the righteousness of the Zionist warning and its solution. Dinur himself described the Zionist lesson as follows: “Zionism predicted ahead of time, although not in such a horrendous magnitude, the threat of a coming Holocaust in the Diaspora, and it is not Zionism that should be blamed but the Jews who did not respond, who paid no attention to its warnings.”23 Accordingly, in the description of Jewish suffering in the years prior to the Holocaust, the authors of history textbooks emphasized the Jewish will-

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ingness for self deception, their refusal to acknowledge Zionism and its warnings. Implicitly, these evaluations gave the impression that the Holocaust was a historical punishment for those who ignored the Zionist call to European Jewry to save themselves by immigrating to Eretz Yisrael.24 This line of thinking, expressed not only in education but, as we saw, by the national memorial authority and the country’s leaders, left most native and veteran Israelis estranged from and even contemptuous toward the majority of survivors, whose stories did not fit with the linkage between Zionism and active heroism. Engagement with the themes of the Holocaust became a domain of deep denial. The survivors, on their part, felt alienated and offended. Ruth Bondi, a survivor of Theresinstadt and Auschwitz, described the survivors’ pain and sense of total isolation: To tell we must until our wit’s end, but no one wanted to listen. Only stories on doll-houses were listened to; to all the rest of the horrors, who can listen? They lowered their eyes as if they were told something too private, too personal, not to be mentioned in public. We learned quickly: Be an Israeli outside and a survivor at home, and even not at home—why burden those dear to you—but only in your heart.25

The negative image of the survivors in Israel manifested itself also in the often asked question: “How come you survived?” “I had a feeling that I am guilty for staying alive,” remembered Simhah Wtthoiser, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto.26 Indeed, the common assumption in Israel was that the best had probably perished while those who managed to survive were the unscrupulous ones, those who knew how to take care of themselves at the expense of the others, or those who collaborated with the Nazis. The fact that ghetto fighters and partisans were also among the survivors was perceived as an exception that confirmed the general rule.27 Ashamed of telling a story that appeared out of tune with surrounding society, the survivors, many of whom felt it their moral and historical obligation to tell and chronicle their war-time experiences while in the DP camps in Europe, chose to remain silent. On their part, native and veteran Israelis could not or did not want to listen. The survivors came from another, incomprehensible world and there was genuine fear of confronting their suffering and torment.28 Mark Dworzecki explained the “ordinary” survivors’ silence as the direct result of this sense of estrangement which “afflicted” both groups: Conspicuous is the sense of loneliness and isolation from the veterans in the Yishuv who did not experience the Nazi atrocities and are not particularly interested to hear about them...In any case, they are not interested to hear, as much as they [the survivors] are willing to tell. Thus an orphanhood complex was created...The new immigrant found among the Yishuv people only a few who want-

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ed to soothe and comfort him, to pay him individual attention outside the official attention that he receives in dealing with this or that institution.29

Another survivor complained in his memoirs: “It was important that what happened should be told, but in the years immediately after the war it was difficult to find anyone willing to listen. You spoke but it was as if you were talking to yourself...”30 This mutually imposed silence was twice broken in the early 1950s: during the debate over the “Reparations Treaty” with Germany and, with even greater intensity, during the Kastner trial. In both instances, however, it was the opposition to Mapai, from the left and from the right, that turned the Holocaust as a convenient issue for attacking the government. The Reparations Treaty with Germany, according to which survivors would receive monetary compensation from Germany for their suffering and the property they had lost, was the initiative of Ben-Gurion. Although a few ministers opposed the idea, especially because of the ethical principle involved in granting Germany even indirect rehabilitation through negotiations, it was the economic consideration, specifically the financial affliction of the state, which decided the matter. The burden of national reconstruction, mass immigration and security costs, have all led to a debilitating economic crisis. At the end of December 1951, Mapai’s cabinet approved the Prime Minister’s proposal to start negotiating with Germany for a treaty. However, in the following weeks, before the matter was presented to the Knesset, the notion of taking “blood money” from Germany rocked Israeli public opinion. Some Knesset members of the coalition government demanded that they be allowed to vote according to their conscience, lobbies and pressure groups sprung up as did public rallies and protest demonstrations. In accordance with Mapam’s affinity to the Soviet line, the party adopted the Soviet distinction between communist East Germany, which, in their view, carried no responsibility for the actions of Nazi Germany during the war, and between West Germany, whom they held accountable for the crimes of the Third Reich. All Mapam members of the Knesset, therefore, voted against negotiations with West Germany. The right-wing Herut party, led by Menahem Begin, had its own arguments.31 In the first Knesset, elected in 1949, Herut had received 14 out of 120 members. In the election to the second Knesset, the party had gone down from 14 seats to 8. The decline in his party’s strength led Begin to adopt a policy of intensified militancy against the government. The opportunity to gain public support for Herut came when the Reparations Treaty with Germany became a hotly-debated national issue.32 Although the issue was manipulated for political purposes, it should

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be added that the Holocaust was at the center of Begin’s system of values and emotions; its lesson as he perceived it—“we shall never again go to our deaths like sheep to the slaughter”—guided his national policy until his death in the 1980s. On January 7, 1952, a few hours before the Knesset was to vote on the proposed treaty, Begin addressed a crowed of some 15,000 in Jerusalem’s Zion Square. With great pathos and emotions, he called the agreement a “holocaust,” equated Mapai with the Nazis, and charged that Ben Gurion’s real intention was to use the “blood money “ to enhance Mapai’s economic position, as in the 1930s, when Mapai signed the haavara agreement with Nazi Germany.33 Despite the fierce opposition, from the left and from the right, the Reparation Agreement with Germany was concluded in September of 1952. Both Herut and Mapam failed in their campaign, mainly because they conducted their struggle as part of their battle for political power. In their rhetoric they attempted to “adapt” the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons to their own dogmas but failed to address the individual needs and feelings of the victims themselves. Indeed, except for a handful of survivors,34 the majority, hundreds of thousands of them, elected to accept their share of the compensation money.35 The Kastner Trial too turned into a hot political issue. In 1952, Malkiel Gruenwald accused Dr. Rudolph Kastner, a Hungarian Zionist leader who negotiated a trucks-for-Jews deal with Adolf Eichmann, of having collaborated with the Nazis.36 Kastner admitted that he had negotiated with Nazi representatives in Hungary, but he claimed that he did so in order to try and save Hungarian Jewry and that, indeed, he managed to save thousands of them.37 In 1954, Gruenwald was tried for libel, but was acquitted by the Jerusalem District Court on the ground that there appeared to be some evidence for his accusations. In reading the verdict, Judge Benyamin Halevy accused Kastner, a Mapai activist and a spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, of “selling his soul to the devil.”38 The verdict, handed out on June 22, 1955, several weeks before the Third Knesset elections, was again quickly seized by the radical right and the left in an attempt to destroy the power and credibility of the Mapai establishment.39 The trial’s proceedings became also the trial of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Survivors who testified on Kastner’s behalf were accused of collaboration, deceit, or of going like “sheep to the slaughter.”40 The accusations against Mapai included criminal and immoral acts, including suppression of information about the mass killings of Jews in Europe as well as indirect responsibility for the eventual destruction of Hungarian Jewry: Like Kastner, Mapai leaders deliberately concealed

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reports about the Holocaust. Had they revealed the truth to the public, it was argued, the Yishuv might have rebelled against the British and forced them to try and save the Jews of Europe.41 In March 19, 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary. They immediately summoned the local Jewish leaders, assuring them that they had no intention of harming the Jews and that Jews who were arrested were charged with criminal conduct that had nothing to do with their racial origin.42 Nonetheless, arrests and deportations began within a short while. Gruenwald’s defense attorney Shmuel Tamir, who would serve in the early 1980s in Begin’s government as Minister of Justice, was then a young lawyer affiliated with the right-wing Revisionist movement. Tamir asserted that Kastner (along with the rest of the Jewish leadership in Hungary) chose to conceal this information for his own personal gain. Had the Jews been warned, Tamir insisted, thousands may have had the chance to flee or organize armed resistence.43 During the trial, Tamir described the failed trucks-for-Jews deal and charged that Mapai leaders deliberately sabotaged the negotiations. They did so, he insisted, in the service of the British who did not want anymore Jews coming to Palestine.44 The Herut party and its newspaper, Herut, supported Tamir’s line of defense: “We have to admit that we are not interested in Kastner himself but for the fact that he represents a certain policy, a certain moral atmosphere. The moral decadence began with cooperation [of the Yishuv leadership] with the British. On the defendant’s chair sits the establishment.”45 As for what came to be known” the “VIP train,” with 1,685 Hungarian Jewish passengers whom the Nazis allowed to leave for Switzerland, Tamir charged that this was given to Kastner in exchange for his silence.46 Records showed that among the passengers selected by Kastner, several hundred were people from his hometown and many others were members of his family. The link between Kastner’s selection and that of the Jewish Councils (Judenräte) was emphasized in both left and right-wing publications. In various articles the authors argued that just like Kastner, the Jewish Councils’ “institutional compliance,” including the compiling of transport and “roundup” lists, while concealing the truth from the masses, prevented any chance for organized or spontaneous acts of resistence. Kastner’s selection was also equated with Mapai’s policy of “selective immigration,” which, during the 1920s and 1930s, mainly encouraged the immigration of pioneers and young people to Palestine.47 Yohanan Bader, a Herut leader, insisted that there was a clear connection between these two issues: both distinguished between those whom they believed worthy of being saved “and the rest who were human dust and, if they were dust,

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should not endanger the chosen.”48 Throughout the proceedings, Tamir presented Kastner, who was not even a member of the Hungarian Judenrat as the very archetype not only of that leadership but also of diaspora mentality. The defense attorney compared the courageous character of the Israelis to the contemptible nature of Diaspora Jewry which, according to him: “in periods of trouble tended to resort to bribery and solicitation.”49 The question of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust was addressed daily in the general press where the overall consensus was that the Jews by their passivity, were responsible for their own death.50 Indeed, in Israel of the 1950s, there were many, from the left and the right, who had readymade prescriptions for what the Jews ought to have done in the countries occupied by the Nazis. In left-wing publications, however, an effort was made to distinguish between the majority of Jews who did not resist and the Jewish fighters. As mentioned previously, the Zionist left viewed armed resistence in the ghettos as the utmost expression of revolutionary Zionism—the rebellion against passivity. The verdict in the Kastner trial, which condemned Jewish cooperation with the Nazis, was presented in both left-wing newspapers, Al Hamishmar (Mapam) and Lamerhav (Achdut Ha-Avodah—a faction of Mapam, established in 1954), as proof of the virtue of their own ideological way, applied during the war in Europe mainly by members of the Halutz movements (associated with Mapam), who chose to fight back.51 Clearly then, the issues involved in the trial went far beyond Kastner’s guilt or innocence. Notwithstanding the political manipulation of the trial by all parties, from the left and the right, for their own ends, the context of the trial expressed and heightened the predominant ideals of Zionism and Israel’s perception of the Holocaust and its victims: active heroism versus passivity and compliance, Diaspora mentality versus the courageous character of the Israelis, collaboration versus resistance.52 Despite these two heated political debates and, perhaps, because these debates accentuated the “difference” between native and veteran Israelis on the one hand, and the survivors, on the other, the latter, feeling more alienated than ever, continued to maintain their silence. Many survivors found some solace within the framework of survivors’ organizations: the Landsmanschaftn.53 The Landsmanschaft organizations held annual memorial ceremonies, usually on the anniversary of the liquidation of the town’s ghetto, organized cultural and social events, as well as established committees whose task was to assist members, materially and psychologically.54 The Bergen Belsen Survivors Association, for example, was founded in

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Tel Aviv on March 27, 1950. On the membership cards, given to the survivors of the Bergen Belsen camp after they filled out a lengthy and detailed questionnaire regarding their wartime experiences, were stamped the four main goals of the Association: “a) Remember that which was done to us by the Nazi Amalek b) Remember Iyar 2 [the day the camp was liberated by the Allies] c) Perpetuate the memory of the martyrs of Bergen Belsen d) Defend the rights of the members and provide mutual help to survivors from Bergen Belsen and [from other camps within] the British zone of occupation in Germany.”55 In 1955, the Association, with 2,000 registered members, had its own constitution, directorate, national council and various committees for policy making, culture, information, reparations, welfare, philanthropy, social work, youth and more. A special emphasis was set by the members on perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust among the youth (a committee organized separate activities for them which included Hanukka and Purim parties, arts and crafts, as well as contests with prizes on such subjects as the Holocaust, the Bible and modern Israel). The children were also asked to contribute essays and poems to a special volume, The Bergen Belsen Youth Magazine, which was eventually published in 1965 and included sections on the life of children in the camp, Jewish education in the ghettos, and much more.56 In the late 1950s, the members, who until then held their meetings at various temporary locations, purchased a house in Tel Aviv where they established a memorial center and a library of the Holocaust, dedicated to the martyrs of Bergen Belsen.57 Since then, the members held their commemoration services in their new house. Each year they held three memorial services: A religious ceremony on the tenth of Tevet (the date chosen for its religious significance by the chief Rabbinate) and the twenty seventh of Nissan, the official “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.” The largest and most “elaborated” service was held in a rented lecture or theater hall, in the presence of thousands of survivors and their families, on the second of Iyar, the day the Bergen Belsen camp was liberated,.58 The commemorative services of the Bergen Belsen Survivors Association as of most Landsmanschaftn followed an identical pattern. The Israeli flag, raised throughout the year over the Association’s building, was lowered to mid mast, six candles were lit, followed by Kadish and Yizkor prayers. Holocaust poems were read, often by children of the survivors. The chairman would then exhort the audience against forgetting, about their obligation to the dead who willed life to the survivors. The evening’s speaker would be introduced and deliver his address.59 The topics included memories from the days of destruction, contemporary problems relat-

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ing to the Jewish nation and to Israel and discussions of the attitude of Israelis to the Diaspora and Diaspora Jewry. In 1965, for example, in a commemoration service on the occasion of the twelfth anniversary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen, Dr. Nachum Goldmann addressed that last issue. In Israel, he said, there exists today a tragic tendency to skip over the history of the Diaspora and to forget the Holocaust. If this tendency takes root, it will, undoubtedly, lead to the moral and spiritual degeneration of the State of Israel.60 In contrast to these memorial services, which were maintained during the 1950s almost exclusively within the survivors’ community, the Jewish fighters’ memorial gatherings were frequently attended by political figures and often received admiring attention in the press. Rachel Auerbach, for example, described her impressions of some of those meetings: “Among the various memorial gatherings those of the partisans are marked by a somewhat different audience and a somewhat different style. Here too memorial candles are lit and here too the Kadish and Yizkor prayers open the ceremony; nevertheless, the atmosphere here is that of vigor and hope. These Jews made their way out to freedom from behind thick walls and barbed-wire fences. When you hear them speak, you are able to ascend somewhat above the deadly fog that surrounds the memories of those days. For a brief while one may inhale the unmistakable scent of cedar and pine trees. Undoubtedly, the Jews of the forests were also survivors of slaughters and horrendous atrocities. Moreover, they emerged from one jungle, that of the Nazi domain to a place where the dominant law was also the law of the jungle: each for his own. Here too the Jew was faced with numerous perils and fears, yet his chances were that of an equal. Here the Jew was also feared; here the Jew proved that he could inflict wounds upon his enemy and cause him real damage, avenge spilled Jewish blood...It is no wonder, therefore, that these remnants...represent, almost each and every one, the elect, the best who knew how to defy reality.”61 The imposition of a Zionist paradigm of explanation on the Holocaust hindered the survivors’ natural desire (expressed, as we saw, before their arrival to Eretz Yisrael, by the establishment of memorial days and historical commissions in the DP camps) to publically acknowledge, experience and mourn their loss. To give vent to this repressed impulse, the Landsmanschaftn encouraged their members to write down their experiences during the war. Over the years, those writings were assembled in what came to be know as the memorial, or Yizkor books (“Yizker-bikher” in Yiddish), each one memorializing a destroyed community.62 Most of these books were written by any number of survivors with lit-

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tle writing experience, from each particular town; they got together, exchanged recollections, gathered testimonies, impressions and memoirs, and wrote them down63. Between 1954 and 1972, some four hundred such books were printed, each with an average circulation of two to three hundred copies, in Hebrew and Yiddish.64 From the outset, the memorial books were designed solely for members of the Landsmanschaft of their city and the material used to portray the history of their community was chosen to suit their emotional interpretation of the past. Since their murdered were left without graves, these memorial books often came to serve as symbolic tombstones: “The memorial books which will immortalize the memories of our relatives and friends, the Jews of Pshaytsk, will also serve as a substitute grave. Whenever we pick up the book we will feel we are standing next to their grave, because even that the murderers denied them.”65 Thus, more than once, according to Abraham Wein who studied the Landsmanschaft memorial books, “a book has been printed without any distinction between factual material and articles that speak only of grief and agony.” Indeed, many survivors who participated in their editing believed that their personal experiences made them better qualified than persons who had only book-learned skills. They feared that the use of professional historical discourse would turn the Holocaust into a subject like any other.66 For example, in the foreword to the memorial book of Olkieniki, the editor wrote: “It must be pointed out from the outset that we have no delusion of giving a scientific, historical evaluation of our small town, nor are we presenting to the public distinguished literary material. Most of the material comes from the painful hearts and soul-yearning of the older generation which witnessed the Holocaust and desired to erect some kind of memorial to their city.” A similar emotion was expressed by the editor of the memorial book of Kowel: “We decided from the outset that this chronicle was not to be written by a professional writer or journalist, but instead by an ordinary member of the community. We wanted the chronicle to be written by someone who personally knew the town and its people, to be written not in a literary style but in a simple language telling the facts and events which really did occur. Afterwards the historian may come and extract from this book the information that he needs.”67 Not surprisingly, since most writers and contributors themselves experienced the terror of the war and survived the death camps, they devoted considerable attention to the Holocaust years. Yet the events of the Holocaust were only part of the experience depicted in the memorial books. Survivors felt obligated not only to bear witness to the Nazi atrocities but to the world the Nazis destroyed—a testament for future gener-

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ations. Most of the books, for example, begin with a substantial account of the history of the town from the time of its first Jewish settlement, including depictions of traditions and transformations that marked everyday life in the Shtetl, communal disasters and celebrations, town characters, parables, maps, pictures and drawings.68 Rather than follow a particular historical sequence, the chapters usually adhere to configurations of the authors’ memory, often reflecting what they considered the most important aspects of their community. Most of these books conclude with a memorial section which contains a name list and, when possible, pictures of the community’s martyrs. A central contributing element to the shaping of the memorial books was the centuries-long tradition of Jewish mourning literature, evident as early as the Book of Lamentations, or, later, the litanies over the persecutions and destructions of Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, Ashkenazic Jews, in particular, developed and wrote the Memorbücher, which contained the names of important communal and religious leaders as well as the names of the martyrs, and were read during memorial services.69 “And yet,” in the words of Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin who published the only comprehensive study to date of the yizker-bicker, “the memorial books are not theological, their concern is primarily with human experience in history. The covenant sealed by the publication of the memorial book is with the dead: to sustain their memory and to be sustained by their memory in turn.”70 In writing the book, the survivors of each particular community gave its murdered Jewish brethren the most fitting burial they could think of.71 The urge of survivors to participate in this collective endeavor was evidenced by the scores of contributors who wrote for the first time in their lives and by the many others, with scant economic means, who donated the little they could to finance the books’ publication. Israel, however, showed no interest in the “ordinary” survivors, who represented and mourned their murdered Diaspora brethren. Their kind of representation had no place in the country’s pantheon of the 1950s, occupied by the partisans and ghetto fighters.

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() CHAPTER FIVE &'

The Turning Point, 1961 to the Present

While in the 1950s, the Holocaust and its victims came to represent the shame of Exile, between 1961 and 1967 efforts were made to “redeem” the image of the Holocaust victims and survivors. This change in attitude was motivated by the emotional reaction of Israelis to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The trial, which took four months, from April to August 1961, impelled the generation of native and veteran Israelis to confront on a daily basis the years of Jewish extermination. The amount and intensity of survivors’ testimonies provoked countless questions and uncertainties which shuddered the simplified image of the passive victims, which had prevailed until then vis-a-vis the dominant image of the “heroic” Israeli or, its mirror image, the heroic ghetto fighter.1 The growing sensitivity concerning the Jewish catastrophe concurring with the realization that neither the Holocaust nor the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state helped diminish the use of antisemitic stereotypes led also to a modification in the ‘negation of Exile’ ideology and the disintegration of the Catastrophe-to-Redemption myth. The purpose of the trial was not only to prove Eichmann’s guilt—for that only a small number of testimonies and documentation would have sufficed. The national meaning of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the ignorance of the younger generation, on the other, were foremost in BenGurion’s mind when he decided to bring Adolf Eichmann to trial in the state of Israel. He wanted to remind the Jewish people and the world why a Jewish state was necessary. In a speech on Israel’s thirteenth Independence Day, he said: “Here, for the first time in Jewish history, his-

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torical justice is being done by the sovereign people. For many generations it was we who suffered, who were tortured, were killed—and were judged...For the first time Israel is judging the murderers of the Jewish people...And let us bear in mind that only the independence of Israel could create the conditions for this historic justice.”2 Although appropriated and invested with official meaning, the Eichmann trial had a “deeply cathartic effect” and served as a first opportunity for many Israelis to face the past.3 The long sequence of individual testimonies during the trial succeeded, in the words of the novelist Moshe Shamir, in bringing the subject home, particularly to the younger generation, as a “personal, moral problem.” In an interview in the daily newspaper Maariv in 1963, Shamir added: “The force of the testimonies of death at the trial, against the background of our dolce vita have caused me, more than anything else, to face the catastrophe for the first time as a personal problem of my own.”4 The appearance of a great number of witnesses, the physical collapse of survivors,5 and the large amount of recorded testimony directed attention to the survivors and contributed to a process of individuation and to an appreciation of the ambiguity of issues that had hitherto been allocated to ideologically facile categories. As Haim Gouri, a native-born Israeli poet who reported on the trial for the Ahdut Haavodah newspaper, Lamerhav, wrote: The truth [of the trial] lays in the uniqueness of each testimony. No witness duplicated the words of those who preceded him. Each of the prosecution witnesses was, therefore, the hero of an act of rescue. I refer to the rescue of the testimonies of these unfortunate people from the danger of being perceived as all alike, all shrouded in the same immense anonymity.6

Needless to say, the Eichmann trial was also a powerful catharsis for the witnesses themselves and, collectively, for the population of survivors in Israel. For the first time, they were given the chance to present themselves in their own voices, in a public forum, over and over again, for months. Indeed, survivors who were silent for years after the war began, in the mid-1960s, to speak of their experiences. It presumably took that long until the rest of society was ready to hear, at least in part, what it had not wanted to know. Thus, for example, in 1963, the World Federation of the Bergen-Belsen Survivors Association began publishing a series of documents and articles aimed “to discredit the myth of Jewish cowardice and make the truth known: that many, if not most, of those six million went to their death, not like sheep to the slaughter, but with a genuine heroism, a determined awareness of their fate, and a loyalty to one another which made them the unsung heroes of the greatest atrocity that man has committed against man.”7

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Members of the World Federation made it clear that these publications were not written in the hitherto apologetic manner but as an over-due correction of the prevailing myth regarding Jewish behavior during the war: “Our martyrs do not owe anybody an answer as to why and how they died, nor does their agony require any defense...The defamation of the memory of the six million martyrs whose voices have been silenced forever is the gravest moral wrong and an unparalleled falsification of history.”8 The growing sensitivity to the plight of the European Jews on the part of native and veteran Israelis can be illustrated by the reaction in Israel to three books which appeared in the early 1960s: Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (1960), Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) and Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). In these books, despite their different styles and approaches, attempts were made to explain and interpret the passivity of the Jewish victims. Hilberg and Arendt, in particular, pointed an accusatory finger at the Nazis’ appointed Jewish organizations within Germany and occupied Europe, especially, the Judenräte (the Jewish Councils)—“whose role in the destruction of their own people,” according to Arendt, “is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”9 For his part, Hilberg charged the Jews under Nazi domination for maintaining the traditional Jewish pattern of behavior under persecution, that of passive compliance—which meant, in other words, participation in the Nazi destruction process.10 As Bettelheim was a psychoanalyst, his theory was taken as the psychological equivalent of Hilberg’s and Arendt’s arguments. According to the author, a necessary requisite for survival in the camp was the preservation of sense of self. But it was not only the overbearing power of the Nazis’ totalitarian structures that stripped their victims’ of their individuality, destroyed their self respect, and “made it impossible to see themselves as fully adult persons any more;” the Nazis’ success was furthered by their victims’ traditional compliance and passive reaction to persecutions.11 As for part of the Nazi appointed Kapos, they increasingly “identified with the aggressor.” The reaction in Israel and abroad to these accusations was one of furious outrage. The main thrust of their violent criticism was directed against the authors’ shift of guilt from the perpetrators to the victims themselves. Arendt’s most vocal critic in Israel was the historian Gershom Scholem. In an exchange of letters between the two, the Israeli scholar denounced Arendt for her “self-hatred” and lack of love for the Jewish people. Among her critics was also the philosopher Martin Buber and his circle, who were upset by, among other things, her pointed attacks on the leaders of the Jewish community in Germany. Others stated that her method and conclusions were giving further “ammunition” to neo-Nazis.12

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In the United States, Jacob Robinson’s book, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight (1965), provided the most compelling and methodical attack on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. “Dissecting” her facts and conclusions, paragraph by paragraph, Robinson charged Arendt’s work to be factually inaccurate and misleading:13 Members of the Judenräte, he argued, did not “offer” their services to the Nazis. When Jews did accept appointment to the Council, they generally did so “out of feeling of responsibility to those in their community.” Unaware, at first of the real goal of the Nazis, many of them did their best to help and save Jews, through bribery and procrastination. Moreover, there were wide areas under Nazi rule, such as in part of Russia, Italy and Romania, where the Jewish Councils were not involved in compiling lists of potential deportees, or where no Jewish Councils existed.14 Hilberg’s position was largely assailed for being based almost exclusively on German documentation and for completely misunderstanding the nature of Jewish Diaspora life, especially during the Holocaust period.15 Certainly, the argument went, one detects in much of the German documentation a tendency to portray Jews according to the Nazi stereotype— cowering, submissive and easily manipulated by crude appeal to individual interest. Undoubtedly, this is how the Judenräte appeared from the Nazis’ point of view. However, Israeli historians argued, the Jewish reaction and especially that of the Judenräte was diverse and certainly did not derive from any “Jewish tradition” of compliance. What is termed collaboration between Jewish institutions and the Nazis was “only too often similar to the ‘collaboration’ between a robber, armed with a revolver, and his victim who has no possibility of self-defense.” Moreover, many members of the Judenräte were intimidated into joining and some committed suicide or resigned and went into hiding, or joined the transports to the death camps when they became aware of the Nazis’ true plans. As to the reaction of the Jews, this was not much different than that of deportees or victims of other groups or nations who went passively to their deaths (the Soviet POWs for example). But if there was any body of civilians which did take up a stand in relatively large numbers, it was the Jewish fighters in ghettos and camps, “who embarked upon their struggle, conscious of being true to their people’s tradition, to the heroic legacy of the Maccabees.”16 Bettelheim’s critics contended that his psychological models derived from his own experiences as an internee in Dachau and Buchenwald in the late 1930s and did not apply to the much more brutal conditions the victims faced a few years later. Moreover, they challenged the principal sources used in his work—the testimony of the unrepresentative few who did manage to survive.17

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In retrospect, the furious reaction of Israeli scholars to what were seen as Arendt’s and Hilberg’s simplified and un-researched generalizations seems paradoxical. Had these books been published ten years earlier, the reaction toward them would have been totally different—a favorable one which would have reinforced existing notions. In 1953, for example, Nahman Blumental argued that “...without the Judenrats’ help, the German policy of extermination would not have succeeded, at least not in the scope it did, and certainly not without great casualties to the Germans themselves.”18 From the Eichmann trial onward, however, empathy with the extended suffering and torment of Jewish communities and of Jewish reactions deepened. A growing number of studies and articles on particular Jewish communities suggested that the victims had no knowledge of, and no way of knowing, the final outcome.19 Furthermore, ghetto diaries and other firsthand accounts, some of which had appeared earlier in limited editions, were henceforth much more widely published. And, in addition, some survivors began to publically reflect on Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. K. Shabbetai, for example, a survivor who served as an editor of Undzer Weg and Nizoz in Munich’s DP camp and, upon his immigration to Israel, as a journalist at Davar, dedicated two booklets to this issue. In As Sheep to the Slaughter? The Myth of Cowardice (1963), Shabbetai argues that, historically, revolts do not occur by chance. There are precise laws, which are applicable to all peoples and nations throughout the world, in all periods of history. Hence, it would be futile to seek in history books for examples of a successful uprising by a minority against a majority with power. The German minority in Poland and Czechoslovakia, for instance, rose up only after Hitler gained substantial power; there are no uprisings against a victorious enemy and, indeed, only after the Germans’ defeat in Stalingrad did the war against them gain momentum and the Warsaw ghetto uprising took place. There are no rebellions against a despot that uses terror to subdue a population. Indeed, during Stalin’s reign-of-terror there were no uprisings—not in Hungary, nor in Poland, nor in Eastern Germany. Not only were there no revolts, but people did not even allow themselves to think of countering the wishes of their oppressor. Only with Stalin’s death did isolate revolts suddenly occur. Back-up and arms are further prerequisites for revolt. The Polish underground, which came into being the day after the collapse of Poland, had at its disposal, from its very inception, high-ranking army officers, trained soldiers, weapons which they still had in their possession, and ample financial resources.20 The Jews, on the other hand, were not merely a minority among a single, hostile majority. “We were a small, weak, impoverished minority

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between two powerful majorities, both terrifyingly hostile. For the indigenous local majority always allied itself with the new foreign majority, and both waged wars to destroy us.”21 Furthermore, Jews had no arms and no secure place for aid and retreat. Undoubtedly, there were a few righteous people in Europe at the time, but they were powerless to change the overall picture in any significant way.22 The question, therefore, should not be why did the Jews go like sheep to the slaughter but “how did it happen that our people, in spite of everything, retained sufficient strength, faith, and will power to stand up to the enemy the way we did? How did it happen that against all reasonable expectation, underground resistance movements were organized in the ghettos, and acts of revolt did occur there? From what rock was this nation hewn?”23 In his second booklet, Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust (1965), Shabbetai explains that although subjectively the few who revolted against the Nazis should be revered, objectively their role should not be exaggerated. “We should indeed be proud of our handful of fighters. In vanquished Europe, theirs was the only resistance movement which initiated open warfare with no hope of victory nor any chance of receiving outside help. The only thing they could hope to achieve was to demand a high price for their lives. Yet, with that in mind, we have to remember that the Warsaw ghetto revolt took place in the “final hour” after the majority of Warsaw Jewry was exterminated. By exaggerating the role of the Jews who fought we defile the honor of the millions who perished as they did, disappeared without a trace, with not even a grave. All that is left is their memory. It would be base of us to slander that sole vestige.”24 Following the Eichmann trial, discussion of the Jewish leadership during the war years also moved to a new plane. While in the 1950s, the Jewish Councils and their executive arm, the Jewish Police, were portrayed, collectively, in the harshest terms, following the trial, the role of individual Jewish leaders was increasingly investigated, revealing many different patterns of behavior, from involuntary compliance, through suicide and resistance.25 This new historiographical trend was first acknowledged in a colloquium convened in December 1967 in New York by the Yiddish Scientific Institute for Jewish Research (Yivo) to discuss the question of “The Judenräte during the Nazi Period.” By and large, Nathan Eck’s paper reiterated the general theme expressed by the other participants. Eck maintained that unequivocal condemnation of the Judenrat is incorrect and misleading. In many places the Judenrat was mainly a continuation of the pre-war Jewish community council (Kehila). Furthermore, the idea that beyond a certain date the Jews of Eastern Europe were aware of their

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fate has no basis in fact.26 Nahman Blumental’s harsh criticism of the Jewish Councils from the 1950s was greatly modified. Analyzing the relations between the Judenrat and the Jewish Police, Blumental argued that, with notable exceptions, the two bodies worked in full cooperation with each other. Yet the Jews’ hatred and resentment was mainly directed at the Police, whose members had to round up Jewish inmates and escort them to the trains. If extenuating circumstances are found in the conduct of the Judenrat, he argued, the same should also be applied to the Jewish Police.27 Based on these and other studies we can conclude that in general the historical sense of the Holocaust period, following the Eichmann trial and its aftermath, deepened. Israeli historians continued to be critical of Jewish behavior, but some of their statements on Jewish passivity and collaboration during the war were greatly modified. Following the Eichmann trial there were also discussions concerning the lack of Holocaust teaching in Israeli schools. A joint committee of representatives from the Ministry of Culture and Education and from Yad Vashem, which first met in mid-January, 1961, issued, for the first time, a circular on the teaching of the period, containing a proposed curriculum for elementary schools. In the spring of 1964, the Ministry announced certain changes in the national matriculation examinations, including a stipulation that one of the Jewish history subjects would deal with the “Ghetto during the Period of the Holocaust,” and the chapter on “Modern Jewish History” would include the story of the Holocaust and of Jewish resistance.28 Although the actual changes that were introduced in the teaching of the Holocaust during the 1960s were relatively minor, they did indicate a gradual change in the process of repression, which had hitherto been predominant in the field of education. The titles of articles written on the subject, such as, “What Has Been Done To Teach the Lesson of the Holocaust?”29 “The Mystery Concerning the Ignorance of Holocaust History,”30 or “The Youth Have Been Reared On a Negative Attitude Toward the Diaspora”31—all attest to this fact. The emphasis in these and other articles on the need to stress the lesson of victimhood rather than heroism did also bring about a change in the approach to “Exile.” Indeed, during the 1960s, more than a few voices were raised among educators criticizing the “negation of Exile” and its place in Zionist education. A moderate expression of that line of criticism, which became a platform for an alternative programmatic view of Israeli education, was voiced by Barukh Ben-Yehudah, the Director General of the Ministry of Education. In a booklet published in 1966, Ben-Yehudah argued that although the “negation of Exile” ideology was justified in its day, with the establishment of the state of Israel, education based on that

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ideology had achieved its goal and was no longer necessary. We must now be concerned with the identification of the younger generation of Israelis with the Jewish people at large, and not with rejection of the Diaspora, “which has already been destroyed” [my emphasis]. For that purpose one must show the bright and positive side of the Diaspora too.32 In should be pointed out that these ideas were expressed by BenYehudah as background for the presentation of an educational program in “Jewish Identity.” While his program was not adopted, the tendency to neutralize the “rejection of Exile” as a central ideological message had its effect. In the long run, and especially following the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars, the emphasis in history textbooks shifted to a more positive attitude toward the continuous heritage of Jewish history.33 The fundamental change that occurred as a result of the Eichmann trial became evident in the fact that antisemitism became the subject of serious historical research. Until that time, despite it being one of the central arguments in favor of the Zionist solution, most historians in the Yishuv and in Israel saw no need to study the history of antisemitism and its causes, although, as noted in chapter three, debates on the importance of the topic as a background to a better understanding of the Nazi era did take place already during the 1950s. The lack of any serious research projects in this domain may have derived from the perception of antisemitism as a mere reflection of a specific historical situation: Jewish life in exile.34 The depth and intensity of antisemitism exposed in the Eichmann trial shattered the Zionist belief in the gradual disappearance of antisemitism and the development of normal relations between Jews and non-Jews once a Jewish state was established. For the first time, laymen and scholars began to realize that the roots of antisemitism ran deeper than was imagined before. Although henceforth hatred of the Jews, in its various forms, became an object of inquiry, it would be inaccurate to speak of a major change in the perception and representation of the Holocaust in Israeli historiography before 1967. Israeli scholars who began to uncover the historical roots of antisemitism, such as Shmuel Ettinger, Jacob L. Talmon, and Jacob Katz, still did not confront the Holocaust period directly. The works of Ettinger and Katz, in particular, led to an interpretation of the Holocaust as the result of cumulative antisemitism, yet they chose to approach the Holocaust itself obliquely, focusing on periods prior to the rise of Nazism. Furthermore, the sense of self-evidence, which characterized previous presentations of the link between pre-Nazi antisemitism and the extermination of European Jewry remained prevalent among Zionist historians throughout the 1960s.35

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For Shmuel Ettinger, for example, the persistence of antisemitism through the ages derived from the existence of a Jewish stereotype as a permanent feature of Western culture. Reappearing in times of crisis, it transformed a latent hatred into various forms of active persecution.36 The particular hostility to Jews first appeared, as a fundamental and conceptual denial of their worth in the Hellenistic era, when a widespread diaspora came into being. Religious conflicts together with differences in life styles and ethical values provided the basis for the rejection of the Jews. According to Ettinger, in each historical period that followed, new features were added to the existing stereotype. With the advent of Christianity, Jews were portrayed as deicides, forsaken by God, while the Middle Ages added usury, black magic, and ties with the devil.37 The decline of Christianity’s influence in the early modern period did not diminish the fervor of antisemitic sentiments. On the contrary, modern antisemitism became especially virulent, using secular and even anti-Christian arguments.38 In his fundamental study “Jews and Judaism as Seen by the English Deists of the 18th Century” (1964), Ettinger traces the roots of modern anti-Semitism to English Deism of the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The Deists’ critic of Christianity, and more so of Christianity’s historical origin—Judaism, led them to define “natural religion” as the antithesis of Judaism.39 In a series of articles that followed, Ettinger trails the connections leading from the critic of Judaism by the English Deists to modern anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.40 In the process, the rationalist ideal of “natural religion” had been transformed into an irrational vision of saving the human race by ridding it of its “Jewish spirit,” the source of all evil. Viewing the Holocaust in this broad scholarly perspective is also apparent in Jacob Talmon’s work from that period. Although his writings deal mainly with the interaction between the myth of the nation and the myth of a universal revolution, he approached the subject with the recent Jewish catastrophe in mind.41 The myth of the nation, Talmon maintains, took two forms: Rousseau saw the nation as an organic whole, a society of free, equal, and participant citizens; Herder’s teaching was more provincial, stressing the peculiar and unique traditions of the Volk. The former version was embraced by the French and later the Russian Revolution, the latter by Fascism/Nazism. Both forms of revolution, however, led to the same disastrous result: The French and Russian Revolutions produced a myth of human regeneration via universal revolution to justify doing whatever they thought necessary. And, expressing “the general will of the nation” and capitalizing on popular resentment and discontent, Hitler and Mussolini stressed the glory and power of superior peoples and races.42

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“The tragic paradox of the Jews in modern times,” according to Talmon, “has been the fact that their existence and success have been dependent upon the triumph of the idea of universalism as represented by liberal democracy and socialism, while the very phenomenon of Jewry is an unparalleled demonstration of the element of uniqueness. The Jews did not want and could not escape the fact of their uniqueness, the Gentiles would not and could not be made oblivious of it.”43 In pre-modern times the tension between the two was for the most part held in check by the inequalities of a society based on status, on the one hand, and on belief, tradition, and custom, on the other. “The new society, based on contract, rendered the Jewish irritant ubiquitous, while the collapse of traditional forms and spiritual certainties shook the balance of the modern world to its foundations. In the struggle between universalism and nationalism, between the tendency for unity and the stubborn fact of peculiarity, the Jews became associated, indeed identified, with the general malaise of modernity.”44 Interestingly, Jacob Katz’s socio-historical studies from that period reach a similar conclusion. Katz, too, finds the roots of antisemitism in the unsolvable problem of Jewish existence among the nations, characterized by a permanent tension between particularism and universalism and, in the modern world, between uniqueness and a rational world order. Thus, even the Enlightenment, with its gospel of tolerance, was unable to eradicate the age-old antagonism because “the rationalists [whether Jews or Christians] were not isolated from their original social spheres....In most cases, the new framework embraced only part of their being. In a number of walks of life, Christians remained Christians and Jews, Jews.”45 Katz’s work on Gentile-Jewish relations in western and central Europe in the modern period led him to focus on the Masonic lodges, supposedly the embodiment of Enlightenment ideology, as a potential locus of institutionalized neutrality. The results of this examination, the subject of his volume, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723–1939 (1970), indicate the constraints that actually operated. Not only did Christian aspects of Masonic ritual discourage Jewish participation, but some lodges actually excluded Jews outright.46 The failure of Gentile-Jewish symbiosis in the new secular culture brought about a new, secular focus for the anti-Jewish argument (although Christian antisemitism remained very much at its base). But while in the Middle Ages the Church remained open to individuals who converted to Christianity, in the modern secular society this avenue of escape was closed. To the modern antisemite, if Jews were inferior, alien, and unworthy of assimilation, then they were an irredeemable problem. According to Katz, it was the transmutation of this motif into modern political idiom in

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the late 1870s that led, eventually, to the implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”47 As we can see then, in all these historical studies of antisemitism, the Holocaust, despite its scope, was presented as yet another chapter in the history of anti-Jewish measures—the end result of a continuous and lengthy cumulation. The explanation of Nazism through its so-called “origins,” sometimes in the very remote past, while conspicuously avoiding any attempt at an explanation of its total present, may be the result of several unconscious motivations, some of which were already alluded to in reference to the overall refraining of most Jewish and Zionist historians from confronting the Holocaust period, during the 1950s. It may be that even in the 1960s the proximity of the event itself still prevented the historians from confronting the Holocaust directly. As both individuals and scholars, they preferred, for the sake of “sanity,” to concentrate on issues which could be handled without despair.48 It may also be that, as Zionists, their work stayed close to the patterns set by their predecessors who were greatly concerned with the “big brush” of the historical picture and approached it not merely as researchers but mostly as designers, looking beyond the details for an ultimate historical justification of Zionism. Whatever their motivations were, it is clear that their study of antisemitism provided a crucial and necessary prerequisite to the next stage in the evolution of Israeli historiography of the Holocaust. It was the Six-Day War in 1967 which pushed the Holocaust into the forefront of Israeli consciousness. The initial prospect of defeat, the fear of a second Holocaust, and the surprising victory that followed enhanced a sense of identity and shared destiny with Jews all over the world. In a gathering of writers and soldiers at Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh following the war of 1967, soldiers and writers expressed the complex relations between their “memory” of the Holocaust and their reasons for fighting, describing their feelings prior to the beginning of the war as little more than another generation of Jews on the brink of a second catastrophe. “We tend to forget those days before the war, said one of the soldiers, “and perhaps rightly so—yet those were the days in which we came closest to that Jewish fate from which we have run like haunted beings all these years. Suddenly, everyone was talking about Munich, about the Holocaust, about the Jewish people left to its own fate.” Another soldier reiterated the same feeling: “...People believed that we would be exterminated if we lost the war. They were afraid. We got this idea—or inherited it—from the concentration camps.”49 The Yom-Kipur War in 1973 further strengthened this sentiment. Historians too sensed that Israel had entered a new period of its history. Interestingly, two new diverging trends in Israeli historiography

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appeared at that time. The first trend was represented by a group of historians, most notably Yisrael Gutman and Yehuda Bauer, who attempted to expand the Zionist paradigm to include also those Jews who had previously been perceived as having gone “like sheep to the slaughter.” Thus, for example, the very term “Jewish resistance,” which until then implied a conscious and organized armed uprising by Jews against their oppressors, was greatly modified. The main feature of this new approach was an emphasis on Jews making a stand; it implied that the Jewish response to the perpetrators had been basically of an active rather than passive nature, and that the ways in which Jews coped with the Nazi measures, either collectively or individually, reflected both physical and spiritual resistance.50 In addressing the subject of the Judenräte, for example, Bauer argued that the predicament of the Jews under Nazi rule was so extreme that the standard categories of the resistance/collaboration dichotomy should not be employed in this case.51 While Gutman and Bauer’s scholarly work still remained entirely within the bounds of Zionist historiography, a second group of historians, most notably Saul Friedländer and Uriel Tal attempted to face the catastrophe in the light of a more “neutral” (also German) historiography. Already in the late 1960s, for example, Tal challenged the politicized academic structure in Israeli universities. The existence of separate departments of Jewish history, he argued, fosters a unique national narrative, indifferent to new historiographical approaches and inaccessible to any genuine interdisciplinary influence, let alone any comparative studies.52 Thus, in their scholarly works, both Friedländer and Tal chose to concentrate on issues related to the roots and nature of the Nazi mind and Nazi ideology—issues which were considered outside the interest of Zionist historiography, for they had no relevance to the identity claims of Zionism.53 And yet, this current in the Israeli historical discourse, like those preceding and following it, was very much anchored in its present. Their implicit distancing from the Zionist paradigm and their choice of narrative interpretations reflected a well defined, if not always announced, “subject position.” Their preoccupation with Nazi ideology, and particularly with the interaction between politics and myth—between the rational and sober political objectives and the non-rational and mythical goals of the Nazi regime, was to serve as a warning that “political messianism might bring moral and political destruction to the Zionist enterprise.”54 During the decade between the late 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of historians came to the fore which tended to question the link between pre-Nazi and Nazi antisemitism. The most compelling examples of the new historiography are to be found in Shulamit Volkov’s work of that

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period. Her articles, “On Antisemitism and Its Investigation” (1982) and “The Written Matter and the Spoken Word” (1989),55 are an answer to and a critic of the traditional historiography, represented by Katz, Ettinger and, in a lesser measure, Talmon. The thrust of her argument is a rejection of the idea of continuous, linear growth of modern and particularly German anti-Semitism; each stage has to be viewed independently or, in other words, has to be historicized within its own context. Thus German anti-Semitism of the Imperial period had, according to Volkov, more in common with French antisemitism of the same period than it had with that of the Weimar Republic or, with that of Nazism.56 Let it merely be added that the shift represented by Volkov’s work has since been pushed to extremes by historians, such as Moshe Zimmerman at the Hebrew university, mainly in his publicistic interpretations of the history of the Holocaust. Another aspect of the period extending from the second part of the 1980s to the present was the surfacing of a relatively new subject in Israeli historiography of the Holocaust: the attitude of the Yishuv and mainly of its leadership. Although the subject had on occasion flared up in Israeli politics, it had never been studied methodically. This issue has been dealt with along two contradictory paths. The first is represented by a group of researchers of the “old ideological guard,” such as Dina Porat, Anita Shapira, Yoav Gelber and Yechiam Weitz, who argue that the leadership of the Yishuv did the best it could under the circumstances.57 According to Weitz, for example, although “negation of exile” was paramount in the leadership’s view of the Diaspora and its Jews, the Yishuv leadership did not forsake or betray European Jewry during the war.58 Rather, confusion and conflict were at the core of their reaction. Yishuv leaders did not believe the information about the extermination and felt that they had other equally legitimate concerns that demanded their attention and to which they allocated the majority of their meager resources.59 Yoav Gelber contends, moreover, that with its limited resources and dependent on the British for its own security, the Yishuv could hardly be expected to rescue Jews from occupied Europe. Therefore, the leadership’s instrumental and pragmatic approach to European Jewry, expressed mainly in preparing the Yishuv for a struggle for a Jewish state after the war and the few symbolic rescue efforts, should be viewed in this context. “It would be a grave mistake and anachronism to attribute to the Yishuv the potentialities and ambitions of its successor, the state of Israel, and to consider it accordingly.”60 The second position is represented by a new and more radical group of contenders in Israeli academia, who offer an interpretation of Jewish and Israeli history different from the one based on the Zionist paradigm.61

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Also know as “post-Zionists,” the new scholars (mainly historians and sociologists, but also journalists and political scientists) argue that the Zionist movement emerged as a direct by-product of European nationalism. The post-Zionists contend that, like other European-nationalist groups of the nineteenth century, the Zionists had aimed at constructing a national consciousness based on romantic ideals. The core of romantic nationalism is the assumption that the common denominator between individuals of a particular society is based on shared geography, language, historical roots and even ethnic origin. But national societies, contended the “post-Zionists” (in agreement with recent European scholarly research62), are “imagined communities” and their national narratives are nothing but invented traditions. National ideals and national movements emerged in order to serve different political groups who aspired to achieve dominance in the framework of the process of modernization unfolded throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.63 As the other European nationalist movements, Zionism too claimed Jewish unity and the existence of a Jewish peoplehood that did not exist in reality. Jews were scattered throughout the world, spoke different languages and assimilated, to various degrees, the culture and habits of their surrounding societies. In this context, Zionist historians fulfilled an important role. They nurtured (in fact, invented) an idea about an imagined “Jewish society” that kept, despite its geographical and cultural dispersion, a shared destiny and a yearning to return to the ancient homeland.64 Moreover, the new researchers insist, Zionism emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century, at the apex of the European colonial period and is a clear expression of it. The movement, therefore, should also be analyzed in the framework of the European-colonial “model,” which “perceived as self evident the right of Europeans to settle any available non-European land.” Hence, the Zionist terms “Eretz Yisrael” rather than Palestine), “Aliya” (literally ascent in Hebrew), not immigration, “redemption of the land,” rather than conquest, and “settlement,” not colonization, have been used to hide the truth that the Zionist return to the land of Israel was a clear act of brutal colonization whose obvious victims were (and are) the Palestinians.65 The new scholars’ contentions soon had ramifications beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Historians, such as Tom Segev, Idith Zertal, and Hanna Yablonka blame the Yishuv’s leadership for inadequate rescue efforts before and during the Second World War: Cold and calculated political interests led them to avoid taking desperate rescue measures, even after details of the extermination became well known. They were interested in rescue only if this could bring the survivors to Israel and not any-

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where else and they refused to lent their resources to finance rescue operations if these were going to deflect anything from their primary goal: the establishment of a Jewish state.66 The new researchers also blame the first Israelis for their insensitive attitude towards Holocaust survivors in the first years of statehood. According to Segev, “permeated with a deep, almost mystic faith of its superiority,” the country fostered the sabra image which came to represent the national ideal, while the Holocaust survivor was its reverse; little was done to advance the survivors’ social integration and, in fact, disdain of the survivors and their exilic mentality often included the accusation that European Jewry was to be blamed for its own extermination.67 In addition, the memory and knowledge of the Holocaust has been exploited, particularly by the right, to justify its preferred solution to the conflict with the Arab world and the Palestinians. According to Zertal, for example, Begin’s proclamation to his cabinet on the eve of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that the only alternative to going to war is another Auschwitz and his equation of the demolition of Arafat’s headquarters in Beirut with the destruction of Hitler in his bunker in Berlin are not only a testimony to the mad illusions that led Begin to that war [against Lebanon] but a clear illustration of how the Holocaust has turned into a political commodity that can be exchanged to suit anyone and any occasion, at a moment’s notice.68 Some prominent voices on the left, on their part, described the war in Lebanon as a “Judeo-Nazi policy” and claim, in general, that nationalist “neo-Zionists” in Israel may indeed be as criminal towards Arabs as Nazis were towards Jews.69 Moshe Zimmerman, for example, who is identified with the extreme left, compared the Torah with “Mein Kampf,” as a racist blueprint for the destruction of other peoples, and the children of the Jewish community in Hebron to the Hitler Youth.70 As an indispensable ideological weapon, the Holocaust has also been deployed to extort economic and political support from the western nations who feel guilty for their indifference to the fate of European Jewry during the war. In his book, Shoah in a Sealed Room (1993), for example, Moshe Zuckerman contends that since the end of the Second World War, Zionist activists and historiographers worked diligently at appropriating and instrumentalizing the knowledge about and the memory of the Shoah. Subsequently, instrumentalization of its memory and history was used to equate the Nazi “Amalek” and the Arab “Amalek”: Be it Gamal Abdul Nazer, Sadam Hussein or Yaser Arafat—all were equated to Adolf Hitler. This moral synthesis was explicitly exposed in the Gulf War, when the threat of the German gas was again real. Sadam Hussein was represented in the Israeli press as having the power and the will to annihilate the

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surviving remnant of the holocaust who had started to build a life in an independent Israel. Zuckerman argues that the fear of a second Holocaust, as expressed in the Israeli press during the Gulf War, was not authentic. Rather, it was used to enhance an image of helplessness for ideological and political gain. By casting itself as a “victim state” Israel was able to extort financial, military and political support from Germany.71 As far as historical representation is concerned, the post-Zionists’ main innovation is in their use of comparative methods to explain events that had previously been presented as unique to the Jewish and Israeli experience.72 Thus, while most mainstream Israeli historians agree that the Holocaust cannot be compared with other organized genocides, the postZionists’ contention is that the Holocaust has not been a uniquely “Jewish” experience in history, pointing to the Armenian genocide, as well as to other groups, such as the Gypsies, who have suffered similarly during the Holocaust. The use of comparative methods, the post-Zionists hope, would free Israeli historiography from ideological approaches to history and analysis, allow the development of healthy skepticism, legitimize other “collective memories” and expose Israeli academia to new historiography and sociology, to pluralism and multi-culturalism. The Post-Zionist criticism of Zionist semi-mythical and deterministic historical readings of Jewish history, and the often controversial statements of its chief spokesmen, almost all academics, instigated a heated debate among Israelis which continues to this day: Was the past, and particularly the recent catastrophic past in Europe, misperceive and, hence, was it in need of demystification? In summary, the shifts in emphasis in Israeli historiography of the Holocaust since 1967, from the centrality of heroism to that of the suffering of the Jews, from a Zionist to a more “neutral” and, at the present, to a “non-conformist” historiography, clearly point to the disintegration of Zionist ideology as a central element in the historians’ interpretive accounts of the Jewish catastrophe. These shifts can be viewed as inseparable by-products of the transition from one generation to the next, in accordance with the sensibilities, as well as the changed political agendas of the new generation of historians. They should also be viewed, however, as “reflecting the remarkable maturity of Israeli society which, a mere half-century after its creation, endorses and even encourages challenging introspection.” For “to avoid such introspection is to live outside of the dynamic current of history.”73

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(When produced by the author, titles in Hebrew or Yiddish are given in their English translation) Introduction 1.

Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, New York 1980, esp.pp.50–87 (La Memoire Collective, Paris 1950). 2. Pierre Nora (ed.), “Introduction,” Les Lieux de memoire, vol. I: La Republique, Paris 1984; Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Seattle 1982. 3. Pierre Nora, “Entre memoire et histoire,” La Republique, vol.1, Paris 1984, p.xvii. 4. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, op. cit, p.21. 5. Yerushalmi, ibid, p.94. 6. Ibid, p.89. 7. E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914, p.3; Amos Funkenstein, “Historical Consciousness,” History and Memory: Studies in Representations of the Past, vol.1, no.1, Tel Aviv 1989, and idem, “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness” (Hebrew), Perceptions of Jewish History from the Antiquity to the Present, Tel Aviv 1991; Saul Friedländer, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe, “Introduction,” Bloomington 1993. For a forceful answer to Funkenstein’s view, see David N. Myers, “Remembering Zakhor: A Super Commentary,” in History and Memory, vol.4, no.2, Fall/Winter 1992. 8. Hobsbawm, ibid. 9. Funkenstein, “Collective Memory,” op. cit., p.18. 10. Ibid, pp.27–28. 11. See Saul Friedländer, “Trauma, Memory and Transference,” in idem, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe, Bloomington 1993, p.259. 12. Felix Gilbert, Hitler Directs His War, New York 1950, and Makers of Modern Strategy: Military thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, edited by Edward Mead Earle with the col-

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15. 16. 17. 18.

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20. 21. 22. 23.

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laboration of Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert. see also Lewis Namier, In the Nazi Era, London 1952. Dinur and Baer, for example, founded and edited Zion, the major journal of Jewish historical studies, whose declared aim was embracing the history of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael and in all the lands of the Diaspora, in all periods. However, during the war and for some years later, the majority of articles dealt with messianic and mystical movements, such as Sabbatianism and Hassidism. Only from the late 1960s onwards did the scope of the topics published begin to widen. In recent years, David N. Myers has raised doubts about the existence of a homogeneous “Jerusalem School.” See idem, “Was there a ‘Jerusalem School’: An Inquiry into the First Generation of Historical Research at the Hebrew University,”in Jonathan Frankel, ed., Studies in Contemporary Jewry, New York and Oxford 1994, pp.10:66–93; idem, “History as Ideology: The case of Ben-Zion Dinur: Zionist historian par excellence,” Modern Judaism, vol.8, 1988, pp.167–193; idem, Re-inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History, New York 1995. Other scholars maintain that there is a strong enough common denominator in this group’s writings and ideology that justifies calling them a school; see, for example, Shmuel Almog’s eulogy of Shmuel Ettinger in his Nationalism, Zionism and Antisemitism: Essays and Research (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1992, pp.13–21. J. Kermisz, “The State of Holocaust Research,” Yediot Yad Vashem, no.1, April 30, 1954, pp.8–10. Salo W. Baron, “Foreword,” in Jacob Robinson and Philip Friedman, Guide to Jewish History Under Nazi Impact, Bibliographical Series, no.1, New York 1960, pp.xix-xx. Gershom Scholem, “Judaic Studies” (Hebrew), Od Davar (Explications and Implications), Tel Aviv 1989, p.140 (first published in De’ot, no.4, May 1961, pp.8–9). Along with his colleague, Ben-Zion Dinur, Baer clearly announced in the statement of objectives of the Journal Zion that the fundamental assumption of Zionist historiography “...is the history of the Israelite nation, which was never interrupted and whose significance never waned. Jewish history is consolidated by a homogenous unity which encompasses all periods and all places.” And yet, Baer’s work was marked by an uneasy tension between his Zionist historiography and his declared commitment to the Rankean demand for objectivity, for seeing each epoch “as immediate to God.” See, “Our Tendency” (Hebrew), Zion, vol.1, no.1, 1935; Baer, “Ikarim be-hakirat toldot Yisra’el” (Hebrew), in idem, Studies in the History of the Jewish People, vol.2, Jerusalem 1985 (c.1931), pp.9–19. Shmuel Almog, “The Impact of the Holocaust on the Study of Antisemitism,”in Yehuda Bauer et al (eds.). Remembering for the Future: The Impact of the Holocaust and Genocide on Jews and Christians, Vol.3, New York,1989, p.2278. Almog, Nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism, op. cit., pp.18–19. Joseph Klausner, The History of the Second Temple (Hebrew), vol.5: The Great Jewish Rebellion and the Destruction of the Second Temple, Jerusalem 1952, Introduction, p.v. Klausner, ibid, vol.3: The History of the House of Hasmonean, Jerusalem 1950, Introduction. Joseph Klausner, “The War of the Hashmonaean” (Hebrew), Herut, 12.12.45, Joseph Klausner Archive, Jewish National and University Library Archives, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 401086/125 a-d. Joseph Klausner, The History of Israel (Hebrew), 4 vols., Odessa, 1909–1924/5.

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25. Joseph Klausner, “The Balance of Accounts.” Address delivered on July 1942, Tel Aviv, to the National Conference of Palestinian Authors, Joseph Klausner Archive, 4o1086/48; see also, idem, “The Solution to the Jewish Question According to Ze’ev Zabotinsky” (Hebrew), Hamashkif, 21.7.44, Joseph Klausner Archive, 4o1086/125 ad. 26. Shmuel Ettinger, “In Memory of Yitzhak Baer” (Hebrew), in S. Ettinger, S. Baron, B. Dinur, Y. Halperin (eds.), Yitzhak F. Baer Memorial Volume, Jerusalem 1980. 27. Yitzhak Fritz Baer, Galut, (Hebrew). Translated by Yisrael Eldad. Jerusalem 1980, Introduction. 28. Yitzhak Fritz Baer, Galut (English edition), New York 1947, p.117. 29. Ibid, p.118 30. Ibid, pp.117–118. 31. Ibid, pp.118–119. 32. Almog, Nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism, op. cit., p.19. 33. Ibid. 34. Shmuel Ettinger, Modern Antisemitism. Studies and Essays (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1978, p.9. 35. See Ben-Zion Dinur, “Diaspora Communities and their Destruction” (Hebrew), Knesset, no.8, 1944, pp.46–60. Now also in his collected studies, Dorot u-reshumot: mehkarim ve-’iyunim ba-historiografyah ha-Yisre’elit (Hebrew), vol.4, Jerusalem 1978. 36. Ibid, pp.175–192. 37. Ben-Zion Dinur, “Our Fate and Our War: Five Openings from the Day of Mourning and Outcry,” (Hebrew), Zakhor: Writings on the Holocaust and Its Lesson, Jerusalem 1958, p.19. Quoted, and translated into English, in Yisrael Gutman, “On the Character of Nazi Antisemitism, in “ Shmuel Almog (ed.), Antisemitism Through the Ages, Oxford 1988, p.353. According to Dina Porat, Dinur’s “sketch” is in fact a summary of the opinions of five members of the Al Domi group (discussed here on pp.23–25). See idem, “Martin Buber in Eretz-Israel During the Holocaust Years, 1942–1944,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol.17, Jerusalem 1986, p.116. 38. “Memorial Meeting in the Martyrs’ Forest” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, nos.4–5, June 1955, p.2. 39. Gershom Scholem, “Israel and the Diaspora,” in Werner J. Dannhauser (ed.), On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, New York 1976. 40. Gershom Scholem, “Judaic Scholarship: Then and Now” (Hebrew), Od Davar, Tel Aviv 1992, p.140. 41. See, for example, Anita Shapira, “Holocaust Survivors and the Yishuv,” Studies in Zionism, vol.7, no.2, Autumn 1986. 42. On the history and activities of Al Domi, see Dina Porat,”Al Domi: Palestinian Intellectuals and the Holocaust, 1943–1945,” Studies in Zionism, vol.5, no.1, 1984, pp.97–124. Earlier attempts to forewarn the intellectual and political leaders in the Yishuv and abroad to the danger posed by Nazism to the Jewish people received little attention. The “Association of Israel Among Peoples,” for example, was founded in 1938, immediately after Kristallnacht, by a small group of Yishuv scholars associated with the Writers’ Association in Tel Aviv. Its members included Martin Buber, Fischel

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44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

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Schneersohn, Dov Levin, Saul Tchernikhowsky, Nathan Feinberg, Samuel Hugo Bergman, and Yehuda Kaufman. Their activities centered mainly on sending written appeals to world figures, such as the Indian leader Gandhi and the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. On the activities of this group, see Dina Porat, “Martin Buber in Eretz-Israel During the Holocaust Years, 1942–1944,” op. cit., pp.94–98. Fischel Schneerson, Writers’ Convention at Ma’aleh Hahamisha, 25 Elul 1945, Moznayim (Hebrew), no.21, Tishrei-Adar 1945–1946, pp.77–78. Quoted in Anita Shapira, “The Holocaust and World War II as Elements of the Yishuv Psych until 1948,” in Alvin H. Rosenfeld (ed.), Thinking about the Holocaust: After Half a Century, Bloomington 1997, p.67. Dinur served as member of the first and second Knesset (Israeli parliament) as representative of the Mapai party from 1949 to 1955, and as Minister of Culture and Education from 1951 to 1955. See, in particular, Ben-Zion Dinur, “Jerusalem’s Alarm”; idem,”Our Fate and Our War: Five Openings from the Day of Mourning and Outcry”; idem, “Our Fate and Our War in These Times”; idem,”Fate and Destiny in Our Generation’s Education”; idem, “What Must We Remember on the Memorial Day of Holocaust and Heroism?”; These were later gathered and published in his book Zakhor: Writings on the Holocaust and Its Lesson (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1958. Dinur, “Fate and Destiny in Our Generation’s Education,” op. cit., pp.59–60. On the matter of the intellectuals’ “protective numbing” following the Holocaust, see Friedländer, “Trauma, Memory and Transference,” op. cit, Bloomington 1993. Dinur, “Fate and Destiny in Our Generation’s Education,” op. cit., pp.59–60. For a more elaborate description of their background, see Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past, op. cit., esp. chapters 5 and 6. On the ambivalence in the attitude of Jews of German origin in Israel following the Holocaust to German culture and to the German people see, Neima Barzel, “The Attitude of Jews of German Origin in Israel to Germany and Germans after the Holocaust,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol.39, 1994, pp.271–301. Joseph Klausner, “In the Absence of God” (Hebrew), Haboker, 17.9.44, Joseph Klausner Archive, op. cit., 401086/125 a-d. Ibid; see also, idem, My Way Toward Rebirth and Redemption: an Autobiography (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1946, p.296. Gershom Scholem, “Jews and Germans,” in Werner J. Dannhauser (ed.), On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, New York 1976, p.89. Ibid, p.90. Ibid. With the exception of Raul Hilberg, a Viennese Jew, who was the first to write a comprehensive analysis of the Holocaust. See idem, The Destruction of European Jewry, New York 1961. Philip Friedman, “Problems of Research on the European Jewish Catastrophe” (Hebrew) Yad Vashem Studies, 3, Jerusalem 1959, p.27. M. Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Historical Committee in Munich” (Hebrew), Dapim le-Heker ha-Shoah ve-Hamered, vol.1, January-April 1951, Beit Lohamei ha-Getaot, p.107. Ibid, p.110.

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60. Siegfried Moses, “Leo Baeck Institute of Jews from Germany,” Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute of Jews from Germany: Yearbook, vol.1, London 1956, p.xiii. 61. On “the thinly veiled antipathy” between Eastern and German Jewry “which has remained noticeable up to the present day,” see Robert Weltsch, “Introduction,” Publications of the Leo Baeck Institute, op. cit., p.xx. 62. Most notable is the case of the organized effort of the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum in Warsaw who managed to accumulate a significant collection of documents and other materials, the gathered material was buried in tin boxes underground and was uncovered shortly after the war’s end. 63. For more on the Dubnowian-Anskian tradition, see chapter 2, pp.26–27, chapter 3, pp.27–28. On the complex relation between Yad Vashem’s researchers and the national Institute’s Executive Board who attempted, unsuccessfully, during the 1950s to impose a more scholarly methods of collection and analysis, see chapter 3. 64. At the same time, Dinur remained steadfast in his view that scholarly writing can only be enhanced by the writer’s ideological objective. Hence, in the preface to this collection of pre-Zionist sources, Dinur clearly states that “the starting point of all work of collection in our generation is Zionist ideology”; and Zionist ideology, as he defined it, is closely linked to historical interpretation, for it “directs the vision of historians to areas of historical reality that earlier were not paid attention to.” Dinur, “be’ayat halukatan shel toldot Yisra’el li-tekufot ba-historiografyah ha-Yehudit” (Hebrew) in idem, Dorot u-reshumot, op. cit., vol.4, p.49. See also “Members of the World Council of Yad Vashem” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, nos. 8–9, March 1956, p.23. 65. See,”Discussion of the World Council of Yad Vashem at Har Hazikaron” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, nos. 10–11, August 1956, pp.9–10. Years earlier, during the First International Conference of historical commissions on the Shoah, held in Jerusalem in July of 1947, under the auspices of Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University, Scholem already commented that scientific historical accuracy and not sentimentality and emotionalism should be the hallmark of the historian’s work on the Shoah. “World Conference for the Study of the Shoah and Heroism,” July 13–14, 1947, Yad Vashem Archives (henceforth, YVA), AM.1/237 66. With the exception of the poet Uri Zvi Grinberg, neither were there any significant works of Hebrew literature that directly engaged the Holocaust. See Alan Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature, New York 1984, pp.159 ff. Part One: Different Perceptions of the Holocaust: The Yishuv, the Survivors and the Jewish Fighters—during and following the War Years 1.

2. 3. 4.

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, “Ha-Yehudim veha-Pe’ula ha-Medinit,” Ha-Ahdut, nos.11–12, 1913, quoted in Josef Gorni, “Yakhasa shel Mifleget Po’alei Tsiyon be-Eretz Yisrael la-Gola bi-Tekufat ha-Aliya ha-Sheniya” (Hebrew), in Ha-Tsiyonut, 2, 1971, p.76. Shmuel Almog, Zionism and History: The Rise of a New Jewish Consciousness, New York 1987, pp.45–51, 308. Dan Bar-On, Fear and Hope: Three Generations of the Holocaust, pp.15–44; Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War, New York 1999, ch.3. It is not surprising, therefore, that the national educational discourse emphasized this view of the Holocaust, implying a critic of the victims for failing to understand that historical lesson in time and to join the Zionist effort. Ruth Firer, Sokhnim shel ha-

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Hinukh ha-Tsyioni (The Agents of Zionist Education), Tel Aviv 1985, pp.96–102; Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, Berkeley 1983, pp.100–104. See George Lipschitz’s discussion of the use of this term, in Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, Minneapolis 1989, p.213; see also, Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. and ed. Donald F. Bouchard, Ithaca 1977. Negative remarks about the Jews’ behavior under Nazism began to be heard already at the end of 1942 when the first news of the Jewish situation in Europe reached the Yishuv. For example, when it was feared that the Germans might invade Palestine, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, member of the Executive Jewish Agency stated: “The problem of the Jews in exile is that they prefer a ‘beaten dog’s life’ to dying with honor...God forbid that we should look like the Jews of Germany and Poland.” In the Face of a Threat of German Invasion to Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew), a collection of essays and speeches gathered by Uri Brener, Ef’al 1984, pp.28–29. Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History, Hanover 1987, pp.108–109. Chapter One: In the Yishuv

1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

It was in the early 1940s that Hayyim Hazaz’s short story, “Ha-derashah” (“The Sermon”) was written, reflecting, in fact, the disparaging attitude of many in the Yishuv toward the Diaspora. Luah ha-aretz, 1942, pp.82–96. Reprinted in idem, Avanim Rothot, Tel Aviv 1968, pp.221–224. Quoted in Dina Porat, “The Role of European Jewry in the Plans of the Zionist Movement during World War II and Its Aftermath,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem Historical Conference, Jerusalem, October 1985, Jerusalem 1990, p.300. In their first published “manifesto” in 1944 the “Young Hebrews” stated: “No one is a Hebrew except a native of the land of the Hebrews; and whoever is not a native of this land, the land of the Hebrews, cannot be a Hebrew and never was a Hebrew. Whoever comes from the Jewish diaspora...is a Jew and not a Hebrew...The Jew and the Hebrew can never be identical. He who is a Hebrew cannot be a Jew, and he who is a Jew cannot be a Hebrew.” Quoted in Council for the Shaping of Hebrew Youth. Opening Address at the Council’s Session with the Delegates of the Cells (First Session),1944 (Hebrew), p.4. On the history of the Canaanite movement, see James E. Diamond, Homeland or Holy Land? The Canaanite Critique of Israel, Bloomington 1986. Barukh Kurzweil, “Nature and Sources of the Movement of ‘the Young Hebrews’” (Hebrew), Luah Ha-Aretz, vol.12, 1952–53, pp.107–129; also in idem, Our Modern Literature: Continuation or Revolution? (Hebrew), Jerusalem-Tel Aviv 1965, pp.270–300; Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis, New York 1986, pp.291–292. On the prevalence of “negation of Exile” in Israeli culture, see Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “Exile in the Midst of Sovereignty: Toward a Critique of the ‘Negation of Exile’ in Israeli Culture” (Hebrew), Theory and Criticism, fall 1993. Hazaz, “Ha-drashah,” op. cit. . For more on this, see Anita Shapira, “Native Sons” (Hebrew), Alpayim, no.2, 1990, pp.178–203. For further discussion of the complicated relations between Holocaust memory and Israeli identity, see Liebman and Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion, op. cit., pp.100–107; Saul

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8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

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Friedländer and Adam, B. Seligman, “The Israeli Memory of the Shoah: On Symbols, Rituals and Ideological Polarization,” in Roger Friedland and Deidre Boden (eds.), NowHere: Space Time and Modernity, Berkeley 1994; James E. Young, The Texture of Memory, New Haven 1993, pp.209 ff.; Segev, 1949: The First Israelis, op. cit., p.97. Evyatar Friesel, “The Holocaust and the Birth of Israel,” The Wiener Library Bulletin, vol.32, New Series Nos.49/50, 1979, p.58. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, op. cit., p.xx. Shmuel Almog, “The Historical Dimension of Jewish Nationalism” (Hebrew), Zion, LIII,4, 1988, pp.421 ff; Saul Friedländer, “The Shoah Between Memory and History,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 53, winter 1990, p.117. See, for example, Friedländer and Seligman, “The Israeli Memory of the Shoah,” op. cit., pp.356–371. On the intricate links between traditional Judaism and Israel’s civil religion, defined by Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya as “the ceremonial, myths and creeds which legitimate the social order, unite the population, and mobilize the society’s members in pursuit of its dominant political goals,” see , idem, Civil Religion in Israel, op. cit. . Israel, the authors argue, “needs a civil religion rooted in the religious tradition but not synonymous with it.” Thus, in a search for an effective synthesis, a series of such civil religions has reinterpreted traditional Jewish values and symbols. Young, The Texture of Memory, op. cit., p.212. On the mythologization of Yosef Trumpeldor and of Tel Hai in Israel’s collective memory, see Liebman and Don-Yehiya Civil Religion in Israel, op. cit., pp.44 ff; H.H. BenSasson (ed.), A History of the Jewish People, Cambridge (Mass.) 1976, p.993; Yael Zrubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, Chicago and London 1995. David Ben-Gurion, “The Tel Hai Order” (Hebrew), Bama’aracha, vol.3, Tel Aviv 1957, pp.120–121. See also Anita Shapira, “Holocaust and Might”(Hebrew), Massuah, April 1992, no.20, pp.42–64. On 12 April 1951 a law established a formal Holocaust commemoration day whose first appellation was “The Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Memorial Day.” The day was chosen for its proximity to the Warsaw ghetto revolt which started on Passover night, fourteenth of Nissan, 1943 (as close as religious laws prohibiting mourning during the days of Passover would allow). This date is closely followed by the Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and, at sunset on that day, by Israel’s Independence Day. See Nathan Eck, “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1971, vol.8, pp.916–917; Friedländer, “The Shoah Between Memory and History,” op. cit, p.117. For a further discussion of the Yishuv’s attitude toward European Jewry see Idith Zartal, From Catastrophe to Power. Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine, 1945–48, Berkeley 1998. See also, Yechiam Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Self-Image and the Reality of the Holocaust,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, no.48, Fall 1988, pp.74–75; Yoav Gelber, “Some Reflections on the Yishuv during the Shoah,” in Gelber et al (eds.), The Shoah and the War, New York 1992. Quoted in Hava Wagman Eshkoli, “Three Attitudes toward the Holocaust within Mapai, 1933–1945,” Studies in Zionism, vol.14, no.1, 1993, p.89. Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Self-Image and the Reality of the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.79–80. Moshe Braslavsky, “When the Curtain Was Lifted” (Hebrew), Mibifnim, June 1945, pp.45 ff. Quoted in Anita Shapira, “Holocaust Survivors and the Yishuv,” in Yisrael

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21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), Sh’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem Historical Conference, Jerusalem, October 1985, Jerusalem 1990, p.277. Shapira, ibid, p.278. The Revisionist party was established in 1925 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who had resigned from the Zionist Executive in 1923. The Revisionists received much of their support from Eastern European middle-class Zionists who did not endorse the socialist ideology of the labor parties but were more militant than the liberal General Zionists. On the Revisionist party and its leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, see Yaacov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925–1948, London 1988, pp.337–338 Ibid. The implementation of the evacuation plan presupposed not only the willingness of the Polish authorities to participate in the mass evacuation of its Jews but also a recognition by the British government that the Jewish plight did not clash with its political interests in the Middle East. Apart from this, American Jewry and the Zionist movement had to be able to raise, on the very eve of the outbreak of the second World War, the tremendous resources necessary for such an operation. For further details on the Revisionists’ Evacuation Plan, see Shavit, Jabotinski and the Revisionist Movement, op. cit., chapter 7. Ibid, p.338. Nahum Benari in Record of the 14th Conference of Hakibbutz Hameuhad (Hebrew), Ein Harod n.d., p.216; see also Moshe Braslavsky, The XIV Conference of Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Hebrew), Giv’at Brenner 1944, p.219. Shapira, “Holocaust Survivors and the Yishuv,” op. cit., p.279. Enzo Sereni, The Holy Spring (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1969, p.315. Quoted in Dinur, “Our Fate and Our War in These Times” op. cit., p.63 [first published by Mapai Publishers, March 1943.] S. Dobromil, “On Immigration and Absorption” (Hebrew), Tzror Michtavim, Ein Harod, April 12, 1944. Eliahu Dobkin at a Mapai Central Committee meeting, May 2, 1942—quoted in Porat, “The Role of European Jewry in the Plans of the Zionist Movement during World War II and Its Aftermath,” op. cit, p.286. In the spring of 1945, following the defeat of Nazi Germany, as many as 100,000 Jewish survivors found themselves wandering through Germany and Central Europe. Known as displaced persons (DPs), they would later be joined by close to 200,000 other Jews from Poland and Russia. Together these survivors formed the remnant who were set up in DP camps in the American, British, and French zones of occupied Germany as well as in Austria and Italy. For a more in-depth look at the Jewish situation in the DP camps see, Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah, New York 1970, esp. pp.261 ff. See, for example, Dina Porat, “The Role of European Jewry in the Plans of the Zionist Movement during World War II and Its Aftermath,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf op. cit., pp.292–293. Letter from the soldier Yosef Bentwich to his family in Nahalal, June 24, 1945, published in the Nahalal Memorial Book for Those Who Fell in the War of Independence (Hebrew), Bracha Habas (ed.), “Those for Whom We Mourn,” pp.180–181—quoted in Yoav Gelber, History of Volunteerism, vol.3, The Standard Bearers (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1983 , p.405.

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37.

38. 39. 40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

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To the survivors, however, the lack of motivation to engage in productive work, at least at the outset, was fueled by their awareness that, as slave laborers in the concentration camps, the only reason they remained alive was because they continued to be of some use to the Germans. After liberation they had no desire to help rebuild the German economy. Angelika Königseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany, Evanston (ILL) 2001 (c. 1994 in German), p.116. Haim Yahil, “The Actions of the Mission to the Survivors, 1945–1949” (Hebrew), Yalkut Moreshet, no.31, April 1981, pp.135 ff. Ibid, no.31, April 1981, p.175. Abba Kovner, “The Mission of the Survivors,” The Catastrophe of European Jewry, Yad Vashem 1976, pp.671–683. Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust op. cit, pp.49–55; Nili Keren, “The Impact of She’erit Hapletah On Israeli Society,” in Yisrael Gutman et al (eds.), Sh’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle. Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Jerusalem, October 1985, Jerusalem 1990. On the encounter between the Jewish soldiers from Eretz Yisrael and She’erit Hapletah, see Gelber, History of Volunteerism vol.3, The Standard Bearers, op. cit., p.435. A letter sent by the soldier T. Gruenthal on July 17, 1945; quoted in Gelber, History of Volunteerism vol.3, The Standard Bearers, op. cit, p.434. See also, Abba Kovner, On the Narrow Bridge, Tel Aviv 1981, pp.30–37. Davar, August 29, 1945. Kovner, On the Narrow Bridge, op. cit., p.38. The bulk of the surviving remnants began to arrive in Israel at the height of the Independence War. In the three and a half years following the establishment of the state (May, 1948 to the end of 1951) approximately 300,000 displaced persons settled in Israel—half as many as the total Jewish population of Israel at the time. Dvora Hacohen, “Mass Immigration and the Israeli Political System, 1948–1953,” Studies in Zionism, vol.8, no.1, 1987, p.101; Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Self-Image and the Reality of the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.84. On the image of the survivors in the emissaries reports, see Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, op. cit., pp.44–61. See Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Self-Image,” op. cit., pp.78–79; for examples of such references in Hebrew textbooks, see Firer, The Agents of Zionist Education (Hebrew) op. cit, p.81. Dan Horowitz, Blue and Dust: the Generation of 1948: A Self-Portrait (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1993, pp.37 ff. Quoted in Shapira, “The Holocaust and World War II as Elements of the Yishuv Psych until 1948,” op. cit., p.70. Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, op. cit., pp.48–49. Ibid. See also Ruzka Korczak, Flames in the Ashes (Hebrew), Merhavia 1965 (c.1946), pp.49–56. See, for example, Book of the Jewish Partisans (Hebrew), Merhavia, 1958; The Fighting Ghettos (Hebrew), Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me’uhad, 1954. K. Tzetnik, Salamandra: Khronikah shel mishpahah Yehudit ba-me’ah ha-’esrim (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1946. During the following decade or so, K. Tzetnik also published House of Dolls, Piepel, and Phoenix over the Galilee.

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48. Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, op. cit., p.49. 49. Minutes of the Histadrut Executive, July 18–19, 1945; Neima Barzel, Sacrificed Unredeemed: The Encounter between the Leaders of the Ghetto Fighters and the Israeli Society (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1998, pp.81–82. 50. Quoted in Porat, “The Role of European Jewry in the Plans of the Zionist Movement during World War II and Its Aftermath,” op. cit, p.302. 51. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.81. 52. Shapira, “The Yishuv’s Encounter with the Survivors of the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.96 ff. 53. Ibid, p.105. 54. In 1948, Achdut Ha’avodah and Hashomer Hatsair united and established Mapam (United Workers Party). The kibbutzim of Hashomer Hatsair and Hakibbutz Hameuchad movements came to be affiliated with this new oppositional left-wing party. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel. From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, New York 1996, pp.362–364. 55. Meir Yaari to Yehudah Tubin, July 24, 1945, Meir Yaari Collection, Hashomer Hatsair Archives, Givat Havivah (HZA) (5), B-2, 7.95. 56. Shapira, “Holocaust Survivors and the Yishuv,” op. cit., pp.285–289. 57. Ibid, pp.297–299. 58. Shapira, “The Yishuv’s Encounter with the Survivors of the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.103. 59. Yahil, “Actions of the Mission,” op. cit. 60. For the debate in the Knesset over the implementation of the Law, see Divre haKnesset (Hebrew), vols.21, 22, 35, Jerusalem 1953, pp.1310–1314, pp.1332–1342, pp.2402–2408. 61. Ha’aretz, April 21, 1946; Hamishmar, April 19, 1946; Ha’aretz, April 20, 1947; Ha’aretz, April 19, 1948. 62. .Divre ha-Knesset (Hebrew), vol.14, Jerusalem 1953, p.1345. 63. Protocols of the Meetings of the Founding Committee for “The Commemoration of the Diaspora’s Martyrs” (Hebrew), National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Chief Rabbinate, gimel lamed/85553/30 III. 64. Proclamation of the Chief Rabbinate in Eretz Yisrael, National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Chief Rabbinate, gimel lamed/85553/30 III. 65. On the central theme of destruction, exile and redemption in Jewish collective memory, see Yerushalmi, Zakhor, op. cit, pp.43–44, 65–66; Alan Mintz, Hurban, New York 1984, pp.102–103; Saul Friedländer, “The Holocaust as Element in the Construction of Israeli Memory” (German), Babylon, vol.2, 1987, pp.10–12. 66. Hazofeh, April 19, 1948. 67. See n.62. 68. The Knesset Archive, First Session of the “Sub-Committee for the Selection of Ghettos Uprising Day” (Hebrew), February 2, 1951, Protocol gimel/1. 69. Ibid. 70. The Knesset Archive, Second Session of the “Sub-Committee for the Selection of Ghettos Uprising Day” (Hebrew), March 21, 1951, Protocol gimel/2. 71. Ibid; see also Friedländer and Seligman, “The Israeli Memory of the Shoah,” op. cit., p.360.

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72. Divre ha-Knesset (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1958, vol.31, pp.2118 ff. 73. Divre ha-Knesset (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1961, vol.31, pp. 1264 ff., 1300 ff., 1504 ff., p. 1590. Chapter Two: The Survivors and the Jewish Fighters in the DP Camps, 1945–1948 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

She’erit hHapletah is a biblical term which appears in Chronicles 5, referring to the Jewish remnant that survived the Assyrian conquest. The term first appeared in reference to those who survived the Holocaust in the list of survivors that was published in July of 1945. See Yehuda Bauer, “The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria,” in Yad Vashem Studies, vol.8, 1970, p.127. Yisrael Gutman, “Discussion” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), She’erit Hapletah, op. cit., pp.509–510. Tsemah Tsamrion, Chapters on the Holocaust and Jewish Survivors (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1975, p.10 Ze’ev Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1987, p.7; Bauer, “The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria,” op. cit. . Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (eds.), vol.9, New York 1990, p.xii. Tkhies-hameysim: A Newspaper for Liberated Jews in the Camps (Yiddish), Buchenwald, 4.5.1945. Tsamrion, Chapters on the Holocaust and Jewish Survivors, op. cit., p.53. For a complete list, see ibid, p.55. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., pp.122–123. Kapos were Jewish concentration-camp inmates to whom the Nazis had assigned various supervisory positions in the camps and workplaces. Ibid, p.22; Koppel S. Pinson, “Jewish Life in Liberated Germany: A Study of the Jewish DPs,” Jewish Social Science, vol.9, no.2, April 1947, pp.121–123; Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., pp.103–122, 134–141. Speech given by Zalman Grinberg at the liberation concert at St. Ottilien on May 27, 1945. “We are Living Corpses” (German) Aufbau, August 24, 1945—quoted in Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit., p.276. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.12. Leo Srole, “Why the DPs Can’t Wait. Proposing an International Plan of Rescue,” Commentary, vol.3, no.1, January 1947, pp.21–23. See also, Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz, Bloomington 1980, p.68. Srole, ibid, p.23. See, for example, Ethel Ostry After the Holocaust: My Work with UNRA, private edition, 1978, Yad Vashem (Library) 1978. Leyvik Halpern, Mit der Sheyres hapleyte (Yiddish), Toronto, 1947, p.7. Srole, “Why the Dps Can’t Wait,” op. cit., p.15. Leo W. Schwarz, “Memorial in Munich,” Congress Weekly, vol.22,no.15, April 18, 1955, p.6.

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20. The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews, Protocol no.42, 5.5.1946, YVA. 21. Israel Efrat, “Nesi’a le-makhanot Yisrael be-Germania” (Hebrew), Hadoar, November 22, 1946, p.94. 22. Schwarz, “Memorial in Munich,” op. cit., p.7. 23. Ibid; Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit., p.36. 24. Samuel Gringauz, “Zum yar-tog fun nizahon” (Yiddish), Landsberger Lager cajtung, no.16 (28), 10.5.1946, p.3; Efrat, “Nesi’a le-makhanot Yisrael be-Germania,” op. cit. 25. Efrat, ibid; see also, Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit., p.36. 26. Israel Efrat, “Nesi’a le-makhanot Yisrael be-Germania” (Hebrew), Hadoar, January 17, 1947, p.286. 27. Ibid, pp.286, 291. 28. Schwarz, “Memorial in Munich,” op. cit., p.7. 29. Gelber, “The Meeting between the Jewish Soldiers from Palestine Serving in the British Army and Sh’erit Hapletah,” op. cit., p.72; Bauer, Flight and Rescue, op. cit., pp.178 ff. 30. Ze’ev Mankowitz, “Zionism and She’erit Hapletah,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), She’erit Hapletah, op. cit., p.213; Koppel S. Pinson, “Jewish Life in Liberated Germany,” op. cit., pp.113–114. 31. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.145. 32. Samuel Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny as the DPs See It,” Commentary, December 1947, p.503. 33. Quoted in Undzer veg, 17, Munich, January 25, 1946, p.2. 34. Srole, “Why the Dps Can’t Wait,” op. cit., p.21. 35. P. Pikatsch, in Undzer veg, December 28, 1950, p.2. 36. Ibid. 37. Ch. D. “Inwardly,” Nizoz, no.7 (52), December 31, 1945, p.3. Quoted in Ze’ev Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit. . 38. Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny as the DPs See It,” op. cit., p.506. 39. Amery, At the Minds Limits, op. cit., p.65. 40. Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny,” op. cit., p.505. 41. Ibid, p.507 42. Ibid, pp.503–505. 43. See, for example, Jacob Robinson (ed.), “Reflections, Interpretations, Responsibilities— Commemoration and Teaching of the Holocaust,” The Holocaust and After: Sources and Literature in English, Yad Vashem-Yivo, Entries 6413–6457, Jerusalem 1973. In this and other bibliographical lists there is no mention of the Fourteenth of Iyar. 44. B. Evalski, “Kapes un blek-elteste farn yidishn gericht in Landsberg” (Yiddish),Landsberger Lager cajtung, no.13 (25), 15.4.1946, p.2; H. Sohalizki, “Tsvey problemen” (Yiddish), Undzer veg, no.4, 5.4.1946, pp.1–2. See also Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation, New York 1977, chapter 10. 45. Jews who were found guilty by the Courts of Honor were turned over to the US mili-

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46. 47.

48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

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tary authorities and retried in American military courts. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat, ibid; Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.139–141. Königseder and Wetzel,ibid, pp.139–140. H. Leyvik, “Mir torn nit farshvakhn undzere kedoshim” (Yiddish), Undzer veg, no.25, 22.3.1946, p.10—quoted in Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit., p.294. A. Akselrad, “Mir torn nit farshvakhn undzere Kedoshim: entfaar H. Leyvik” (Yiddish), A heym, no.6, 28.3.1946, p.4. Yosef Sperling, “Die mezuraim mikhutz lamachane” (Yiddish), A heym, no.8, 11.4.1946, p.10 . For a detailed account of the exchanges between Leyvik and the survivors, see Mankovich, ibid, pp.294 ff. On the history of the concept of Kiddush ha-Shem, see Itamar Grunwald, “Kiddush haShem: Beruro shel Musag” (Hebrew), Molad 1, 1967, pp.476–484. On the development of the laws of martyrdom, see Shlomo Goren, “Mitsvat Kiddush ha-Shem le-Or haHalakha” (Hebrew), Mahanayim 41, 1960, pp.7–15. Reflecting on his own German-Jewish past, George L. Mosse suggests that there was a particular humanitarian ethos shared by German Jewry, defined by a commitment to culture, self-cultivation and tolerance. Yet such ideals, according to Sidney M. Bolkovsky, often rendered German Jewry incapable of assessing the dangers that faced them. See Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism, Bloomington 1985; Bolkovsky, The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptions of Germans and Germany, 1918–1935, New York 1975, p.184. Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny,” op. cit., p.506. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, op. cit., p.193. Samuel Gringauz, “Varshaver oyfstand” (Yiddish), Yiddishe Cajtung, no.29 (97), 8.4.1947, p.4. Ya’akov Aliasky, “Grandizer troyer akademi lekhoved dem 3tn yartog fun yidn oyfstand in varshe” (Yiddish), Landsberger Lager cajtung, no.15 (27), 3.5.1946, p.8. See also, K. Shabbetai, Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust, New York & Tel Aviv, 1965. Mankovich, “The Politics and Ideology of Survivors of the Holocaust in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, 1945–1946,” op. cit., p.293. See, Moshe Frager, “Hasidic Underground in Poland’s Ghettos” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, 21–22, December 1959, pp.7–10. Gideon Hausner, “Foreword,” in K. Shabbetai, As Sheep to the Slaughter?, Bet Dagan 1962; F. Wiederman, “The Cult of Heroism” (Yiddish), Dos fraye vort, nos.45–50, 29.9.46, p.7—quoted in Mankovich, ibid, pp.322–303. The Yiddish Scientific Institute, known as YIVO, was founded in 1925 with the aim of studying the history of East European Jewry. Philip Friedman,”Problems of Research on the Holocaust,” in idem, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, New York and Philadelphia 1980, pp.556. Ibid, pp.556, 559. However, during the first convention of the various branches of the Central Historical Commission in the American zone of occupation in Germany, which took place in Munich on May 11 and 12, 1947, Friedman himself stated: “By looking into our martyrology, we are fulfilling our duty to the victims and erect in, thereby, an eternal monument in their honor.” “Report—from the First Conference of Delegates from the Historical Commissions in the American Zone in Germany, which took place in Munich on the 11th and 12th May, 1947,” p.2, YVA, File 12, M-1/B.

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60. Samuel Gringauz, “Some Mythological Problems in the Study of the Ghetto,” Jewish Social Studies, 12, January 1950, pp.65–72. 61. For more on the “Dubnowian tradition,” see chapter 2. 62. See p. 67, n.62. 63. Isaiah Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis, New York 1982, p.ix. 64. M. Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Historical Committee in Munich” (Hebrew), Dapim le-Heker ha-Shoah ve-Hamered, vol.1, January-April 1951, Beit Lohamei ha-Getaot, p.107. The first Jewish Historical Institute for the research and study of the Holocaust was established in Poland in 1944 (Zydowski Instytut Historyczny). Among its founding members were Philip Friedman, Nahman Blumental, Joseph Kermisz and Isaiah Trunk. See Abraham Wein, “The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.8, 1970, pp.203–213. 65. See the Historical Commission Stuttgart to the Central Historical Commission, 10.2.1947, YVA, MI/B, File no. 11. According to Philip Friedman, these eyewitness accounts, which mainly cover the East European areas, were drawn up by poorly instructed interviewers and, therefore, have limited scientific value. Friedman, “European Jewish Research on the Holocaust,” in idem, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, New York and Philadelphia 1980, p.513 (the essay is based on a lecture given by Friedman at the annual meeting of the American Academy for Jewish Research, held on December 26, 1948). 66. YVA, MI/B, File no.11. 67. The branch in Landsberg published a booklet about Vilna under Nazi rule; the Stuttgart branch a book about Nazi persecutions of Jews in Radom. Friedman, “European Jewish Research on the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.513, 523n. 68. M. Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Historical Committee in Munich” (Hebrew), Dapim le-Heker ha-Shoah ve-Hamered, vol.1, January-April 1951, Beit Lohamei ha-Getaot, pp.107–108. 69. J. Kermisz, “The Central Archive of the History of the Shoah and Heroism” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, no.2, July 29, 1954, p.5; Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Committee,” op. cit., pp.108–110. 70. Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.93. 71. Feigenbaum, “Bericht fun ershtn tsuzamenfar” (Yiddish), op. cit., p.9; idem, “The Activities of the Central Committee,” op. cit., p.108. 72. “Report—from the First Conference of Delegates from the Historical Commissions in the American Zone in Germany, which took place in Munich on the 11th and 12th May, 1947,” p.9, YVA, File 12, M-1/B. 73. Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Committee,” op. cit., p.110. 74. Friedman, “European Jewish Research on the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.514. 75. Ten issues of Fun letstn khurbn were published between 1946 and 1948 (at which time the paper ceased to exit). 76. Leo W. Schwarz, The Root and the Bough: The Epic of an Enduring People, New York 1949. 77. Barzel, Sacrificed Unredeemed, op. cit., p.137. 78. Central Historical Commission: M.I. Feigenbaum, Report on the Work of Delegates of the Historical Commission in the American Zone in Germany, 11–12.5.1047, YVA, MI/B,

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79. 80.

81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

86.

87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

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File no.11, p.7; see also Feigenbaum, “The Activities of the Central Committee,” op. cit., p.110. Ibid, p.230. For a detailed account of the survivors’ alternatives following the war, see Gelber, History of Volunteerism vol.3, op. cit., pp.367–368. See also Bauer, “The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria,” op. cit., p.145. Sholem Hirschkopf, “Reflections on the Warsaw Uprising,” Dos fraye vort, no.28, April 26, 1946, p.2. See, for example, Samuel Gringauz, “Varshaver oyfshtand” (Yiddish), Yidishe Cajtung, no.29 (97), 8.4.1947, p.4. See also, Friedman, “Problems of Research on the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.560. Ruth Zariz, Letters from Jewish Pioneers in Occupied Poland, 1940–1944 (Hebrew), Beit Lohamei Ha-Getaot 1994, p.51. Zivia Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1979, p.194. This letter was sent to the Ichud Olami by Dr. Moshe Schweiger, formerly an inmate of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, from a DP camp in Germany. Quoted in Archives of the Holocaust: An International Collection of Selected Documents, vol.9, New York 1990, p.106. The Brichah was an organized illegal mass movement that brought Jews after the war from Soviet-held territories to American and British-held territories and from there, the hope was, eventually to Palestine. Yehuda Bauer, “The Brichah,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), She’erit Hapletah, op. cit., pp.52–53; see also, idem, Flight and Rescue: Brichah, New York 1970. Anita Shapira, Walking on the Horizon (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1988 pp.328 ff. See also, Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., p.182; Irit Keynan, Holocaust Survivors and the Emmissaries from Eretz- Yisrael: Germany 1945–1948 (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1996, p.105. Partizanim, Hayalim, Haluzim—in Hebrew. Shalom Holevski,”Partisans and Ghetto Fighters” (Hebrew), in Yisrael Gutman et al (eds.), Sh’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948, op cit., p.227. Ibid, p.229. Ibid, pp.229–230. On the activities of the Central Historical Commission of Pahah in Italy, see the report by M. Kaganovitch in Im Gang (journal of the Jewish writers’ union in Italy), nos.13–14, July-August 1948. “In the Movement: Conference of the Pahah Historical Commission,” Pahah, no.5/6 Munich, December 1947, pp.18–19. Ibid. Ibid; M. Kaganovitch, Der yidisher ontayl in der partizaner-bavegung fun Soviet-Rusland (Yiddish), Rome and New York 1948. Friedman, “Problem of Research on the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.560 Königseder and Wetzel, Waiting for Hope, op. cit., p.4. Report from a meeting with Dr. Hoffman (Yahil)—head of the Jewish Agency delegation to the DPs in Germany, YVA, January 14, 1948, AM.1/189; Tsamrion, Chapters on the Holocaust and Jewish Survivors, op. cit., pp.127–128; Kermisz,”The Central Archive,” op. cit.

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The boxed documents of the Central Historical Commission were transferred first to Switzerland, to a temporary office of Yad Vashem adjacent to the Office of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, until it was safe to ship the gathered material to Eretz Yisrael. “Proceedings of the Working Committee of Yad Vashem,” YVA, July 4, 1948, AM.1/290. Part Two: Politics of Memory and Historiography 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

On the political manipulation of the memory of the Shoah in Israel public discourse during the 1950s, with a special emphasis on the debates over “Shoah vs. heroism,” see Roni Stauber, “The ‘Jewish Response’ during the Holocaust as Reflected in Israeli Public Thought in the 1950s” (Hebrew), Ph.D. Diss., Tel Aviv University 1997; idem, Lesson for This Generation: Holocaust and Heroism in Israeli Public Discourse in the 1950s (Hebrew), Jerusalem 2000. Dapim le-Heker ha-Shoah ve-Hamered, vol.1, January-April 1951, Beit Lohamei haGetaot, p.5. Yitzhak Katzenelson, Ketavim Ahronim (Hebrew), Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers, 1953. “A Decade to The Ghetto Fighters’ House” (Hebrew), Yediot Beit Lohamei Hagettaot, no.22, April 1960, pp.1–4. Gad Rosenblatt, Esh ahaza ba-ya’ar: im pelugat partisanim Yehudit uve-hativat Kubepak (Hebrew), 2nd edition, Tel Aviv 1976 (c.1957). Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamrof, Dapim min ha-delekah: pirke-yoman, mikhtavim vereshimot (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1947. Tuvia Bozikovski, Ben kirot noflim (translated from the Yiddish to Hebrew by Moshe Basok), Tel Aviv 1950. Sefer Milchamot Hagetaot (Hebrew), edited by Izhak Zuckerman and Moshe Basak, Tel Aviv 1954; in 1962 the book was translated in New York to English and edited by Meyer Barkai under the title The Fighting Ghettos. Ruzka Korczak, Flames in the Ashes (Hebrew) Merhavia 1946. Chaika Grossman, Anshei Hamahteret, Merhavia 1950. Levi Dror and Yisrael Rosentsvayg (eds.), Sefer Hashomer Hatsair (Hebrew), Merhavia 1956. For a broad interpretation of the term, see Liebman and Don Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel, op. cit. . David Ben-Gurion, The Eternity of Israel (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1964, p.307. Divrei Hakneset (Hebrew), 1953, pp.1313, 1331, 1336, 1350. Chapter Three: The Israeli Representation of the Holocaust in the 1950s

1. 2.

3.

M. Shenhabi, “‘Yad Vashem’ after the Confirmation of the Law in the Knesset” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, no.1, April 30, 1954. See Shmuel Spector, “Yad Vashem,” Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York 1990, vol.4, pp.1681–1686; Mooli Brog, “In Blessed Memory of a Dream: Mordechai Shenhavi and Initial Holocaust Commemoration Ideas in Palestine, 1942–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol.30, Jerusalem 2002, 297 ff. Because they were not granted visas to enter Palestine, no representatives of historical commissions from the DP camps attended the World Conference. Participated in

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4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

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the Conference representatives of Jewish historical institutes and centers from France, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. “World Conference for the Study of the Shoah and Heroism,” July 13–14, 1947, YVA, AM.1/237. Ibid. Divre ha-Knesset (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1953, vol.35, p.2409. The law was fully reprinted in “Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Law, Yad Vashem, 1953,” Yediot Yad Vashem, no.1, April 30, 1954, p.2; parts of this law’s articles are reprinted and discussed as well in Ben-Zion Dinur, “Problems Confronting ‘Yad Vashem in Its Work of Research,” Yad Vashem Studies, no.1, 1957, pp.7–30. Nathan Eck, “The Aims of Yad Vashem’s Historical Research” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, 4–5, June 1955, p.10. Ben-Zion Dinur, “From the Knesset Debate over the ‘Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Act—Yad Vashem’” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, no.1, April 30, 1954, pp.2–3. See Segev’s interpretation of Dinur’s speech in Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., p.434. “Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Law, Yad Vashem, 1953,” op. cit., p.2. Dinur, “From the Knesset Debate over the ‘Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Act— Yad Vashem’” op. cit., pp.2–3. “World Conference for the Study of the Shoah and Heroism,” July 13–14, 1947, YVA, AM.1/237. See Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, London 1987 pp.133 ff.; Friedman, “Problems of Research on the European Jewish Catastrophe,” op. cit., 1959; Léon Poliakov, “The Activities of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris,” an address delivered at the conference World War II in the West, Amsterdam 1950. A letter sent by Ben-Zion Dinur to David Ben-Gurion on 3 April, 1953. Quoted in Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit.,p.431. Yad Vashem to Foreign Ministry public relations department (Hebrew), 6 January, 1954, National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Foreign Ministry, 2388/15/A. On August 18, 1953 “the memorial to the unknown Jewish martyr” was unveiled in Paris. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory, op. cit., p.72. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, July 10, 1956, p.4. Ibid. Mark (Meir) Dworzecki, Avraham Granot, and Yitzhak Gruenbaum at a Yad Vashem Executive Board meeting, 16 July, 1954, National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Foreign Ministry, 2388/15/A. “Bulletin to a Meeting with Journalists” (Hebrew), Dec.2, 1953, p.2, YVA. S.Z. Kahana, “In the Chamber of the Shoah” (Hebrew), National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Ministry of Religion, undated, gimel/lamed/6261/9–12.See also, Frieländer and Seligman, “The Israeli Memory of the Shoah,” op. cit., pp.358–359; Young, The Texture of Memory, op. cit., pp.247–249; Stauber, “The ‘Jewish Response’ during the Holocaust,” op. cit., p.204; idem, Lesson for This Generation, op. cit., pp.136–142. Kahana, ibid. “Basic Assumptions for the Planning of the Memorial Mountain” (Hebrew), 8–9 April, 1956, National Archives, Jerusalem, Files of the Foreign Ministry, 2388/16. Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., p.427.

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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Ibid; see also, Yosef Gorni, The Quest for Collective Identity (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1986, p.106. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, April 29, 1958, pp.5–6. Ibid, p.6. “Historical Survey and Ceremonies” (Hebrew), Ministry of Religion Files, National Archives, Jerusalem, gimel/lamed/6315/8/24. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, February 1, 1955 and April 29, 1958; see also Stauber, “The ‘Jewish Response’ during the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.203–213. Pages for the Study of the Catastrophe and the Revolt (Hebrew), no.1, January-April 1951, p.5. Yediot Be’it Lohamei ha-Getatot, no.3, October 1953. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, July 17, 1954. Ibid. Ibid. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, November 15, 1955. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, March 2, 1958, p.7. Ibid., p.8. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, March 13, 1956, p.6. Dawidowicz, “Toward a History of the Holocaust,” op. cit, p.52. Nachum Goldmann, President of the world Jewish Congress, remembered asking Ben-Zion Dinur, then Chairman of Yad Vashem, why the relatively large sums of money that he had received from the Claims Conference to finance research projects on the Holocaust had not been used: “I asked him for the reasons. He replied that he could not find scholars to deal with the topic, as the youth studying at the universities showed a greater readiness to do research concerning the period of the Inquisition or the pogroms in Russia than that of the Holocaust.” Goldman, “The Influence of the Holocaust on the Change in the Attitude of World Jewry to Zionism and the State of Israel,” in Holocaust and Rebirth: A Symposium, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1974, pp.79–80. Rachel Auerbach, “What the Struggle within Yad Vashem is All About,” Davar, October 6, 1958. Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, Cambridge (MA) 1981, p.125. David G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, Cambridge (MA) 1984, p.135. David G. Roskies (ed.), The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe, Philadelphia 1988, p.6. Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinsion. Essays on the Holocaust, New York 1980, pp.554–557. Dawidowicz, “Toward a History of the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.51–52. Rachel Auerbach, for example, was one of only two survivors of Emmanuel Ringelbaum circle in the Warsaw ghetto who were involved in establishing the “Oneg Shabat” archive. HaShoah ve-ha-Meri (Hebrew), Ministry of Culture and Education, p.41. Following the Stalinization of Poland and the liquidation of Jewish communal life there, many of its members, including the founders of the Institute, Philip Friedman, Nahman Blumental and Joseph Kermisz chose to immigrate to Israel (Philip Friedman spent the years 1951–53 at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot and then emigrated to the US, where he

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52.

53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

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joined the Yivo staff in New York; shortly thereafter, he was appointed its chief archivist. On the activities of the Jewish Institute in Poland, see the articles by N. M. Gelber, “In Memory of the Late Philip Friedman” (Hebrew); J. Kermisz, “The Founder of the Historical Institute in Poland After the War” (Hebrew); and Nathan Eck, “In Memory of a Friend” (Hebrew)—all in Yediot Yad Vashem, nos. 23/24, May 1960, pp.3 ff. Yehuda Bauer, “Trends in Holocaust Research,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol.12, January 1977, p.8. The first Holocaust researchers from among the survivors included Joseph Kermisz, Nahman Blumental, Natan Eck, Rachel Auerbach, Shmuel Krakowski, and others. Isaiah Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution, op. cit., p.ix. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, March 11, 1958. See also BenZion Dinur (ed.), Sefer ha-Tsiyonut: mevasre ha-Tsiyonut (Hebrew), vol.1, Tel Aviv 1938, p.19 Jacob Robinson, “The Claims Conference and Yad Vashem: Report,” p.37, Claims Conference Papers, Central Archives of the Jewish People, Jerusalem (CA). On the report and the relations between Yad Vashem and the Claims Conference, see also Ronald A. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, op. cit., pp.133 ff. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, March 11, 1959. Ben-Zion Dinur, “The Historical Consciousness of the People and Problems of Its Study” (Hebrew), Dorot u-reshumot, op. cit., vol.4, p.160. See also “Introduction,” n.64. On Dinur’s interpretation of Jewish history, see Uri Ram, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur” History and Memory, vol.7, no.1, Spring/Summer 1995, pp.91–118. Dinur, “The Historical Consciousness of the People and Problems of Its Study,” op. cit., pp.175–192. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 29, 1956 and May 22, 1958. Goldmann, “The Influence of the Holocaust on the Change in the Attitude of World Jewry to Zionism and the State of Israel,” op. cit., pp.79–80. Stauber, Lesson for This Generation, op. cit., pp.172 ff. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, November 15, 1955. Ben-Zion Dinur, “The Difficulties Facing Yad Vashem in the Study of the Holocaust and Heroism (Hebrew), “ Zakhor, op. cit., pp.109–110; Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, February 1, 1956 and March 11, 1959. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 1, 1956 and May 13, 1956. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 1, 1956. Ibid. Ibid. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 13, 1956. Ibid. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, April 24, 1956; November 6, 1956 and July 22, 1957.

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69. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, November 6, 1956. 70. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, April 24, 1956; November 6, 1956 and July 22, 1957. 71. Testimony given by Nathan Eck before the Committee of the Fourth World Council of Yad Vashem, July 1958. Quoted in Stauber, “The ‘Jewish Response’ during the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.266–267. 72. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, September 28, 1958. 73. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 22, 1958. 74. Jacob Robinson, “The Claims Conference and Yad Vashem: Report,” p.37, Claims Conference Papers, Central Archives of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. See also, Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World, op. cit., pp.133 ff. 75. On Yad Vashem’s contention with the four survivors, see also in Stauber, Lesson for This Generation, op. cit., pp.173 ff. 76. Wein, “The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw,” op. cit., p.204. 77. “The Contributors,” Yad Vashem Studies, II, Jerusalem 1958, p.331. 78. A special memo prepared by this group of survivors and sent on October 1958 to the members of the Fourth World Council of Yad Vashem, Personal Archive of Rachel Auerbach at YVA, P16/24. Quoted in Stauber, “The ‘Jewish Response’ during the Holocaust,” op. cit., pp.258 ff. 79. David Lazar, Maariv, June 18, 1958. See also Boaz Evron, Haaretz, 21.6.60, pp.10, 14, 16. 80. See, letters and memos in the Personal Archive of Rachel Auerbach at YVA, P16/24; Yosef Lapid, “Go Home. Let the People Do the Work!” (Hebrew) Ma’ariv, June 18, 1958; Rachel Auerbach, “What the Struggle within Yad Vashem is All About” (Hebrew) Davar, October 6, 1958. 81. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 22, 1958, p.10. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid, p.6. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid, p.5. 86. Yediot Yad Vashem, no.14, 1957, p.19. 87. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 29, 1956, and December 11, 1956. 88. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, May 22, 1958, p.7. 89. Ibid. 90. Auerbach, “What the Struggle within Yad Vashem is All About” op. Cit. 91. Ibid. See also Ben-Zion Dinur’s answer to Rachel Auerbach, published, under the same title in Davar, October 9 1958, as well as Auerbach’s response to Dinur’s letter, in late October. Auerbach, “What the Struggle within Yad Vashem is All About: A Response To Professor B.Z. Dinur’s Answer” (a draft letter, possibly unpublished) Personal Archive of Rachel Auerbach, YVA, P16/24. 92. Quoted in Keren, “The Influence of Opinion Leaders and of Holocaust Research on the Development of the Educational Discussions and Curriculum on the Holocaust in Secondary Schools and in Informal Education in Israel, 1948–1981” op. cit, p.69.

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93. “The Fourth World Council of Yad Vashem and Its Conclusions” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, nos.17/18, December 1958, p.30. 94. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, September 26, 1958 and November 11, 1958, p.8. 95. See Rachel Auerbach’s letter to Dr. Melkman, (undated), Personal Archive of Rachel Auerbach, YVA, P16/24; Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, January 20, 1959. 96. Protocols of the Executive Board of Yad Vashem, YVA, March 11, 1959. 97. Yediot Yad Vashem, nos.21/22, December 1959, p.2. Chapter Four: Israel’s “Pantheon” and the “Silence” of the Survivors during the 1950s 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

The sociologists, Charles Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, describe the historical museum at Yad Vashem as “the major Holocaust shrine..., second only to the Western Wall in its sacredness as a shrine of the Israeli civil religion. It is the place to which foreign dignitaries are taken and where they celebrate and solemnize their relationship to Israel by sharing its identification with the victims of the Holocaust . . .” Liebman, “Myth, Tradition, and Values in Israel Society,” Midstream, January 1978, p.50. See also Young, The Texture of Memory, op. cit. . “World Conference for the Study of the Shoah and Heroism,” July 13–14, 1947, YVA, AM.1/237. Ibid. Arik Carmon, “Education in Israel—Issues and Problems” (Hebrew), in Arik Carmon, W. Ackerman and David Zucker (eds.),Education in an Evolving Society: Schooling in Israel, Tel Aviv 1985, p.132. At a conference of teachers in 1948, Dinur explained that, to him, absorption of the new immigrants meant a process by which “the newcomer changes in spirit and gradually begins to resemble the settlers, adopting their ways of reacting, thinking, relating to each other, dressing and their values.” Quoted in Michael Keren, Ben-Gurion and the Intellectuals: Power, Knowledge, and Charisma, DeKalb (Ill) 1983, pp.125–126; in a conference of writers in 1953, Dinur reemphasized this position: “Our problem is...to what extent all our being is permeated by the volition for togetherness, by a connection of sympathy, of identification, attachment.” idem, Values and Ways: Problems of Education and Culture in Israel (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1958, p.61. Indeed, by the end of 1953, the enactment of the State Education Law, abolished the independent educational “trends” and established a unified, state educational system in which the importance of national values became central. On the concept of the ‘negation of Exile’ in Israeli education, see Firer, The Agents of Zionist Education, op. cit., pp.92 ff. Keren, Ben-Gurion and the Intellectuals, op. cit., pp.100–117; Dinur, Values and Ways, op. cit., pp.98–116; J. Schoneveld, The Bible in Israeli Education: A Study of Approaches to the Hebrew Bible and Its Teaching in Israeli Educational Literature, Assen 1976, pp.24–38; Yitzhak Etzion, “The Bible, Its Instruction” (Hebrew), in Educational Encyclopedia, vol.2, Ways of Education, Jerusalem 1959, pp.1186–1250. Quoted in Uri Ram, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur,” op. cit., pp.111–112. This trend in history studies has been labeled by Ruth Firer as the Law of Zionist

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Redemption. In her research on the content of history textbooks used in the educational system of the Jewish community in Palestine and of the State between 1900 to 1984, Firer found that in the late period of the Yishuv, between 1930 and 1948, this “Law” was much more emphasized compared with the previous period when its usage was still non-inclusive; in the first two decades of the state, between 1948 and 1968, its application became comprehensive. See Ruth Firer, “Formation and Information: The Influence of Zionist Values on the History-Textbooks of the Jewish People, Written in Hebrew and Used in Israel Between the Years 1900–1980” (Hebrew), Ph.D. diss.—Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1980; The Agents of Zionist Education, op. cit.; Agents of the Lesson (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1989. Carmon, “Education in Israel,” op. cit., pp.154–158. Quoted in Uri Ram, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood,” op. cit., p.112. Firer, “Formation and Information,” op. cit., p.viii. Dinur, “Fundamental Problems in Today’s Jewish Historical Research” (Hebrew), Davar Supplement Tel Aviv 1955; also in idem, Dorot u-reshumot, op. cit., vol.4, p159. Only in April 1979, the Holocaust became a mandatory subject by the Ministry of Education. And, in March of 1980, the 1953 State Education Law was amended to include compulsory teaching of the Holocaust in all Israeli high schools. See Carmon, “Holocaust Teaching in Israel,” Shoa, Fall/Winter, 1982–83, pp.22–25; “Amendment to the State Education Law, 1953” (Hebrew), Divre ha-Knesset (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1980, vol.89, pp.2137, 2416–2417, 2677. Nili Keren “Ideologies; Attitudes and Holocaust Teaching in the State of Israel— History and Recent Development” in Yehuda Bauer et al (eds.), Remembering for the Future: op. cit., p.1031. Firer, Agents of the Lesson, op. cit., pp.97 ff; idem, The Agents of Zionist Education, op. cit., p.70. Firer, The Agents of Zionist Education, op. cit., pp.53–55. Ibid, pp.50–61. According to Ruth Firer grade and high school textbooks during this period devoted only a third or less in space to the description of human suffering during the Holocaust compared to two thirds or more to Jewish resistance; see Firer “Formation and Information,” op. cit., p.141; idem, The Agents of Zionist Education, op. cit., pp.79–82. S. L. Kirshenbaum, Toldot Am Yisrael Bedorenu (Hebrew), vol.2, Tel Aviv 1965, p.278. Y. Riger, Toldot Yisrael Ba-zman Ha-hadash (Hebrew), vol.2, Jerusalem 1963, p.249. M.Katan, Toldot Ha-yehudim me-milhemet Ha-olam Ha-rishona Ve-ad yamenu (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1958, p.176. Firer, “Formation and Information,” op. cit., p.146. For the direct quotations, see M. Ziv & S. Ettinger, Divrey Ha-yamim (Hebrew), vol.2, Haifa 1966; M. Katan, Toldot hayehudim, op. cit., p.176; I. Spivak, M. Avidor, Am Yisrael Be-arzo U-va-nehar (Hebrew), vol.4, Tel Aviv 1949, p.186. Firer, ibid. Dinur, Zakhor: Writings on the Holocaust and Its Lesson (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1958, p.59. M. Ziv and Y. Tori, Divre Ha-yamim, Ha-zman He-hadash (Hebrew), vol.2, Tel Aviv 1961, p.192. See also Dinur, “Fate and Destiny in Our Generation’s Education,” op. cit., p.64. Ruth Bondi, Lefetah Be-lev Ha-mizrah (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1975, p.20.

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26. Quoted in Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, op. cit., p.60. 27. Hagith Lavsky, “‘She’erit Hapletah’ From Object to Subject: Trends in Research” (Hebrew), Yahadut Zmanenu, vol.6, 1990, p.33. See also, Keynan, Holocaust Survivors and the Emissaries from Eretz-Yisrael, op. cit., pp.194–196. 28. On the overwhelming inability of Israelis to comprehend the survivors’ sense of isolation and alienation, see A. B. Yehoshua’s article in Yedi’ot aharonot, November 2, 1979. Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., pp.153 ff. 29. Mark Dworzecki, “She’erit Hapletah in Israel” (Hebrew), Gesher, no.1, 1956, pp.102–104. Dworzecki began teaching the Holocaust at Bar-Ilan University in 1959, highlighting not the Jewish armed resistance but rather the spiritual resistance of many survivors and the unique problems and dilemmas which they faced. 30. Moshe Sandberg, My Longest Year (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1968, p.2. 31. The Herut Movement was founded in 1948 with the creation of Israel. It presented itself as the successor of Revisionist ideology in general and Jabotinsky’s world view in particular. On the historical roots of the movement, see in particular Shavit, Jabotinski and the Revisionist Movement, op. cit. . 32. Yohanan Bader, Knesset and I, Tel Aviv, 1979, pp. 54 ff; Yechiam Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 8, no.3, winter 1994, p.352. 33. The haavara, or “transfer agreement,” was signed in 1933 between the Zionist Organization and Nazi Germany. Its aim was to enable German Jews, emigrating to Palestine, to take some of their possessions with them to Palestine. The Revisionists strongly opposed the agreement, which they viewed as treachery and as defiling Jewish national pride. Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,”op. cit., p.365; Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., p.213. 34. The most notorious case was that of Dov Shilansky, a survivor of Dachau, who brought a time bomb to the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv in an attempt to protest and halt the negotiations with Germany. He was arrested and served close to two years in prison. After his release, Shilansky studied law and later entered politics and became speaker of the Knesset. Segev, ibid, pp.236–239. 35. Ibid, p.226. 36. The “trucks-for-Jews deal” was an offer made by Adolf Eichmann to Zionist leaders to save the lives of a million Jews in exchange for ten thousand Allied trucks and raw materials 37. Shalom Rosenfeld, Criminal Case 124: The Gruenwald- Kastner Trial (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1955, pp.28–31, 109–110, 266–267. 38. Ibid, pp.455 ff. 39. Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” op. cit., pp.352 ff. See also Roni Stauber, “The Political Debate over the Kastner Trial in the Parties’ Newspapers” (Hebrew), ha-Tsiyonut, 13, 1988. 40. “The Verdict in the Gruenwald-Kastner Trial” (Hebrew), Haaretz, 27 June 1955, p.4. 41. Ibid; Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” op. cit., p.355; Rosenfeld, Criminal Case 124, op. cit., pp.331 ff. 42. Rosenfeld, ibid, pp.10–11, 30–31. 43. Ibid, pp.319 ff.

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44. Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., pp.93–96. 45. Quoted in Stauber, “The Political Debate over the Kastner Trial in the Parties’ Newspapers,” op. cit., p.230. 46. Rosenfeld, Criminal Case 124, op. cit., pp.319 ff. 47. Bader, Knesset and I, op. cit., pp.84–85. 48. Ibid. Quoted in Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” op. cit., p.359. 49. Quoted in Rosenfeld, Criminal Case 124, op. cit., p.36; see also “The Verdict in the Gruenwald-Kastner Trial” op. cit., p.4; Yechiam Weitz, “Changing Conceptions of the Holocaust: The Kastner Case,”in Jonathan Frankel (ed.), Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians. Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol.10, New York 1994. pp.211–227. 50. Tamar Zemach, “Coverage of the Holocaust in the Israeli Press During the Nuremberg, Kastner, Eichmann, Auschwitz and Demjanjuk Trials” (Hebrew), Ph.D. diss.—Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1995, pp.20–21, 154–155. 51. Ibid; Stauber, “The Political Debate over the Kastner Trial in the Parties’ Newspapers,” op. cit., pp.231 ff; see also, Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” op. cit., pp.353 ff. 52. In March 1957, Kastner was assassinated. Less than a year after his death, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, clearing Kastner of most of the accusations against him. Weitz, “The Herut Movement and the Kastner Trial,” op. cit., pp.351. 53. In fact the Landsmanschaftn (as well as the Jewish Councils) were modeled after the selfgoverning medieval Jewish communal institution: the Kehila. 54. Tsamrion, Chapters on the Holocaust and Jewish Survivors, op. cit., pp.76 ff; Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1998, “Introduction.” 55. Tsamrion, Chapters on the Holocaust and Jewish Survivors, op. cit., p.77. 56. Ibid, pp.82–85. 57. Ibid, pp.78–79 58. Ibid, p.79. 59. Ibid, pp.85 ff. 60. Ibid, pp.79–80. On the history of the Belgen Bergen survivors following their liberation, see Sam E. Bloch (ed.), Holocaust and Rebirth. Bergen-Belsen, 1945–1965, New York—Tel Aviv 1965. 61. Rachel Auerbach, “Men of the Forests” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, December 1954, p.9. 62. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse, op. cit., p.260. 63. “From the Literature on the Holocaust” (Hebrew), Yediot Yad Vashem, no.1, April 30, 1954, pp.12, 15; Friedman, “Problem of Research,” op. cit., pp.30–31; Kugelmass and Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden, op. cit., p.2. 64. Avraham Wine, “Memorial Books as a Source for the Study of the History of Jewish Communities in Europe” (Hebrew), Yad Vashem Studies, vol.9, 1973, pp.209, 212–213. 65. Quoted in Young The Texture of Memory, op. cit., p.7. See also Kugelmass and Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden, op. cit., p.43. 66. Wine, “Memorial Books as a Source for the Study of the History of Jewish Communities in Europe,” op. cit., pp.209.

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67. Avraham Wine, “Memorial Books as a Source for the Study of the History of Jewish Communities in Europe,” Yad Vashem Studies (English edition, see n.58), vol.9, 1973, pp.209 ff (Quotation from p.263); see also, Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden, op. cit. 68. Kugelmass and Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden, op. cit. Wine, “Memorial Books as a Source for the Study of the History of Jewish Communities in Europe” (Hebrew), op. cit., pp.218–219. 69. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, op. cit., p.46. 70. Kugelmass and Boyarin (eds.), From a Ruined Garden, op. cit, p.42. 71. Ibid. Chapter Five: The Turning Point, 1961 to the Present 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Dalia Ofer, “The Strength of Remembrance: Commemorating the Holocaust During the First Decade of Israel,” Jewish Social Studies, vol.6, no.2, September 2000, pp.24–55. Translation taken from Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Siege, New York 1986, p.405. Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons, London 1971, p.215. Quoted in Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe, and Hannah Arendt’s Narrative, Philadelphia 1965, pp.138–139. For example, the survivor-writer, Yehiel Dinur, whose nom de plume “Katzetnik” is a Yiddish abbreviation for “concentration-camp inmate,” gave a powerful testimony about life and death in Auschwitz.” His collapse on the witness’ stand, was one of the most emotionally charged moments of trial. Haim Gouri, “Facing the Glass Booth,” translated in Alan Mintz, Hurban, op. cit., p.243. Shabbetai, As Sheep to the Slaughter?, op. cit., p.6. Ibid, p.5. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York 1965. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol.3, revised edition, New York 1985, pp.1030–1031, 1038–1039. Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age, second edition, New York 1971 (c. 1961), chapters 4 and 5, quotation p.134. For the reaction in Israel to Arendt’s book see, for example, Aryeh Leon Kubovy, “A Criminal Country versus a Moral Society”; M. Mushkat, “Eichmann in New York”; and Nathan Eck, “Hannah Arendt’s Hateful Articles”, all in Yediot Yad Vashem 31, December 1963, pp.1 ff.; Scholem, Significant Acts (Hebrew), Tel-Aviv 1982, p.91. Robinson, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, op. cit., pp.vii-ix. Ibid, pp.223–226. For the reaction to Hilberg’s book see, for example, Nathan Eck, “Historical Research or Slander?” Yad Vashem Studies, vol.6, 1967, pp.385–430. Mushkat, “Eichmann in New York,” op. cit., pp.5–6. For more thorough criticism of Bettelheim by Israeli scholars, see Arieh Kubovy, “A Criminal Country versus a Moral Society,” op. cit.; Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps, New York 1976, pp.56–57, 79–80, 103, 116–117, 155–156, 157–163; Elli Pfefferkorn, “The Case of Bruno Bettelheim and Lina Wertmueller’s Seven Beauties,” in Gutman and Saf (eds.), Nazi Concentration Camps: Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference—January 1980,

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18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

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Jerusalem 1984, pp.663–681. See also George M. Kren and Leon Rappoport, The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior, New York 1980, ch.4. Nahman Blumental, “The Warsaw Ghetto and Its Destruction” (Hebrew), in Encyclopedia of Exiles—Warsaw, vol.1, Jerusalem-Tel Aviv, 1953, p.605. On the different experiences of Jewish communities during the Holocaust, see, for example, Molcho, Michael, & Nehama, Joseph, The Destruction of Greek Jewry, 1941–44, Jerusalem 1965; Meir Teich, Rumanian Jews in World War II (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1965; Dr. Mozes Weinberger-Carmilly, “The Tragedy of Transylvanian Jewry,” Yad Vashem Bulletin, no.15, August 1964, pp.12–27. Shabbetai, As Sheep to the Slaughter?, op. cit., pp.5–24. Ibid, p.25. Ibid, pp.23–28. Ibid, p.54. K. Shabbetai, Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust, New York & Tel Aviv, 1965. See, for examples, Nahman Blumental, Conduct and Actions of a Judenrat—Documents from the Bialystok Ghetto (Hebrew and Yiddish), Jerusalem 1962. A. Hartglass, “How did Czerniakov Become Head of the Warsaw Judenrat?” Yad Vashem Bulletin, no.15, August 1964; Israel Taubes, “The Jewish Council of Amsterdam,” and Hartog Beem, “The Jewish Council of the Province of Vriesland (Holland)”—both in Yad Vashem Bulletin, no.17, December 1965; Aryeh Tartakower, “Adam Czerniakow: The Man and His Supreme Sacrifice,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol.6, 1967, pp.55–67; Michael Zylberg, “The Trial of Alfred Nossig: Traitor or Victim,” Wiener Library Bulletin, vol.23, nos.2,3, 1969, pp.41–45. Nathan Eck, “General Statement on the Judenrat and on the Jews’ Awareness of Their Fate,” News of the Yivo, no.104, December 1967. Nahman Blumental, “The Role of the Jewish Police and Its Relation to the Judenrat,” News of the Yivo, no.104, December 1967. See Nathan Eck’s article on the activities of Yad Vashem under the chairmanship of Aryeh L. Kubovy, “Seven Years as Chairman of Yad Vashem,” Yad Vashem Bulletin, no.1, October 1966, p.15. A. Dushkin, “Hora’at Hashoa B’veit Sefer,” in Hora’at Hashoa B’veit Sefer. Diyunim VeIyunim, Ministry of Education and Culture, 1961. M. Dworzecki, in ibid. S. Nehamit, ibid. Barukh Ben-Yehudah, Toward the Essence of Jewish Consciousness (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1966. Noting that the process of composing and publishing textbooks is a long one, Ruth Firer, maintains that changes in the authors’ presentations reflect an approach that had been formulated at least five years earlier. Idem, “Formation and Information,” op. cit., p.25. Shmuel Almog, “The Impact of the Holocaust on the Study of Antisemitism,” op. cit., vol.2, p.2278. Ibid. See Shmuel Ettinger’s collected essays: Modern Anti-Semitism. Studies and Essays, (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1978.

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37. Shmuel Ettinger, “Jew Hatred in its Historical Context,” in Shmuel Almog (ed.), Antisemitism through the Ages, op. cit., pp.9–10. 38. Ibid, pp.10 ff; idem, Modern Anti-Semitism, op. cit., pp.223–240. 39. Shmuel Ettinger, “Jews and Judaism as Seen by the English Deists of the 18th Century” (Hebrew), Zion, vol.29, 1964, pp.1–2. 40. See, for example, Shmuel Ettinger, “The Young Hegelians—A Source of Modern AntiSemitism,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, vol.28, 1983, pp.73–82. 41. Jacob .L. Talmon, “Preface,” The Unique and the Universal, London 1965, p.9. 42. See, especially, the first two books in Talmon’s trilogy, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952), and Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase, London 1960; see also idem, The Unique and the Universal, op. cit.; and Ideology and Power in Modern Times, London 1967. 43. Jacob L. Talmon, “Mission and Testimony: The Universal Significance of Modern Anti-Semitism,” The Unique and the Universal, op. cit., p.123. 44. Ibid, p.122–164. 45. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, London 1961, p.255. 46. Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723–1939, Cambridge (MA) 1970. 47. Jacob Katz, Ha-Antishemiyut Ke-Gorem Hevrati U-Politi Ba-Hevrah Hamodernit (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1964, pp.135–141. 48. On the silence of the historians, see Saul Friedländer, “Trauma Memory, and Transference,” in Geoffrey H. Hartman (ed.), Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, Cambridge (MA) 1994, esp. p.259. 49. The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, recorded and edited by a group of young Kibbutz members, Middlesex 1971, pp.38, 217. 50. Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, Bloomington 1983; Yehuda Bauer, They Chose Life: Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust, New York 1973; idem, The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness, Toronto 1979. 51. Ibid; Bauer, “Trends in Holocaust Research,” op. cit., p.32. 52. Uriel Tal, “Reciprocity between General and Jewish History” (Hebrew), Yahadut Zmanenu, 3, 1986, pp.13–19. 53. See for example, Saul Friedländer, L’Antisemitisme nazi. Histoire d’une psychose collective, Paris, 1971. 54. Saul Friedländer, “Preface,” to Uriel Tal’s Te’ologyah politit veha-Raikh ha-Shelishi (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1989. 55. Shulamit Volkov, “On Antisemitism and Its Investigation” (Hebrew), Zemanim, no.7, winter 1982, pp.76–81; idem, “The Written Matter and the Spoken Word,” in François Furet (ed.), Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews, New York 1989. 56. Volkov, “The Written Matter and the Spoken Word,” op. cit., pp.33 ff. 57. Dina Porat, “The Role of European Jewry in the Plans of the Zionist Movement during World War II and Its Aftermath,” in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), She’erit Hapletah, 1944–1948, op. cit; idem, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945, 1990; idem, “Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust” (Hebrew), Ha-Tzionut, 12, 1987, pp.293–314; Anita Shapira, Land and

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58.

59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

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power: the Zionist resort to force, 1881–1948, Stanford 1999 (c.1992); idem, “Native Sons” (Hebrew), Alpayim, op. cit.; idem, “Holocaust and Might” op. cit.; Gelber, “Some Reflections on the Yishuv during the Shoah,” op. cit. . Weitz, “Yishuv, Holocaust and Diaspora: Myth and Reality” (Hebrew), Yahadut Zemanenu, 6, 1990, pp.135–150; idem, Aware but Helpless—Mapai and the Holocaust, 1943—1945 (Hebrew), Jerusalem 1994. Weitz, “Yishuv, Holocaust and Diaspora: Myth and Reality” op. cit.; see also Dina Porat, “The Question of Rescue During the Holocaust in light of the Yishuv’s ‘Negation of Exile’” (Hebrew) in Ha-Tzionut, 23, 2001, pp.175–192. Weitz, ibid. Gelber, “Some Reflections on the Yishuv during the Shoah,” op. cit., p.338. The earliest critic of the Yishuv leaders’ behavior during and following the Holocaust was advanced as early as the late 1970s by Shabtai Beit-Zvi in his book, Post-Ugandan Zionism in the Crucible of the Holocaust (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1977. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London 1983; Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, London 1990; and Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge 1990. Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimenssion of Zionist Politics, Berkeley 1983. See also idem, “Academic History Caught in the Cross Fire”; Ilan Pappe, “Critique and Agenda: The Post-Zionist Scholars in Israel,” Uri Ram, “Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur”—all in History and Memory, vol.7, no.1, Spring/Summer 1995. Ibid. Ibid. See also, Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914, Cambridge 1989. Segev, The Seventh Milliom, op.cit.; Idith Zertal, “The Poisoned Heart: The Jews of Palestine and the Holocaust,” Tikkun, vol.2, no.1, p.80; idem, From Catastrophe to Power, op. cit.; Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust, op. cit. . Segev, ibid. Idith Zertal, “Supermarket in Auschwitz,” Haaretz, March 15, 1996. Segev, The Seventh Million, op. cit., pp.401–403. Moshe Zimmerman, The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1995. Moshe Zuckerman, Shoah in the Sealed Room: The Holocaust in Israeli Press During the Gulf War (Hebrew), Tel Aviv 1993, pp. 77 ff, 199 ff, 111 ff. See also, idem, “If the Holocaust Had Not Happened...On ‘The Jews and Europe’ by Max Horkheimer” (Hebrew) Theory and Criticism, no.3, winter 1993, pp.84–85. Hence, for example, the post-Zionists paradigm of colonialism which views Israel as an immigrant-settler society, similar to many others. David Myers, “Hazony and Zionism,” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, June 2, 2000.

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Index

A Adler, H. G., 52 Agnon, Shmuel-Yosef, xxi Altman, Tosia, 12 Amery, Jean, 25 Anielewicz, Mordecai, 33 Anski, S., xxv, 29, 51 Arafat, Yaser, 91 Arendt, Hannah, 79, 80, 81, Auerbach, Rachel, 56–57, 59, 60, 61, 73, 110 n.46, 111 n.49 B Bader, Yohanan, 70 Baer, Yitzhak, xv, xviii, xix, xxiii, 94 n.13, n.18 Baron, Salo W., xv Bauer, Yehuda, xxvi, 51, 88 Begin, Menahem, 68 Beit-Zvi, Shabtai, 120 n.61 Benari, Nahum, 8 Ben-Gurion, David, 7, 40, 41, 64, 68, 69, 77 Bentwich, Yosef, 100 n.32 Ben-Yehudah, Barukh, 83, 84 Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak, 3, 46 Bergman, Samuel Hugo, 96 n.42 Bettelheim, Bruno, 79, 80, 117 n.17 Bezalel, Judah Liwa ben, xix

Bialik, Chaim Nachman, 5 Bialer, Yehudah Leib, 59 Blumental, Nahman, 39, 48, 56–58, 61, 81, 83, 106 n.64, 110 n.47, 111 n.49 Bolkovsky, Sidney M., 105 n.50 Bondi, Ruth, 67 Boyarin, Jonathan, 75 Bozikovski, Tuvia, 40 Braslavsky, Moshe, 8 Buber, Martin, xxi, 79, 95 n.42 C Carmon, Aryeh (Arik), 65 D Dessau, Hermann, xviii Dinur, Ben-Zion, xv, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 9, 41, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 52–56, 58, 59, 62, 64–66, 94 n.13 n.18, 95 n.37, 96 n.44, 97 n.64, 110 n.39, 113 n.5 Dinur, Yehiel, 117 n.5 Dobkin, Eliahu, 9 Dubnow, Simon, 29, 51 Dobroszycki, Lucjan, 52 Don-Yehiya, Eliezer, 99 n.10, 113 n.1 Dworzecki, Mark (Meir), 50, 60, 67, 115 n.29

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E Eck, Natan, 56, 57, 59–61, 82, 111 n.49, 112 n.71 Efrat, Israel, 22 Eichmann, Adolf, xi, xii, xxvii, 50, 69, 77–78, 81–84, 115 n.36 Esh, Shaul, 53 Ettinger, Shmuel, xix, xxvi, 84, 85, 89 F Feigenbaum, Moshe Joseph, xxiv, 30, 57 Feinberg, Nathan, 96 n.42 Firer, Ruth, 113–114 n.8, 114 n.17, 118 n.33 Frank, Ernest, 22 Friedländer, Saul, xi-xii, xxvi, 88 Friedman, Philip, 29, 31, 34, 105 n.59, 106 n.64 n.65, 110 n.47 Friesel, Evyatar, 6 Funkenstein, Amos, xiv G Gandhi, Mahatma, 96 n.42 Gar, Yosef, 28 Gelber, Yoav, 89 Gilbert, Felix, xv Gluber, S., 30 Goldmann, Nachum, 46, 73, 110 n.39 Gouri, Haim, 78 Grinberg, Uri Zvi, 97 n.66 Grinberg, Zalman, 21–24 Gringauz, Samuel, 24–25, 29 Grossman, Chaika, 11, 40 Gruenbaum, Yitzhak, 5, 49, 98 n.6 Gruenthal, T., 101 n.37 Gruenwald, Malkiel, 69, 70 Gutman, Yisrael, xxvi, 88 H Halbwachs, Maurice, xiii Ha-Levi, Yehudah, xviii Halevy, Benyamin, 69 Halperin, Israel, 53, 55 Halpern, Leyvik, 22, 26 Harman, Avraham, 55, 58 Hazaz, Hayyim, 6, 98 n.1 Herder, Johann Gottgried, 85

Herzog, Yitzhak, 16 Hilberg, Raul, 79–81, 96 n.56 Hitler, Adolf, 20, 54, 55, 81, 85, 91 Hobsbawm, Eric, xiv J Jabotinsky, Ze’ev (Vladimir), 8, 100 n.20, 115 n.31 K Kaganovitch, Moshe, 34 Kahana, S.Z., 46–48 Kaplan, Israel, 30, 31, 57 Kaplan, Moshe, 48 Kasan, Shalom, 49 Kastner, Rudolph (Israel), 68–71, 116 n.52 Katz, Jacob, xxvi, 84, 86, 89 Ka-Tzetnik, 12 Katzenelson, Yitzhak, 39, 49 Kaufman, Yehuda, 96 n.42 Kempner, Vitka, 12 Kermisz, Joseph, 48, 56–59, 61, 106 n.64, 110 n.47, 111 n.49 Klausner, Joseph, xv, xvii, xxi, xxiii Klinger, Chaika, 33 Kol, Moshe, 49, 57, 58 Kook, Abraham Hacohen, 65 Korczak, Ruzka, 11, 40 Kovner, Abba, 10–12, 33, 64 Krakowski, Shmuel, 111 n.49 Kubovy, Aryeh Leon, 62 Kugelmass, Jack, 75 Kulka, Dov, xxvi L Levin, Dov, 96 n.42 Lidovsky, Eliezer, 33 Liebman, Charles S., 99 n.10, 113 n.1 Lubetkin, Zivia, 7, 11, 14, 32, 49, 50 Lurye, Zvi, 16 M Magnes, Judah Leib, xxvi Mazar, Benjamin, 55 Melkman, Joseph, 53, 54, 57–60 Mendez, David (Franco), 53 Moses, Siegfried, xxiv, 60

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INDEX

Mosse, George L., 105 n.50 Mussolini, Benito, 85 Myers, David N., ix, 94 n.14 N Namier, Lewis, xv Nebuchadnezzar, 6, 15 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xxiii Nora, Pierre, xiii Nurok, Mordecai, 16, 17 Nussbaum, Y., 12 P Plotnicka, Frumke, 7 Porat, Dina, 89 n.37, 95 R Reisman, Abraham, 23 Ringelblum, Emmanuel, 50, 51, 97 n.62 Robinson, Jacob, 52, 56, 80 Rosenberg, Hans, xv Rosenblatt, Gad, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 85 S Schneerson, Fischel, xxi-xxii Scholem, Gershom, xv, xxi, xxiii-xxv, 53, 79, 97 n.65 Schwarz, Leo, 22, 31 Schweiger, Moshe, 33, 107 n.85 Segev, Tom, 44, 90, 91 Sereni, Enzo, 9 Shabbetai, K., 81, 82 Shalitan, Levi, 22 Shamir, Moshe, 78 Shapira, Anita, 13, 89 Shaver, Emma, 22 Shazar, Zalman, 49 Shenhabi, Mordechai, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50 Shilansky, Dov, 115 n.34 Shner, Zvi, 39 Shneurson, Yitzhak, 45, 46 Spinoza, Baruch, xviii Srole, Leo, 21

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T Tabenkin, Yitzhak, 7 Taeubler, Eugen, xv Tagore, Rabindranath, 96 n.42 Tal, Uriel, xxvi, 88 Talmon, Jacob, xxvi, 53, 59, 84–86, 89 Tamir, Shmuel, 70, 71 Tchernikhowsky, Saul, 96 n.42 Temkin-Berman, Batia, 40 Tenenbaum-Tamrof, Mordechai, 40 Tocqueville, Alexis de, xiv Trumpeldor, Yosef, 7, 99 n.12 Trunk, Isaiah, 106 n.64 U Urbach, Efraim, 53, 55 Uveeler, Mark, 52 Uziel, Ben Zion, 16 V Volkov, Shulamit, 88, 89 W Warhaftig, Zerah, 15 Wein, Abraham, 74 Weinberg, Sylvia, 22 Weitz, Yechiam, 89 Weitz, Yosef, 46–47, 55, 56 Wtthoiser, Simhah, 67 Y Ya’ari, Meir 12 Yablonka, Hanna, 90 Yahil (Hoffman), Haim, 10, 14, 54 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, xiii, xiv Yosiphon, xiii Young, James E., 7 Z Zertal, Idith, 90, 91 Zimmerman, Moshe, 89, 91 Zuckerman, Yitzhak (Antek), 11, 14, 33, 48, 91, 92 Zur, Yaakov, 46