Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
Modern Judaism
Angaben zur Quelle:
35,1 (2015) 83-107
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Foreign public opinion, American
;
Zionism
;
Jewish refugees
Abstract:
Dismisses the view that it was the American Jewish community, and especially its Zionist faction, that, in the late 1930s-early 1940s, toppled the schemes to resettle Jewish refugees in territories other than the Land of Israel, and thus thwarted their rescue. Focuses on two schemes of this period: the Alaska plan, put forward by the U.S. on the eve of the war, and the Dominican Republic plan, proposed by Dominican President Trujillo in 1938. Examines the Jewish press, both pro-Zionist and non-Zionist, English- and Yiddish-language. Shows that, far from being uniformly and unequivocally hostile to the plans, Jewish papers supported or rejected one of the plans or both of them at different stages of their proposal. Their attitudes toward the schemes depended mainly on the assessment of their practicability. For example, some periodicals opposed the Alaska plan because it demanded too radical a revision of U.S. immigration legislation; others opposed the Dominican plan, pointing to the political instability of the Republic and the insecurity of the contracts signed with its authorities. The schemes of resettlement failed not because some "Zionists" torpedoed them, but because of the opposition to them in the USA and, first and foremost, because the war began in Europe. Admits that the divided Jewish position did make it easier for the Roosevelt administration to postpone the resettlement project to the postwar future.
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