WHAT TO DO WITH THE ? POST-WORLD WAR II JEWISH REFUGEES AND THE CREATION OF IN U.S. AND SOVIET POLICIES 1945-1949

by Sarah Jean Gavison B.A., Université X – Nanterre, 2002 M.A., Université Paris X – Nanterre, 2003 M.A., Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris – Sciences-Po, 2005

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado Boulder in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History 2019

This thesis entitled: What to Do with the Jews? Post-World War II Jewish Refugees and the Creation of Israel in U.S. and Soviet Policies, 1945-1949 written by Sarah Jean Gavison has been approved for the Department of History

Dr. Thomas Zeiler (chair)

Dr. David Shneer (co-chair)

Date:

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.

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ABSTRACT

Gavison, Sarah Jean (Ph.D. History)

What to Do with the Jews? Post-World War II Jewish Refugees and the Creation of Israel in U.S. and Soviet Policies, 1945-1949

Thesis directed by Dr. Thomas Zeiler and Dr. David Shneer

This project started as a diplomatic study comparing U.S. and Soviet policies on the creation of Israel in the context of the early . Supporting the creation of a Jewish state and thus alienating the Arab-Muslim world at the onset of their struggle for influence seemed counterintuitive. This approach led my research to shift the focus toward post-World War II

Europe and the question of Jewish refugees. Indeed, at the onset of the Cold War, was the main battlefield for both superpowers, and therefore their goals in Europe were a major factor in all foreign policy decision-making. The needed to control to relieve its insecurity vis-à-vis German revanchism and the West. In parallel the U.S. sought to rebuild

Germany as a stronghold against Soviet influence on . Yet, Jewish refugees were an extraterritorial entity whose presence became a liability for both superpowers’ goals in

Europe, as Polish and German peoples nurtured a strong post-Holocaust and associated the Jewish refugees with occupation authorities.

This dissertation argues that solving the problem of the Jewish refugees in order to uphold their Cold War policy in Europe was the driving force behind the superpowers’ support for Jewish emigration from Europe to British Mandate Palestine, and eventually for the creation

iii of a Jewish state. It would represent an outlet for Jews to leave Europe, and therefore remove the problem of antisemitism without repressing the populations they sought to control. In parallel, this work also reassesses the role that Jewish refugees in Europe played in the framing of U.S. and Soviet policies, toward both Europe and Palestine, and therefore how they regained agency and control of their own fate. The Cold War context indirectly gave them more influence than their number and the scale of the problem they represented might have allowed otherwise. Jews’ homelessness, stranded among antisemitic populations, interfered with U.S. and Soviet goals for

Europe, reinforced their sense of a common Jewish identity, and developed their Zionist activism. In this context, the Jewish refugees became the bridge between U.S. and Soviet policies in Europe and in Palestine.

Keywords: Jewish refugees, displaced persons, Holocaust, U.S.-Soviet relations, Cold War, antisemitism, British Palestine, creation of Israel, immigration, , Poland, .

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude goes first to my wonderful advisors Dr. Tom Zeiler and Dr. David Shneer. No matter where I was in the world, their unwavering support through all my research dead ends and personal set backs brought me back on my feet more than once. They believed in me and in this work sometimes more than I did, and though I am the author of this dissertation, they are without a doubt its midwifes. Their attentive and patient editing and proofreading improved it considerably, and their reactivity despite delays on my end has always been flawless.

This dissertation required a lot of travel and a long writing period. I want to thank in particular the people and institutions which supported me through my research and writing. The Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute (2017- 2018) and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Graduate School of the University of Colorado Boulder (2018) allowed me to focus exclusively on writing my dissertation. The Rabbi Daniel and Ida Goldberger Fellowship for Jewish Studies (2012), the Barry and Sue Baer Graduate Fellowship (2016), the Summer Research fellowships from the Departments of History (2014, 2015, 2016) and the Global Initiatives Scholarship from the Department of Jewish Studies (2016) funded most of my research travels.

In the nomadism that my research (and personality?) involved during the past few years, I am particularly grateful to Dr. Scott Ury, who gave me an invaluable sense of academic home and community by welcoming me at the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, University, during the whole academic year 2017-2018. I also want to thank the International Forum of Young Scholars on East-European Jewry, especially Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Semion Goldin, Israel Bartal and Zvi Gitelman, for helping me feel comfortable in the Jewish history subfield. Our work in Prague (2017) gave me the confidence I needed to embrace a topic overlapping Jewish history with my more familiar diplomatic lens, and shift from research to writing. The Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research (2014) had already gotten me started on this dissertation. I want to express a special thanks to my colleague and friend Nick Underwood, who patiently read, commented on, and supported the evolving versions of my research project. With Pete Veru, Jennifer Cullison, Dror Segev, Yarden Avital, Karen Lloyd D’onofrio, Abby Lagemann, Tolan Hoffman, Ted Rogers, Sierra Standish, and many others, we have been a motivating community of Ph.D. candidates and researchers, supporting each other and enjoying late night conversations on every possible topic, our respective dissertations and many others. In this nomadism that my research and personal life implied during the past few years, many friends and family members gave me a sense of home: Zeev Glozman, Juliet Gavison, Sophie Chauveau, Serge Salfati, Ian Wamhoff, Cécile Givelet, and Ludovic Bariteau, Tim and Wendy Stokes, Yael Koenig, Amir Katz, and Jennifer Cullison. They welcomed me with my furry companion, and put up with my intellectual doubts and emotions. Finally, Phil Weinstock has been a close witness of these years. His life, my work, and our love were not always compatible. But he always supported me and he is, as I write these lines, the only person apart from my committee members who read and commented on this work. To our post-dissertation life together!

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction ...... 1

Prologue — The International Context: From World War II Grand Alliance to Cold War Confrontation ...... 14 The diplomatic shift from World War to Cold War ...... 14 U.S. and Soviet interests in the construction of the postwar order: the crystallization of tensions around the questions of Poland and Germany ...... 18 The emergence of the “non-repatriable” displaced persons ...... 28 The specific case of the Jewish displaced persons ...... 43 Significance of the Middle East in U.S. and Soviet foreign policies ...... 49 Conclusion ...... 56

Chapter 1 — Jewish Refugees in Soviet and American Policies ...... 58 Soviet perception of the “Jewish question”: the case of Poland ...... 59 Displacement of the Jewish problem westward: U.S. policy toward Jewish refugees ...... 85 Conclusion ...... 107

Chapter 2 — The Jewish Refugees: A Bridge Between U.S. and Soviet Policies in Europe and Palestine ...... 109 Jewish voices from the D.P. camps and from the illegal roads to Palestine ...... 110 Effects of Jewish refugees’ and Zionist organizations’ activism on U.S. policy ...... 123 Zionist activism’s diplomatic approach toward the Soviet Union ...... 139 Conclusion ...... 158

Chapter 3 — Turning Points in the Spring 1947: How Creating a Jewish State in Palestine Became a Viable Option ...... 160 The internationalization of the Jewish D.P. issue and its irresistible ties to the Palestine question ..... 161 The Soviet surprise: a shift in Soviet traditional anti-Zionism? ...... 182 Conclusion ...... 202

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Chapter 4 — The Diplomacy of the Vote, May-November 1947 ...... 204 The Special Committee on Palestine: the British, the Arabs, the Yishuv, and the Jewish D.P.s ...... 205 The uneasy path to partition I: U.S. diplomatic hesitations ...... 224 The uneasy path to partition II: Soviet ambiguous policy ...... 238 Conclusion: the vote for the Partition of Palestine ...... 252

Chapter 5 — From Partition to Independence: Six Months in Limbo, November 29, 1947 – May 15, 1948 ...... 255 Reactions to partition: Jewish hopes, Arab resistance, Arab-British pressures, and the “war before the war” ...... 256 The State Department’s efforts to prevent partition ...... 274 Saving partition: Zionist actions on the ground, Soviet firmness in the ...... 296 Conclusion: the creation and recognition of Israel ...... 315

Epilogue — Aftermath ...... 317 The Jewish refugees in Europe ...... 318 Israel’s War of Independence and its regional consequences ...... 323 The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. reassess their policies in the Middle East in the Cold War context ...... 328 Conclusion ...... 339

General Conclusion ...... 341

Sources and Bibliography ...... 349 Archives ...... 349 Published primary material ...... 351 Books, chapters and articles ...... 352

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INTRODUCTION

In 1945, Europe was in ruins. The Allies – the , the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and – had liberated the continent from the Axis forces led by , and were subsequently occupying it to oversee its reconstruction. In addition to redefining borders and designing new regimes, they faced a global humanitarian crisis the scale of which the world had never seen. Around twelve million persons were uprooted by the war and its aftermath. In the background, the wartime Grand Alliance was giving way to the opposition between the Western powers and the Soviet bloc, progressively dividing Europe and announcing the future bipolarization of the world in the Cold War era.

In parallel, the colonized world was claiming its right to self-determination and caused troubles to the colonial powers, most importantly France and Britain – the two most crucial allies of the United States in the postwar era, and even more so, in the Cold War to come.

Interestingly, the Jews were part of both worlds: on the one hand, they were refugees in Europe –

where they had been uprooted by the war and represented about 18% of the displaced persons – and on the other hand, they were one of the two peoples claiming their right to independence and statehood in Palestine, under British Mandate since 1922.

Despite Jewish refugees’ different past, wartime experiences, languages, and cultures, the

Holocaust that befell European Jews had helped create a sense of nationhood, reinforced their consciousness of a common identity, and, for many of them, raised the necessity of a national home. The latter created a bridge between Jewish refugees in Europe and Jews of the Yishuv

(literally “settlement,” and the name designating the Jews who had already immigrated to Palestine for national purposes). Zionism preexisted the war; but to some extent, united most Jews in a common cause for the creation of a Jewish state, whether they planned to live in it themselves or not. There were some exceptions among Reform Jews in the U.S., communist and Bundist Jews in the Soviet Union, some ultra-orthodox Jews, and a handful of communist Jews in the Middle East. Britain, involved in both the occupation of postwar Europe and the colonial management of Palestine, rejected the connection between Jewish homelessness in Europe and the Jewish fight for self-determination in Palestine.

In this complex international context of post-World War II/early-Cold

War/decolonization eras, despite the apparent cooperation inherited from the Grand Alliance,

Soviet and U.S. main goals were to assert their rival influence, primarily over Europe, and progressively also over what would soon be called the Third World. Their official positions on the many issues they encountered between 1945 and 1949 were almost always opposite.

However, some topics emerge, on which their strategies, or at least the way they translated into policies, were not as divergent as they might have appeared at the time, despite rhetoric that sounded quite different. Among these issues, the U.S. and Soviet authorities dealt in quite similar ways with Jewish refugees emerging in Eastern and Central Europe from the rubbles of the Second World War. Though for increasingly different reasons, Soviet and U.S. subsequent policies toward Jewish emigration from Europe and the creation of a Jewish state in British

Palestine also followed similar paths – and even, although this goes beyond the chronologic boundaries of this work, toward the early years of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This dissertation explores several questions. Why did the United States and the Soviet

Union, despite their early-Cold War rivalry, paradoxically designed somewhat comparable

2 policies toward European Jewish refugees and ? How did the Cold War affect Soviet and U.S. policies toward the Jewish refugees in Europe and the creation of a Jewish state? How did their European policies influence U.S. and Soviet policies toward the Jews and the Middle East? How was Great powers’ diplomacy in the Middle East affected by the creation of Israel? How did the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. perceive Zionism and Arab nationalism? How did the regional actors navigate between the two superpowers and the newly created international institutions, such as the United Nations? How did non-state actors, such as the Jewish refugees and Zionist institutions, influenced great powers’ foreign policies?

This work stands at the crossroad of different historic fields, and therefore draws from, and ties together, sets of scholarship which often do not speak to each other. It considers the aftermath of World War II, but most topics this dissertation explores – U.S.-Soviet relations, their policies on Europe and the Middle East, their perception of Zionism, their handling of refugees and population displacement – already existed in the prewar and wartime eras. The postwar context gave them a much greater importance. Before getting to the heart of the topic, here is a brief appraisal of the decision-making processes in U.S. and Soviet foreign policies.1

Soviet foreign policy was designed by two parallel bureaucracies: the party and the government. The International Department of the Central Committee examined proposals made by the Foreign Ministry and sent recommendations to the Party Secretary and the Politburo, the latter two making the final decisions. Under ’s leadership in the postwar era,

1 One needs to keep in mind the difficulties of exploring the Soviet past. For over forty years, the historiography on Soviet policy and motives had mostly been based on non-Soviet archives and largely the result of interpretation. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, some archival material had been released by and former Soviet republics and satellites, allowing for a reappraisal of Soviet goals and strategies. Yet the access to the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry is still limited and monitored. Although I was eventually allowed into the reading room, I was never able to consult documents that related to my topic. Therefore, for the Soviet side, I relied essentially on documents that have been published, and on the footnotes of scholars who had the chance to work in these archives in the peak of access of historic material – the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as Laurent Rucker, Yaakov Ro’i, Gabriel Gorodetsky, Aleksander Fursenko, Timothy Naftali, Odd Arn Westad, etc. Therefore, there is inevitably a slight imbalance in the archival evidence between U.S. and Soviet policy. 3

Vyacheslav Molotov played a central role as Foreign Minister (1939-1949), alongside Andrei

Zhdanov as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet – whose influence (and antisemitism) outlasted himself, as he retired in early 1947.2 Andrei Vyshinsky was Molotov’s Deputy Minister of

Foreign Affairs (1940-1949), and then replaced him as Foreign Minister (1949-1953). Andrei

Gromyko also played an important role, as one of the Soviet delegates to the Allied conferences of Teheran (November 1943), Yalta (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945), and then as the permanent Soviet Representative to the United Nations. Ivan V. Samylovsky was in charge of the Near East Department (1945-1947), but his successor Ivan Bakulin does not appear as often in the archival material available.3

Regarding the forces on the ground in Eastern Europe the decision-making process is unclear. It involved personnel, N.K.V.D. officers,4 and to some extent national governments, whose leeway under Soviet occupation varied from country to country and is difficult to assess in the immediate postwar era. It is likely that no general policy was applied without Stalin’s agreement, yet the urgency of the day-to-day management of the reality of massive destruction and migrations of uprooted populations must have required some improvisation. It is important to keep in mind that the information from the diplomatic archives might not be at the source of every decision taken locally.

On the U.S. side, the decision-making process is well known and relatively clear.

Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt kept a direct hand on foreign policy and did not necessarily share his intentions with his State Department, President Harry S. Truman was

2 He left this last office as Chairman of the Soviet of the Union (one of the chambers of the Supreme Soviet) on February 25, 1947, and died on August 31, 1948. 3 Other important diplomatic figures will be introduced when they appear in the dissertation. 4 Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del, literally the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, was the secret police, under the direction of Lavrentii Beria and Georgi M. Malenkov. In the aftermath of WWII the NKVD sent units in occupied countries to arrest or execute collaborators with Germany and non-Communist underground groups. It had been very active in establishing the Committee, the Polish Communist government, and the People’s Republic of Poland, and in the postwar fight against the Polish Home Army resisting Soviet occupation. 4 somewhat more respectful of the protocol. However, on the questions at stake in this work of the

Jewish refugees and the creation of a Jewish state, Truman sometimes got very involved. So in addition to the secretaries of State, War and later Defense presented below, some of Truman’s

White House staff and personal advisers had much power on these questions, but only on occasions.5

As commander in chief, Truman would sometimes give direct orders to the military administration in Europe. But usually foreign policy and the administration of postwar Europe went through the Department of War – led by Henry L. Stimson (named by Roosevelt), Robert

P. Patterson (1945-1947), and Kenneth C. Royall (1947) – renamed after 1947 Department of

Defense – led by James V. Forrestal (1947-1949) and Louis A. Johnson (1949-1950) – and through the Department of State – successively led by secretaries Edward R. Stettinius Jr.

(named by Roosevelt), James F. Byrnes (1945-1947), George C. Marshall (1947-1949), and eventually Dean G. Acheson for Truman’s second term.

These bureaucracies were in charge of designing the foreign policies of the U.S. and the

U.S.S.R., addressing the issues of the postwar world in the context of a growing opposition between East and West. This work argues that the challenges they faced in Europe due to the postwar transition from Grand Alliance to Cold War confrontation were essential in forging their policies both toward the Jewish refugees and toward the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle

East. Soon after the war, tensions between returning Jews and non-Jewish Europeans’ antisemitism became a problem for the reconstruction of Europe, in territories controlled by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Both superpowers eventually supported, more or less officially and openly, Jews’ emigration from Europe. Their most-often sought destination – whether by conviction or pragmatism – was British-ruled Palestine. This eventually led to the creation of a

5 These specific advisers and other important diplomats will be introduced as they appear in the dissertation. 5

Jewish state by the United Nations, a process that both superpowers supported. Soon enough though, when the Cold War, and therefore U.S. and Soviet interests, turned away from Europe and shifted toward the Third World, their initial support for Israel became a liability and both superpowers had to adopt a more nuanced position (in the U.S. case), if not a radically pro-Arab stance (in the Soviet case), when they designed a diplomatic policy toward the wider Middle East at the turn of the 1950s.

The early chronological boundary of this study, 1945, corresponds to the emergence of

Jewish refugees as the Allies liberated Europe and their progressive acknowledgment of their homelessness. The late boundary, 1949, represents the moment when Israel, having secured its existence by its victory in the War of Independence, became a shelter for the homeless Jews who wished to join it. Between 1945 and 1949, the fate of the Jewish refugees in Europe depended on the four powers occupying and managing Central and Eastern Europe; but also on the populations and governments of these occupied countries themselves; and to some extent, on

British authorities in Palestine. In 1948-1949, the newly-founded Jewish state lifted all restrictions on Jewish immigration, and progressively Western Allies managing Jewish D.P.s in

Europe lifted their restrictions to Jewish emigration. But some Jews remained in Europe for a variety of reasons (see for example the fate of the Soviet Jews, unable to leave the U.S.S.R. for at least two decades).

This study is a transnational one, due to the very nature of post-Holocaust Jewish uprootedness and homelessness, the demographic context of post-World War II population displacement, and Zionist ambitions. In Central and Eastern Europe, most prewar borders had become insignificant, whole areas switched sovereignty, and most countries were occupied by a

6 foreign power. Jews who survived the war did so in three ways. Some were liberated by the

Allies from concentration/extermination camps, throughout Poland and Germany. Depending on their countries of origins, some could actually return home safely (Jews from Western Europe mostly). But the bulk of Jewish survivors were originally from Central and Eastern Europe: among them, some hid among the non-Jewish population, either passing as Aryans or fighting with the Resistance and partisan movements; and some had been deported by Soviet authorities between September 1939 and June 1941 (from Poland, Byelorussia, , and the Baltic

States), or had later fled/been evacuated to Soviet Central Asia and the Ural Mountains. Coming back at the end of the war, most of them found death and devastation. They were also greeted by popular antisemitism, unleashed and aroused by years of Nazi rule and nationalist fight against both German and Soviet occupiers.

Therefore my research starts in Central and Eastern Europe, with a stronger, but not exclusive, focus on Polish Jews as a (non-generalizable) case study. Emerging from a clandestine life or returning from the Soviet rear, even those who had initially planned to rebuild their life in their former home country, often changed their minds in front of what they found back “home:” complete Jewish destruction and persisting antisemitism. They moved westward, to the Western occupation zones, mostly the U.S.-controlled D.P. camps. Some of them remained there, waiting for an immigration visa to North America or Palestine; others tried their chance at illegal immigration to Palestine. So I follow the Jews who emerged from the war in territories under Soviet authority, migrated westward and fell under U.S., British, or French policies, and/or took the roads toward British-ruled Palestine. My work ends in the Middle East, where the creation of a Jewish state redesigned the role of the region in both superpowers’ Cold

War strategies.

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In this work, “Jewish refugees” is used in its primary meaning and designs all Jews who had been uprooted by the war – and not those who obtained the status of refugee in a given country. It overlaps with “Sh’erit ha-pletah,” Hebrew for “surviving remnants,” the expression forged by Jews themselves to identify with one another in an inclusive way, and is used here when talking from their own standpoint (such as in Chapter 2). “Jewish survivors” tends to qualify the Jews who survived in Nazi-occupied Europe, and “Jewish displaced persons” the

Jews who passed through the D.P. camps in the Western occupation zones and benefitted from the D.P. status in the eyes of the United Nations and the Western Allies. The term “displaced persons” was coined by Eugene Kulischer, who fled Soviet Russia for Europe and then Europe for the U.S. in 1941, and adopted by the United Nations in its postwar nomenclature to design refugees, prisonners or war, slave laborers, etc.

My dissertation argues that both U.S. and Soviet policies toward the Jewish refugees and the creation of a Jewish state were driven by their goals in postwar/early-Cold War Europe, rather than by sympathy for the Jews who survived genocide or for Middle Eastern concerns. At the time, U.S. and Soviet foreign policies were contingent on their goals for Europe – they let the

Jews leave, not for humanitarian reasons or Middle Eastern plans, because it fit their Cold War strategy in Europe. The initial loci of their Cold War strategies were respectively Poland for the

Soviet Union, and Germany for the United States. Yet in both these countries, local populations’ hostility to the surviving/returning/migrating Jews became a liability for securing peace and order in territories under their control. Therefore, U.S. and Soviet authorities chose to solve one of their problems in Europe by “removing” the Jews, who coincidentally also wanted to leave

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Eastern and Central Europe – initially, not necessarily for Palestine, but it soon became the least inaccessible destination.

Jews’ legal and illegal migrations toward Western Europe and British Palestine led the

United Nations to connect the two questions of Jewish homelessness in Europe and of the future status of Palestine, under British Mandate but where two national liberation movements were fighting both each other and British control. Surprisingly, and again for equivalent reasons, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. ended up supporting the partition of Palestine and the creation of a

Jewish state. After Israel secured its existence through its victory in the War of Independence, the two superpowers had to design their diplomatic strategy toward the newly independent state and its neighbors, who were also its enemies. And again, their Cold War strategies led both powers to reassess their support for Israel into a more pro-Arab policy at the turn of the decade.

This work claims that the situation in Europe, and among others, the presence of non- repatriable Jewish refugees, and the problems of dealing with them in the early-Cold War

European context, were an important, if not the most crucial element of decision-making toward the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Therefore, it also reassesses the agency of Jewish refugees, their direct and indirect ways of reclaiming power over their own fate, and even their ability to influence great powers’ policies.

This work is based on many archival collections. For the study of U.S. policy, most of my sources are from the Harry S. Truman Library archive (National Archive Record

Administration, Independence, Missouri) and from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

I also used the collection of published archives Foreign Relations of the United States, from

1945 to 1948. For exploring Soviet policy, I used mostly published collections of documents.

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Indeed, despite research trips to , I was denied access to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive, and when I was eventually allowed in, they did not let me consult the collections that could have been useful to my topic. So I mostly used Yaakov Ro’i, Yehoshua Freundlich, and

Dov Yaroshevski, (eds.), Documents on Israel-Soviet Relations 1941-1953, Part I, 1941-May

1949 (: Frank Cass, 2000). A handful of documents also come from these collections:

Boris Leonidovich Kolokolov and Eytan Bentsur (eds.) Sovietsko-izrail’skie otnoshenia: 1941-

1953, kn. 1 (Moskva: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 2000); Blizhnevostochnyi konflikt, 1947-

1967: iz dokumentov arkhiva vneshnei politiki rossiiskoi federatsii, 2 toma (Moskva:

Mezhdunarodnyi Fond “Demokratia,” 2003); Yaakov Ro’i (ed.), From Encroachment to

Involvement: A Documentary Study of Soviet Policy in the Middle East, 1945-1973 (,

New York: Israel Universities Press/Halsted Press, 1974). In addition, I looked at the Central

Zionist Archives, mostly the collections on the Central Office of the Zionist Organization and the

Jewish Agency (Z4 and Z5), the Department of Immigration (S6), and the Department of State

(S25). I also found some insight about the refugees’ situation in Europe in the United Nations archive, mostly the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency files.

In Soviet archives, the material does not necessarily reflect the actual state of affairs –

well, this might be said of every archival data, but it is even more so in collections from propagandist and authoritarian regimes. It is tendentious, if not biased, despite the fact that it was designed for an internal audience. The decision-making is in the hand of a few leaders and not necessarily the ones who actually produced the archival documents. Therefore, a work of this nature requires some methodological explanation since it is not entirely satisfying in terms of balance between the various sources. Much more information is available from the U.S., U.N.,

10 and Israeli archival collections, than from the Soviet ones, thus the analysis of Soviet policy I less systematically documented and more subject to hypothetical interpretation.

Following both a chronological and a thematic approach, each chapter covers a short period of time, qualified by specific policy features and events. Each chapter explores U.S. and

Soviet policies in relation to each other, on Jewish refugees and on the creation of a Jewish state.

First the prologue assesses the situation in 1945 at the end of World War II, explores the Soviet and U.S. postwar stakes, sets the diplomatic context of the transition from World War II alliance to early-Cold War rivalry, and introduces the problems of population displacement, especially the non-repatriable displaced persons, and the Jews among them; and eventually it presents the the significance of the Middle East in U.S. and Soviet policies.

The first chapter explores how Soviet and U.S. policies initially perceived and eventually adapted to the problem of the Jewish refugees who emerged from, and migrated within, postwar

Europe. The second chapter analyzes how these Jews, by their homelessness and their activism

– derived from realizing the scale of the destruction of European Jewry and of the strong remaining antisemitism – and the growing awareness that they represented a liability for great powers’ policies in Europe, started to impose Palestine as the only viable solution to the Jewish question in Europe. The third chapter examines the two important processes which made the

Palestine solution a concrete possibility, namely the internationalization of the Jewish D.P. issue that led Britain to relinquish the issue to the United Nations, and the Soviet shift away from its traditional anti-Zionism in the spring 1947. The fourth chapter explores the debate over the fate of European Jews and the diplomatic battle over the future of Palestine, going into details of the

U.S. and Soviet diplomatic hesitations. The fifth chapter resolutely shifts toward the Middle

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East, leaving Europe behind, as it analyzes the U.S. and Soviet policies after the vote for the

Partition of Palestine and toward the actual creation of Israel and its war of Independence.

The epilogue then delves into the consequences of this whole process for the remaining

Jews of Europe, identifies the issues that the creation of Israel provoked in the region, and finally explores how the establishment of a Jewish state affected the significance of the Middle East in

U.S. and Soviet policies, and transformed their involvement in the region for the entire Cold War period.

This complex, transnational topic is rooted in diplomatic history by its approach and the archival material on which it relies. Through the comparison of U.S. and Soviet policies in the late 1940s, it is naturally inscribed into the field of post-World War II and Cold War studies.

This comparative approach calls for different historical tools, within the fields of political history and the history of ideas and ideologies. It explores how these two superpowers interacted, opposed, and influenced one another through their framework of understanding each other’s goals and defining their own.

There is also an important dimension of Jewish studies, both by its focus on post-

Holocaust Jewish refugees in Europe, and by its exploration of their postwar migrations, whether to Western Europe or/and British Palestine. As mentioned earlier, the transnationalism of the topic is rooted in the homelessness and migrations of Jews within Europe and from there to

Palestine. The fight for independence and the process of nation-building that the Zionist institutions undertook during the period under study also calls into play the concepts of identities and self-determination in a decolonizing and then post-colonial contexts.

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The topic then shifts toward Israel/Middle Eastern studies, and considers the region in the diplomatic arena, rather than in and of itself. As a result, the interactions between a global conflict – the Cold War – and a regional one – the Arab-Israeli conflict – draws in the conceptual framework of center-periphery. In parallel, it analyzes how local, non-state actors such as the

Zionist institutions, and international organizations such as the United Nations and other organizations taking care of refugees, played a role in the migrations of Jewish refugees and in the creation of Israel, while both instrumentalizing, and being instrumentalized by the two superpowers and their emerging rivalry.6 Though not my initial assumptions, the conclusions of this work also bring into light the important role and agency of the Jewish refugees. Although this was not my main research focus either, this dissertation pulled me into reconsidering the strength of antisemitism in the postwar era, in the Soviet and the Western blocs, in popular feelings and elite/governmental circles, and in the Arab world.

6 Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Second edition, Cornell Paperbacks (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2005), 21–26, 82–88, 95–101, 104–8. 13

PROLOGUE

THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT:

FROM WORLD WAR II GRAND ALLIANCE TO COLD WAR CONFRONTATION

This prologue presents the problems that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Second

World War, and how the United States and the Soviet Union confronted these issues. The two superpowers did so occasionally together, scrutinizing each other, or against one another, sometimes all at once. It covers the period from the tripartite Crimean conference in Yalta,

Ukraine, in February 1945, to the first Cold War crises in 1946-1947. It explores U.S. and

Soviet postwar stakes, during this era of transition from the wartime Grand Alliance to the early

Cold War, highlighting the ones most connected to the considerations that explained the Soviet and U.S. attitudes toward the Jewish refugees and the creation of Israel. This prologue exposes the diplomatic framework in which the transition from World War to Cold War took place. Then it explores the issues over which the confrontation built up: the rebuilding of Europe, which led to the crystallization of tensions over the questions of Poland and Germany and the control of

Middle Eastern routes and resources. Finally, it focuses on the emerging question of the non- repatriable displaced persons and presents the specific case of the Jews.

The diplomatic shift from World War to Cold War

In February 1945, when the three allied leaders of the (soon-to-be) victorious powers met at

Yalta, the wartime Grand Alliance that had characterized the relations between the Big Three,

14 the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, was still in place and expected to outlive the war. The years of war against a common enemy, despite mutual defiance that one might consider a separated peace with Germany, had established some measure of trust between the

U.S. and Soviet leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin. Wartime meetings (most importantly the tripartite conferences of Casablanca and Teheran, in January and December 1943 respectively, and Winston Churchill’s meeting with Stalin in Moscow in October 1944) achieved agreements on terms favorable to the Soviet Union – for which Cold War historiography long criticized Roosevelt.

Yet Roosevelt was only compensating Stalin and the U.S.S.R. for having delayed for over two years the opening of a second front in the West, which would have relieved the Soviet war effort on the eastern front. In addition, as Tony Judt notes, the Western Allies were “merely conceding to the Soviet dictator ground that the latter was already sure to seize,” since the Red

Army played by far the most important role in the struggle against the Axis. In October 1944 in

Moscow, Churchill and Stalin initialed the infamous “percentage agreement” and Yalta remains in historic memory as the “Western betrayal” of Eastern Europe, and most notably of Poland.

Yet according to Judt, “by then Stalin hardly needed the West’s permission to do whatever he wished in Eastern Europe. […] The eastern territories ceded to Stalin under the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet pacts of 1939 and 1940 were firmly in Soviet hands once again: […] the

‘Lublin Committee’ of Polish Communists brought west in the Soviet baggage train to run postwar Poland was already installed in .”7

These wartime conferences, including the Crimean conference, give a good picture of where the Grand Alliance and the U.S.-Soviet relations stood just before Roosevelt’s death and the end of the war. Yalta certainly represents the last East/West meeting dominated by a spirit of

7 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (: Penguin Press, 2005), 100–102. 15 cooperation, and respectful of the fact that the Soviets had paid the heaviest price for the imminent victory on the European theater of the war. On the international scene, Roosevelt was tolerant of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and “looked the other way” from Soviet domestic regime. The three leaders agreed on a harsh postwar treatment of Germany. Roosevelt focused on common ground with Stalin, including his insistence on Germany’s unconditional surrender and his anti-colonialist stance. He proved understanding on issues Stalin considered vital to the Soviet Union, such as creating a zone of influence with friendly regimes in Eastern

Europe as a buffer against German revanchism. At Yalta, Stalin showed an unusual respect for the U.S., despite his position of superiority (the Red Army was 45 miles from Berlin, and the

U.S. needed him more than he needed them, to convince the U.S.S.R. to join the U.S. on the

Pacific theater of the war, by taking care of Japanese troops in Manchuria).8

The wartime conferences also aimed at setting up the framework for postwar international cooperation. They designed the Allied Control Council and the Council of Foreign

Ministers, for handling the four powers’ occupation of Germany; the United Nations

Organization (U.N.) and some of its main agencies, most notably the United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Administration (U.N.R.R.A.), which was meant to deal with the flows, repatriations, and care of the over 12 million displaced persons. It evolved into the International

Refugees Organization (I.R.O.) in April 1946, which was planned to deal with the non- repatriable displaced persons – hence its rejection by ’s countries, suspicious of the very concept of non-repatriability.

However, these seemingly genuine intentions of maintaining a collaborative diplomatic and military framework in Europe soon hit a wall of misunderstanding between the Soviet Union

8 Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012); Judt, Postwar. 16 and the United States. The violence of the Soviet military liberation and subsequent occupation of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, and the demands of Stalin, which were deemed excessive, alienated Churchill and the entire British Foreign Office, and most military and diplomatic personnel specializing on Russia in the U.S. departments of War and State. The

Polish government in exile in London had been an ally to Britain and France throughout the war, a war which these countries declared on Nazi Germany precisely because it invaded Poland.

Roosevelt seemed alone in his tolerance vis-à-vis Stalin and his attempts to accommodate Soviet demands. Stalin was aware that his relationship with Roosevelt was a special one.

Vice-President Harry S. Truman was not even remotely involved in Roosevelt’s diplomacy. Though he inherited Roosevelt’s State and War Secretaries, Edward Stettinius Jr. and Henry L. Stimson respectively, he replaced them soon after taking office (the former on June

27 and the latter on September 21, 1945), showing an obvious shift in foreign policy, backing away from Roosevelt’s supposed soft-handling of Stalin. The State Department’s Soviet experts became the architects of Truman’s anti-Soviet policy – soon to be known as containment – and of the maintaining of U.S. forces in Europe. After Roosevelt’s nuanced approach, not merely set on a give and take basis but on a political sense of mutual trust, Truman’s represented a radical reorientation, in style, at least. Indeed, Truman was sensible to Harriman’s warnings not to fear the Soviet Union, and chose to demonstrate that he was up to the job by being tough with Stalin and his main representatives.9 Together, U.S. and British anti-Soviet experts led Truman to make Poland, in addition to Germany, a central issue in U.S.-Soviet relations, showing Stalin that he was ready to withdrow Roosevelt’s concessions on issues that the Soviets considered vital to their country’s security.

9 “Memorandum written by the President in May 1951”; Topics File: The Molotov Conferences, April 22-23, 1945 #17; Folder 14; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 17

While Roosevelt aimed at bringing together isolationist Americans and suspicious

Soviets at the San Francisco conference in April 1945, Truman made this conference a transition from Grand Alliance to Cold War. He recast America’s ideological orientation away from the anti-fascism that had united the Big Three. In Stalin’s mind too, the Cold War had begun, and although it immediately played out both in Europe and in colonial areas, in the late 1940s,

Europe was the Cold War’s most crucial battlefield; but with regards to the rest of the world, the

Middle East was next.

U.S. and Soviet interests in the construction of the postwar order: the crystallization of tensions around the questions of Poland and Germany

In these postwar years, Europe not only needed to be rebuilt. It was being divided. On top of the humanitarian crisis, a new line of opposition appeared, following approximately the diplomatically negotiated line on which Soviet and Western armies met in Central Europe.

Europe was at the core of both Soviet and U.S. concerns. Both powers had clearly defined goals for Europe, and for themselves in Europe, not entirely compatible. As the wartime Grand

Alliance vanished and gave way to Cold War confrontation, competition between the Soviet

Union and the United States for influence over Europe depended partly on how each superpower could manipulate and control local populations and governments, by force, persuasion, and/or economic influence.

This bipolarization of Europe was the most important challenge the Soviet Union faced in the early-Cold War era, whereas the West European allies, especially Britain and France, were also confronted with a renewed strength of nationalist and independence-minded movements in their colonial empires. Meanwhile, Moscow could only make progress in these areas, since its

18 presence in the colonial world, especially the Middle East, was close to inexistent. These tensions were felt nowhere more palpably than in Britain’s , where Arab and

Jewish national liberation movements struggled against British authorities and against each other to achieve statehood and independence.

Yet even for the U.S., Europe’s reconstruction was the most important postwar issue.

West-European countries were its main economic and political partners, hence the urge to prevent democratic elections from bringing to power communist parties, glorified by their important place within national Resistance movements and by the U.S.S.R.’s major role in the victory against . Increasingly the fear of Soviet expansionism became the main driving force in U.S. diplomacy. In a security assessment of the world situation on September 12, 1947, the new Central Intelligence Agency presumed a new weakness of Western Europe, including

Britain and France, which had altered the balance of power that prevailed in 1939 Europe.

Western Europe “is the most favorable for the early development of [Soviet] potential power. It is also most accessible from the center of Soviet power, and conversely best located for the eventual exertion of restraining pressure upon the Soviet Union.”10 There were also other areas of concern – decidedly, of secondary (or lesser) importance for U.S. security, but still significant.

The C.I.A. noted: “As a region, the Near and Middle East is of second priority in point of both urgency and importance. […] In terms of strategic location, the region has value […] as a barrier to Soviet expansion.”11

For the Soviet Union too, Europe was the most important postwar concern. Soviet attempts to take or hold power in Iran and Turkey, which revealed the Cold War by leading to

10 “Review of the world situation as it relates to the Security of the United States” September 12, 1947; CIA Files; Folder 1; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 11 “Review of the world situation as it relates to the Security of the United States” September 12, 1947; CIA Files; Folder 1; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 19 strong responses (George Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” the European Recovery Program also known as the , and the Truman Doctrine of containment), showed Stalin’s determination to establish the Soviet Union as a superpower. Yet they were not worth a war against the West, and in both cases the Soviets backed down. But any European issue would be worth a fight, and in Eastern Europe the Red Army was already on the ground, whereas to sustain a force ratio in the Middle East would have required troop movements in areas dominated by Western powers (except in Iran, where Soviet troops were already stationed during the war).12

So the U.S.S.R. was willing to act upon in Europe, even aggressively if necessary, in ways that it would not dare do so in the Middle East. The Red Army did not use its forces in Iran and eventually withdrew, nor did its tanks cross the Turkish border. On the other hand, Stalin was inflexible about the postwar treatment of Germany and about the Soviet “right” to keep the territories acquired in 1939 through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement – including Eastern

Poland, despite the West’s commitment to this country.13 In sum, Soviet policy in the Middle

East – and, for that matter, in the rest of the world – was only contingent to the problems and policy hazards it encountered in Europe.

Indeed, Soviet archives from 1943-1944 reveal that the U.S.S.R. did not have a clearly defined policy in the Middle East. In June 1943 and January 1944, Soviet ambassadors to

Washington and to London Ivan Maisky filed reports to Molotov and Stalin, evaluating the situation of the Soviet Union with regards to the Western world, including the attitude to adopt vis-à-vis the Middle East. Litvinov’s general assessment was that the Soviet

12 As the Prague Coup (1948) and the First Berlin Crisis (1948-49) soon confirmed. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999). 13 A commitment proven by the French and British, who declared war against Nazi Germany because it invaded Poland, while they chose appeasement when Germany invaded and annexed the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. The British capital also sheltered the Polish Government in Exile during the war, among others. 20

Union should reinforce its cooperation with the United States to temper British power in the world, and especially in the Middle East. He highlighted the Soviet-British conflicts of interest that would necessarily appear while they would share spheres of influence in Europe, where

Soviet-British opposition would burst. Maisky, on the other hand, foresaw the appearance of conflicts of interest between the U.S. and Britain, worried about U.S. ambition, and advised cooperation with Britain in order to temper America’s growing power. He called U.S. power

“dynamic imperialism,” or a new kind of imperialism that would not try to annex new territories but instead apply economic and financial domination on Europe and the colonial/post-colonial world. Palestine was not even mentioned in these reports: the Arab East itself, as a sub-region, was barely cited, and only as a potential tool to exploit the “capitalist” powers’ internal contradictions.14 These documents, among others, led me to believe that if Europe was paramount to and at the core of both Soviet and U.S. postwar preoccupations, it must have been the situation in Europe that was the driving force behind their foreign policies in other parts of the world.

As the Cold War bipolarization of Europe started to reveal itself more clearly, Germany stood at the frontier between the Soviet and the Western worlds.15 For the U.S., Germany became a fortress on the border of Soviet expansionist policies and the outpost of U.S. containment doctrine. U.S. diplomats were especially concerned about Germany because of the memory of the post- crisis and First Red Scare in 1918-1920, but also because they attributed the rise of National Socialism and the origins of World War II to the harsh treatment of

14 “Note from Maisky to Molotov” January 11, 1944; AVP FR, f.3, o.63, d.237, ll.52-93; document published in Istotchnik, no.4, 1995, 142-143; and “Note from Litvinov to Stalin and Molotov on US policy” June 2, 1943; sent to Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Beria, Malenkov, Vishinski, Dekanozov et Lozovski; AVP FR, f.3, o.63, d.237, ll.52-93; published in Vestnik ministerstvo inostrannykh del, no.7 (65), 1990, 54-63; both documents are cited in Laurent Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2001), 71–73. 15 Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace. 21

Germany in Versailles Treaty, that provoked German irredentism and revanchism. Germany was still seen as a defeated country, yet not anymore as a country to humiliate – but as country to rebuild, and the Germans, as a population to control but not to alienate. Perhaps the most revealing shift away from cooperation with the Soviets and toward a reshaping of Germany from defeated enemy to Western outpost of the Cold War was the jettisoning of the Morgenthau Plan, which called for a tough treatment of Germany, including a radical deindustrialization of its economy – and its replacement with the Marshall Plan, which incorporated the three Western zones of Germany as a means of rebuilding the German economy, and reinserting it among the other European nations.16

On the other hand, for the U.S.S.R., this buffer role was attributed to Poland – Germany as a Cold War outpost was a country to be subdued, exploited, and totally controlled. The damages the Nazis had brought on the Soviet Union were unprecedented and the wealth of its land and people were an insult to Soviet suffering and communist doctrine. But most of all, the

Soviet fear of German revanchism was extremely high. The question of the new Polish-German border was an important one, but even more so for the Soviet Union. Part of the Soviet strategy to lead to accept, even reluctantly, the presence of Soviet troops on their soil as a necessary and durable feature of the postwar era was built on their common fear of German irredentism, pushed to its extreme due to the fact that almost a third of the new Polish state would now lie on former German lands. In each and every meeting among the Allies, Molotov fought very hard to secure for Poland the former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, to the point of reinterpreting the Potsdam agreements and demonstrating that “the existing western boundary of

16 Robert Dallek, Harry S. Truman: The 33rd President (New York: Times Books, 2008), 60–61. 22

Poland was an agreed permanent frontier, and that any change therein would be a failure to respect the obligations made by our heads of government at Potsdam.”17

Most Cold War era scholarship assumed that Soviet authorities did not care for public opinion.18 It is now clear that they at least attempted not to alienate popular feelings unnecessarily, especially in Poland. The U.S.S.R. tried to convince Poles to accept its domination as a necessary, if not benevolent. The Soviet insistence for the westward shift of

Polish borders in the peace settlement was part of this plan: it gave an essential argument to the new temporary communist government of Poland, the Lublin Committee, in order to raise some degree of local support. Indeed, accepting a communist government secured for Poland “the benefits of Soviet ‘friendship’: an effective guarantee against German territorial revanchism” and a green light for Polish ethnic cleansing of Germans and , while the German occupation had already rid Poland of 90% of its Jewish population.19 “Poland’s use value to

Moscow was above all a buffer against German […] aggression. It was desirable that Poland become socialist, but it was imperative that it remain stable and reliable.”20

This attempt to gain Poles’ good will might also explain Soviet efforts at limiting the influence of non-pro-Soviet forces in the future government and the presence of Western representatives in Poland. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius informed Truman that

“permission for our contact teams to go into Poland to assist in the evacuation of liberated

17 “Report from Smith to Marshall, transmitted to the President, Vandenberg, Connally and Acheson from Marshall” April 9, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 6: Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, March 1947; Box 141; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 18 , The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace; Judt, Postwar, 135. 19 Judt, Postwar, 135. Poland became basically a monoethnic territory: from 68% Polish in 1938, it became overwhelmingly Polish in 1946. 20 Judt, 172. 23 prisoners of war has been refused.”21 Because Poland stood on the route from Berlin to Moscow, it was essential to Soviet perception of its territorial security.22 Yet when the Red Army liberated and occupied Poland, it met a fiercely anti-Russian, anti-Communist, not to mention antisemitic, population. In addition, Soviet diplomacy feared British – and by extension U.S. – reaction and pressure against Soviet occupation of Poland.23

From their first meetings in mid-April 1945, Molotov made clear to Truman that Poland was more important strategically to the U.S.S.R. than it could ever be to the United States. “Mr.

Molotov replied [to the President] that he knew this [Polish matter] was an important question for the United States but that it would be understood that it was even more important for the

Soviet Union; that Poland was far from the United States but bordered on the Soviet Union and this Polish question was therefore vital for them.”24 Yet, in most communications from

Stettinius to Truman over the summer 1945, Poland was often among the first items on the list, though little progress was made on the diplomatic scene. Both expressed concerns over the project of a Soviet-Polish treaty of mutual assistance before the formation of a new government, which would be a de facto recognition of the Lublin Committee as the legitimate representation of the Polish people – which Washington interpreted as an indication that the U.S.S.R. did not intend to carry out the decisions taken at Yalta.25 The President reported having told Molotov

21 Secretary of State Edward Stettinius to President Truman: “Reports Current Foreign Developments: Special information for the president” April 13, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 2; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 22 Judt, Postwar, 135. 23 FDR’s death brought to power Harry S. Truman, more resolutely anti-Soviet, and with whom Stalin had not built the wartime relationship he did with FDR. See Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances. 24 “Memorandum of Conversation” Participants: The President, Mr. Stettinius, Mr. Molotov, Ambassador Harriman, Mr. Pavlov and Mr. Bohlen, undated (but we know the first meeting between Truman and Molotov happened on April 22, 1945, and the second on April 23; this memorandum is a summary of the first meeting from Bohlen); Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 10 “Russia Molotov”; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 25 Secretary of State Edward Stettinius to President Truman: “Reports Current Foreign Developments: Special information for the president” April 17, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 2; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 24 that “he intended to go on with the plans for San Francisco and if the did not wish to join us they could go to hell.”

There were voices of caution in the U.S. administration, namely Secretary of War Henry

Stimson, calling to consider Russian motives in “areas that they regarded as vital to the Soviet

Union.” He also remarked that “25 years ago virtually all of Poland had been Russian.”26 But

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal advised toughness: “if the Russians were to be rigid in their attitude we had better have a show down with them now than later.” Ambassador to

Moscow Averell Harriman, who participated in shaping Truman’s policy of containment, stood somewhere in between: “the real issue was whether we wanted to be a party to a program of

Soviet domination of Poland.” Stimson responded that “the Russians perhaps were being more realistic than we were in regard to their own security.”27 His dismissal soon afterwards confirms yet again that Truman was choosing an aggressive path in his dealings with the Soviet Union.

On the Soviet side, Molotov’s task seems to have been to get the Western powers to admit the Lublin Committee as the legitimate Polish government. He called it “the Provisional

Government of National Unity” (even before London Poles and other political forces were integrated in it), and criticized the British and Americans for refusing to refer to it as the

“government.” Molotov eventually resorted to the fait accompli, claiming that in any event, it was the only functioning government in Poland at the time, thus forcing the Western powers to work with it if they expected a favorable ending to the negotiations over the participation of other political entities, such as the London Government in Exile, into a real Polish Government

26 “Memorandum of Meeting at the White House” Participants: The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, Admiral King, Mr. Dunn, Ambassador Harriman, General Deane, and Mr. Bohlen, April 23, 1945, 2:00 p.m.; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 10 “Russia Molotov”; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 27 “Memorandum of Meeting at the White House” Participants: The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, Admiral King, Mr. Dunn, Ambassador Harriman, General Deane, and Mr. Bohlen, April 23, 1945, 2:00 p.m.; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 10 “Russia Molotov”; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 25 of National Unity.28 Eventually the U.S. authorities gave in, and the new Polish government consisted of communists holding the key security and political positions, including the independent Ministry of Internal Security, which U.S. officials felt was developing into a Soviet- style secret police. Non-communists obtained only five posts, while the U.S. expected seven.

From then on, concerns about Poland revolved around the border question and the organization of free elections.

Washington was concerned with the transfer of German territories to Polish administration by the Soviet occupation forces and its consequences on the future status of these territories. Germans had fled the advance of the Red Army, and those who did not were later expelled from these areas, preparing the ground for the region to become Polish territory. The

Polish-Soviet Pact was making it risky for the Western Allies to question the Polish annexation of these former German lands. In the meantime, U.S. officials worked at defining their own position on which parts of former German territory should to be given to Poland. It was generally agreed that East (except the Kœnigsberg district which will go to Russia),

Danzig, German Upper , and Eastern Pomerania be transferred to Poland. They preferred that the rest of the territory east of the Oder remained German, but as the British already agreed to giving them to Poland, Washington would not oppose a Soviet/Polish request. But the U.S. would reject Poland’s annexation of the German territories between the Oder and Lower Neisse

28 “Minutes of Second Meeting between Mr. Stettinius, Mr. Eden and Mr. Molotov regarding the Polish question” Department of State, April 23, 1945, 10:30 a.m. to 12:05 p.m.; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3 “Poland”; Box 163; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 26 rivers.29 Yet according to U.S. intelligence, the Soviet and Polish communists were transferring large number of Poles to this area and building state machinery.30

It is clear, from this report, that Washington had given up Poland’s independence vis-à- vis the Soviet Union. The border question was raised time and again at each Allies’ meeting during the next few years, but remained at a standstill. U.S. officials attempted to be firmer on the issue of free elections, but their lack of presence on Polish territory made it useless.

Interestingly though, in the fall 1945, President Truman requested a report on the situation in

Poland to Irving Brant, former informal adviser to Roosevelt. Does this suggest that the president wanted information from a source independent from his own administration? Brant provided a more nuanced assessment – giving Stalin more credit that any U.S. or British diplomats did. Considering the importance of Poland for Russian security, and that communists in the Polish government were an insurance against Russian invasion, he concluded that the West should let “the Poles fashion the 1946 election so that it will avoid either the fact or the appearance of anti-Russianism.”31 Yet, despite this report, U.S. diplomats kept pressing the issue of free election at each meeting with the Soviets and Poles, until they were held in January 1947

– but they were not, of course, “free.” This turn of events in Poland reinforced U.S. perception of Germany as the last stronghold standing between the Red Army and Western Europe.

Initially, debates on Germany at inter-allied meetings were not polemic. They revolved around the best use of resources, the amount and schedule of reparations Germany should pay, which questions should be handled by the four occupying powers together or separately in each

29 “Territorial Studies” Prepared by the Department of State for the Meetings of the Heads of Government, July 6, 1945: “German Frontier” pp.12-22; The Berlin Conference; Vol. III; Box 1; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 30 Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew to President Truman: “Reports Current Foreign Developments: Memorandum for the president” May 9, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 2; Box 164; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 31 “Report to the President from Irving Brant” January 14, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3 “Poland”; Box 163; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 27 zone, and which infrastructures would be needed to receive the ethnic Germans fleeing former

Nazi-occupied territories and to shelter displaced persons. Overall, the four powers agreed on how to treat Germany as a vanquished country after the war. But soon enough, Germany became

– as Poland had been from the start – another bone of contention between U.S. and Soviet diplomats (the British standing with the U.S. and the French mostly watching from the sideline).

The Soviet handling of its occupation zone, including the unilateral transfer to Poland of former

German territories, played an important part in the dissension.

By late 1947, U.S. personnel, not only the staff on the ground but high-ranking officials, had endorsed the cause of Germany’s rights and had become the champions of Germany’s reconstruction – a defeated country, yet now a partner, if not an ally, in the Cold War.32

Germany was soon divided between the tri-zone (U.S., British, and French zones united into one entity) and the Soviet zone. It is debatable who, among the occupying powers, made the most significant moves that led to the division of Germany. But clearly the German question, now in addition to the Polish question, had become a key issue between the former allies, and displaced persons, on the move or in camps, a key feature of this issue.

The emergence of the “non-repatriable” displaced persons

Over 36 million people died in Europe between 1939 and 1945, as a result of the war or related causes, and 19 million, or over half, were civilians. Poland lost about one fifth of its prewar population, including almost all of its Jewish citizens and its elites. In addition to the dead, the living were in disarray: “Between them Stalin and Hitler uprooted, transplanted, expelled,

32 “Summary of State Department’s Proposed Position Papers for London Meeting of CFM, November 1947: No.5: Territorial questions” November 25, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 3: London Conference of Foreign Ministers Prep; Box 142; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 28 deported and dispersed some 30 millions people in the years 1939-1943.”33 When the war ended, millions of people were on the move, for different reasons and with different purposes.

Men and women who had been forced by the Nazis to work in German factories were heading home. Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, Cossacks, , , were fleeing westward for fear of falling under Soviet rule. Deported and evacuated East-Europeans were returning home from the Soviet rear. Germans and ethnic Germans were fleeing the Red Army or/and local populations’ reprisals for having directly or indirectly associated with the Nazis during their occupation of Europe, such as the ethnic German population of the Czechoslovakian

Sudetenland and the seven million Germans now in the Soviet occupation zone, soon to become

Polish western territory.

All were lucky to be alive, yet according to historian Tony Judt, “Surviving the war was one thing, surviving the peace another.” Massive postwar migrations were progressively redesigning the continent: “What had once been an intermixed region of different faiths, languages and communities became two [Ukraine and Poland] distinct, mono-ethnic territories.

[…] The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ did not yet exist, but the reality surely did. […] The outcome was a Europe of nation states more ethnically homogeneous than ever before.”34 The four powers occupying postwar Europe had to manage this incredible flow of migrations, which represented “one of the most difficult and delicate problems arising in the military government of

Germany” according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.35 In particular, the Allies had to plan the care and repatriation of the thousands of men and women driven from their home by Nazi

33 Judt, Postwar, 18–23. 34 Judt, 21–27. 35 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 29 persecutions.36 In the US- and British-controlled areas alone, about four millions of displaced persons (D.P.s) had been found by June 1945. The numbers of displaced persons in the Soviet zones were not known. Despite the creation of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation

Administration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff deplored that “no intergovernmental agreement has been reached concerning [its] use for the care and handling of displaced persons in Germany and

Austria during the period of military government after dissolution of Supreme Headquarters,

Allied Expeditionary Force and Allied Force Headquarters.” Moreover, the Soviet government declined U.N.R.R.A.’s care for Soviet displaced citizens.”37 The four occupying powers never coordinated their D.P. policies.

Most of the proactive management of D.P.s – gathering them, establishing them in camps, fulfilling their basic needs (food, housing, medical care, work, schooling) – was undertaken by the Western Allies, mostly the U.S., and to some extent Britain. The French organized their reception and immediate care in Paris, but had few D.P. camps in their zone. We know little about the D.P.s’ situation in the countries occupied by the Red Army – secrecy of what was happening in Soviet-occupied areas covered up the issue, and the Soviets offered no reciprocity to Western military with respect to the care of displaced persons uncovered in their zone.38 For Soviet leaders, the displaced persons were a non-problem. They wanted everybody to return to their place of origins, or to resettle within their former country’s new borders.

Ideally, so did the Western leaders, but they would not force anyone to do so in the name of self- determination. And later, some of these D.P.s became instrumental to their policies.

36 “Note”; Topics File 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 37 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 38 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 30

However, most D.P.s wanted to (and could) return home – and did so, with or without the assistance of the military authorities. The U.S. and British military authorities processed effectively the first waves of repatriations during the summer and fall 1945. As the U.S. military informed the State Department, some 105,825 persons had repatriated to Belgium, and 284,711

French had passed through Belgium on their way home as of May 14, 1945 (20,000 per day).

This flow convinced the Americans that the end of the D.P. problem in Germany was in sight for the end of July 1945, especially if the Soviets accepted the West’s help to repatriate D.P.s moving eastward.39 Indeed, East-Europeans found in the Western zones were not being repatriated with the same efficiency for three reasons. First was the lack of coordination with the authorities (local and/or Soviet) in the countries where these D.P.s would wish to return.

Second, some of these East-European nationals were waiting to see what would happen to their countries before diving into the uncertainty of Soviet occupation. Third, due to emerging Cold

War tensions, Western authorities were ambiguous about pressing East-European citizens to return to Soviet-occupied countries, except Soviet citizens found in Western areas, who were forcibly returned to Soviet authorities.

Indeed, at Yalta, the Allies had signed a Repatriation Agreement, in which Soviet citizens found in the Western zones would be handed over to the Soviet authorities, forcibly if necessary.

But Truman interpreted this agreement in an increasingly liberal way. He chose to consider as

“stateless” rather than “Soviet” the D.P.s whose place of origin was in territories acquired by the

Soviet Union after 1939 – Poles, Latvians, Estonians, and in majority.40 Both the military administration in Europe, under the authority of General Dwight Eisenhower, and the

39 “Incoming Telegram” Brussels to Secretary of State, May 26, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 2; Box 166; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 40 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 31

State Department, through Undersecretary Dean Acheson, raised concerns about force- repatriation of Soviet citizens. .41 In spring 1946, Truman supported the end of all forced repatriations and cancelled an order from Secretary of State James F. Byrnes to cut off aid to the refugee camps in Germany.42 U.S. leaders insisted on the tradition of protecting political refugees, thus opposing expulsions and forced repatriations, a position they also promoted in the

United Nations.

On the other hand, little information exists about the situation of the D.P.s found in the

Soviet-occupied areas, and most of it comes from indirect sources (international institutions, foreign observers, and testimonies of D.P.s emigrating westward, rather than Soviet or local sources). The total number of D.P.s under Soviet control remained unknown, since the Soviets even denied the existence of the problem and therefore did not officially recognize a specific status to the displaced persons. They seemed to have fended for themselves, and to some extent were cared for by local communities rather than by official state-representative authorities. The latter seemed to have only monitored their transportation, whether for the repatriation of East-

European exiles from the Soviet rear, or for the transfer of population the Soviet operated between territories under their control, such as ethnic Ukrainians from Poland to Ukraine and vice-versa. The Soviet Union was very reluctant to let any foreign or international institution operate in territories under its control, and did not consider displacement as an issue.

After summer 1945 repatriation were over, the D.P. population had drastically fallen.

But the problem took a different turn than the Western governments had expected. Some D.P.s

41 The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State; Moscow; June 11, 1945; Document 849, 740.00114 EW/6–1145; FRUS, 1945, Vol. V; 1097-98; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v05/d849 consulted on September 22, 2017. 42 The Secretary of State to the Secretary of War (Patterson); Washington; April 23, 1946; Document 101, 800.4016 DP/4–2346; FRUS, 1946, Vol. V; 155; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v05/d101 consulted on September 22, 2017. See also Mark R. Elliott, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation (Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 109–12. 32 appeared to refuse, or to be unable, to return home. Some even, after having repatriated, came back to the occupied zones where they had been liberated in the first place. And new waves of refugees flocked into the Western zones from Soviet-occupied countries. A new issue arose: the question of the “non-repatriability” of some displaced persons. Some could not return anywhere, either because they had become stateless; by fear of falling victims to popular anger, or to governmental reprisals (local or Soviet). Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau raised the issue to President Truman on May 23, 1945, of the problem of the political, racial, and religious refugees, “permanently displaced and non-repatriable groups in Europe.”43

These non-repatriable D.P.s were of diverse backgrounds. The most obvious, the

“stateless” persons, designated mainly the categories of people who had been singled out by the

Nazis for genocide, and were stripped of their citizenship by puppet or collaborationist governments. The Jews were the most obvious case, alongside Roma and Sinti. Other groups involved people (civilians brought to work in the Reich or prisoners of war) whose country’s borders had moved, making them citizens of a country, whereas their birthplace was now in a different one. They did not know whether they should go back to their birthplace or relocate within the new borders of their country of citizenship. Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and

Balts represented the bulk of this category. Among these, and this was also true for other nationals from countries now under Soviet rule, some were at particular risk depending on their activities during the war. Of course, those who had collaborated with the Nazis were at risk of national and Soviet reprisals, but those who had fought in partisan groups against Nazi occupation were also at risk. These underground armies were usually also nationalist, if not anti- communist, and definitely anti-Soviets. This put them in a position of heroes to their own

43 “Memorandum for the President” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to President Truman, May 23, 1945; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 33 people, but enemies to the now (or soon-to-be) communist governments and Soviet occupation forces. In some cases, their wartime activities did not have much to do with the Soviet perception. The simple fact that they had spent months or years abroad, in contact with

Westerners, made them suspects of treason.

This unexpected problem started to appear to U.S. officials on the ground quite early after the liberation/occupation of Germany, Austria, and Italy. In the spring 1945, hopes of addressing this issue collectively were still high, especially with the coming up in July-

August 1945. The Joint Chiefs of Staff noted that “No intergovernmental agreement has been reached regarding the disposition of so-called stateless persons […] persecuted by their national governments because of race, religious creed, political belief, etc. The exact numbers of such persons who will have to be cared for have not yet been definitely ascertained.”44 Yet at

Potsdam, the U.S.S.R. kept refusing to recognize “the existence of a displaced-persons problem.”45 This difference of perception of the D.P.s, and of each power’s responsibility to care for them, rendered the problem hard to manage in a cooperative manner. For instance in their zones, the U.S. and Britain provided the funds to care for the D.P.s, whereas the French and

Soviets cared for them, when they did, out of the local economies. As a result, the burden of maintaining displaced persons fell mainly on Britain and the United States, and slowed down reconstruction and economic improvement in former enemy territories.

This problem was perceived differently by the four powers involved in the reconstruction of postwar Europe. For the French, the fear of German revanchism grew in parallel to

44 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 45 “Research Project No. 80” September 1948, Division of Historical Policy Research, Office of Public Affairs, Department of State: “Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, July 17-August 2, 1945 (Truman; Churchill, later Attlee; Stalin)” pp.23-49; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Potsdam”; Box 163; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 34 demographic density in Germany, when ethnic Germans started to flock into Germany, fleeing

(or being chased from) the rest of Europe. At the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow in

March 1947, Foreign Minister Georges Bidault argued against the transfer of more ethnic

Germans and opposed the permanent settlement of non-repatriable D.P.s in Germany. He suggested ethnic Germans’ emigration from Germany and even offered to take some German refugees in France (!). The British Foreign Minister could not understand “why

110,000 Poles in the British zone, in spite of all legitimate pressure, refused to return to Poland and assist in rehabilitation of their country.”46 In other words, Britain had not (yet) adopted the

Cold War strategy of using nationals from Soviet-occupied countries, such as Poles, as a Cold

War propaganda tool. Of more urgency was the handling of their zones in Germany and Austria.

The British wanted to repatriate D.P.s, mostly because of their economic weight in their zone.

Soviet representative Andrei Vyshinsky concurred with Bevin’s complaints that “a definitive solution of the problem of displaced persons should have been found long ago,” but for different reasons, some of which contradicted each other.47 First, the U.S.S.R. considered the

D.P.s refusing to return home as “hostile elements,” mostly war criminals and traitors, who

“must be silenced.”48 On the other hand, the Soviets complained that “Soviet and other Allied citizens in Western zones […] through Fascist propaganda, were constrained from returning to their native lands.”49 The Soviets negated the very existence of a D.P. problem, albeit they

46 “Report from Smith to Marshall, transmitted to the President and Acheson from Marshall” March 15, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 6: Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, March 1947; Box 141; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 47 “Statement by the Soviet Delegation” March 15, 1947; Council of Foreign Ministers Files, 1945-1949; Folder 1: “Documents on Germany Sessions I-VI 1945-49”; Box 145; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 48 “Statement by Mr. Bajan (Ukrainian SSR) Committee 3 Summary Record” February 1, 1946, United Nations Journal No.12, Supplement No.3 A/C.3/19. 49 “Report from Smith to Marshall, transmitted to the President and Acheson from Marshall” March 15, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 6: Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, March 1947; Box 141; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 35 fought the West’s way of dealing with it.50 Ultimately, Soviet leaders knew that D.P.s’ refusal to return home to Soviet or Soviet-occupied countries was bad press for the U.S.S.R.’s reputation, both in the countries they occupied and internationally. Poles’ refusal to return home was especially problematic, as it fueled the international community’s debate on the legitimacy of

Soviet occupation of a former ally against Nazi Germany.

Many different, occasionally opposite elements drove the U.S. position. The handling of the D.P.s stood at the crossroads between domestic public opinion and foreign policy issues, creating internal tensions. The American people and most representatives alike were divided. On the one hand they nurtured their self-image of saviors of Europe, who needed to take care of the refugees as humanely as possible, without forced-repatriation in order to uphold their democratic and self-determination values. Yet they were reluctant to alter immigration policy to welcome some of these refugees, in the name of these same values as these refugees, they feared, did not share them. In foreign policy, the non-repatriable D.P.s were a different kind of problem: their economic weight could affect the stability of postwar Europe, and their handling started to become a bone of contention with its most important allies, Britain and France. Humanitarian concerns were probably more present in U.S. policy-making than in British, French, or Soviet policies, yet the Cold War urge to rebuild a strong anti-communist Germany was also present in

President Truman’s approach to the problem.

In the years following the war, Truman worked hard at convincing his citizens to modify existing legislations, or create new ones, in order to allow a greater number of non-repatriable

D.P.s to immigrate to the United States. “[Truman] was driven by humanitarian concerns, but also concerns over how refugees and displaced persons could affect the stability of postwar

50 “Questions relating to Germany: Transfer of Population” March 29, 1947; Council of Foreign Ministers Files, 1945-1949; Folder 1: “Documents on Germany Sessions I-VI 1945-49”; Box 145; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 36

Europe,” political scientist Aristide Zolberg notes. Many in his administration saw the D.P.s as a

“threat to the social and economic stability of a strategically crucial region… the solution required some form of international resettlement.”51 Most of Truman’s work toward solving the

D.P. question, focused on letting them immigrate to the U.S., permanently or temporarily.52 He even received proposals to find solutions for relocating them in Alaska, among other places.53

But Truman knew that convincing the people and the Congress would take time, and in parallel he also set out to protect refugees in international law, particularly by preventing their forcible repatriation.54

Truman imposed to his administration in Europe a liberal policy of welcoming refugees to the U.S. zones and rejecting forced-repatriation, while lobbying at home for the admission of refugees in the United States. But soon this became a difficult position to uphold. Discussions about closing the D.P. camps appeared in the spring 1946, which raised a dilemma between the

State and War Departments.55 The number of D.P.s in the U.S. zones had decreased from 3 million to 500,000, among which fewer than 35% seemed repatriable, according to a report from

51 Aristide R. Zolberg, “From Invitation to Interdiction: US Foreign Policy and Immigration since 1945,” in Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and U.S. Foreign Policy, Michael S. Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner, Eds. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 117–59. 52 “Press Release from President Truman to the Congress” July 7, 1947; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 53 Correspondence between President Truman and Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, Inc., May 12, 1947, and related materials: “Memorandum of Conference with President Harry S. Truman” The White House, July 10, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 54 Phil Orchard and Jamie Gillies, “Atypical Leadership: The Role of the Presidency and Refugee Protection, 1932- 1952,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2015): 490–513. 55 “Memorandum for the President” Secretary of State James Byrnes to President Truman, April 12, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library; and “Memorandum on American Policy on Displaced Persons” E.A.L. Jr. to President Truman, March 20, 1946, transmitted on April 4, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 37

Secretary of War Patterson in June 1946.56 However, the flow of migrants from East-European countries was steadily increasing, raising the D.P. population of the U.S. zone in Germany to

800,000 in November 1947. “The DPs cannot be kept indefinitely in camps, and with few exceptions, they cannot be settled in Germany.”57

Until the summer 1947, U.N.R.R.A. administered the D.P. camps in coordination with the military, and centralized the work of private organizations and agencies. But when

U.N.R.R.A.’s mandate was coming to an end, an argument arose between the United States and the Soviet Union about whether the International Refugee Organization (I.R.O.) or the Allied

Control Council should take over U.N.R.R.A.’s work. In August 1947, the U.S. implemented the transfer of the camps’ administration from U.N.R.R.A. to I.R.O., and the British followed, despite Soviet protestations.58 At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in March-April

1947, the U.S. delegation had been willing to compromise on I.R.O.’s definition and status. The final decisions made no mention of resettlement, encouraged repatriation, and made some concessions to the Soviet fear of anti-Soviet propaganda in D.P. camps.59

This last question was a major win for the Soviet delegation, which kept accusing the

Western Allies of preventing Soviet representatives to access D.P.s from the U.S.S.R. and countries under Soviet influence, and of keeping these D.P.s from repatriating. Despite U.S> concessions, U.S. representatives’ refusal to renounce the rights of refugees not to be forcibly

56 “Report to the President by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson” June 11, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8: “Germany General 2”; Box 156; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 57 “Summary of State Department’s Proposed Position Papers for London Meeting of CFM, November 1947: No.7: Transfer of Population” October 27, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 3: London Conference of Foreign Ministers Prep; Box 142; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 58 Gerald Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, Oxford Studies in International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Louise W. Holborn, The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Nations: Its History and Work, 1946-1952 (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956); Louise W. Holborn, Refugees, a Problem of Our Time: The Work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1951-1972 (Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press, 1975). 59 “Questions relating to Germany: Report from the Deputies to the Council of Foreign Ministers: Agreements - Population transfer” March 29, 1947; Council of Foreign Ministers Files, 1945-1949; Folder 1: “Documents on Germany Sessions I-VI 1945-49”; Box 145; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 38 repatriated led the Soviet Union, followed by Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, and Yugoslavia, to vote against the transfer of U.N.R.R.A.’s prerogatives to I.R.O. Molotov and Vyshinsky were against any long-term organization devoted to the care of D.P.s, and insisted on forced- repatriation. Soviet authorities claimed that the D.P.s wanted to return but were forbidden to do so, as a way to counter the West’s growing use of D.P.s’ refusal to go home as a propaganda weapon in the nascent East/West confrontation.60 More genuinely, the U.S.S.R. had suffered the highest demographic losses, civilian and military, so the country needed every Soviet citizen to rebuild the population. Soviet leaders were especially upset about the situation of the D.P.s in

Austria, where the occupation would end in a foreseeable future. The country would recover its independence, contrary to Germany, and the Allies would then lose any control over the D.P.s.

Eventually, no communist government adhered to the I.R.O., its definition of a refugee was narrow and partial, so Truman moved away from the U.N. and favored creating refugee organizations outside of it during his second term.61

In parallel to these negotiations, in which the U.S. appeared as the conciliatory power, it nonetheless started to instrumentalize these non-repatriable D.P.s in its Cold War rhetoric. To some extent, this might have been a strategy to lead the American people and Congress to move forward on bending existing immigration laws by converting the refugee issue from one of immigration to a Cold War concern.62 Treating D.P.s from the Soviet bloc as political refugees fleeing would ensure them a favorable image on the domestic front, and lessen the fear of immigrants as agents of communist infiltration. But it might also have come from a

60 “Report from Smith to Marshall, transmitted to the President and Acheson from Marshall” March 15, 1947; Conference File, 1945-1952; Folder 6: Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, March 1947; Box 141; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 61 Bruce Cronin, Institutions for the Common Good: International Protection Regimes in International Society, Cambridge Studies in International Relations 93 (Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 62 Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York, London: Free Press; Collier Macmillan, 1986), 14–15. 39 genuine fear of Soviet expansionism, which was progressively taking hold in the political mindset of postwar America. In any event, the instrumentalization of the non-repatriable D.P.s was already well underway in 1947, as shown by the change in vocabulary: the D.P. nationals of countries under Soviet occupation became “Iron Curtain Refugees” and “friends of the United

States and proponents of democracy” – a status that Jewish D.P.s never really acquired. In May

1950, the State Department asked the Senate to revise its refusal to include 15,000 visas to D.P.s in the second D.P. Act. “If the leading country in the community of nations resisting the advance of Communism is not prepared to help these anti-Communist friends of the democracies, it is certain that the situation will be well publicized in the satellite countries; the Communist regimes would use this as an effective part of their propaganda designed to beat down the spirit of the non-Communist masses in Eastern Europe.”63

Among people whom the U.S. would not return by force were those from the Baltic states that had been Sovietized, and thus were not recognized as Soviet citizens by the Americans.64

The Poles were also considered refugees, though not necessarily stateless – only the ones from former eastern Polish territories now in Ukraine. Only 22,000, out of 733,000 Pols found in

Germany had repatriated as of June 1945 because “the Poles have not desired repatriation.”65

Most Poles refused to repatriate, which was met with sympathy by U.S. leaders, increasingly critical of Soviet handling of Poland and sensitive to pressure from the Polish government in

63 “Memorandum to Mrs. Bonsteel, with attachments” May 4, 1950; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 64 “Background Information for the Meetings of Heads of Government” Prepared by the Department of State for the Meetings of the Heads of Government, July 6, 1945: “Displaced Persons”; The Berlin Conference; Vol. II; Box 1; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 65 “Background Information for the Meetings of Heads of Government” Prepared by the Department of State for the Meetings of the Heads of Government, July 6, 1945: “Displaced Persons”; The Berlin Conference; Vol. II; Box 1; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 40 exile and the six millions Americans of Polish descent.66 Charles Rozmarek, founder and president of the Polish National Alliance and the Polish American Congress, pleaded the Polish

D.P.s’ cause to Truman:

“We are gravely disturbed by the ominous silence to the tortured cry […] of approximately one million Polish refugees in the same American areas of occupation [as Jewish DPs]. […] Poland….and this is no secret….is not free. It is ruled by ruthless agents of Soviet imperialism. The war which was fought to save Poland and her neighbors from the aggression of an enemy has ended in the enslavement of two thirds of Europe….by an ally. […] It is tragic […] that […] physical and moral persuasion is being exerted to force displaced Poles in American-occupied Germany to return to Poland and to submit to the communist yoke. To force these unfortunate exiles […] to be repatriated to a Sovietized Poland is tantamount to giving them the ticket to death.”67

This shift in the U.S. perception of the D.P. question, and its utilization in the fight against Soviet expansion in Europe, came progressively. In January 1946, Irving Brant’s report was the only document that backed the Soviet view that only fascist elements refused to repatriate and were subverting others’ repatriation process.68 Some branches of the government had also not given up on D.P. repatriation in the fall 1946: “The War Department, while providing temporary care […] has kept its sight set on the goal of returning to their old homes those who are willing to go and of getting the remainder resettled in new homes.”69 Yet, the conversion of the D.P. issue from a humanitarian to a Cold War cause was underway.

66 “Background Information for the Meetings of Heads of Government” Prepared by the Department of State for the Meetings of the Heads of Government, July 6, 1945: “Displaced Persons”; The Berlin Conference; Vol. II; Box 1; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 67 “Correspondence between President Truman and Charles Rozmarek, with related material” October 8 to October 25, 1945; OF 463: Misc. Poland; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 68 “Report to the President from Irving Brant” January 14, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3 “Poland”; Box 163; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 69 “Address by the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Secretary of War, at the Dinner of the United Jewish Appeal, Ambassador Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey” November 30, 1946; Box 3; Records of the Office of the Secretary of War: RG 107; Federal Record; Truman Library. 41

Yet in April 1946, E. Allan Lightner from State Department’s Central European Affairs

Division qualified D.P.s from territories under Soviet control, such as Balts and Poles, as

“innocent people who are afraid of totalitarian reprisals – even death or exile to – if they accept or are forced into repatriation.” He specified that “80 per cent of these Displaced Persons are of the Catholic faith,”70 most likely to remove any fear of Jewish communist agents. In the fall 1946, the War Department reported that “many thousands […] have no decent prospects where they formerly lived, and […] fear for their personal safety.”71 This new Cold War-tinged rhetoric applied to D.P.s appeared even more clearly in a report from the fall 1947, in which

D.P.s are presented as deeply anti-communist, immune to agents sent to them in order to spread communist propaganda in the camps. By this time camps were already organized by nationalities, and most D.P.s refusing to return home were citizens of countries under direct communist rule and/or Soviet occupation – and Jews.72

This attitude confirmed and reinforced Soviet suspicions that the D.P. issue was becoming enmeshed in the Cold War. Soviet and Polish governments accused the British and

Americans, not so much of continuing to help the Poles who refused to return home, as of assisting those who “continue to fight the government [i.e. the new government of Poland].”73

Yet Soviet protests were vain, and unable to stop the process that remade East-European D.P.s into Cold War propaganda weapons. Around the D.P. Act of 1948, the rhetoric was in full

70 “Memorandum on American Policy on Displaced Persons” E.A.L. Jr. to President Truman, March 20, 1946, transmitted on April 4, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 71 “Address by the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Secretary of War, at the Dinner of the United Jewish Appeal, Ambassador Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey” November 30, 1946; Box 3; Records of the Office of the Secretary of War: RG 107; Federal Record; Truman Library. 72 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 73 “UNRRA Conference, Atlantic City” in , March 27, 1946 Harry S. Truman to Cardinal Stritch, with related material; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 42 blown and found credit in the fact that most non-repatriable D.P.s were moving westward, either fleeing antisemitism, other types of persecutions at the hands of the Soviet occupiers or Soviet- puppet governments, or just because in the Western zones, they knew they would be taken care of. One paradox of this rhetoric is that while using the D.P.s’ westward movement in their anti-

Soviet propaganda, Western powers were also blaming the Soviets for pushing these refugees westward to deliberately create in Western Europe a situation impossible to handle, or/and to infiltrate these immigrants with Soviet agents. That was one of the differences of perception, in the U.S., between non-Jewish and Jewish displaced persons.

Indeed, ironically, when the Fulton Subcommittee investigated the D.P. issue in 1947 for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, the resulting report was tainted with the prewar eugenicist spirit. It praised the northern peoples (Balts, Poles, Czechoslovaks) with a perfect sense of hygiene, cleanliness, intelligence, industriousness, a sign they “come from good stock and good breeding,” whereas Jewish D.P.s deserved a much less favorable treatment. Obviously the subcommittee did not take into account the Jews’ different wartime plight and postwar experience: “It was my impression that 50% of the total number were clean, orderly, industrious and intelligent. Approximately 20% were about average people, while 30% were of the lowest type of poor, miserable, illiterate humanity.”74

The specific case of the Jewish displaced persons

Despite the report’s unflattering presentation, the Jewish displaced persons are at the heart of this dissertation’s argument. Rare are the studies that explore how the Jewish D.P.s, by their very

74 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 43 presence, their interaction with occupation authorities and local populations, and their activism, played a role within the diplomatic context of the postwar world and in the U.S. and Soviet decisions about themselves, but also about other topics, among which, Palestine. The homeless

Jews were a problem for Europe’s reconstruction, felt by both Western and Soviet powers occupying and rebuilding postwar Europe. While spheres of influence were being defined between Western liberal democracies and Communist countries, the presence of Jews in these areas provoked fear and anger among the peoples under occupation, whom neither Western

Allies nor Soviet authorities wanted to alienate in their respective zones. Therefore, these Jewish refugees who emerged from the ashes in Eastern Europe or repatriated from the Soviet rear following the fall of Nazi Germany are a key element to understand Soviet and U.S. policies both in Europe and in Palestine.

Who were these Jewish D.P.s? In what situation were they exactly? In reality, they represented a heterogeneous group of people with diverse identities – various languages, political backgrounds, and religious commitment – and even more so, different wartime experiences.

Most of their former home countries tolerated a high level of antisemitism (Eastern and Central

Europe, with the exception of ), and potential countries of relocation were not willing to welcome a significant wave of unhealthy and penniless Jewish immigrants (Western

Europe and New World countries), also because of antisemitic prejudice. The postwar era tolerated heightened nationalism in Europe and in the colonial/post-colonial world claiming their right to self-determination. Yet paradoxically, though the Allies soon recognized Jewish national difference by identifying their non-repatriability, their right to statehood was not acknowledged.

Britain, which controlled Palestine, was not ready to let Jewish national aspirations achieve its desired goal – sovereignty through statehood.

44

The Jewish refugees could be divided into three categories. The first group was the approximately 70,000 survivors of Nazi camps and death marches, whom the Allies discovered at the end of the war (more were actually liberated, but 40% of Jews did not survive, as they were beyond what medicine could achieve, and West-European Jews quickly repatriated).75 To these should be added the Jews who survived in Nazi-occupied Europe, fighting among partisans, passing as Aryans, or in hiding. But the most important group that increased this initial number up to 250,000 in 1946-1947, was the – mostly Polish – Jews who spent the war in the Soviet rear and were allowed to return under the Soviet-Polish repatriation agreements of

1944 and 1945. During the Soviet invasion and occupation of Poland between September 1939 and June 1941, Polish Jews displayed a strong (Polish) nationalism. They fought in the Polish army against the Red Army and by and large rejected the Soviet offer to trade their Polish citizenship for the Soviet one. Therefore they had been disproportionately deported to Soviet labor camps, thus ironically escaping the Nazi systematic extermination policy after Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in , in violation of the

Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact. Others, who had remained in Soviet-occupied

Poland and the Baltic states, had been later evacuated or had fled eastward after the German invasion.76

Upon their return to Poland in 1945-1946, Jews assessed the new reality. Jewish life had been annihilated, the country was a mass grave for Jews, and ethnic Poles still displayed a strong antisemitism, sometimes violent – most infamously the Kielce in July 1946.

Most continued their way westward to the D.P. camps in the Western occupation zones of

75 Judt, Postwar, 24. 76 Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 1–2. 45

Germany, Austria, and Italy.77 Europe was in the process of being geographically redesigned, and in the wake of this dramatic human catastrophe, each country aimed at becoming a nation- state with the fewest possible members of ethnic/religious minorities, to prevent future foreign claims on its territory.78 In the midst of this Europe in ruins, Jewish refugees, despite their different backgrounds, started to forge a common identity of , or sh’erit ha- pletah, based on the recent persecutions that entirely destroyed their communities in Eastern

Europe and on the fact that no matter how they had survived the war, their Jewishness made them homeless and sometimes stateless, and definitely aware that they were the remnants of a genocided people.

The scholarship on Jewish D.P.s is largely based on the Jews who sojourned, or at least passed through, the D.P. camps set up by the Western Allies in their zones.79 Since the Soviet occupation zones had no official D.P. camps, Soviet relations with its vast Jewish refugee population are generally ignored. Most interactions must have happened with Soviet military authorities or N.K.V.D. officers. Needless to say, these archives are still inaccessible to researchers, and most especially to foreign researchers,80 except for the little information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, the Soviet-Zionist communications about Jewish D.P.s, and U.S.’s, Britain’s, and international agencies’ observation of Soviet forces’ attitude on the

77 Yosef Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland at the End of the Second World War and Afterwards,” in Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46, Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky, Eds. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 227–39. 78 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (London: Penguin Books, 1998); Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012); Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 79 William I. Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe (New York: Free Press, 2009); Cohen, In War’s Wake; Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies. 80 I must admit that I found myself unable to access documents about Soviet policy toward non-Soviet Jewish D.P.s in the East European countries the Red Army occupied in the aftermath of the war. At the archives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was told that such documents do not exist at all in their records, and I was (ironically, I guess) invited to try the NKVD archives and the Military Intelligence archives, because these were the two authorities with men on the ground in Eastern Europe after the war, and therefore they must have been the ones who dealt with the Jewish D.P.s’ internal migrations and emigration. 46 ground vis-à-vis the Jewish D.P.s – even the U.N.R.R.A. archive does not provide much information regarding the Soviet treatment of Jewish refugees.

Most of the historiography on Jewish D.P.s explores humanitarian and sociological issues regarding displacement and trauma from genocide. They study the physical and moral consequences of Jews’ wartime experience, their time and rehabilitation in the D.P. camps, their relations other non-Jewish D.P.s and with local populations living around the camps, their experience of antisemitism when trying to return home and resettle in their former towns, their activism toward emigration from Europe, etc. They are rarely thought of as an essential part of diplomatic policies – mostly treated as one element among others, and as such, the questions circle around whether public opinions, humanitarian motives, international politics, or individual agency, eventually forged their fate.81

The Jewish D.P.s are indeed at the crossroad of many elements. The Holocaust that transformed Eastern Europe into a mass grave for their communities and postwar local antisemitism explained Jews’ unwillingness to return to and then remain in their countries of origins. Western antisemitism and general xenophobia (sometimes expressed through restrictive immigration laws as was the case in the U.S.) limited their possibilities to resettle in Western

Europe or New World countries. International politics and colonial/post-colonial concerns participated in maintaining them homeless, wandering from wartime hardship to postwar D.P. camps. Some studies follow the Jewish D.P.s’ routes from their wartime situation to postwar

Eastern Europe and D.P. camps, to their place of relocation, be it the New World or Palestine.

But they consider the survival and migration experiences from the D.P.s’ standpoint. Rare are the scholars considering the Jewish D.P.s’ presence and activism as a factor in the shaping of

81 Cohen, In War’s Wake; Anna Marta Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011). 47 superpowers’ policies. Arieh Kochavi might be the historian who gets closest to filling this gap.

He explores the Jewish D.P.s within the diplomatic context of the postwar era, bridging

European and Middle Eastern issues. But he does so through the lens of British diplomatic archives and policies. The Cold War looms in the background, and Soviet and American policies are mentioned inasmuch as they interfere with British diplomacy toward the Jewish

D.P.s and their illegal immigration to Palestine. He focuses on Britain, bridging British policy in postwar Europe and in Palestine, not Soviet or U.S. policies.82

Regarding Soviet policy toward Palestine with regard to the Cold War context and the

Jews, Laurent Rucker is one of the rare historians who note the correspondence between Soviet policies in Europe and in Palestine. He observes that progressive support for Zionism came hand-in-hand with the rise of East-West tensions. Rucker shows that the Soviet Union shifted from an anti-Zionist position, to a slight sympathy toward Zionism in early 1947, and later to a strong pro-Israeli attitude during the War of Independence (May 1948-January 1949), in parallel to the formulation of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, the failure of the Conference of

Foreign Ministries in April 1947, the elaboration of the Marshall Plan for Europe in June 1947, and the decision to make the U.S. fleet’s presence in the Mediterranean Sea permanent in June

1948. As a response, the was created in September 1947 and the Soviet positions in the U.N. became more systematically opposed to the U.S. ones, including on the Arab-Israeli issues, in 1948. He also draws a parallel with Soviet policies toward its own Jewish population, bridging Soviet domestic and foreign policies. Yet Rucker does not elaborate about the potential

82 Arieh J. Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 48 influence of the non-Soviet Jewish refugees present in the countries that the U.S.S.R. occupied after the war.83

Significance of the Middle East in U.S. and Soviet foreign policies

Because these Jewish D.P.s eventually forced the international community to make the link between Jewish homelessness in postwar Europe and Jewish claims for statehood in Palestine, which radically transformed the Middle East and the superpowers’ diplomacy in the region, this prologue ends with a historiographic presentation of the Middle East in Soviet and U.S. policies.

Although a region less crucial than Europe in U.S. and Soviet postwar agendas, the Middle East had been nonetheless an important factor in the transition from their wartime alliance to their growing rivalry for establishing spheres of influence all over the world. Crises in Iran and

Turkey drove the two superpowers to confront each other almost on the brink of war. Therefore the region participated fully in the making of the early-Cold War international landscape, and is too often neglected on the scholarship exploring the shaping of the Cold War, which tends to focus on Europe. When historians explore the role of the Middle East in the Cold War, they rarely consider the bridges between the two regions.

In their struggle for influence in the Middle East, the U.S. was far ahead the Soviet

Union. Bringing the Palestine question out of British and American sphere and into the United

Nations had been, for Soviet leaders, a way to enter the Middle East despite the U.S. policy of containment, designed in part to address Middle Eastern developments. For the U.S.S.R., the

Middle East, although not the top priority in foreign policy, was nonetheless a place of great

83 Laurent Rucker, “Une alliance improbable : l’URSS et la création d’Israël,” Relations internationales, no. 110 (summer 2002): 251–68. 49 interest – mostly the Northern Tier (Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and later Pakistan, still part of

British India until 1947). The region laid on Soviet long southern border, hard to protect, and of course had geopolitical interest. Strategically, it is the crossroad of three continents, Europe,

Asia, and Africa, and Russia’s only access to the warm water ports of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Economically, it holds the Silk Road commercial routes, Middle Eastern oil reserves, and other Third World resources.

In the aftermath of the war, these countries were suspicious of Soviet intentions, and early on sided with the Western powers – despite Stalin’s claims for influence over Iran and

Turkey. In Iran, he refused to remove Soviet troops, until U.S. and U.N. pressures settled an agreement in May 1946 in exchange for oil concessions and communist participation in the

Iranian government.84 Stalin also questioned Turkish sovereignty over the Straits; he demanded the abolition of the Montreux Convention to obtain a joint, if not a Soviet control of the Straits, yet backed away in front of the U.S.-supported Turkish refusal and the moving of the U.S. 6th fleet in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.85 The Northern Tiers became a powerful barrier to Soviet penetration in the Middle East. The necessity of “jumping over” this barrier to penetrate the region has long been considered the main driving force behind Soviet policy in Palestine.

The Arab East was an area of newly independent states, albeit still under British and

French influence; but further decolonization was on its way. As a result, it was the nest of national liberation movements, radical and conservative ideologies, Islamic fundamentalism, pan-Arabism, internal rivalries, and revolutions. In the new world structure of the emerging

Cold War, it was becoming a target – and a challenge – for both superpowers, and proved ripe for Soviet subversion. However, the U.S.S.R. did not have a clearly defined policy in the Middle

84 Agreements that were never honored by Iran. 85 Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge, ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 50

East, let alone in Palestine. As mentioned earlier, Maisky’s and Litvinov’s reports to Molotov and Stalin differ on the attitude to adopt in the Middle East, the former betting on tempering U.S. ambitions by a cooperation with Britain, the latter favoring a cooperation with the U.S. to limit

Britain’s influence in the region. Palestine is not directly addressed in either reports, and the

Arab East is barely mentioned, and only as a potential tool to exploit the capitalist powers’ internal contradictions.86

New – or revisionist – historians have qualified Soviet policy in the Middle East as reactive to developments in the region.87 Other historians think that Soviet policy was mainly defensive and based on Cold War interests.88 Some assert that Soviet policy was offensive and expansionist, manipulating regional actors to eliminate Western influence. This work argues that

Soviet policy indeed aimed at spreading its influence, but highlights Soviet policy-makers’ absence of definite agenda, and therefore tended to react and adapt to, rather than to act on,

Middle Eastern developments. Mostly it claims that Soviet postwar policy in the Middle East was a secondary concern, contingent on Soviet stakes and developments in Europe. The first debate concerns how Soviet leaders perceived Europe and the Middle East in the postwar era.

Some believe that Stalin was still in the perspective of cooperating with the West and had troubles to adapt to the new Cold War bipolarity; when he did, he resumed Soviet-British confrontation on the Great Game model rather than identifying the U.S. as the new enemy.89

Finally, others think that the perspective of U.S. involvement in the Middle East drove Stalin’s

86 “Note from Maisky to Molotov” January 11, 1944; AVP FR, f.3, o.63, d.237, ll.52-93; document published in Istotchnik, no.4, 1995, 142-143; and “Note from Litvinov to Stalin and Molotov on US policy” June 2, 1943; sent to Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Beria, Malenkov, Vishinski, Dekanozov et Lozovski; AVP FR, f.3, o.63, d.237, ll.52-93; published in Vestnik ministerstvo inostrannykh del, no.7 (65), 1990, 54-63; both documents are cited in Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs, 71–73. 87 Yezid Sayigh and Avi Shlaim, eds., The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford, England; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1997). 88 Golan, Soviet Policies. 89 Gabriel Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel,” The Journal of Israeli History 22, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 4–20; Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs. 51 policy. The Palestine issue, while low in Soviet agenda, provided the U.S.S.R. with an unexpected opportunity to enter the region.90

Another debate concerns the Soviet decision to support the Partition Plan in November

1947 and the creation of Israel in May 1948, which was paradoxical given Soviet long-lasting history of anti-Zionism. Some attribute it to Soviet sensibility to Jews’ persecutions and/or to the ideological proximity of Soviet communism with mainstream Zionism – Labor Zionism, with socialist tendencies and experiments in communal life and agricultural work in kibbutzim and moshavim, which have been compared to Soviet collectivist agricultural villages kolkhozi and sovkhozi. This, however, does not take into account that prewar, the U.S.S.R. championed the

Arabs’ claim for decolonization, encouraged anti-Western feelings in the Arab world, and saw

Zionism as a bourgeois-nationalist ideology and an imperialist puppet of Britain.91

Soviet reappraisal of Palestine can be partly attributed to Zionists’ lobbying,92 Soviet-

Zionist coincidence of short-term goals, and Realpolitik – thus downplaying the weight of ideology.93 For undermining British control over the Middle East, the Jewish State would be, if not a socialist one, at least a friendly ally that would not tolerate British domination, whereas

Arab leaders rejected communism. The West, through its main actor in the region Britain, supported the Arabs, the being the most recent British tool to maintain its power.

Consequently, a binational Palestine would be Arab-dominated, and thus likely under British influence.94 The U.S.S.R. realized that support for Zionism could be a means to many aims:

90 Arnold Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947-53 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974). 91 Rami Ginat, “Soviet Policy towards the Arab World, 1945-48,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, no. 4 (October 1996): 321–35. 92 Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship; Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs; Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 93 Alden H. Voth, Moscow Abandons Israel for the Arabs: Ten Crucial Years in the Middle East (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1980); Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship. 94 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 52 destabilizing Britain, penetrating the Middle East, and provoking tensions between the U.S. and

Britain in the early Cold War.95 In addition, the U.S. support for partition allowed the U.S.S.R. to anticipate that Arab anger would concentrate against the U.S. rather than the U.S.S.R., not compromised by alliances with former colonial powers. The Soviet Union could therefore let short-term objectives take the lead over long-term aims – undermining Britain came before recruiting the Arab states on the Soviet side of the Cold War. Some believe Moscow expected the situation to degenerate, in order to legitimize sending the Red Army in the Middle East under the pretense of a U.N. flag.96

Most explanations tend to focus on Middle Eastern circumstances, and to forget that in the postwar years, the Soviet priority was Europe. Diplomatic history tends to look at foreign policy from the perspective of one region, often omitting that it is not necessarily designed region by region, but in a wider perspective.97 I argue that the Soviet shift of policy on Palestine resulted from a combination of factors. The most important one was the primacy of Europe in

Soviet priorities, and the problematic presence of Jewish refugees. Rare are the historians who have explored the connections between Soviet goals in postwar Europe and Soviet policy on

British Palestine. Laurent Rucker did, but he focused on Soviet Jews, while I found that non-

Soviet Jews were actually more instrumental to the Soviet pro-Zionist shift. Bożena Szaynok includes some Soviet perspective in her study of Polish-Zionist/Israeli relations and highlights the role of Polish Jews in Poland’s policy toward the creation of Israel; but the Soviet Union is only a distant authority looming over Poland’s foreign policy, whose leeway is yet to be assessed.

95 Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs. 96 Voth, Moscow Abandons Israel; Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship. 97 They are encouraged to do so by departments’ specialization and foreign affairs archives’ organization, though. 53

On U.S. policy toward the Middle East and the creation of Israel, revisionists give non- state actors, long-term phenomena, and smaller states, more agency and influence on great powers’ policies, than the older realist Cold Warriors did. My approach draws from the realist school by the type of material I used – diplomatic archives – but considers non-state actors such as the Jewish refugees, the Zionist organizations, and the United Nations; studies long-term processes such as displacement and migrations; and takes into account smaller states. Though definitely not as important as Europe, the Middle East was high in U.S. postwar priorities. The first Cold War doctrines emanated from Middle Eastern troubles, following the Iranian crisis, the struggle over the Turkish Straits, and the Greek crisis. Therefore the region fully participated in framing the bipolarity of the early-Cold War world. The question remains as to whether the U.S. expected Britain to continue handling the Middle East in order to maintain Western influence, but had to step in when its ally lost ground, or if U.S. policy was imperial in nature and aimed at building its own influence by drawing on Britain’s postwar weakness, as historian Melvyn

Leffler claims.98

Another question arises on whether U.S. policy in the Middle East was contingent on the policy of containment99 or to other, more economic purposes – in parallel to the growing oil lobbies.100 By 1947 there was a U.S. commitment to, and a permanent military presence in, the eastern Mediterranean region and on the Soviet border in Turkey,101 in order to deter the Soviet

Union from attempting to control the Middle East through military interventions.102 The U.S.

98 Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford Nuclear Age Series (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1992). 99 Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan, Middle Eastern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); George Lenczowski, The Middle East in World Affairs, 4th ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980). 100 Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008). 101 Golan, Soviet Policies. 102 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 54 ambivalent position, in favor of decolonization but counting on British influence as a buffer to

Soviet infiltration, led the Arab peoples to consider the U.S.S.R., rather than the U.S., as the champion of their national movement for independence and against imperialism.103

Truman took the decision to support the partition of Palestine in 1947, in opposition to his own administration and to Britain, his most important ally, most influent power in the Middle

East, and still in charge of the Mandate in Palestine. At first glance, this decision seems antagonistic to Cold War alliances, since the Zionists benefited also from Soviet support whereas the Arab states secured British favor. But for the U.S. too, Europe was the primary concern in the postwar era. And Jewish refugees paradoxically threatened to jeopardize U.S. goals in

Europe and destabilize the U.S. on domestic issues. Their homelessness and idleness in D.P. camps were a liability to the reconstruction of Germany as a stronghold against Soviet communist expansion. At home, pressure from Congress and public opinion, led in two opposite directions. On the one hand they advocating for a better treatment of Jewish D.P.s who were overburdening occupation forces in Europe while expecting to emigrate to the New World or

Palestine; yet they opposed any alteration of U.S. immigration policies. So anti-immigration lobbies, most (but not all) American Jewish institutions, and Zionist organizations pressed to consider Palestine for Jews’ resettlement.

Truman did try to convince Britain to let them go to Palestine without presuming of the country’s future status – yet that was enough to alienate the Arab world.104 Britain and the U.S. sought every means possible to solve the Jewish and the Palestine issues separately from each other and without involving the Soviet Union, but failed. There are few studies attempting to connect U.S. handling of Jewish D.P.s in Europe to U.S. policy on Palestine. Some focus on the

103 Ginat, “Soviet Policy towards the Arab World, 1945-48.” 104 David Tal, War in Palestine 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (London, England: Routledge, 2003). 55 negotiations with Britain about Jewish D.P.s in Europe, or on the politics of Jewish immigration to the U.S. and Truman’s efforts to relax U.S. immigration laws through the D.P. Acts of 1948 and 1951. Most only consider the Middle Eastern aspect of the issue. Arieh Kochavi is one of the rare historians who did connect the two issues – but he does so through the lens of British policy.

Many in Truman’s administration opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine for

Cold War concerns – to prevent the Arab world from falling under Soviet influence. Even after

Truman imposed the U.S. vote in favor of partition, his State and Defense departments tried to prevent Jewish statehood, supposedly to avoid war in Palestine, but most likely to secure U.S. economic and strategic interests in the Arab world.105 Following Israel’s creation on May 15,

1948, and the mutation of the Palestinian civil war into the first Arab-Israeli war involving directly six Arab states,106 the U.S. adopted a paradoxical position. On the one hand Truman recognized de facto the newly-born state of Israel immediately after its creation, yet on the other hand, he decided not to support its war effort to maintain its existence, by declaring an arms embargo on both sides, and refused to call any side “ally” or “friend.”107

Conclusion

This prologue presented the diplomatic context in which this dissertation takes place, the transition from the Grand Alliance of World War II to the oncoming confrontation of the Cold

War. It exposed most of the questions which polarized the frictions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and among them, the problem of the displaced persons. It situated the

105 Little, American Orientalism; Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict. 106 Egypt, , Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and . 107 George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). 56

D.P.s within that European context, and most specifically the Jewish refugees. This work argues that the Jewish D.P.s were the link that bridged U.S. and Soviet policies in postwar Europe and in the Middle East. The first chapter now focuses on the specific problem of the Jewish refugees in Soviet- and U.S.-occupied Europe, the policies the two superpowers implemented toward them, and the way U.S. and Soviet policy-makers perceived and influenced each other’s policies.

57

CHAPTER 1

JEWISH REFUGEES IN SOVIET AND AMERICAN POLICIES

Jewish displaced persons, though representing barely 20% of the non-repatriable D.P.s, posed a problem within the Cold War context that was disproportionately important. Despite their different wartime experiences, they shared the terrifying awareness that their prewar world, and often their entire families and communities, had vanished. They also realized their new statelessness, reinforced by the antisemitism with which they were greeted when trying to return home after the war. Not only were they deemed non-repatriable by the Western powers, they were also recognized by the Soviet authorities as a specific case. Although Soviet leaders never openly admitted it, they treated them differently than displaced persons from other nationalities.

Yet despite some attempts to do so, the allied powers, both liberators and occupiers, never reached an agreement to coordinate their D.P. policies, even for the ones persecuted under Nazi rule and stateless after the war.108 Soviet-U.S. tensions made it difficult to respond to the Jewish refugee crisis, especially because of Russian sensitivities in Europe. This chapter investigates

Soviet and U.S. policies toward Jewish D.P.s, and how they influenced and affected each other.

Its first part explores the case of Soviet-occupied Poland, as this was where most surviving Jews found themselves at the time of liberation, and where most Jews who survived in exile initially attempted to return – because most of them had been Polish citizens before the war. The second

108 “Comments and Recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Memoranda from the President’s Records on Subjects to be discussed at Berlin” July 26, 1945: “Handling of Displaced Persons in Germany and Austria” Tab 12; The Berlin Conference; Vol. V; Box 2; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 58 part studies the evolution of U.S. policy toward the displaced Jews in relation to the consequences of Soviet policy in the American zone.

Soviet perception of the “Jewish question”: the case of Poland

Due to reasons specific to its postwar Jewish population, Poland provides the best case study for this investigation of Soviet policy toward Jewish refugees. Yet it is important to note that it cannot be considered representative and certainly cannot be a basis for a generalization of Soviet policy toward Jewish D.P.s in the other countries the U.S.S.R. occupied. Indeed, although Soviet forces encountered various degrees of anti-Russian, anti-Soviet, anti-communist, and antisemitic populations everywhere in Eastern Europe, Poland presented a particularly challenging case because of its deep anti-Soviet feelings and its unleashed antisemitism, but also because it had been a victim, not an ally, of Nazi Germany. Therefore, Soviet policy in Poland triggered strong

Western responses. Yet, despite the fact that 90% of Polish Jews died in the Holocaust, most

Jews who survived the Holocaust were Polish Jews, and while returning home in search of their lost ones, fell victim to this renewed antisemitism.

Despite this situation, Soviet leaders claimed that all D.P.s must return to their country of origin – even the Jews.109 A memorandum opposed immigration of Jews to Palestine, then under British Mandate, with the rationale, in a Soviet ideological framework, that the “Jewish problem” (in Soviet vocabulary, this meant “antisemitism”) could be best solved through “the democratization of Europe and the eradication of the roots of fascism.” Antisemitism should be

109 It is important to remember that Soviet policy toward Jewish immigration was different for East European Jews, allowed to emigrate, and for Soviet Jewish citizens, for whom immigration was not an option; see below. 59 cured at its source, not through emigration.110 On the other hand, U.S. liberal policy would not force repatriation in the name of self-determination.111 Yet Soviet policy on the ground largely differed from this official doctrine, and went through successive phases toward Jewish refugees.

After various attempts at instrumentalizing the Jews to serve broader goals in Poland, Soviet authorities eventually accommodated Polish antisemitism through a liberal and flexible policy toward the emigration of the majority of the Polish Jews.

The instrumentalization of Polish Jews by Soviet authorities started with the agreements on the repatriation of Polish citizens from the Soviet Union to Poland, during, at the end, and in the immediate aftermath of the war. Indeed, the Soviets initially accepted repatriation of ethnic

Poles only, as Polish Jews had been offered Soviet citizenship during the 1939-1941 occupation of Poland. The first indication of Stalin’s flexibility about Polish Jewish repatriation was reported by the Polish Zionist activist Emil Sommerstein, member of the Lublin Committee and later chairman of the Central Committee of Polish Jews, and dated from a confidential meeting on July 25, 1944, during the visit of a Polish delegation to Moscow.112 Interestingly, only Poles and Polish Jews were granted authorization to repatriate to Poland. Other formerly Polish citizens who identified as Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, and other ethnicities, were only eligible for the reversed process of giving up their Polish citizenship for the one that corresponded to the ethnic group with which they identified most.

According to historian Yosef Litvak, the Soviet policy in regard to the repatriation of

Polish Jews ended up being quite liberal. “The central Soviet authorities were not interested in

110 “The Palestine Question (October 1946-February 1947)” M.A. Maksimov, deputy director of the Near East Department, and S. Nemchinov, attaché of the Near East department, to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow; March 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.07, op.12A, p.42, d.6, ll.130-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 73, pp.166-168. 111 Except in the case of Soviet citizens, which had been the subject of a Repatriation Agreement at the . 112 Hanna Shlomi, “The ‘Jewish Organising Committee’ in Moscow and the ‘Jewish Central Committee’ in Warsaw, June 1945 – February 1946: Tackling Repatriation,” in Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46, Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky, Eds. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 240–54. 60 raising unnecessary obstacles” – at least in theory. This liberal practice from the Kremlin did not prevent harassment by local authorities on the ground. Yet, the vast majority of those seeking repatriation to Poland were given the opportunity to return.113 Historians disagree on the number of the Jews who repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland, because Soviet statistics are not broken down by ethnicity. Scholar Raul Hilberg suggests that over 250,000 Jews left the

U.S.S.R. for Poland in 1946114; Israeli historian Yaacov Ro’i posits 22,058 in late 1945 and

173,420 in 1946.115 Polish historian Piotr Żaroń reaches the number 136,500 Jews among the

217,144 Polish citizens who departed from the U.S.S.R. during the first half of 1946, probably not including the 55,000 Jews who had made their way from the Soviet rear during the first phase of the repatriations.116 Demographer Mark Tolts’s estimate of 175,000 Jews allowed to emigrate between 1944 and 1948 seems a bit low.117 Polish historian Józef Adelson arrived at figures close to those of Żaroń, counting not the ones who left the U.S.S.R. but the ones who arrived in Poland: 136,579 Jews had repatriated by the end of July 1946.118 Litvak gives a different number, suggesting a figure of somewhat over 190,000, but suggests that by the end of the decade about 230 700 Jews had returned.119 Historian Albert Kaganovitch suggests that the total number of Polish Jews leaving the Soviet Union during the first and second phases in 1944-

113 Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland.” 114 Raul Hilberg, La destruction des juifs d’Europe, trans. Marie-France de Paloméra and André Charpentier (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 986. 115 Yaacov Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making in Practice: The USSR and Israel, 1947-1954, Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), 28. 116 Piotr Żaroń, Ludność polska w Zwia̜ zku Radzieckim w czasie II wojny światowej (Warszawa: Państwowe wyd. naukowe, 1990), 356; cited in Albert Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics, the Return of Jewish Refugees to Poland, and Continued Migration to Palestine, 1944-1946,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies: An International Journal 26, no. 1 (2012): 59–94. 117 Mark Tolts, “Population and Migration: Population since World War I,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Gershon D. Hundert, Ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 118 Józef Adelson, “W Polsce zwanej Ludową,” in Najnowsze dzieje Żydów w Polsce: w zarysie (do 1950 roku), Jerzy Tomaszewski, ed. (Warszawa: Wydawn. Naukowe PWN, 1993), 387–477; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 119 Yosef Litvak, Plitim yehudim mi-polin be-brit ha-moatsot: 1939-1946 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1988), 346; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 61

1946 should be slightly over 202,000, including those who cleared border control with false documents, children from orphanages, and Polish Jews who had served in the Red Army.120

In any case, it is safe to assume that between 180,000 and 230,000 Polish Jews returned to Poland from the Soviet Union in the immediate postwar years, under the auspices of different treaties. These included treaties between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in

1941 and 1944; between the pro-Soviet Provisional government or Lublin Committee and the

Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian Socialist Soviet Republics in September 1944; and finally between the Lublin Committee and the Soviet Union in July 1945. The question arises: why did Stalin allow the Polish Jews to be included in these population exchange treaties?

Historians have suggested various – and sometimes contradictory – reasons. Some concern domestic policy, others, relations with the East-European countries under Soviet occupation, yet others, relations with the Western powers and with territories under Western influence (such as

Palestine under British Mandate).

First, the timing suggests that one of these reasons might have been to secure sympathy for the Soviet Union in the West. Most Soviet leaders have tended to overestimate the influence of Western Jewish communities and organizations on their governments, especially in the U.S. and Britain. After the abovementioned meeting of July 1944, Sommerstein had the impression that Stalin expected him to convey the signal of Soviet potential flexibility about Polish Jews’ repatriation to U.S. Jewish leaders.121 This would be consistent with previous hints of the importance Stalin attached to the opinion of Western Jewish leaders, such as when he sponsored the creation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in April 1942 or the creation of the Central

Committee of Jews in Poland in November 1944. Most important, the timing of the Soviet-

120 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 121 Kaganovitch. 62

Polish treaty of July 6, 1945, which conveniently occurred a couple of weeks before the opening of the Potsdam Conference (July 16 to August 2, 1945), seems to confirm that Stalin wanted to secure sympathy in the West especially for his negotiations about postwar Poland. By doing so, he expected that Jewish influence would neutralize the hostility of the London-based Polish government-in-exile and of the Polish lobby, strong in Britain and the United States.

Soviet diplomats had been trying to use Western Jewry’s sympathy toward the Soviet war effort to counter the hostile influence of the London Poles throughout the war, as historian

David Engel demonstrates through a Polish intelligence report. During a meeting, probably in late 1943 when Ivan Maisky visited Jerusalem, the Soviet ambassador to London122 concluded an agreement with Zionist leaders. In exchange for an explicit pro-Soviet statement on the question of the future Soviet border with Poland by the Zionist institutions, Moscow would allow Polish

Jews to emigrate.123 This is confirmed by Kaganovitch, who suggests that despite the lack of archival proof from Soviet or Zionist sources, there was indirect evidence that in 1944 or early

1945, “the Zionist and Soviet sides did in fact arrive at a secret verbal understanding.”124 At the

Potsdam conference, the U.S. and Britain with great reluctance recognized the new Polish government and its treaty with the U.S.S.R. ceding western Ukraine and . It is unlikely that Jewish organizations had anything to do with the U.S. position on the Polish question, or even tried to influence it, or had the power to do so. But one has to take into account

Stalin’s perception of Jewish power in the West, not only the reality of Jewish influence.

Another reason occasionally mentioned by historians is that Stalin wanted to get rid of this group of Jews, deemed unreliable because they had not been properly Sovietized since 1917,

122 Maisky had been involved in the Sikorski-Maisky agreement between the U.S.S.R. and the Polish Government in Exile that allowed Poles, among which a significant portion of Jews, to be released from the GULag. 123 David Engel, Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1943-1945 (Chapel Hill: The Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2012), 83–84. 124 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 63 but instead had lived under capitalism in interwar Poland. Yosef Litvak, citing an interview with

Hersh Smolar, suggests that Lazar Kaganovich, though himself of Jewish origins, convinced

Stalin to relieve the country of these Polish Jews “contaminated by the bourgeois bacillus.”125

Historian Kaganovitch (no relation to Lazar) also included this argument, among many others, as one of the reasons why Stalin let the Polish Jews repatriate to Poland after the war.126

Although it is likely that Stalin distrusted Jews, especially Polish Jews, as an unreliable group, this work does not support this as the reason he let Polish Jews leave the Soviet Union.

On the contrary, Stalin believed that Polish Jews would actually be less anti-Soviet than most ethnic Poles. Therefore, though he might not have thought they would participate in spreading communism, there is some evidence that he considered them more loyal to the Soviet Union than other Poles. In a country invaded by both the Nazis and the Soviets, with the shared aim of breaking the Poles as a nation by eliminating its elites and military, then occupied in full by the

Nazis, and then “freed” by the Soviets for another phase of traumatizing occupation, only Jews could consider the Soviets as “liberators.” Whether they approved of Soviet ideology or not was irrelevant; communism could not be worse for Jews than Nazism.127 Even Polish Jews who resented the U.S.S.R. for invading Poland in 1939, for deporting thousands of Polish Jews, and for the hard wartime in the Soviet rear, would eventually become grateful to the Soviet Union for what historian Atina Grossmann termed “deportation to life,” when they returned and discovered the scale of the destruction of European Jewry under Nazi rule.128

125 Interview with Hersh Smolar, in Litvak, Plitim yehudim, 331; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 126 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 127 Antony Polonsky, “Writing the History of the Jews of Poland and Russia,” European : A Journal for the New Europe 46, no. 2 (Autumn 2013): 4–11. 128 Atina Grossmann, “Looking for Gender in the Absence of a Master Narrative: Jewish Refugees from National Socialism in the Soviet Union, Iran, and India” (Wiener Research Workshop, November 15, 2017, Wiener Library, , Israel, 2017). 64

As Litvak continues, Stalin might have returned the Polish Jews to Poland because

“they all – communists and non-communists and even opponents of communism – were meant to serve a positive function and to assist the new regime willingly or unwillingly, as they had no alternative. Their very physical existence, and all the more so the possibility of their economic and social rehabilitation, depended on the favours of the new regime.”129 They would therefore be more reliable than ethnic Poles, even more than the diehard communists among them, who were first and foremost Poles and patriots, when they were not strongly anti-Soviet reactionary and anti-Russian nationalists. Their nationalist feelings had been provoked by the 1943 discovery of Katyń and other such massacres of 20,000 prisoners of war, by the recent occupation of their country and its subordination to the U.S.S.R., and, of course, by the Soviet refusal to return western Belorussia, western Ukraine, and the Lithuanian Vilna district to

Poland. Stalin was informed by his secret services (N.K.V.D.) that among the non-Jewish Poles who had to relocate from prewar eastern Poland to postwar western Poland, 70% had a negative attitude toward the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities might have counted on the Jews to weigh in the postwar elections, held in January 1947. Indeed, few Jews, if any, voted for the nationalist party Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe headed by Stanisław Mikołajczyk.130

Some historians go even further and argue that Stalin intended to use Polish Jews not only as a counterweight to the supposedly disloyal ethnic Poles and the nationalist Right, but also as agents of the Sovietization of Poland. The rationale behind this argument is that Stalin knew full well that the majority of Poles never considered Jews “a desired element.” Indeed, considering that he gave East-European countries (including Poland) his blessing for, and even encouraged, what we would now call ethnic cleansing – but was then labeled “population

129 Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland,” 230–31. 130 Natalia Rybak: Belarus’ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Uroki istorii i sovremennost’ (Minsk: n.p., 2004) 222; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 65 exchanges” between Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, etc. – letting Jews go back to Poland would only make sense if it served his purpose of establishing and reinforcing Soviet control of Poland.

Based on Smolar’s interview, Litvak concludes that “Stalin did not believe the Polish communists could find enough competent cadres to Sovietize Poland, and might have counted on

‘Jewish reinforcements,’” despite the opposition of Władysław Gomułka, the Secretary of the

Polish Communist Party at the time.131 The Polish Communist government was indeed weak, and considered a Soviet puppet by most Poles. Gomułka strongly opposed using Jews, not only because of his own (later confirmed) antisemitic prejudice, or because he was striving to make the new Poland a monoethnic state – but also because he was well aware of the anti-Soviet and anti-Jewish feelings among his people. Therefore, he knew that using Jews to spread communism would be counterproductive and would discredit the Soviet Union.

Gomułka was right. To the traditional antisemitism shared by many Poles, inherited from the Catholic tradition and exacerbated by years of Nazi rule, the postwar era added a new form of antisemitism: reprisals against “collaborators.” In postwar Poland’s popular beliefs, it meant collaborators with the Soviet occupier, not with the Nazis. Jews were suspected of sympathy for the Soviet Union.132 Fueling this myth of Judeokommuna (equating Jews with

Communism) was the fact that most Jewish survivors had spent the war in the U.S.S.R., and their return followed the Red Army’s march westward. Before the war, the myth of Judeokommuna had already had its heyday. In its aftermath, the presence of Jewish “returnees” (from the Soviet rear) in the new Soviet-puppet government, and at every level of the new administration, led antisemitism to reinforce anti-Sovietism and vice versa. Using the Jews in government and administration in postwar Poland had been a failure, if the Sovietization, or even just the

131 Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland,” 228–29. 132 Judt, Postwar, 43. 66 pacification, of Poland had been Stalin’s sole intention. In front of this failure, the repatriation of the Polish Jews from the Soviet rear should have stopped, especially since these Jews eventually did not stay in Poland but continued westward (see below).133 Yet it did not. Soviet authorities kept allowing Polish Jews to return to Poland despite knowing that it heightened anti-Sovietism and that Jews were continuing westward. This raises the question of how these Jews allowed ot repatriate to Poland fit in the Soviet strategy.

The Soviet authorities struggled to assert control over postwar Poland. Not only the international community questioned the legitimacy of Soviet influence in and occupation of an ally; Polish resistance on the ground also proved a more difficult challenge to gain control of the territory than in other East-European countries. According to historian Bożena Szaynok, the scale of violence on both sides turned into a “civil war.” The Soviet military and the Polish communist government harshly repressed the anti-communist resistance, composed of pro-

Western political groups and nationalist underground forces. Although some anti-Soviet groups genuinely wanted “to conduct the free and democratic elections in Poland guaranteed by

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in the Yalta Accords of February 1945,”134 others clearly drew their ideology from the nationalist antisemitic repertoire. In any case, the conflict permeated and gave a political tone to deteriorating Polish-Jewish relations, in the context of widespread popular antisemitism. Jews, and even Poles who had helped Jews during the Nazi occupation, were the targets of popular vengeance.135 Historians consider that between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews

133 Marc Hillel, Le massacre des survivants: En Pologne après l’holocauste, 1945-1947 (Paris: Plon, 1985), 257– 352. 134 Bożena Szaynok, “The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946: New Evidence,” 1, no. 3 (1997). 135 Jan Tomasz Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay In Historical Interpretation, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 2006), 31–80; Jan Tomasz Gross, Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 67 have been killed in Poland during the few months that followed its liberation.136 This postwar violence of Poles against returning Jews culminated in the pogrom in Kielce on July 4, 1946.137

Stalin, who was sensitive to Western critiques of Soviet occupation and repression in

Poland, did not feel confident about Soviet power in Poland at the time. Being aware of popular sympathy in the West towards the fate of East-European Jewry (and again overestimating the influence of Western Jewish organizations on their governments), he shifted the Soviet strategy in order to use Polish violence against Jews to his advantage. Soviet and pro-Soviet leaders in

Poland systematically associated “reactionary” Polish nationalism with antisemitism, blaming antisemitic violence on “anti-government” and reactionary nationalist forces. Thus Stalin could use all acts of violence to justify his military occupation.138 On the ground, however, in the face of this growing antisemitic violence in Poland, Soviet authorities rarely took any action, with the excuse that “they did not meddle in the internal matters of Poland, and that that was the duty of the Polish police.”139 But on the other hand, in the diplomatic arena, these Polish acts of antisemitism were used to demonize every group of the Polish opposition as part of the nationalist reactionary underground, therefore justifying the need for Soviet forces to crackdown on every opposition group and to impose Soviet presence in Poland as necessary to establish and maintain order in the country.

136 Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah, 1st ed., Contemporary Jewish Civilization Series (New York: Random House, 1970), 115; Moshe Ishai, Be-tsel ha-shoʻah: rishme shliobus be-Polin 1945-1946 (Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighters’ House, 1973), 55–56; Michał Chęciński, Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism (New York: Karz-Cohl Publishers, 1982), 17; Antony Polonsky, ed., Focusing on the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Polin, v. 13 (London; Portland, Or: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000); Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II, East European Monographs, no. 613 (Boulder; New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 196–229; Joanna B. Michlic, “The Dark Past: Polish-Jewish Relations in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” in Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, Dorota Glowacka, Joanna Zylinska, Eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 21–39. 137 Gross, Fear, 81–139; Szaynok, “The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946: New Evidence.” 138 Bożena Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968: In the Shadow of the Past and of the Soviet Union (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, 2012). 139 Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland,” 237–38. 68

This Soviet attitude became so obvious that some even believed that the Kielce Pogrom was carried out in accordance with a joint plan of the Soviet and Polish communist security forces, in order to place the blame on the Polish national underground and discredit its cause.

This version had first been raised by the anti-communist Polish Peasant Party of Stefan

Korbonski and Stanisław Mikołajczyk, who claimed that the pogrom had been organized by the head of the Kielce Security Bureau, Major Sobczyński, on instructions from the communist government, with the aim of discrediting Polish society in the eyes of the West. Israeli historian

Michał Chęciński concurs, arguing that the U.S.S.R. had the most to gain from Polish antisemitic violence. He uses as evidence the fact that Soviet advisers took part in the interrogations of people arrested during and after the pogrom.140 But Szaynok accurately refutes this thesis, which lacks archival evidence and is oversaturated in “cold warrior” anti-Soviet historiography.141 Yet it is undeniable that the pogrom was indeed used like other antisemitic violence to justify Soviet control over Poland, if only afterwards.

Before the Kielce pogrom, an average of one thousand Jews per month crossed the

Polish border illegally toward the Western occupation zones, with the help of the Zionist movement Brichah (Hebrew for “escape”) founded in 1944 by former commander of the

Lithuanian underground Abba Kovner and other Jewish partisans, to help survivors emigrate from territories liberated by the Red Army. In the wake of the pogrom, in July, August, and

September 1946, over sixty thousand Jews left Poland.142 This recurring anti-Jewish violence and the Jews’ continuous flight westward mark the obvious failure of Stalin’s main motivation to allow the Jews to return to Poland after the war: securing a group that would accept, if not advocate, Soviet influence on Poland. However, this work argues that the reason why this liberal

140 Chęciński, Poland, 21–34. 141 Szaynok, “The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946: New Evidence.” 142 Szaynok; Gross, Fear, 81–139. 69 repatriation policy did not stop altogether when confronted with its failure, is that Stalin rekindled his strategy when he realized how he could use the Jews by advertising Polish antisemitism to his advantage. In Soviet policy, Polish Jews went from assets in Poland’s

Sovietization, which failed, to instruments generating Polish antisemitism, which would lead the international community to accept Soviet occupation of Poland.

What did the 180-230,000 Jews who repatriated find in Poland? Most survivors describe life in fear of violence and death despite the presence of Soviet forces. Those who attempted to reclaim former property or to return to their professions faced great danger.143

Many Poles, including ethnic Ukrainians, opposed Soviet rule, and some who had collaborated with the Nazis readied to slaughter the returning Jews, so that they could not divulge their wartime treasonous behavior.144 So in addition to experiencing ghost towns and a deep sense of grief for their former flourishing Jewish communities, Jews felt an ongoing threat to their lives, in Poland as well as in most of Eastern and Central Europe.145 Failed attempts at grassroots cooperation to improve Polish-Jewish relations, such as the Liga do Walki z Rasizmem (League for the Struggle Against Racism) founded by former Żegota activists to bring together people of different political views in a common cause, are symptomatic of how this sort of activity had no chance of success during this period.146

143 Natalia Aleksiun, “Returning From the Land of the Dead: Jews in Eastern Galicia in the Immediate Aftermath of the Holocaust,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów/Jewish History Quarterly 2013, no. 2–246 (2013): 257–71. 144 Baruch Milch and Shosh Milch-Avigal, Can heaven be void? (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003), 231; cited in Aleksiun, “Returning From the Land of the Dead.” 145 Adam Penkalla, Poles and Jews in the Kielce Region and Radom, April 1945-February 1946, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry 13 (London; Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 236–52; Daniel Blatman, “The Encounter Between Jews and Poles in Lublin District after Liberation, 1944-1945,” East European Politics & Societies 20, no. 4 (2006): 598–621. 146 Władysław Bartoszewski, “Powstanie Ligi Do Walki z Rasizmem w 1946 R.,” Więź, no. 4 (1998): 238–45; cited in Bożena Szaynok, “The Role of Antisemitism in Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations,” in Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, trans. Lisa Di Bartolomeo and Robert Blobaum, Robert Blobaum, Ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 265–83. 70

Jews found little to no help from the authorities, be they the Polish administration or the

Soviet occupation forces. Although Soviet occupation meant the end of life in camps or in hiding and the theoretical possibility of return, officials were unmoved by the wartime plight of the Jews – or only to question how some had been able to survive genocide without having collaborated with the Nazis. Survivors’ accounts such as Baruch Milch’s mention that the

N.K.V.D. was particularly hostile to Jews. On the Polish side, local administrations still included former Nazi collaborators.147 Therefore, for most Jews emerging from the ashes or returning from Soviet exile, Poland was only a transition before further emigration. Jews started to organize their departure.148 For those whose place of origin was not in Poland anymore because of the new borders, this migration sometimes happened in two steps: first from former eastern Poland to new western Poland, alongside Poles, before continuing westward to the U.S.,

British, and French occupation zones.149

And what was the attitude of the Soviet authorities toward Jews’ obvious flight from

Poland westward? There were actually many different “authorities,” as the Soviet control of postwar Poland allowed some degree of autonomy to the Polish government. It is difficult to measure how much leeway local administrators could afford, and how much influence Polish communists may have had on Soviet policy locally, when it came to ruling Poland and controlling its borders and migration movements. But it can be assumed that both influenced each other, even if Moscow probably had the final say in key matters. There was also the attitude of the Polish government-in-exile in London. Although it denied, or at best was indifferent to, manifestations of Polish – as opposed to German – antisemitism, the London Poles

147 Milch and Milch-Avigal, Can Heaven Be Void?, 238–43. 148 Aleksiun, “Returning From the Land of the Dead.” 149 Marcin Zaremba, Wielka trwoga: Polska 1944-1947: ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2012), 447–55; cited in Aleksiun, “Returning From the Land of the Dead.” 71 lobbied during the war to include Polish Jewish citizens in the successive repatriation agreements with the Soviet Union. Despite regular complaints about antisemitism, the London Poles claimed that Jews were an integral part of the Polish citizenry, and that Jewish life in Poland would be restored after the war.150 The London Poles also gave some assurance to Jewish organizations that Polish Jews who would wish so would be allowed to emigrate from postwar

Poland. This accommodating position was a way to cultivate good relations with Western

Jewish leaders on the assumption that they could help secure British and U.S. support for the negotiations over the fate of postwar Poland.151 But when the Red Army entered Poland, Polish

Jews’ fate fell in the hands of the Moscow Poles, the communist government-in-exile, which became in July 1944 the Polish Committee of National Liberation (also known as the Lublin

Committee), and later dominated the Polish provisional government founded in June 1945.

According to Szaynok, Polish members of the communist Polish Workers’ Party (P.P.R.) were divided on the Jewish question. Some backed the “programmatic assimilation of Jews in realization of the idea of the nation-state” while others supported “the reconstruction of Jewish life in Poland.”152 Most however tended to support the idea of Jewish emigration, to Palestine or elsewhere, for diverse reasons. Some, in order to fulfill their aim of a monoethnic Poland, whether tainted by antisemitism or out of genuine belief that monoethnic states were the best way to prevent new wars. Others, to get rid of a group they considered resistant to the realization

150 This antisemitism sometimes emanated from state authorities – such as discrimination of Jews in the different Polish armed groups within occupied Poland and the Polish Anders army set up in the Soviet rear by Polish prisoners of war and evacuees. Many (apparently more than half) candidates to the Anders Army were Jews, but most were rejected, humiliated, on the ground that they were unfit to fight, not patriotic enough, would become a future fifth column in postwar Poland, and deserters – the latter happened to be partly true: some Jews, such as Menahem Begin, left the Anders Army before reaching Europe, when it was going through Palestine. Grossmann, “Looking for Gender in the Absence of a Master Narrative: Jewish Refugees from National Socialism in the Soviet Union, Iran, and India.” 151 David Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews, 1939-1942 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 125–27; Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival, vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 362–65. 152 Szaynok, “The Role of Antisemitism in Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations.” 72 of communism in Poland – which is counterintuitive, given the fact that most non-communist

Poles still believed in Judeokomuna, and thus shows that Jews were perceived as outsiders by all parties. Others, among whom secretary general of the P.P.R. Władysław Gomułka, went further and “called for the removal from power of communists with Jewish ancestry,” whose presence they deemed harmful to party interests. “Jews would have to emigrate from Poland because their presence hindered the struggle against the forces of reaction.”153 Paradoxically, Szaynok notes, non-Jewish communist Poles “declared a greater understanding of Zionist postulates than did

[Polish] Jewish communists.”154

Within the new Polish government, the pro-emigration position won this internal battle.

A letter from Edward Osobka-Morawski, chairman of the communist government, to Emil

Sommerstain, leader of the Polish Jews’ Delegation to the Zionist conference in London, confirmed that the Polish government “would not hamper – on the contrary, it would back – the efforts of persons or institutions organizing the voluntary emigration of Jews from Poland.”155

Szaynok claims that “until the end of 1945, the government’s stand on emigration was defined first and foremost by the need to solve internal problems,” rather by support for Zionism itself.156

Poles’ reasons for supporting Jews’ emigration varied, but most did not care much where the

Jews would end up going. As the years passed and the Jewish question was inevitably intertwined with the Palestine question, Poland felt the need to take a stand on this issue as well.

This stand fulfilled the Polish internal need to get rid of its Jews. Indeed, although the Polish government took the question of antisemitism seriously, blaming it on reactionary forces to

153 Hersz Smolar, Oif Der Lecter Pozicje Mit Der Lecter Hofenung (Tel Aviv: Peretz Farlag, 1982); cited in Szaynok, “The Role of Antisemitism in Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations.” 154 “Fifth meeting of Jewish activists in the Polish Workers’ Party” August 3, 1945; n.p.; AZIH, CKZP, Organization Department, 15; JHI; cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 64–65; see also Daniel K. Heller, Jabotinsky’s Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 155 “Letter from Prime Minister Edward Osobka-Morawski to Emil Sommerstein” leaf 17, 1945; Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Presidium Office, 5/17; AAN; cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 37. 156 Szaynok, 39. 73 discredit the opposition, it still had to deal with anti-Jewish violence.157 Letting Jews emigrate from Poland was the most convenient solution for the Polish government to solve its Jewish problem without jeopardizing its fragile authority by repressing popular antisemitism and thus fueling the Judeokommuna myth.

Polish policy on Palestine represents further proof that the Polish government wanted

Jews to leave Poland. As on most diplomatic issues, Polish policy was somehow subordinated to

Soviet policy.158 Archives show that this was a problem for Warsaw, who did not know what position Moscow would adopt and would allow Poland to adopt. In July 1946, director of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs political department Józef Olszewski sent a dispatch explaining: “our situation would be very delicate if the Soviet Union uncritically supported the Arab side. While

Poland has no particular interest in the Arab countries, it is interested in helping Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Securing an operational margin would be highly advisable.”159 Therefore, Warsaw requested some flexibility to support Zionism as a solution for their Jewish problem: “Talk to

Wyszynski [Vyshinsky] about the Palestinian issue at the UN forum. Tell him that you would consider it desirable for Lange to have a certain margin for negotiations. What we are concerned about is that, given the present situation of Jews in Poland, taking an anti-Jewish and pro-Arab stand, or a purely neutral stand, would be ill-received by the Polish public opinion, let alone by

Jewish public opinion.”160

The Polish authorities also received occasional requests from the Jewish Agency, one of the international Zionist institutions helping Jews to immigrate to Palestine, for mediation with

157 Szaynok, “The Role of Antisemitism in Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations.” 158 Szaynok: Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 39. 159 “Cryptogram no. 140/3751” from Olszewski to Minister Modzelewski, July 29, 1946; Dispatches, Paris 1946, series 6/77; AMSZ; cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 49. 160 “Cryptogram no. 4111” from Olszewski to Skrzeszewski, August 15, 1946; Dispatches, Paris 1946, series 6/77; AMSZ; cited in Szaynok, 49–50. 74 the Soviet government on behalf of Polish Jews. This is further proof that the Jewish Agency had no doubt that the Polish government approved, and even supported, Jewish emigration, regardless of the Palestine question or of ideological support for Zionism. And indeed, various compromises were made to accommodate Jewish requests for permission to emigrate.161

Polish Jews did emigrate, en masse, from Poland westward. Considering the situation, and the Soviet stake in controlling postwar Poland, it is unlikely that this happened without the knowledge of the Soviet authorities at every level – on the ground in Poland, and at the highest level in Moscow. The question remains as to how much the Soviet authorities were involved in this Jewish flight. Were they just turning a blind eye? Were they aware of its scale? Were they encouraging the Poles to let the Jews emigrate, or even directly pushing Jews to leave? Were they actively facilitating their flight? These questions can be answered by comparing different archival sources. But the Soviet incentives to allow, encourage, or facilitate Jews’ emigration, remain a mystery, with only circumstantial evidence.

Soviet archives show that these migrations were closely scrutinized – they knew about them and did nothing to stop them. A dispatch from Colonel Starov, head of the Prisoners of

War and Displaced Persons division in the Soviet Allied Commission for Austria, observed that

“a movement of Jews has begun in Poland, heading for Palestine through Czechoslovak territory and the Soviet zone of Austria. […] A number of sources have confirmed the figure of 150-

180,000 Jews who are travelling not only across Czechoslovak territory but also via Polish ports.

The trains with these refugees are making for Munich, in the American zone […]. The departure

161 Szaynok, 51–52. 75 of the trains from Poland is to take place at an unknown date, passing through the town of Glatz

(Czechoslovakia).”162

Jewish organizations working to facilitate the departure of Jews from Poland were allowed by the Soviet authorities to operate on Polish soil, in one of the rare cases of Soviet forces giving permission to Western non-governmental organizations to operate in territories under their control. The Soviets knew they were Zionists, and eventually headed for Palestine, though their destination was the U.S. occupation zone. They were also aware of their connection with the Jewish Central Committee, presided by Emil Sommerstein in Warsaw, and even that “a representative of the U.S. government” (actually Walter Bein from the Joint Distribution

Committee, another international Zionist organization) was participating in the organization of

Jews’ free transport from Polish countryside.163

Historian Albert Kaganovitch provides much circumstantial evidence that the Zionists and the Soviets had a secret agreement on Jewish emigration from Soviet-controlled Eastern

Europe. He mentions two agreements with countries under Soviet occupation. On May 15,

1945, there was an unofficial agreement between Jewish Agency representative in Tehran

Shimon Halperin and Lublin Committee representative Milena Kraszewska on the departure of

Jews to Palestine in groups of twenty.164 The other was the July 1948 official agreement between Israel and Romania for Jews’ emigration.165 As he notes, it is unlikely that any such

162 K.D. Golubev to A.A. Smirnov, Moscow; September 4, 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.16-17; DISR, Part I, doc. 66, pp.142-144. 163 K.D. Golubev to A.A. Smirnov, Moscow; September 4, 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.16-17; DISR, Part I, doc. 66, pp.142-144. 164 Marcos Silber and Szymon Rudnicki (eds.): Te’udot le-yahsey Yisrael-Polin, 1945-1967 (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 2009), 6-7; Yochanan Cohen, Ovrim kol gvul: ha-brichah, Polin 1945-1946 (Tel Aviv: Zmora Bitan, 1995), 337–52; both cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” On the agreement between the Polish Government and Brichah organizers, see also David Engel, Bein shichrur le-brichah, Holocaust Books (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1996), 134–36. 165 Binyamin Pinkus, “Change and Continuity in Soviet Policy Towards Soviet Jewry and Israel, May-December 1948,” Israel Studies 10, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 96–123. 76 agreement would have been possible without being sanctioned by the Kremlin. He also presents different instances of Zionist activists being arrested, interrogated, and then released. Brichah organizer Yochanan Cohen was arrested in Poland, interrogated by a Soviet investigator, and

“guessed from his interrogation that the Kremlin already knew a great deal about the activities of the organization.”166 Another Brichah activist, Baruch Kamin, wrote in his memoir that “the

Soviets facilitated the organization’s activities in Romania, desiring to foist more Jews on the

British and to relieve themselves of a destitute population.”167

Kaganovitch also mentions examples of secret orders outside the usual chain of command given to official authorities on the ground, such as the case of Polish border patrol officer Michał

Rudawski, who wrote that in July 1946, he was told “to create a ‘window’ on the border with

Czechoslovakia for the secret departure of Jews without passports and visas. At the end of 1946,

Alexander Kharkowski (Zvi Melnitser), the point of contact with the Zionist organizations, told

Rudawski that according to his lists one hundred thousand Jews had left Poland through this sector of the border.”168 When this was denounced by some member of Polish security services, who thought that the exodus was the result of the bribing of border guards, “nothing came of his proposal, [which] also speaks to the existence of a secret understanding” sanctioned by

Moscow.169

These pieces of information of Soviet officials observing Jews’ migrations and Jewish organizations’ activities reached the highest levels of the Soviet government, as indicated by this report from Deputy Chief of the Foreign Affairs Ministry Vladimir G. Dekanozov, a significant figure of Soviet decision-making (until 1947): “Lieutenant-General Golubev has reported that

166 Cohen, Ovrim kol gvul, 350; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 167 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 168 Silber and Rudnicki (eds.): Te’udot le-yahsey Yisrael-Polin, 50-51; cited in Kaganovitch. 169 Silber and Rudnicki (eds.): Te’udot le-yahsey Yisrael-Polin, 60-64; cited in Kaganovitch. 77 there is a mass exodus taking place of Jews who are trying to go to Palestine from Poland through Czechoslovakia and the Soviet zone of Austria.” He added that Comrade Osokin

(apparently the director of Soviet intelligence in ) reported that the leader of the Zionist organization in Hungary told him that Zionist Jews of Hungary also intended to leave for

Palestine. He emphasized that Jews’ departure was organized by Zionist organizations, and that the Zionist Jewish Central Committee formed in Warsaw was meant for this purpose.170 Yet, no measures were taken to prevent the departure of the Jews, nor to undermine the Zionist and

Jewish organizations working toward facilitating Jews’ emigration.171

On the contrary, Dekanozov specifically ordered Soviet officials to keep observing, but instructed them not to intervene.172 He asked Soviet ambassadors in Poland, Romania, and

Czechoslovakia, and Soviet ministers in Bulgaria and Hungary, for “more detailed information on the activity of the Zionist organizations in these countries in connection with the measures which are being taken to organize the mass exodus of Jews to Palestine.” Yet he also admonished “we must warn our ambassadors and ministers in these countries that none of our personnel should become involved in any matters to do with the departure of Jews for

Palestine.”173 It is unclear whether this sentence meant “do not help the Jews” or “do not prevent their departure” – probably both. Yet the outside perception was that the Soviet authorities

170 A.A. Smirnov, M.A. Maksimov, L.F. Teplov to V.G. Dekanozov; Moscow; 17 September 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.18-19; DISR, Part I, doc. 68, pp.146-147. 171 On legal emigration of Jews from Poland with the Central Committee of Polish Jews’ financial assistance, and on the Central Committee’s structure see Natalia Aleksiun, “Zionist and Anti-Zionists in the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland: Cooperation and Political Struggle, 1944–1950,” Jews in Eastern Europe 33, no. 2 (1997): 32–50. 172 K.D. Golubev to A.A. Smirnov, Moscow; September 4, 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.16-17; DISR, Part I, doc. 66, pp.142-144. 17 September 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, o.2, p.2, d.7, ll.18-19; SIO, Part I, pp.161, 164- 165. See also Tatiana V. Volokitina, Sovetskii faktor v Vostochnoi Evrope: 1944-1953: v dvukh tomakh: dokumenty, vol. 1 (Moskva: ROSSPĖN, 1999), 340–44; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” See also the reports in Natalia Aleksiun, “The Situation of the Jews in Poland as Seen by the Soviet Security Forces in 1945,” Jews in Eastern Europe 37, no. 3 (1998): 57–68. 173 A.A. Smirnov, M.A. Maksimov, L.F. Teplov to V.G. Dekanozov; Moscow; 17 September 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.18-19; DISR, Part I, doc. 68, pp.146-147. 78 tolerated, if not tacitly sanctioned, Jewish emigration. The British noted that Jews’ “exodus from

Poland to Czechoslovakia [which] was taking place in broad daylight.”174

So did Zionist officials, who “assumed that this transit movement […] would not have been allowed without clearance from the Soviets.”175 Furthermore, the supposedly illegal emigration was mostly limited to Jews. Western authorities and Zionist organizations alike noted that the “attitude which they [Soviet representatives] have expressed with respect to Jewish displaced persons [which] is quite at variance with their stand on non-Jewish DPs.”176 Vladimir

Iakovlev, the Political Counselor of the Soviet embassy in Warsaw, known as the link between the Polish authorities and Moscow, even acknowledged to Israel Barzilai, leader of ha-shomer ha-tzair (a Zionist socialist youth organization) that Soviet ambassadors in Europe had been instructed to allow activities relating to Jews’ emigration.177

This turned out to be not far from the truth. Not only were the Soviets turning a blind eye to Jews’ emigration, they, and their satellites, occasionally provided active support for their departure, according to international welfare organizations. Mary Gibbons, Deputy Assistant

Director of U.N.R.R.A. Operation for Europe, wrote that “Jews […] crossing the border […] were transported by train by the Czechs to Bratislava, where the Soviets helped them cross the border to the American zone.”178 Indeed, Czech Deputy Interior Minister Zdenek Toman admitted to have maintained transportation by train of Jews from Poland through Czechoslovakia

174 Cavendish-Bentinck to British consulate in Katowice, no. 39; August 31, 1946; PRO, FO 371/56534/N11440; British consulate, Katowice, to Cavendish-Bentinck, no. 1; September 6, 1946; PRO, FO 688/34; and “Memorandum by Banks” September 10, 1946; PRO, FO 688/34; all three documents cited in Kochavi, Post- Holocaust Politics, 179. 175 Minutes of Mapai Center, Lubianker; August 27, 1946; LPA, 24/46, vol. B; Dr. Mertz; September 9, 1946; HA, 14/77a; Gafni, Oferi, Steiner, and Surkiss, Oral testimonies; HA; all three cited in Kochavi, 188. 176 D.R. Wahl to A.H. Silver; New york, May 15, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 84, pp.196-197. 177 Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making, 32–33. 178 The Ambassador in Poland (Lane) to the Secretary of State; July 25, 1946; Document 113, 840.48 Refugees/7– 2546: Telegram; and The United States Political Adviser for Austria (Erhardt) to the Secretary of State; August 3, 1946; Document 116, 840.48 Refugees/8–346: Telegram; FRUS, 1946, Vol. V, 174-176; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v05/d113 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v05/d116 consulted on October 12, 2017. 79 to Germany and Austria, even though U.N.R.R.A., who had initially accepted to pay for their transportation, denied reimbursement on the basis that these Jews had already been repatriated once – i.e. to Poland.179 The Soviet Union enabled the Jews’ flight,180 though their emigration would have to be represented as “illegal,” according to Kaganovitch.181 Despite claims that they were “taking extreme measures against Jewish infiltrators,” it is obvious that the Soviets encouraged Jews to leave Poland.182

So why would the U.S.S.R. claim to forbid Jewish emigration when it was in fact facilitating it? British intelligence services had an interpretation. They did not think “that the mass movement of the Jews was being encouraged by the Soviets so as to embarrass the British authorities in their occupation zone in Austria and exacerbate the political situation in Palestine.

All that the Russians were doing, they argued, was to pass on the Jewish infiltrators to the

British zone because they constituted a problem for them as well [emphasis is mine].”183 This

British assessment perfectly supports my thesis. Over the past seven decades, historians have interrogated archives, witnesses, actors, Jews themselves, without finding one single reason, convincing enough to stand by itself, explaining why the Soviets let the non-Soviet Jews emigrate. There is a multitude of reasons to collect sufficient likely causes for justifying Soviet

179 Tad Szulc, The Secret Alliance: The Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews since World War II, 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991), 158. 180 Telegram from N. Goldman to A.A. Gromyko (New York); New York; April 13, 1945; CZA Z6/2262; DISR, Part I, doc. 48, pp.97-98; K.D. Golubev to A.A. Smirnov, Moscow, 4 September 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.16-17; DISR, Part I, doc. 66, pp.142-144; A.A. Smirnov, M.A. Maksimov, L.F. Teplov to V.G. Dekanozov; Moscow; 17 September 1946; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.2, d.7, ll.18-19; DISR, Part I, doc. 68, pp.146-147. See also Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making, 26–33. 181 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 182 “Infiltrators” is highlighted by author – it qualifies the Jews who were clandestinely reaching the Western occupation zones in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Note by the Secretariat “Treatment of Jewish Refugees” December 7, 1945; PRO, FO 1005/838: Allied Control Authority, Directorate of Prisoners of War and DPs; cited in Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 167. 183 “Report of the British Intelligence in Austria” no. 564; January 19, 1946; PRO, FO 945/655; cited in Kochavi, 168. 80 policy. Among them, some are irrelevant, others represent the crucial reasons behind Soviet policy, and some are what Moscow identified as secondary benefits resulting from their policy.

Among the irrelevant ones, which also happen to be, chronologically, the first ones suggested by analysts in the aftermath of the war, was the similarity of mainstream Zionist and

Soviet ideologies. Indeed, socialist (Labor) Zionism was at the time the major force within the

Zionist movement and in the Yishuv. Zionist leaders played this card in their negotiations with

Soviet officials.184 Organizations such as the socialist party Mapai, the labor union Histadrut, the

V League (a wartime public committee to support Soviet war effort against Nazism), and the youth organization ha-shomer ha-tzair counted many pro-Soviet members. Western policy- makers and 1950s analysts raised this hypothesis when trying to explain Soviet policy, and this reason is still regularly mentioned among the probable causes for the Soviet decision to let most non-Soviet Jews leave Europe.

It conflates with another potential reason often mentioned by historians – that Stalin might have hoped to be able to influence the political orientation of the Yishuv and to establish, if not a puppet state, at least an ally, in the Middle East. This diplomacy would solve the century- old problem of Russian access to warm water seas. And indeed, there is much evidence that the

N.K.V.D. exploited the Soviet role in defeating Nazism for recruiting Polish Jews among the candidates to emigration.185 Yet, this was not a major incentive to the Soviet policy of letting

184 Shimon Redlich, Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR, 1941-1948, East European Monographs, no. 108 (Boulder, Co: East European Quarterly, 1982), 140–44, 156–57; Pinkus, “Change and Continuity,” 96. On Stalin’s hopes for any future Jewish state’s pro-Soviet stance, see Arnold Krammer, “Soviet Motives in the Partition of Palestine, 1947-48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 2, no. 2 (Winter 1973): 102–19; Other motivations that Krammer suggests (103) appear improbable or insignificant to Kaganovitch: forestalling creation by the West of a Near Eastern base for an attack on the Caucasus; establishing a military presence on the Mediterranean; winning a voice in controlling Near Eastern oil; undermining Western unity by promoting chaos in the region, see Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 185 Krammer, “Soviet Motives,” 115–17. See also Sara K.' testimony in Joachim Schoenfeld and Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust Memoirs: Jews in the Lwów Ghetto, the Janowski Concentration Camp, and as Deportees in Siberia (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing Hause, 1985), 276–92; Samuel Honig, From Poland to Russia and Back: 1939- 81

Polish Jews leave. First, if Stalin expected the future Jewish state to become pro-Soviet, Soviet

Jews should have been able to emigrate as well. They were more Sovietized, and most were grateful to their government for having been evacuated to the rear when the Nazis invaded the

Soviet Union. Second, Stalin did not even try to pull the first Israeli government toward

Sovietism, but conspired behind its back with the Communist Party of Israel, which had almost no power and barely any supporters in the country, as Yaacov Ro’i demonstrated.186

In a different vein, some believe that the Soviet policy reflected a diplomatic strategy to regain control of pre-World War I Russian property in Palestine, the value of which, in 1945, had been estimated at one million Sterling pounds. Using the Zionists was a way to bypass the

British by cultivating good relations with the likely rulers of Palestine in the near future.187 But this latter reason seems unrealistic, as it would presume that Stalin had already anticipated the creation of a Jewish state long before Soviet officials’ behavior betrayed the possibility of a

Soviet pro-Zionist policy and key role in the establishment of Israel, even as short-lived as it would be, from May 1947 to January 1949.

From the diplomatic and Cold War perspective, historians have suggested that Stalin allowed non-Soviet Jews to leave because he wanted to undermine British policy in Palestine and gain ground in the Arab East, as part of the traditional Great Game between Russia and Britain in the Middle East and Central Asia. However, although this was definitely a secondary benefit, it

1946: Surviving the Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Windsor, Ontario: Black Moss Press, 1996), 247; Joseph B. Schechtman, The United States and the Jewish State Movement: The Crucial Decade, 1939-1949 (New York: Herzl Press: T. Yoseloff, 1966), 341–42; Michael Zimmermann, How I Survived the Wars and Peace: My Life in the Gulag, Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors in Canada (Montreal: Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 2001), 134–37; Dina Gabel, Behind the Ice Curtain: The Holocaust Diaries (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1992), 290–92; Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 186 Yaacov Ro’i, “The Deterioration of Relations: From Support to Severance,” Journal of Israeli History 22, no. 1 (March 1, 2003): 21–36. 187 “Memorandum on our Property in Palestine” I.V. Samilovskii and V. Maliarov to V.G. Dekanozov; Moscow; October 10, 1945; AVP RF, f.012, op.6, p.81, d.177, ll.1-6; DISR, Part I, doc. 53, pp.112-115; and Dov Yaroshevski, “Beyond the ‘Russian Property’ Discourse, 1917–53,” Journal of Israeli History 22, no. 1 (March 1, 2003): 56–70. 82 was not the driving force behind the Soviet policy of letting the Jews leave. If this had been the main cause, why did Stalin not allow Soviet Jews to emigrate as well? After the Holocaust, the

U.S.S.R. hosted the largest demographic concentration of Jews, a much greater number than other East-European countries. Almost two million Soviet Jews survived the war, and for sure

Stalin knew that some of them would be candidates to immigrate to British Palestine. Yet, only non-Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate, and over half of them did not travel to British

Palestine but to – or through – Western Europe.

This difference of treatment between Soviet and non-Soviet Jews in Soviet policy had various causes. The first reason was internal: the U.S.S.R. was eager to restore demographic growth after World War II killed between 22 and 27 million citizens (depending on whether with consider “Soviet” the peoples who fell under Soviet rule during World War II). So, emigration was not an option, and for Jews and non-Jews alike, the authorities remained inflexible. In addition, perhaps Soviet ideological self-confidence might have assumed that most Soviet Jews were too Sovietized and assimilated to embrace Zionism. But another reason is worth mentioning. That is, nobody, internally or from abroad, would have dared to question Soviet authority on its own territory (at least on the lands that were already Soviet before 1939) and on its own citizens – as proven by the West’s agreement to forcibly repatriate D.P.s who had already been Soviet citizens before the war. As such, Soviet Jews did not represent a problem for Soviet control over its populations, no matter how they would be treated by the authorities or by the rest of the population. Meanwhile Polish Jews, and to some extent, most non-Soviet Jews in territories under Soviet occupation, were an issue in Soviet efforts to control Poland and other

East-European countries.

83

Indeed, Poles were very hostile to both Soviet rule and returning Jews. As they often associated the two, they forced the Soviets into a dilemma. They could either confirm the

Judeokommuna myth by protecting the Jews from Poles’ antisemitism – therefore intensifying their own unpopularity and undermining the authority of the pro-Soviet Polish government; or they would let the Poles display various degrees of post-Holocaust antisemitism and thus expose to the international community the failure of the Soviet occupation of Poland. Both attitudes would have been harmful to the international image of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. They would have disproved Soviet propaganda of “solving antisemitism at its roots” by imposing its system of “popular democracy” in East-European countries. Inasmuch as anti-Jewish violence had been an argument to justify Soviet occupation of Poland, if antisemitism had been allowed to continue under Moscow’s control, it could have discredited Soviet authority as well.

In sum, imposing Soviet influence on hostile populations, with the tolerance of the international community, became irreconcilable with repressing antisemitism. The Communist

Poles, even more so than the Soviets, knew that protecting the Jews from Polish antisemitism was only jeopardizing their own fragile authority. Was it the Polish government that convinced

Moscow to get rid of the Jewish problem by allowing Jews to emigrate and thus removing the problem altogether by letting antisemitism’s victims vanish? The archives are not clear enough to affirm this. Nevertheless, the Polish government wanted the Jews out of Poland, in order to solve antisemitism without being forced to repress it and because it aspired to make postwar

Poland as monoethnic as possible.

Thus the real reason that led to Soviet tolerance, unpublicized yet often quite proactive, for Zionist activities toward Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe, depended on diplomacy within Eastern Europe, under the shadow of the Cold War. Of course, this policy had many

84 consequences – some unrelated, and even maybe unanticipated by Moscow – which Soviet leaders later exploited to their advantage as well. Among these secondary benefits from the massive Jewish emigration westward, the U.S.S.R. participated in the humanitarian problem faced by the Western powers in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Indeed the number of Jewish D.P.s rose from 70,000 at the end of the war to 250,000 in 1948. Although the main goal was to rid

Poland of its own Jewish problem, it consequently displaced the problem toward the Western zones, where more Jewish D.P.s fueled the numbers of candidates for immigration to Palestine.

And to the Soviet advantage, it threw at once two bones of contention between its most significant Cold War adversaries, Britain and the United States.

Displacement of the Jewish problem westward: U.S. policy toward Jewish refugees

Regardless of Soviet motives toward non-Soviet Jews, as these Jewish refugees fled westward, they became the responsibility and the problem of the Western powers. Soviet actions had direct consequences on U.S. policy toward Jewish D.P.s, since most of them came from Soviet- controlled territories. In 1945, the U.S. position was clear: while favoring repatriation, it would not force it, in the name of self-determination. On the other hand, the British sought to pressure

Jews to return to their country of origin in order to prevent them from waiting in D.P. camps for an eventual visa for Palestine or an illegal opportunity to join the Yishuv. Soviet decision to let

Jews migrate directly affected the refugee issue in Western Europe, and indirectly, participated in framing U.S. policy toward them. Western powers considered East-European Jews as part of the non-repatriable D.P.s, as their entire world had been torn apart and antisemitism remained strong in their places of origin. Yet as the number of Jewish refugees grew, policies evolved, and tensions among the Western Allies regarding the fate of Jews increased – and Moscow soon 85 realized it could exploit these tensions for Soviet interest. Initially, the Harrison Report, ordered by President Truman, became the cornerstone of a liberal policy toward Jews found in and flocking into the American zone, but the unending flow of Jewish refugees from the Soviet zone in the context of escalating East-West tensions created conflicts with Britain and within the U.S. government.

U.S. leaders and occupation forces initially thought they could manage repatriation for most European displaced persons, and did not consider the Jews as a special case. When they realized that two thirds of European Jewry had been systematically murdered during the war, that survivors were more mentally and physically traumatized than other D.P.s, and that strong antisemitism was still potent in Europe, they acknowledged the Jews’ specificity.188 In the summer 1945, President Truman sent Earl Harrison to evaluate the situation of all non- repatriable D.P.s, but more specifically, of the Jews, who were primarily former citizens of

Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Austria.189 Harrison’s results were disturbing and drew a dark picture of the Jews’ situation. “They [Jewish D.P.s] have little to do except […] to draw comparisons between their treatment ‘under the Germans’ and ‘in liberation’. Beyond knowing that they are no longer in danger of the gas chambers, torture, and other forms of violent death, they see – and there is – little change. […] The first and plainest need of these people is a recognition of their actual status and by this I mean their status as Jews.”190

The report was instrumental in shaping U.S. policy. Harrison was outraged. Although the

Allies “have recognized formerly persecuted persons, including enemy or ex-enemy nationals, as one of the special categories of displaced persons,” he deplored that “the general practice thus far

188 Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 33–34. 189 “Note”; Topics File 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 190 Dinnerstein: America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 33-34. 86 has been to follow only nationality lines.” Despite the fact that in theory, “it is not normally desirable to set aside particular racial or religious groups from their nationality categories,”

Harrison justified his position toward Jewish D.P.s by the fact that “this was done for so long by the Nazis that a group has been created which has special needs.”191

The British initially resisted this assessment of Jewish specificity, but because of public opinion and after much persuasion from the U.S., all Western powers recognized the specificity of the Jewish case regardless of their citizenship of origin in 1939. The U.S. won this debate, and by fall 1945, following the Harrison Report’s suggestion, the Jews were treated as a separate nation in all D.P. camps across the Western zones. “Jews as Jews […] have been more severely victimized than the non-Jewish members of the same or other nationalities. […] I recommend urgently that separate camps be set up for Jews [… because …] it is the only way in which administratively their special needs and problems can be met without charges of preferential treatment or (oddly enough) charges of ‘discrimination’ with respect to Jewish agencies.”192

The report also triggered some changes within U.S. management of the D.P. camps.

Truman transmitted Harrison’s preliminary report to General Eisenhower on August 31, 1945, with some recommendations to improve the life of Jews within and outside the camps. Truman urged Eisenhower to find them decent housing situation, if possible outside of the camps. “Some of these camps are the very ones where these people were herded together, starved, tortured and made to witness the death of their fellow-inmates and friends and relatives.”193 The preliminary report narrated the disturbing situation of the Jews, as a barely veiled reproach to Eisenhower,

191 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 192 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 193 “Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 87 who was responsible for the occupation zone: “many of the Jewish displaced persons, late in

July, had no clothing other than their concentration camp garb – a rather hideous, striped pajama effect – while others, to their chagrin, were obliged to wear SS uniforms. It is questionable which clothing they hate the more.” The preliminary report also mentioned the fact that there was no centralized program to help the Jews reconnect with their lost family members. It concluded, “in many cases […] they are the sole survivor of their families and many have been through the agony of witnessing the destruction of their loved ones. Understandably, therefore, their present condition, physical and mental, is far worse than that of other groups.”194

Eisenhower’s response was prompt. “Special centers have been established for Jewish displaced persons. […] The American Joint Distribution Committee was called upon to supervise the establishment of these centers.”195 Indeed, contrary to the Soviets, who were very suspicious of Western or international Jewish organizations and only tolerated, to some extent and silently, Zionist and local Jewish institutions within the territories it controlled, the U.S. chose to rely on Jewish organizations to assist in the management of the Jewish D.P.s within and outside the camps.

Improvements were made, but according to some, nothing close to what was actually needed, and certainly not quickly enough. Although Jews were progressively considered an ethnic group rather than treated according to their citizenship of origins, humanitarian personnel kept complaining about the Jews’ situation in the camps. A survey led by U.S. and British authorities denounced the “panicky conditions of 100,000 Jews who are utterly homeless and are

‘living’ in ill-equipped concentration camps in Italy, Austria and Germany.” In addition, a

194 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 195 “Letter from General Eisenhower to President Truman” October 8, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 88

U.N.R.R.A. officer, Dr. Lee Srole, declared on December 5, 1945: “I am resigning against my will as the only means of effective protest on the eve of a disastrous epidemic [… which] will almost certainly decimate this physically broken, tiny remnant of the millions of Europe’s prewar

Jews.” He insisted that return to their country of origin was dangerous: “these afflicted souls dread the return to their former homes among hostile people […] as in the case of a handful of despaired Jews who returned to Poland. Facts of their massacre are a matter of public record.”

Therefore, according to some U.N.R.R.A. officers, the United States, as “the constitutional power in a great portion of Germany where some of these people are exposed to starvation, disease and other privations” is “directly responsible for their fate. So that they may not perish under the Stars and Stripes, we respectfully propose, Mr. President: […] to accede to the repatriation to Palestine of these tested human beings […] with a stipulation that they constitute part of the ‘immigration quota’.”196

Life in camps, among fellow Jews who survived the war in one way or another, led

Jewish refugees to forge a common identity connected to their recent persecution and their present homelessness. This common identity of Shoah survivors, or sh’erit ha-pletah as Jews came to call themselves, was the first step toward building a national sentiment. This process was encouraged by Zionist organizations allowed to operate in the U.S. camps, which progressively came to represent most Jewish D.P.s, whether they were Zionist or not themselves.

Indeed, one of the consequences of the Holocaust, and of the rebuilding of life among Jews in these camps, was the acknowledgement of the need for a Jewish state. Even the Jewish refugees who would not have defined themselves as Zionists, and were waiting in these camps in the aim of immigrating to the New World rather than to Palestine, would not undermine the Zionist

196 “Letter (Petition?) to the President” December 10, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 89 project. With Hannah Arendt, there was the idea that only a nation-state could guarantee civil and human rights, both for Jews who would become citizens of this state and for those who would choose to remain an ethnic minority in another country.197

The Harrison report also pointed to another problem: it denounced some U.S. officers’ reluctance to alienate the German population, which sometimes flirted with a tendency toward antisemitism. “The military government officers manifest the utmost reluctance or indisposition, if not timidity, about inconveniencing the German population. They even say that their job is to get communities working properly and soundly again, that they must ‘live with the Germans while the DPs are a more temporary problem’.” As a result military government officers often favored the employment of German civilians over equally qualified displaced persons “whose repatriation is not imminent.”198

In 1945, this reluctance to alienate the German population was not yet set in Cold War rhetoric, in which Germany would stand as the fortress of Western civilization against Soviet expansionism. At this time, this tendency arose from an identification that U.S. citizens found with Germans and other ethnic groups of Northern origins, with whom they seemed to have more in common than with Jews. Indeed, Holocaust survivors and returnees from the Soviet rear appeared as aliens. Many were unhealthy, had poor hygiene, could be withdrawn, and were often aggressive.199 Without proper knowledge of the wartime conditions that had created this situation in the first place, not to mention their own racial and antisemitic prejudices, U.S. troops and some officers, and occasionally politicians who traveled in postwar Europe, had troubles

197 Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman, 1st ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 2007). 198 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 199 See below in chapters 2 and 3. 90 empathizing with the Jews, whereas they understood the orderly Germans and other non-Jewish displaced persons. Racial prejudice might have occasionally driven some of the negative description of Jews.

Yet, the Harrison report had been persuasive. It became the cornerstone of U.S. liberal policy toward Jewish D.P.s. Truman recounted that he found it “a moving document. The misery it depicted could not be allowed to continue.”200 In parallel with the ongoing postwar trials, local and international (the most famous being the Nuremberg trials), which uncovered the scale of persecutions against the Jews, the report participated in obtaining for Jews in D.P. camps a special status, slightly better than citizens of former enemy countries. This minimal improvement of the Jews’ treatment was a source of resentment from other D.P.s, and also from the German population.201 If the Harrison Report acknowledged the remaining presence of a strong antisemitism in Europe, firmly opposed repatriation, and called for the recognition of

Jews as a distinct group entitled to preferential treatment, it remained silent on the sensitive and controversial question of their potential immigration to the U.S., rather calling for the

“repatriation” of 100,000 Jewish D.P.s to British Palestine.

Though the report adopted a moral approach, it did not neglect politics. Truman was sensitive to two domestic trends: anxiety about the potential wave of European immigrants uprooted by the war, and the electoral and financial significance of American Jews. The latter was not yet what would a decade later become an organized and efficient pressure group, or lobby, and was definitely weaker than Stalin assumed. Yet Jewish communities were vocal and their support for Democratic party was critical in some areas. The Cold War was progressively

200 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, 1st ed. (New York: New American Library, 1965), 138. See also At War with the Experts “Episode 6 - Decision: The Conflicts of Harry S. Truman” November 1964, http://www.c- spanvideo.org/program/197078-1 consulted on September 11, 2018. 201 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism. 91 looming in the background, creating urge to rebuild Western Europe economically to prevent peoples from turning toward communism for answers. This was especially true in Germany, where the density of population had increased with the above-mentioned arrival of 12 million ethnic Germans and the permanent flow of stateless persons, non-repatriable, arriving from the

East. The number of displaced Jews increased more than any other group in 1945-1947.

The Western powers watched, concerned but helpless spectators, the flow of Jews whom the Soviet authorities allowed to migrate westward. In June 1946, the U.S. military authorities had set the resettlement of “some 300,000 - 400,000 non-repatriable displaced persons, including some 62,000 Jews” as one of its main goals. It would mark “the success of the second year of our occupation of Germany.”202 But the number of Jews grew dramatically within the next months, especially in the wake of the Kielce pogrom in July 1946. According to the U.S. forces on the ground, 63,000 Jews left Poland between July and September 1946.203 “Our military authorities in Germany report that 10,000 Jewish infiltrees are arriving in the US zone monthly and this flow is expected to double within the next few months. The majority apparently come through Austria and practically all are Polish.”204 Starting in the summer 1946, U.S. forces, powerless to stem the tide, observed thousands of Jews coming through Austria, and reported rumors that “Czechoslovakia had opened the Polish-Czech border to these movements.” The

U.S. embassy in Warsaw estimated that about 700 Jews per day were leaving Poland illegally, and that the total number of Jews ready to emigrate was around 100,000.205 By September,

202 “Report to the President by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson” June 11, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8: “Germany General 2”; Box 156; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 203 Malcolm Jarvis Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939-52: A Study in Forced Population Movement, Northwestern University Studies. Social Sciences Series 10 (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1956), 341. 204 Summary of Telegrams, July 1, 1946; State Department Briefs Files, 1946 June-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 205 Summary of Telegrams, August 5, 1946; State Department Briefs Files, 1946 June-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 92

1947, the number of Jews who had left Poland and were living in D.P. camps in the U.S. zone was about 180,000, and this after many thousands had left the camps on their own.206

Truman initially designed a liberal open door policy toward the refugees making their way from Eastern to Western Europe. Despite calling them “infiltrators,” the authorities accepted them, concentrated them in separate camps, and provided them with reasonable care.207

Most of these “infiltrators” were Jews, which is more proof that the Soviets did control their zone’s border and gave tacit authorization to Jews only to move westward toward the Western zones. Not everyone in the Truman administration approved of this liberal policy; some wanted limits. The initial assessment was that “only 80,000 to 100,000 persecuted persons (the Jewish group who are in separate Displaced Persons camps) would continue to live in the camps and receive care.”208 Yet, with the dramatic increase in the number of Jewish refugees flocking from the East into the U.S. zone in the spring and summer 1946 (and even occasionally from the

British and French zones, where they were not given the same care), General McNarney wanted to seal the border or to withhold D.P. status when the camps reached 100,000 inmates.209

Some serious thought was given to the project of sealing the border of the U.S. zone. Yet the Jews continued to be admitted, despite the anticipation that overcrowded D.P. camps would create more troubles. Especially if Jews faced delays in their admission to Palestine, “protests and demonstrations in Jewish displaced persons camps, including suicide and large scale

206 Ignacy Blum, Z Dziejów Wojska Polskiego w Latach 1945-1948, Wyd. 1, Biblioteka Wiedzy Wojskowej (Warszawa: Wydawn. Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1960); cited in Litvak, “Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland.” 207 McNarney to Office of Military Government (Western District), October 13, 1945; file 4, box 1, Fait Collection; HIA. 208 “Memorandum on American Policy on Displaced Persons” E.A.L. Jr. to President Truman, March 20, 1946, transmitted on April 4, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 209 “Refugees and DPs, McNarney to War Office, no.6224, June 23, 1946” and “teletype conference, June 27, 1946” and “McNarney to Eisenhower, no.6553, June 28, 1946”; FSCC of Petersen, Dec. 1945-Aug. 1947; ASW 383.7; RG 107; NACP; cited in Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics. 93 attempts to cross the borders to and France, are to be expected.”210 Eventually, no

Jews were denied entry to the U.S. zone or to its D.P. camps, when they were coming from the

Soviet-occupied territories. U.S. officers found a middle ground, or, rather, a fig leaf, to alleviate the management of their zone, by closing the U.S. zone to refugees coming from the British and

French zones, but otherwise not placing limits on refugees fleeing from the East.211 In other words, the U.S. expected its Western Allies to do their share, by taking care of the Jews already in their zones, whether they liked it or not, while the U.S. would manage those fleeing the Soviet zone – another sign of the emerging of the Cold War.

Indeed, in opposition to this pressure from the U.S. authorities in Europe hoping to reduce or limit the number of non-repatriable Jewish D.P.s in the American zone, Truman faced domestic pressure emanating from public opinion, lobbyists, artists, and even Congress, strongly rejecting attempts to close the borders to Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. Even personalities such as Groucho Marx wrote to the President about the Jewish D.P.s. “I am sure that you are deluged with mail of this sort, but even a president at times can be confused. […] Despite all this I propose voting for you in 1948.” Truman’s response was polite, but vague: “no one has given this displaced persons program more thought, and more effort, than I have. It is one of the terrible results of war, and is now becoming one of the hardest for solution. I do certainly appreciate your interest in it very much.”212 In July 1946, House majority leader John

McCormack – so a democrat from Truman’s own party – raised the question of closing the U.S.

210 “Report to the President by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson” June 11, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8: “Germany General 2”; Box 156; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 211 “Letter from Secretary of State Byrnes to the President” July 26, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 212 “Letter from Groucho Marx to the President” and “President’s Response to Groucho Marx” October 8 and 19, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 94 zone border to Jews, and expressed his opinion “it would be most unfortunate if the border of the

American Zone was closed to these unfortunate people who are trying to flee to safety.”213

With the Jewish D.P. problem becoming unmanageable and the domestic pressure to solve the question increasing, Truman, initially sympathetic to the Jews’ plight, eventually grew bitter about the Jewish refugees. Truman’s answer to McCormack sounded disillusioned: “We simply can’t take care of all of them – it is not our business to take care of all of them and eventually there will have to be a limit, much as I regret it.”214 With closer friends or advisors,

Truman’s bitterness appeared even more clearly, if not bluntly. In the fall 1946, his friend and confidante Edwin Pauley215 raised the issue in moving words:

“We cannot bring five million dead bodies to life. […] But we can […] make certain that the over one million European Jews who survived the Nazi terror are given a chance to live. […] America has a grave responsibility to see to it that the Jews who are in camps in the American Zones in Germany and Austria are moved out as quickly as possible. They have no ties in these countries and no desire to go back to the countries in which their families were maimed, tortured and murdered. […] It seems to me that the time for inquiries, for investigations, for commissions, for discussions and diplomatic maneuvers has past. Elementary human decency and morality require that these human beings be moved as soon as possible, to places where they can live without fear on equal footing with their fellow man.”

To this compassionate plea, Truman’s response reflected his powerlessness and frustration from not being able to solve the issue in a way that would satisfy everyone – but he attributed the responsibility of failure mainly to Jews themselves, and to some extent to London:

“This situation in insoluble. […] Not only are the British highly successful in muddling the situation as completely as it could possibly be muddled, but the Jews themselves are

213 “Letter from Office of the Majority Leader John W. McCormack to the President” and “President’s Response to John W. McCormack” July 22 and 24, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 214 “Letter from Office of the Majority Leader John W. McCormack to the President” and “President’s Response to John W. McCormack” July 22 and 24, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 215 Pauley was at Potsdam with the rank of Ambassador and industrial/commercial advisor. As president, Truman appointed him U.S. representative to the Allied Reparations Committee from 1945 to 1947. 95

making it almost impossible to do anything for them. They seem to have the same attitude toward the ‘under dog’ when they are on top as they have been treated as ‘under dogs’ themselves. […] I am going to spend the rest of my time here at this place working for the best interest of the whole country and let the chips fall where they may.”216

It is obvious that Truman’s presidency spent energy on the non-repatriable Jewish D.P. problem disproportionate to the scale of the problem itself. But stating that the Jews are “on top” might have been somewhat of an overstatement when talking of Jewish refugees in D.P. camps.

Still, the Administration sought solutions. Sending the Jews back to their place of origins, or resettling them in Germany or Austria, were not realistic options, as antisemitism was strong in both areas, and most Jews did not want to remain in German lands. There were only two choices left: resettling them in the U.S. or elsewhere – the most obvious place being the

Yishuv in British Mandate Palestine. Truman proactively worked toward both solutions. His primary attention was devoted to working toward a solution for these Jews to resettle in the

United States.217 But his efforts were not very successful. Although he managed to obtain from

Congress what came to be known as the (First) Displaced Persons’ Act in June 1948, this piece of legislation was still discriminatory, as it only benefited the D.P.s who arrived in the zone before December 22, 1945, which de facto excluded most Jewish refugees. Truman signed it anyway, as shameful as it was due to its undeclared yet blatant exclusion of Jews, because it still represented an improvement in the U.S. immigration policy toward other groups of displaced persons. Truman eventually won this battle in the Second Displaced Persons’ Act of 1951. But both D.P. Acts came too late anyway: by June 1948, the state of Israel had come into being, so

Jews who wished so already had a way out of the D.P. camps and of Europe.

216 “Letter from Edwin W. Pauley to the President” and “President’s Response to Edwin W. Pauley” October 9 and 22, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 217 “Statement by Charles G. Ross, Secretary to the President” August 16, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Palestine Press Release”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 96

It took Truman over six years to convince the U.S. public and elected public servants to pass the Second D.P. Act, because the question of immigration was a very heated topic.

Americans had a vision of a very troublesome Europe, which they had to rescue from itself twice in the past 25 years. Their sympathies went to West-European peoples such as British and

French, and to North-European peoples whose values and way of life they thought could better assimilate into the U.S., as shown by their commitment to the system of immigration based on quotas, made in proportion to the ethnic groups already present in the U.S. citizenry. But they felt no sympathy whatsoever with East- and South-European peoples. Their sympathy for the ordeal of European Jewry under Nazi rule did not extend to welcoming the survivors. U.S. leaders and public opinion were outraged by the genocide of European Jews, and their postwar plight of being stuck in camps; but they were not ready to welcome them as U.S. citizens. Part of it might also have been due to their fear of communist infiltration through this large group of

East-European Jewish refugees – a prejudice that paralleled in the West the Polish fear of

Judeokommuna. But the shift in rhetoric from World War to Cold War, in which the Soviets quickly replaced the Germans as villains, eventually did the trick.

Indeed, paradoxically, this shift in rhetoric contributed to framing public and congressional opinions against the sealing of the borders to “freedom lovers” fleeing Soviet- occupied areas, while at the same time it fueled Americans’ fears to admit these very same refugees into the United States. So in parallel to his relentless efforts to designing legislation that would allow some Jews to resettle in the U.S., Truman also endeavored to find other solutions to help Jews find their way out of the D.P. camps, mostly through his efforts to persuade the British to admit 100,000 Jews into Palestine, as suggested by the Harrison Report.

This element of the report might have been among the most controversial ones: it was a source of

97 concern both domestically, between different branches of the Truman administration, and internationally, between the U.S., Britain, the Arab states, and the Zionist institutions. Yet, in this way too, the Harrison Report had set the line of U.S. policy on Jewish D.P.s for the years to come. It designed Palestine rather than the U.S. as Jewish D.P.s’ most desired destination, and suggested allocating 100,000 visas for Palestine to Jewish refugees in D.P. camps. However, the

U.S. did not control the doors to Palestine. Britain did.

Truman’s instructions to accept all Jewish refugees flocking into the U.S. zone from

Eastern Europe created some conflicts within his own government. The most obvious one was between the Department of War and the White House. While the latter insisted that all Jews be taken care of and admitted to the D.P. camps under U.S. administration, both for humanitarian concerns and for public relations purposes, the former had to handle the refugees on the ground, the increase in the camps’ population, and the troubles that camp inmates might create. Thus, according to War Secretary Patterson, “the U.S. has retained the humanitarian reputation and good will it has gained for its care of these people [Jews] to date by continuation of a liberal policy by the Army regarding reception and care of increased numbers of them. While the borders of the U.S. zone of Germany and Austria have been closed to other classes of immigrants, Jewish refugees have continued to be received.” However, Patterson considered that the U.S. zone was about to reach its limit: “Should an influx of unmanageable proportion be indicated, it may be necessary to close the borders in spite of the possibility of incidents which may develop from use of German border patrols which must be used for this purpose.”218

Truman’s liberal policy also disturbed the Department of State, albeit for different reasons. The Jews could not be resettled in Europe against their will, and the legislative process

218 “Report to the President by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson” June 11, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8: “Germany General 2”; Box 156; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 98 to admit them into the U.S. was slow and full of obstacles. Therefore, the State Department, in line with the British Foreign Office, knew that the more Jews accumulated in these D.P. camps in Europe, the more candidates there would be for immigration to Palestine. Yet it claimed to be concerned by the status of Jews in Europe as much as by the situation in Palestine: “Mass emigration [… of Jews to Palestine …] would raise questions with regard to the political rights and the political status of Jews in Europe, to the restoration of Jewish property, and to the reintegration of the Jewish population into the economic life of various European countries. The announcement of such a policy now might affect the policy of many European governments towards the Jews.”219 In fact, the Department of State was deeply anti-Zionist, in the context of the escalating Soviet-U.S. struggle for influence in the Cold War world. In parallel, the question of letting Jews immigrate to Palestine also divided the legislative and executive branches of the government, some in Congress being even more anti-Zionist than the State Department. But foreign policy was in the hands of President Truman.220

On top of these internal differences, Truman’s liberal policy also became a source of conflict between the U.S. and Britain. Unlike the U.S.S.R., Britain had not only been the main

U.S. wartime ally, it was also definitely its closest associate, even more so in the nascent Cold

War. Despite the 1917 , in which Lord Balfour declared Britain’s willingness to create a national home for the Jews in Palestine, and the League of Nations’

Mandate which integrated this Declaration and re-emphasized its commitment, the British displayed a strong anti-Zionism since the mid-1930s. London had taken anti-immigration measures to appease the Arabs on the eve of World War II. But after the war, anti-Zionism

219 “Memorandum: Immigration into Palestine Previous to a Final Decision with regard to the Future Status of Palestine” Department of State, From Division of Near Eastern Affairs Mr. Loy W. Henderson to the Secretary of State, August 29, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 220 Françoise Ouzan, Ces Juifs dont l’Amérique ne voulait pas, 1945-1950 (Bruxelles: Complexe, 1995), 105–19. 99 became Britain’s official policy, even when the Labor Party, traditionally more supportive of

Jewish national aspirations, came to power. British manifestations of anti-Zionism started in their treatment of Jews in Europe after the liberation of the camps.

President Truman, after receiving the Harrison Report, raised the issue of providing special treatment for the Jewish D.P.s in a letter to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The latter strongly opposed the idea: “they [British representatives on the Control Commission] have endeavoured to avoid treating people on a racial basis. […] One must remember that within these camps were people from almost every race in Europe and there appears to have been very little difference in the amount of torture and treatment they had to undergo.” Pushing cynicism to its extreme, he justified the British position in the name of anti-racism. “Now, if our officers had placed the Jews in a special racial category at the head of the queue, my strong view is that the effect of this would have been disastrous for the Jews and therefore their attempt to treat them alike was a right one.”221

Whether Attlee really believed that there “have been very little difference in the amount of torture and treatment” between Jews and non-Jews is a matter for his biographers or for historians of Holocaust denial. But it is rather obvious from other statements that the British knew quite well the Nazis had relentlessly singled out Jews for harsher treatment and extermination, despite Attlee’s letter to Truman. The fact that the British authorities would eventually give in, and allow the Jewish D.P.s to be considered a separate group – the most important Jewish-only camp in the British zone would soon become Belsen – rather than according to their prewar citizenships, confirms the hypocrisy of this letter. It also leads to the real reason for British resistance to giving the Jews special treatment: the British wanted to

221 “Telegram from Prime Minister Attlee to the President” September 16, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Jews DPs”; Box 159; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 100 prevent any precedent that might give some recognition to Jewish nationhood and therefore create a link between the Jewish D.P.s and the Palestine issue.

Yet Truman acknowledged this link when he suggested that 100,000 Jews be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, despite his claims that this would not presume of Palestine’s future status. For the Allies’ goal of rebuilding a peaceful and blossoming Europe, “the main solution appears to lie in the quick evacuation of as many as possible of the non-repatriable Jews, who wish it, to Palestine.”222 This was actually the real issue preventing the British from accepting to treat the Jews as a specific group regardless of their prewar citizenship. London rejected the view that the Jews should be allowed to leave Europe, or even Germany. Attlee even claimed that it would equate to “accepting Hitler’s thesis.”223 Anglo-American conflict over this issue was of great concern to the two allies. They knew they had to sort things out if they wanted to limit Soviet power within the international organizations or in regional arrangements that were taking shape in the postwar world. A solution, so the British thought, would be worked out with more U.S.-British collaborative work on the Jewish D.P.s and the situation in Palestine.

This is the reason why the British government suggested the creation of the Anglo-

American Committee of Inquiry Regarding the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine

(A.A.C.I.). Britain wanted the U.S. to take joint responsibility, with the hope that a closer look at the situation in Palestine would lead Truman to relax his pressure concerning the 100,000 certificates for immigration to Palestine. The A.A.C.I.’s goal was to examine the situation of the

Jews in Europe and look into the possibilities of relocating them.224 London tried to suggest

222 “Letter from the President to Prime Minister Attlee, with Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached” August 31, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Jews DPs”; Box 159; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 223 “Informal record of Conversation, British Embassy, Washington D.C.” October 19, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 224 The British Ambassador (Halifax) to the Secretary of State; October 19, 1945; Document 750, 867N.01/10–1945; and “Memorandum of conversation” between the Secretary of State and the British Ambassador (Halifax), October 22, 1945; Document 753, 740.00119 FEAC/10–2245; FRUS, 1945, Vol. VIII; 771-775 and 779-783; 101

Palestine as only one option among many other potential places for the Jews’ relocation.

Nonetheless, Palestine was the only place actually mentioned by name in the Committee’s title.

The A.A.C.I. proceeded to D.P. camps in Europe and to Palestine over the winter 1945-1946 and submitted its findings in the spring.225

The A.A.C.I.’s final report, submitted on April 20, 1946, made ten recommendations. It reiterated the demand for granting 100,000 certificates for admission to Palestine to “Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist persecutions.” But it also mentioned that Palestine was not meant to absorb all Jewish D.P.s, and that most of them shall remain and/or be resettled in Europe.

Palestine should eventually become neither a Jewish nor an Arab state, but one guarding the rights to the Holy Land for Muslims, Jews, and alike. Yet, until hostility between

Jews and Arabs disappeared, Palestine should remain under British Mandate or a trusteeship under U.N. authority. It suggested that the mandatory power facilitate Jewish immigration, and in this aim called for the abrogation of the 1939 White Paper. It had been designed to appease the Arab population, then in open rebellion in what came to be known as the Arab Great Revolt of 1936-1939. This White Paper restricted Jewish immigration and Jewish acquisition and ownership of land. The A.A.C.I. also called for economic and educational development for both

Jewish and Arab communities, and asked their commitment to renounce violence and cooperate with Mandate authorities.

President Truman quickly moved forward on April 30, 1946, by endorsing the report’s recommendations favorable to Zionism, such as the 100,000 certificates for Jewish immigration

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v08/d750 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v08/d753 consulted on October 12, 2017. 225 Allen Howard Podet, The Success and Failure of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1945-1946: Last Chance in Palestine (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). 102 and the immediate abrogation of the 1939 White Paper.226 He did so despite some opposition from his own State Department. Although the Division of the Occupied Areas, under Assistant

Secretary of State John H. Hilldring, supported any measure that would favor the emigration of

Jewish refugees from the U.S. zone, on the other hand, the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, under Gordon Merriam, claimed that U.S. relations with the Arab world would be dangerously jeopardized if the report’s measures favorable to Zionism were implemented. Truman’s public position angered London. The British government started threatening to reject the report, and even to abandon its Mandate on Palestine, which was a great economic and military burden, unless the U.S. committed to participate in providing financial and military assistance.

As a result of this argument, a new committee was created to explore the A.A.C.I.’s proposals and prepare their implementation. Under the supervision of the British cabinet minister Herbert Morrison and the U.S. ambassador Henry Grady, the committee produced the

Morrison-Grady Plan proposing a unitary federal trusteeship in Palestine. It would grant semi- autonomy to two areas, one Jewish and one Arab, under the oversight of the British High

Commissioner. Jerusalem and the Negev desert, as well as responsibility for the region’s defense, foreign relations, customs, and immigration, would remain under direct British control.

In October 1946, Britain submitted the plan to both sides. Both rejected it – the Arabs on the grounds that it would lead to partition, and the Jews because they would not settle for less than immediate partition. Both also opposed it because it would have effectively strengthened British control over Palestine.227 Truman did not endorse this plan, as he leaned more and more toward

226 The Acting Secretary of State (Acheson) to the Secretary of State; April 30, 1946; Document 452, 867N.01/4– 3046: Telegram; FRUS, 1946, Vol. VII; 588-589; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d452 consulted on November 2, 2017; and “Public Papers of President Harry S. Truman” 1946, no. 92, April 30, 1946; https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1534&st=&st1 consulted on November 2, 2017. 227 Amikam Nachmani, Great Power Discord in Palestine: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945-1946 (London: Frank Cass, 1987); Spiegel, The Other Arab- Israeli Conflict; Howard Morley Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936-1954 (New York: Knopf, 1972). 103 a solution to the European Jewish D.P.s problem that involved Palestine in some ways. Yet the two allies wanted to avoid public confrontation on these topics, especially as the relations with the Soviet Union were becoming more difficult every day.

Speaking of the devil, the evolution of the U.S. interpretation of Soviet policy on Jewish migrations was also a source of tensions with Britain, but eventually evolved in tandem with the

Cold War and the increase in the number of Jewish D.P.s in the Western zones. From a genuine image of Jewish refugees fleeing spontaneously, the U.S. government increasingly adopted the

British point of view that the Soviets were conspiring to mess with the Western powers in

Europe and Palestine by pushing the Jews out. Even the British embassy in Warsaw regularly communicated to its own government that the Jews were eager to leave, pushed away by Polish antisemitism rather than by Soviet strategy or Zionist activism. Yet in a fanning of Cold War flames, London ignored its own embassy and intelligence reports.228 Instead it kept claiming that

Moscow was encouraging the Polish government to allow Jews to leave. Sometimes London even accused the Soviets of sending Jews as agents of communist infiltration in Western Europe and Palestine. Was it a strategy to get Washington, sensitive to the threat of communism, to relax its pressure for Jewish visas to Palestine? In any case, the tactic did not work.

In 1945, no U.S. official doubted that the Jews were genuinely fleeing Poland by fear of antisemitism: “Rightest elements of the violent sort […] are engaged in provoking anti-Semitic outbreaks, hoping that suppression of them by the government will make the government unpopular.”229 Over the summer 1946, British and U.S. diplomats attempted to get East-

European governments, notably Poland and Czechoslovakia, to cooperate in slowing down the

228 “Report of the British Intelligence in Austria” no. 564; January 19, 1946; PRO, FO 945/655; cited in Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 162–68. 229 “Letter to the President from Irving Brant” Polonia Hotel, Warsaw, October 15, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3 “Poland”; Box 163; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 104 influx. They emphasized the “critical situation […] created by the exodus of thousands of

Jewish refugees from Poland to our zone in Austria” and requested their cooperation “in regulating the movement of these refugees.”230 But according to historian Arieh Kochavi,

London believed that it was useless to ask the Polish government for cooperation to stop Jews’ departure from Poland, because of its lack of control over its own territory, and because they assumed that the Polish government wanted the Jews out anyway in order to decrease antisemitism by removing its targets.231 After all attempts to cooperate with East-European states had failed, American perception of Soviet policy on Jewish emigration grew closer to the

British’s, though without adopting their rhetoric of a supposed Soviet-Zionist conspiracy.

This claim can be easily disproved by the fact that the Zionists themselves kept wondering why the Soviets were so lenient toward their own activities and the emigration of some 150,000 non-Soviet Jews by late 1946. Jacob Robinson, founder and head of the Institute of Jewish Affairs sponsored by the World Jewish Congress, and legal adviser for the Jewish

Agency, provided his interpretation of Soviet liberal practices. “These 150,000 Jews in the

Soviet Union presented a problem. Either they keep them and they will have an enemy who will be a source of trouble on [their] hands, or they let them out and have 150,000 propagandists against the Soviet Union, and they weighed these two evils.”232 Although a questionable interpretation, it does suggest that there was no Soviet-Zionist conspiracy. Yet by late 1947,

U.S. officials shared with the British that although the Russians called “border crossers” and

“black marketeers” the Jews who crossed into the Western zones, “in truth and in fact, the

Russians are deliberately trying to create additional havoc and embarrassment to our inadequate

230 Summary of Telegrams, August 13, 1946; State Department Briefs Files, 1946 June-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 231 Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 164–66. 232 “Minutes of a Report of J. Robinson at a Meeting of the American Zionist Emergency Council” New York, 19 November 1946; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 70, pp.150-157. 105

Army of Occupation in Germany and Austria by driving truck loads of Jewish DPs to our border, firing rifle volleys over their head and scaring them into the American Zone.”233

There was some solid ground to this interpretation. According to historian Gabriel

Gorodetsky, Soviet documents clearly show that Soviet authorities purposely overlooked the activities of the Zionists who organized the brichah.234 However, the initial purpose was to get rid of the Jewish problem in territories the U.S.S.R. occupied without having to repress antisemitism, rather than to embarrass the West. This counters the view of many Cold War historians, such as Albert Kaganovitch, who maintained that “Stalin’s related willingness for

Poland’s new Communist government to permit the emigration of Jews to Palestine likely manifested the dictator’s interest in creating difficulties for the British Empire and gaining influence in a possible future Jewish state.”235 That idea survives in more recent scholarship.

Szaynok believes that “the Soviet Union achieved an important political goal when mass- emigrating Polish Jews overflowed the Displaced Persons camps in the Western zones of

Germany and Austria.”236 Indeed, the consequences of Soviet policy were many. Among them was indeed to overcrowd the D.P. camps under Western control with non-repatriable Jewish

D.P.s, whose number grew from 70,000 at the war’s end to 250,000 in spring 1948, despite these who chose to move out of the camps and resettled in Western Europe, as well as the 130,000 who sailed illegally to Palestine as part of the ha’apala movement, otherwise known as beth, the organization of illegal immigration to British Palestine between 1934 and 1948. These refugees, consequently, drove a wedge between the U.S. and Britain.

233 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 234 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 235 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 236 Szaynok, “The Jewish Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946: New Evidence.” 106

In any event, the Jewish D.P.s, trapped in postwar Europe, represented an unending problem in great power politics, disproportionate to their actual number. The Jews’ unwillingness to resettle in their place of origins in Eastern Europe and their limited ability to relocate to Western or New World countries due to immigration policies, shaped them into

Zionist activists, either actively or just by their very presence in D.P. camps and non- repatriability. And indeed, they were in a situation that embarrassed all powers, and which was utilized by Zionist organizations, both for humanitarian concerns for their kin and for achieving their own political goals of Jewish statehood in whole or part of Palestine. The Jews’ very presence and the great powers’ disagreements and indecisiveness over their fate were one more argument for the necessity of a Jewish state, whether they tried their chance at illegal immigration to Palestine and ended in British custody in camps in Palestine or Cyprus, or remained in camps in occupied Europe as a reminder of their wartime persecutions. Despite

British efforts to solve the Jewish D.P. issue without involving the United Nations and separately from the Palestine issue, the link between the two became more obvious and inevitable everyday.

Conclusion

This first chapter showed that among all the difficulties of managing and rebuilding Europe after the Second World War, Holocaust survivors237 were a source of concern for all countries involved. Each country reacted in its own different way, yet all of them wanted to remove the problem, which, as small as it was in the scheme of organizing the postwar era, had a disproportionate influence on their policies for Europe and risked jeopardizing their goals.

237 In the widest sense of the term including Jews liberated from camps, emerging from hiding, or repatriated from the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe. 107

Moscow supported Jewish emigration to avoid having to repress East-European peoples’ antisemitism, yet without losing its legitimacy to occupy Poland in the eyes of the international community. Washington wanted to remove the Jewish D.P.s by closing the camps, but did not want them to immigrate to the United States. The Jewish D.P. camps represented a visible and embarrassing stigma from the war in the European landscape, which the authorities feared might induce German and Austrian resentment against Jews, and indirectly hinder their efforts to rebuild Western Europe into a peaceful and a strong economic ally against the growing Soviet threat. London just wanted the Jews to vanish both from its occupation zones in Europe and from its Mandate in Palestine. The diplomatic context of the early-Cold War, with the struggle for influence in Europe and the tensions emerging in the colonial world, shaped both Soviet and

U.S. foreign policies in general and influenced their policies on Jewish displaced persons.

108

CHAPTER 2

THE JEWISH REFUGEES:

A BRIDGE BETWEEN U.S. AND SOVIET POLICIES IN EUROPE AND PALESTINE

After exploring the causes of U.S. and Soviet policies towards Jewish refugees within postwar

Europe, this chapter analyses how these policies connected with the U.S. and Soviet diplomatic attitudes toward Jewish immigration to British Palestine. In the emerging Cold War context, the

“Jewish problem” forced the two superpowers to create a bridge between their policies in Europe and in the Middle East. Indeed, though the Jewish question originated in Europe, and Britain did everything it could to find a solution to it in Europe and/or the New World, the presence of displaced, homeless, and stateless Jews jeopardized both U.S. and Soviet goals for the old continent. This chapter demonstrates that successful activism from the Jewish refugees themselves, lobbying from the Yishuv and Zionist institutions, and diverse diplomatic and domestic issues different for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., made Palestine the most convenient solution to the Jewish refugee issue in Europe. However, it also shows that it was mostly Cold

War concerns in Europe that convinced Washington and Moscow that the solution to their

Jewish problem in Europe lay in Jewish immigration to Palestine.

This chapter first explores how the Jews who survived the war, no matter their wartime experience, built an identity of sh’erit ha-pletah, Hebrew for “surviving remnant,” to which

Zionism became an essential character.238 Life in D.P. camps, under Allied military rule but also among former hostile populations, paradoxically witnessed the revival of Jewish life and united

238 I will be using the Hebrew designation sh’erit ha-pletah when emphasizing the Jewish survivors’ self-perception, as displaced persons is an international designation to which Jews did not necessarily identify. 109

Jews regardless of their prewar citizenship, political allegiance, and degree of religiosity, behind the banner of Zionism. It then explores how the sh’erit ha-pletah, with the help of Yishuv institutions, of Jewish relief workers, and of Western Zionist organizations, led the U.S. government to see Palestine as the only path toward solving the Jewish refugee issue in Europe.

Finally, the chapter studies Zionist attempts to reach Soviet officials, which in the absence of

D.P. camps under Soviet supervision and of Soviet diplomatic legation in Palestine, presented a particular challenge.

Jewish voices from the D.P. camps and from the illegal roads to Palestine

In the years 1945 to 1948, between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews passed through the D.P. camps in

Western Europe. Survivors of Nazi concentration and/or extermination camps were a minority, but they were soon to be joined by Jews who spent the war in hiding, passing as Aryans, or fighting in partisan movements, and eventually by the non-Soviet Jews returning from exile or evacuation in the Soviet rear. The latter group soon represented the great majority of Jews on the move in Europe and on the roads to Palestine in the postwar era. While most of the people from former categories were young, single men and women, the returnees added new social groups such as children, families, old people, and intellectuals, to the Jews in D.P. camps. Despite their various prewar cultures and wartime experiences, they overcame their initial differences and worked out their misunderstandings to find some common ground and forge an inclusive identity as the sh’erit ha-pletah, based on the awareness that they had been targeted for extermination as

Jews. Their acute feeling of homelessness, in parallel to the persistent antisemitism among

European peoples, in the context of the liability they represented for the Allies, led to a

110 spontaneous and largely shared feeling and conviction that the Jewish people had no future in

Europe, only in Palestine.

The Jews started to organize soon after their liberation, on their own, as Jewish welfare organizations were not allowed to operate in the D.P. camps until December 1945 for the U.S. zone and March 1946 for the British zone.239 Stranded in camps even after liberation, they developed a sense that their liberators, and more widely the world, had deserted them. Jewish

D.P.s’ grassroots activism contested primarily the initial allied policy of sorting D.P.s based on their prewar citizenship, which condemned Jews to remain among hostile peoples, and sometimes, even, to be handled by the authorities as if they had been former enemy nationals. In order to claim separate camps or quarters, Jewish D.P.s had to affirm their common identity as

Jews. Survivors founded D.P. organizations to represent Jewish interests and claim Jewish victimhood’s specificity.240

Most West-European Jewish survivors left Germany soon after their liberation, since they still had a homeland to return to after the Holocaust and sometimes living family members.

Therefore, by late 1945, most Jews remaining in (or joining) D.P. camps were from Eastern

Europe. Prewar activists, such as Joseph Rosensaft, Polish, and Dr. Zalman Grinberg and

Samuel Gringauz, Lithuanians, often took initiative and provided the first leadership for survivors.241 Grinberg organized the first meeting of Jewish survivors in the British zone at

Bergen-Belsen a few days after its liberation, in April 1945, and Rosensaft held the first meeting

239 Irit Keynan, “The Yishuv’s Mission to the Displaced Persons Camps in Germany: The Initial Steps, August 1945-May 1946,” in She’erit ha-pletah, 1944-1948: Rehabilitation and Political Struggle, Proceedings of the Sixth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, October 1985, Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf, Eds. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 231–48; Hagit Lavsky, New Beginnings: Holocaust Survivors in Bergen-Belsen and the British Zone in Germany, 1945-1950 (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 2002), 104. 240 Zeev W. Mankowitz, “The Formation of the She’erit Hapletah: November 1944-July 1945,” Yad Vashem Studies, no. 20 (1990): 337–70. 241 Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), 294. 111 in the U.S. zone at St. Ottilien in Germany, on May 27, 1945. They called out the United

Nations, demanding improved living conditions in the camps, Jewish-only camps or quarters, and the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.242 These initiatives led Jewish survivors to feel empowered. The destruction of their people united them to form a new national

Jewish identity. The first Congress of the sh’erit ha-pletah of the U.S. zone took place on

January 27-29, 1946, in Munich. They created the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, which played an important role in the administration of life in the camps, harmonizing relations between Jewish D.P.s and the military government, welfare organizations (including Jewish ones), and German officials.243

Part of the process of building a common identity despite the Jews’ different background happened around commemorating the dead and finding heroic figures to look up to. “Partisans needed to honor the deaths of the concentration camps victims, and camp survivors needed to acknowledge the value of the resistance fighters’ deaths. […] Reconciling the two groups necessitated interpreting ghetto fighters and partisans as expressions of the will of the Jewish community,” according to Margarete Feinstein. Those returning from Soviet exile were neither.

Despite difficulties to understand each other at the individual level, they nonetheless participated in forging a common identity. They could honor the memory of the martyrs and admire the heroes of the uprisings, and enabled all survivors to integrate their own personal experiences within the larger narrative of the Holocaust. Mourning ceremonies honored the fallen, but also nurtured the Zionist vision of the combative Jews. They helped to rewrite the past by “replacing passive martyrdom with heroic resistance.” Survivors adopted “the Zionist interpretation of

242 Yosef Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004), 42–54; Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, 1945-1957 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 17. 243 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 258. 112 wartime resistance as connected to the battle for Jewish survival and the demands for a Jewish state,” which was also a way to recast as resistance fighters.244

The sh’erit ha-pletah grew a sense of shared destiny, an “imagined community” that built out of a common past, shared religious and/or cultural traditions, and most important, the desire to leave Germany.245 Despite Jews’ unwillingness to remain in camps, these D.P. camps witnessed the revival of Jewish life and culture, provided space for a Jewish national rebirth, helped them find their postwar unity and create a narrative that encompassed their prewar, wartime, and postwar life. They developed schools and libraries, published newspapers, set up drama and music groups, and courts of law.246 The religious calendar was both a source of conflict between the secular majority and religious minority of D.P.s, and paradoxically a source of unity, as Jews connected their historic holidays, such as Hanukkah and Pessach, to their suffering during the Holocaust, their liberation from bondage, and their national struggle for a

Jewish homeland.247

Theater, traditionally important in East-European Jewish culture, enabled them to rework their immediate past and to assert some control over it, while connecting it to their actual struggle to leave Germany for Palestine. Yiddish was the language of memory and unity, but

Hebrew also had its place as the language of the future homeland. Newspapers emphasized national aspirations, reported on the Middle East, on the activities of historical commissions on camps and ghettos, and published lists of survivors from other camps. Immediately after the war, the sh’erit ha-pletah started to collect documents about the Holocaust and record

244 Markus Nesselrodt, “‘I Bled Like You, Brother, Although I Was a Thousand Miles Away’: Postwar Yiddish Sources on the Experiences of Polish Jews in Soviet Exile during World War II,” East European Jewish Affairs 46, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 47–67; Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 77–80. 245 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 198. 246 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 294. 247 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 209. 113 testimonies, to substantiate di letste or dritte khurbn, the latest or third destruction, embedding the Holocaust in the long history of Jewish catastrophes from the destruction of the First and

Second Temples.248

The fact that this Jewish revival happened on German soil forged a specific kind of activism and ideology. The belief that they must “remain mobilized for defense against the

Germans and for war against the British in Palestine led the DPs to adopt militant models of masculinity and femininity.” Physically combative males built on the prewar Zionist image of the new Jewish man, fit for physical labor and able to fight; while females, who, as survivors, were never asked to be pure or blamed for not being so, were independent and capable of fighting.249 During the war, Jewish volunteers were denied the right to create in the British

Army their own all-Jewish combat formation, with its recognizable insignia and flag, until in

1944 Prime Minister Winston Churchill eventually allowed the creation of three Jewish infantry battalions to be integrated in the Palestine Regiment.250 When in late 1945, men from the Jewish

Brigade reached the Jewish D.P. camps in Germany and Austria, the sight of a Star of David insignia on military uniforms restored pride and raised hopes among survivors.251

The sh’erit ha-pletah emphasized sports, for the rehabilitation of their starved and damaged bodies, the reaffirmation of their masculinity, but also for the preparation for life in

Palestine, be it physical agricultural work or warfare for the homeland.252 Although some women restricted their fertility because they were on German soil and assumed leadership roles in Zionist activities, a massive baby boom occurred nonetheless among Jews in the D.P. camps.

248 Feinstein, 157. 249 Feinstein, 107. 250 During the war, Yishuv Jews volunteered in the British Army, but until 1944 the British refused to constitute an all-Jewish military formation with their own recognizable insignia and flag. In 1944 Churchill eventually created three infantry battalions of 5,000 Jewish volunteers, in the Palestine Regiment. They fought the Germans in Italy, and later worked in the Jewish D.P. camps. 251 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 104. 252 Shephard, 345. 114

So in parallel to the childless partisan-girl devoted to the fight for the national cause, the sh’erit ha-pletah also promoted the image of the self-sacrificial mamele dedicated to the renewal of the

Jewish people through motherhood. Both stereotypes were united in their Zionism.253

The birth of a new Jewish generation on former Nazi land represented what Atina

Grossmann called “biological revenge.”254 Babies not only meant the return to normalcy but also vengeance against Nazism.255 “Messiah children” were proof that the Jews were still alive and that the Nazi policy of annihilation had failed.256 Jewish D.P.s raised the children, whether they were orphaned or unaccompanied, born, or raised in camps among their families, with a strong awareness of their Jewishness. Protecting children was a common source of conflict between survivors and relief institutions. The latter attempted to remove the children from the camps, which they deemed an improper surrounding for their rehabilitation. On the contrary, the sh’erit ha-pletah believed that they, having survived similar hardship and sharing the same sense of loss, provided the safest environment for Jewish children to discuss and process their wartime traumas.257 For instance, despite pressure from relief agencies and even from Jewish Agency personnel, survivors resisted the removal of 1,000 orphans to Britain on temporary visas. They educated the children in a way that would prepare them for life in Palestine, strengthening their

Jewish identity and Zionism, through teaching Hebrew, Jewish history, Palestinian geography, agricultural engineering, and sports.

Although most survivors lived in D.P. camps, some organized kibbutzim within or outside the camps. These were even more Zionist than other D.P. institutions, and sometimes

253 Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies, 184–96; Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 165–66. 254 Atina Grossmann, “Trauma, Memory and Motherhood: Germans and Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1949,” Archiv Für Sozialgeschichte, no. 38 (1998): 215–39. 255 Dan Stone, The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 169. 256 Atina Grossmann, “Victims, Villains, and Survivors: Gendered Perceptions and Self-Perceptions of Jewish Displaced Persons in Occupied Postwar Germany,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2 (2002): 291–318. 257 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 165–79. 115

Yishuv activists came to Europe to set up and run kibbutzim. Focusing especially on young and teenagers, they provided comradeship, social and therapeutic support, vocational instruction, and often priority for legal and illegal immigration to Palestine.258 By the start of 1947, there were

276 kibbutzim in Germany, counting 16,328 members. Living in kibbutzim, within or outside the camps, was also a way to remain isolated from their German surrounding and to avoid participating in the rebuilding of the German economy, while learning skills for their life after the camps, in Palestine.259 In Soviet-occupied countries, where authorities rarely cared for

Jewish refugees, kibbutzim were actually the main structures Jews set up to organize collective life, when they did not intend to remain.

Uprooted and homeless, Jews spontaneously embraced Zionism. Historian Hanna

Yablonka described an “instinctive ‘gut’ Zionism rooted in a loss of faith in the European emancipation and the profound sense of humiliation that they felt during the years of destruction.”260 Historian Zeev Mankowitz confirmed what he called an “almost intuitive

Zionism” and explained it by the hope that a Jewish homeland would fulfill their need to achieve some sense of belonging, now that their families, communities, and homes had been destroyed.261 Zionism gave them a sense of purpose and a project to regain control over their own life and future. It also provided an explanation for their past suffering – the absence of a state of their own – and represented the prospect that massacres of this scale could never happen again. Feinstein claims that “the lesson of the Holocaust […] was that only a Jewish state could protect the Jewish people from genocide.” The connection between the dead of Europe and the

258 Feinstein, 193–96. 259 Stone, Liberation, 171. 260 Hanna Yablonka, “Holocaust Survivors in Israel: Time for an Initial Taking of Stock,” in Holocaust Survivors: Resettlement, Memories, Identities, Dalia Ofer, Françoise Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Eds. (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), 185–207. 261 Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 69. 116 need for an independent Jewish homeland was explicit, often symbolized by the juxtaposition of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and ha-tikvah, the Zionist anthem.

A consensus emerged that the dead would have wanted the survivors to build a Jewish homeland, because only a Jewish state would have been able to save them from Nazi extermination. “Whatever the political convictions of Nazi victims had been in life, in death they were Zionists. […] There was tacit agreement that the dead supported the movement of the survivors to the Land of Israel,” Feinstein writes.262 Mankowitz confirmed that “the creation of a

Jewish state in the Land of Israel was taken to be the last will and testament bequeathed by the dead to the living. […] It signified the only real hope for the rescue and rehabilitation of the little that remained of European Jewry and, in the longer term, the promise of the Jewish future.”263 The perspective of a Jewish state also offered a real goal and a sense of purpose to broken survivors, now stateless refugees, who had lost everything. It fulfilled emotional and practical needs.264 Jewish D.P.s themselves theorized it: Gringauz described Zionism as “a debt to the dead and a duty to the living, the end of a Jewish abnormality that could lift the danger of a repetition of the catastrophe.”265

As early as the summer 1945, survivors made sure the authorities could not ignore their

Zionism, long before any Zionist or Yishuv organization reached the D.P. camps. The Harrison

Report already noted that Jews “want to be evacuated to Palestine now. […] Very few Polish and Baltic Jews wish to return to their countries. […] Palestine is definitely and pre-eminently the first choice.” A choice that Harrison assessed as “based […] on a love for the country and devotion to the Zionist ideal.” Some of them would not even consider a different resettlement

262 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 102–4. 263 Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 69. 264 Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz, eds., “We Are Here”: New Approaches to Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010); Shephard, The Long Road Home, 105. 265 Samuel Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny as the DPs See It,” Commentary 4, no. 6 (December 1947): 501–9. 117 location, arguing that “there is no acceptable or decent solution for their future other than

Palestine.”266 Jews claimed that the Holocaust justified the need for a Jewish State: “The fact that the disaster which befell European Jewry reached such dimensions can only be ascribed to the homelessness of our people. […] We, therefore, firmly believe that for our and our children’s safety and peace the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine is an absolute necessity.”267

Yet in 1946, with the massive arrival of East-European, mostly Polish, Jews in the

Western zones, officials started to question Jews’ real incentive, as shown by U.N.R.R.A. director General Morgan’s statement about how well fed and well dressed Jews were as they arrived from Poland, while there were no signs of in Poland – as he cynically claimed despite reports from the British embassy in Poland itself. The British already suspected the

Zionists to have organized a plan enabling Jews to become a world force in order to press for a

Jewish exodus from Europe.268

They were not entirely wrong. Yishuv and foreign Zionist organizations instrumentalized the Jewish D.P.s for their own cause. Since August 1945, the World Zionist Conference, which met in London in August 1945 and gathered all Zionist organizations, had endorsed an aggressive approach. During the war, president of the World Zionist Organization Chaim

Weizmann had led the Zionist movement and maintained a moderate position toward the British authorities. David Ben Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency and therefore leader of the Yishuv, had supported the British war effort, with the motto that Jews should “support the British as if

266 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 267 Central Committee of Liberated Jews to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, July 22, 1947; cited in Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 173. 268 “UNRRA Diary” 165, General Frederick Morgan, USHMM; cited in Shephard, The Long Road Home, 159. 118 there were no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there were no war.” But after the war he instigated in the Zionist movement a more radical approach to pressure London. He secured a united front of all military organizations in Palestine. The Zionist underground

Haganah, traditionally disciplined, cooperating with the British authorities, avoiding retaliations against Arab attacks, and advocating self-defense only, now cooperated with the dissident groups

Irgun ha-Tzvai ha-Leumi (Irgun) and Stern Gang (Lehi), proponents of more aggressive actions against the British authorities, including assassinations and terrorist attacks and harsh reprisals against Arab attacks.269

Ben Gurion, though shocked by the situation of Jewish survivors, did not try to rescue them, but used “the power of their adversity […] in his battle to establish a Jewish state” as moral leverage. However, this was not a one-way instrumentalization, as historian Shabtai

Teveth analyzed. Jews in D.P. camps received Ben Gurion with great enthusiasm, as if they were willingly becoming the “political factors” the Zionist cause needed. He sensed that Jewish refugees did not expect from him “caresses nor compassion […] but the bearing of a torch that lit a vision of hope for all.” Both Zionists and survivors seemed to agree that “the function of

Zionism is not to help the remnant to survive in Europe, but rather to rescue them for the sake of the Jewish people and the Yishuv: the Jews of America and the D.P.s are allotted a special role in this rescue.”270 In other words, Yishuv activists did not cynically force Zionism on the sh’erit ha- pletah, but, as historian Yehudah Bauer claims, survivors stranded in D.P. camps “wanted to be manipulated, they wanted to escape from an untenable situation first in Eastern Europe and then

269 Shephard, 183–84. 270 Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 870–73. 119 in the D.P. countries, and Palestine seemed to them to be the only practical way out [emphasis in original].”271

In polls implemented by U.N.R.R.A. and military authorities, between 80 and 95% of the

Jewish D.P.s expressed their wish to go to Palestine.272 Survivors’ voices even surpassed Ben

Gurion’s greatest hopes. The sh’erit ha-pletah claimed this fight for themselves and willingly engaged in illegal activities to support the fight against the British in Palestine, considering that their war would not be over as long as they remained in camps.273 The only alternatives came from a few Bundists and communists, but soon enough they repatriated to Soviet-occupied territories, leaving a clear Zionist majority in the camps. Even ultraorthodox movements, such as Agudat Israel, shed their prewar anti-Zionism. They accommodated their new position, theoretically irreconcilable with their religious belief, by an interpretation of the Holocaust as a khurbn (catastrophe), which should be followed by a renewal of the Jewish people, which a return to the Land of Israel could symbolize.

Across political divides, the idea spread that the survival of the Jewish people depended on their ability to achieve a strong unity of action. The very fact that orthodox and seculars, some Bundists and Zionists, were willing to work together and to consider aliyah (Hebrew for

“ascent,” designates immigration to the ancestral homeland), was the proof of an exceptional unity.274 At its roots, one can obviously emphasize the Holocaust and the violence of the war years. But what triggered and nurtured this unity was the postwar situation. First, the fact that

271 Yehuda Bauer, “The DP Legacy,” in Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945-1951, Conference Proceedings, Washington, D.C. January 14-17, 2000; Menachem Z. Rosensaft, Ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001), 25–35. 272 “Notes and Information on the Project for Immigration of Displaced Persons in the American Occupied Zones of Germany and Austria under President Truman’s Directive of December 22, 1945” non dated but most likely in the summer 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 273 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 31–33. 274 Feinstein, 262–65. 120 the world could allow Jews to remain in camps indefinitely, showed the failure of the democratic world – of Jews’ very liberators – to acknowledge their past suffering and present ordeal. Denial of Jews’ national sentiment actually reinforced it.275 Indeed, British hostility to Zionism held the sh’erit ha-pletah together and strengthened their unity. In the U.S. zone, devoid of such hostility, political fragmentation started in late 1946. Yishuv’s factionalism corrupted the distribution of scarce resources and visa permits among political lines, and the awareness that ideological divisions in D.P. camps would eventually transfer to Palestine led political parties to start recruiting.276

This indifference of the world contrasted with the call of the Zionists. The Yishuv needed the sh’erit ha-pletah. Zionism promised them self-determination and agency. These were invaluable to a people who had been at the mercy of successive persecutors and were now stranded in camps where supposed Allies were hesitantly deciding of their fate. Survivors manifested their Zionism by many means. They sent weapons and other commodities to the

Yishuv. Parents willingly endured separation if they believed it could increase their children’s chances to emigrate.277 Jews chose to remain in camps they despised, even when the borders were still fluid enough for them to reach Western Europe, hoping to become eligible to immigration to Palestine. But the sh’erit ha-pletah’s most important Zionist militancy was to attempt illegal immigration to Palestine despite British policy.

Since 1944, the Brichah movement had been helping Jews to escape from liberated areas of Eastern Europe. They first used a route through Romania, then with the help of the Jewish

Brigade, through Italy. When the British closed this route, they sent Jews to the Western zones

275 Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny,” 501–3; Stone, Liberation, 147. 276 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 266. 277 Feinstein, 165–66. 121 of Germany.278 By the end of 1945, over 40,000 Jews had already reached the U.S. zone. This movement originated among Jewish survivors themselves, even though in late 1945, the Yishuv sent agents to help them organize illegal immigration.279 The sh’erit ha-pletah were determined to leave Europe for Palestine. They crossed borders illegally, used forged documents, falsified their age, occupation, country of origin, and medical conditions to qualify for visas.280 Their claim was clear: “open the gates of Palestine.” Whether or not they intended to live in it, they supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. There are instances of Jews claiming their intention to immigrate to Palestine only out of solidarity with the Zionist project.

This in and of itself proves that their Zionism was genuine and not the cynical manipulation of the Jewish Agency or the Yishuv. Holocaust survivors were not an easily manipulated population. They claimed that they would rather “die fighting as members of a

Hebrew nation than rot away in assembly centers in Germany, run by British and Americans who talked of humanity but shut their doors to human suffering.”281 The sh’erit ha-pletah knew their future was linked to world politics and acted on it. Their existence, homelessness, and activism, in parallel to the Yishuv’s and Zionist institutions’ lobbying, participated in convincing the

Americans and the Soviets of the need for at least some Jewish immigration to Palestine.

278 Bauer, Flight and Rescue; Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny,” 17. 279 Bauer, Flight and Rescue, 121. 280 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 31. 281 Richard H. S. Crossman, Palestine Mission: A Personal Record (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1947), 88; see also Avinoam J. Patt, “Stateless Citizens of Israel: Jewish Displaced Persons and Zionism in Post-War Germany,” in The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Postwar Europe, 1944-9, Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White, Eds. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 162–82. 122

Effects of Jewish refugees’ and Zionist organizations’ activism on U.S. policy

How did U.S. authorities react to this activism from the Jewish D.P.s, the Yishuv, and Zionist organizations? The presence of non-repatriable Jews became increasingly burdensome on their occupation policy in Germany, especially as their claims, coordinated with the Yishuv’s and

American Zionist organizations’, had a strong effect on congressional and public opinions at home. Americans in general started to look favorably at the idea of Jewish immigration to

Palestine, whereas the State Department opposed it. Yet Jewish D.P.s’ radicalization, a liability for the recasting of Germany as a stronghold in the Cold War, led U.S. authorities on the ground to allow Jews to leave, though they knew Palestine was their most likely destination, despite

British protestations.

Jewish D.P.s, as a non-repatriable group stranded in former hostile territory, represented a burden for the occupation forces. Considering the scale of destruction of European Jewry, some immediately suspected survivors to have compromised themselves in some way or another, to have been able to survive. Conversely, as victims of Nazi Germany, Jews identified with the

Allies who freed them and resented and rejected being treated as charity cases. At the liberation of the camps, the urgency of the survivors’ state forced Allied authorities to endorse the duty of taking care of them – but they expected this situation to evolve rapidly. Pressed by President

Truman, especially after the Harrison Report, the military government reluctantly continued to welcome and care for Jewish “infiltrees” from the East. But their sense that these Jews were a nuisance never entirely disappeared, and increased considerably with the new policy of rebuilding Germany into an ally against the Soviet Union.

By their attitude, Jewish survivors actually reinforced that perception among Allied personnel. They appeared ungrateful, lazy, unclean, and unambitious to observers who did not

123 take into consideration the wartime treatment Jews had received as an explanation for their postwar behavior. As occupation personnel was renewed, some had not participated in the camps’ liberation and lacked this awareness, while others were just prejudiced against Jews.282

Jews’ ungratefulness came from the idea that the world had failed them and owed them this care, so they were resentful of the authorities’ patronizing attitude.283 Their lack of cleanliness resulted from their life in camps or in hiding. Their supposed laziness derived from the fact that they had been worked to exhaustion during the war and were now stuck in hostile territory.

Therefore they resolutely refused to participate in German reconstruction – while those who wanted to work were often denied positions, which the Allied and German authorities preferred to fill with Germans or ethnic Germans expelled from other European countries. Their lack of ambition came from the uncertainty about their future.

Occupation authorities viewed Jewish D.P.s as putting strains on the economic recovery of local communities, especially since most of them would not work despite the fact that they lived on German soil and benefited from military resources. The German population also looked at Jews with spite and contempt. Nazi antisemitism, which labeled Jews as parasites of the

German nation, did not vanish overnight. In addition, Germans resented their defeat and only submitted to the Allied occupation because they had no choice. They refused to take responsibility for what happened to Jews and other groups persecuted under Nazi rule. When the

Allies – some of whom were also antisemitic such as General George Patton – made them tour and clean up the camps, they felt that this labor had exonerated them from the wrong their country had done. They weighed the Nazi concentration and extermination camps with the firebombing of their country, Auschwitz with Dresden, and the persecution of Jews with the

282 Stone, Liberation, 142. 283 Stone, 127–28. 124 expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe.284 And naturally, just as Jews spontaneously identified with their liberators and felt empowered by the Allies’ occupation of Germany – which was not necessarily reciprocated by Allied personnel – so too the Germans associated the return of and care for Jews on German soil with the occupation.285

Initially, both the Germans and the Allies assumed that the D.P.s would leave quickly; they saw them as a temporary feature of the immediate postwar era.286 Yet more Jews arrived in

1945-1947 from Eastern Europe, and obtained the status of non-repatriable. With the gates of

Palestine still closed to them, expectations of a speedy removal of all D.P.s vanished, and with it the Allies’ initial sympathy for the Jews’ plight. Both lower echelon personnel and higher officials started to resent Jewish “infiltrees” for the situation their presence created. Some even doubted that their flight from the East was motivated by real persecution, and assumed Jews were merely fleeing due to rumors.287 The massive arrival of East-European Jews weighed on the economy of the occupation and on the reconstruction of Germany. Suspicion of Jewish criminality, already strong among the German population who inherited the antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish profiteers, spread to Allied officials as well. As a result, they cracked down on every Jewish difficulty, disproportionally to their scale and degree of illegality, in order not to appear as weak occupiers in Germans’ eyes.288 The special relationship between U.S. troops and Jewish survivors gave way to an aggravated impatience, tainted with antisemitism, for a series of reasons.

284 Stone, 25, 51. 285 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 98. 286 “Care of Jewish Displaced Persons,” Major General Arthur A. White, to Commanding General, XX Corps, US Army, 29 October 1945; and “Report on Jewish DPs in Turkheim and Vicinity,” Lieutenant Jack M. Sauter to G-2 71st Infantry Division, 19 October 1945; File 7; Box 10; UN S-0425; cited in Feinstein, 38. 287 Bauer, Flight and Rescue, 197. 288 Stone, Liberation, 151. 125

The most obvious one was that as the months passed, the troops that had fought the

Nazis, and therefore had been appalled by their discovery of the camps and especially of the

Jewish inmates, were progressively replaced by new soldiers. These new troops had not learned to hate Germans on the battlefield, and had not confronted Jewish suffering in its rawest aspect when liberating the camps.289 Feinstein confirms that the troops who had not participated in the liberation of the camps “did not feel responsible for the care of the survivors.”290 This new personnel was more sympathetic to the disciplined Germans than to the Jews who stubbornly refused labor and further complicated their work by permanent irregular movement from East to

West, and from camp to camp, in search of family members. Experts from the A.A.C.I. noted that “Jews have wandered through Europe almost as they wish, from center to center, zone to zone, and country to country. Such movements have […] imposed a heavy burden on the authorities who have constantly had to improvise reception arrangements.”291 With the increasing influx of East-European Jews, Jews living outside of the camps saw their conditions deteriorating, as antisemitism grew proportionally to their numbers and their strains on German communities.292

The policy imposed from above was to never turn away any Jew coming from the East.

Ben Gurion had secured this attitude from some U.S. officers, including Major General Walter

Bedell Smith.293 Yet on the ground personnel had to deal with the tensions between this D.P.

289 Abram Leon Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1983), 201–5. 290 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 57. 291 “AACI Report” Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Palestine AAC”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 292 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 38. 293 Apparently there is no available record of this conversation between Ben Gurion and Bedell Smith – so I do not know if these negotiations happened when Bedell Smith was Eisenhower’s chief of staff at S.H.A.E.F. or already U.S. ambassador to Moscow, a position he held from April 1946 to December 1948. Their negotiations are mentioned in Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope, 67–68; Bauer, “The DP Legacy”; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 187. 126 policy and the new Cold War goal of rebuilding Germany as a stronghold against the Soviet

Union. Gringauz blamed Byrnes’ speech in Stuttgart in September 1946 as the trigger that allowed Germans to reassert themselves and overtly display their antisemitism. Occupation authorities not only let this happen; they sometimes shared this prejudice against Jewish survivors. “With emboldened Germans, unsympathetic soldiers, and beleaguered DPs, the stage was set for tragedy in the spring and early summer of 1946,” according to Abram Sachar.294

Feinstein argues that as soon as the Allies resolved to create “a German bulwark against the communist East, the DPs were an unwanted reminder of the past conflict.” Indeed, the sh’erit ha-pletah categorically refused to participate in the reconstruction of Germany, so their presence thwarted Allied goals. Military officials considered them a burden, refusing to do their share despite the fact that managing the D.P. situation required considerable manpower and material resources. “They felt more comfortable with the less traumatized and more cooperative

Germans,” naturally eager to rebuild their country.295

U.N.R.R.A. personnel and Jewish relief workers denounced this new alliance between occupation troops and Germans, which manifested on occasion against D.P.s, and mostly against

Jews among them.296 Yet, this new inexplicit alliance between Allied troops and Germans was seen as a Cold War necessity, and the degradation of Allied troops relations with non-repatriable

Jewish D.P.s as its unfortunate but inevitable collateral damage. In this context, a special mission came to Germany to explore the human aspects of European reconstruction. It was comprised, among others, of Earl G. Harrison, then head of the Citizens Committee on Displaced

Persons; Russian sociologist and demographer Eugene Kulischer; European chairman of the

Joint Distribution Committee Joseph Schwartz; and diplomat Ernest Penrose, who helped

294 Sachar, The Redemption of the Unwanted, 201–5. 295 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 57. 296 Samuel B. Zisman Papers, RG-19.047.02*01; USHMM; cited in Feinstein, 52. 127 establish the International Refugee Organization. They concluded that the D.P.s were “a dead weight on the ailing . […] They are a drag on European recovery.” They suggested that D.P.s should be rehabilitated and relocated, sent as labor force wherever it was needed, so they would at least produce as much as they consumed. They pointed out that their presence on German soil was a strain on reconstruction: ethnic German expellees could only be integrated into German society if and when the Jewish D.P.s could be removed from it.297 But as much as getting rid of the D.P. population in Germany was essential to the U.S. Cold War goal of rehabilitating Germany, letting the Jews emigrate created another problem regarding Cold

War strategy in the Middle East.

Keeping Jews in camps after the war was a humanitarian failure, likely to become also a public relations disaster in the United States. In an uncoordinated strategy, Jewish survivors,

Yishuv representatives, and American Zionists complemented each other to impose Palestine as the only acceptable solution to the Jewish D.P. problem. The sh’erit ha-pletah claimed their determination to reach Palestine. In 1946, 80% in the British zone and 90% in the U.S. zone indicated Palestine as their first choice for resettlement.298 Later in October 1947, the Fulton

Committee’s investigation confirmed that “in excess of 90% wanted to emigrate to Palestine,” driven by “a nationalistic movement spear-headed by a religious obsession to return to Palestine

– the home of their fathers.”299

This determination had been acknowledged by the U.S. since the Harrison Report, after which President Truman did its best to convince British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to let

297 Jane Perry Clark Carey, The Role of Uprooted People in European Recovery: An International Committee Report (Washington, D.C.: National Planning Association, 1948). 298 “Harry Lerner, Letter dated 7 February 1946,” Information on Jews in British Zone as Required in War Office Telegram SUGRA 374 of 26 January to BERCOMB, [February 1946?]; Harry and Clare Lerner Papers, RG- 19.029*01; PRO, FO 945/590; USHMM; cited in Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 46. 299 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 128

100,000 Jewish D.P.s immigrate to Palestine.300 At this time, there were still few Jews in

Germany and Austria, so granting these immigration certificates would not necessarily have forced the Western powers to define their policy for the future status of Palestine. The longer the

Western powers waited to make a decision on what to do with the Jewish D.P.s, the more complex the situation became, as increasing numbers of homeless Jews meant more candidates for immigration to Palestine, therefore more abrupt modifications of the demographic and administrative status quo in this region, and of course, more Zionist activism in and out of the

D.P. camps.

Ben Gurion knew the political weapon he had acquired: “the green light to bring as many

East European Jews as possible into the American zone” was undeniably the best way to put indirect pressure on the British, since they were impermeable, if not hostile, to direct Zionist activism. “If we manage to concentrate a quarter of a million Jews in the U.S. zone, it would increase the American pressure […] because they see no future for these people anywhere but in

Palestine.”301 Jewish D.P.s and their leadership never missed an opportunity to convey their determination to immigrate to Palestine and helped the Zionist cause in every way they could, whether by refusing to let Jewish orphans out of the D.P. camps, or by exploiting Belsen for

Zionist propaganda in the U.S., accusing the British of behaving like Nazis.

Zalman Grinberg once delivered a speech summoning the Western powers to redeem their failure to prevent the destruction of the Jews by giving them a homeland and a state.302 He told members of the Anglo-American Committee of Investigation that the Jews in D.P. camps lived with a mindset based on “a bitter, terrible yesterday, an impossible today, and an

300 “Letter from the President to Prime Minister Attlee, with Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached” August 31, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Jews DPs”; Box 159; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 301 Bauer, Flight and Rescue, 95–96; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 187–88. 302 Leo W. Schwarz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Years 1945-1952 (New York: Farrar Straus and Young, 1953), 81–88; Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies, 168–69. 129 undetermined tomorrow.”303 Of course, Zionist activists had prepared the sh’erit ha-pletah to the A.A.C.I.’s visit: “Go wherever you wish, no one will coerce you, but to the outside world, declare that you only want to go to Palestine.” As a result, out of 20,000 Jewish D.P.s polled by

U.N.R.R.A., 96.8% declared their desire to go to Palestine.304 According to Shephard, although

A.A.C.I. members realized that the D.P.s had been coached, they nonetheless felt that their wish to immigrate to Palestine was led by a genuine support for Zionism.305

Zionist activists used the Holocaust and Jewish D.P.s to achieve their goals. They tried to discredit British authority in Palestine in the eyes of the international community, and especially of Britain’s closest ally, the United States. They emphasized how British immigration policy into Palestine was not only unfair and illegal with regards to international law and the terms of the Mandate. British immigration policy had also condemned the Jews of Europe to be trapped and exterminated in Nazi-ruled Europe. “The White Paper proved a death warrant for tens of thousands of Jews who, denied a refuge in Palestine, were counted in the Nazi gas chambers census of 6,000,000 Jews. How many might have escaped if Palestine had been open will never be known.”306 According to the terms of the Mandate, Britain was supposed to facilitate Jews’ immigration into Palestine, their “national home,” to comply with the Balfour Declaration, rather than limit Jewish immigration as the British did with the 1939 White Paper. The Zionists thus used the wartime massacre of the Jews and their postwar unending suffering to question British authority on Palestine and connect the two issues of the survivors’ homelessness and the future of Palestine.

303 Bartley Cavanaugh Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain: A Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), 78–81. 304 Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 138. 305 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 195. 306 “Memorandum by the Jewish Agency: The background of the Palestine Problem” New York, April 28, 1947; ISA 93.3/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 80, pp.182-187. 130

American Zionists also used their influence. Jewish communities in the U.S. did not have much pressure power yet, but had some strategically located friends. Historian Ben

Shephard emphasizes the roles of former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Supreme Court

Justice Louis Brandeis, former and Director of U.N.R.R.A. Herbert

Lehman, and special advisor to President Truman David Niles. Together, they helped maintain the border of the U.S. zone open to East-European Jews and to keep Zionist activists informed of the evolution of U.S. policy toward Jewish D.P.s and Palestine.307 U.S. Zionists also rallied

Jewish voters and influenced Jewish institutions’ donations. “Zionism’s most effective instrument […] is that of driving home to our country’s National Administration the feeling of indignation and resentment shared by great numbers of American citizens.” In this open letter to the Democratic Party, the American Zionist Emergency Council also criticized the government for failing to uphold its own repeated pledges on Palestine. The Democratic Party had indeed included on its platform “vigorously-worded plank on Palestine which pledges full support for the aspirations of the Jewish people. We regret that we are unable at this juncture in the tragic history of the Jewish people to hail this renewed expression of support from one of our country’s two major political parties.”308

The Council also issued a report on “The Truman Administration’s Record on Palestine” on August 26, 1946. The document quoted Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, American rabbi and leader of various Zionist organizations, who accused the State Department of allowing Britain to use

“100,000 helpless refugees” as hostages to “extort from the Jewish people acceptance of a political formulation which clearly repudiates every international commitment made to the

307 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 366. 308 Harry L. Shapiro to the Members of the American Zionist Emergency Council, with attachment, September 12, 1946; 1945-June, 1947; Box 28; Displaced Persons and Immigration File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 131

Jewish people with respect to Palestine.” It referred to the Morrison-Grady plan, which conditioned issuing 100,000 immigration certificates to Jews’ acceptance of the “federalization” of Palestine, where they would have only partial autonomy. “The lives of oppressed men, women and children, who have passed the limits of endurance, should thus be used as pawns in

Britain’s imperialistic maneuvers – and [that] the United States should now be a party to this abomination.”309 This report seemingly ignored the fact that just three weeks prior, the President had rejected the Morrison-Grady plan.

The document criticized the policy of the State Department and accused Britain of usurping its role. Knowing that the White House was more sympathetic to Zionism, it absolved the President himself of any wrongdoing, but accused the State Department and Britain to conspire together to impose their policy on the President. “Could the President’s Cabinet

Committee have accepted this abominable ‘federalization’ plan if its members had been convinced that the President wants them to carry out U.S. policy as stated by him? […] It is clear that Mr. Grady and his fellow Committee members were advised by the State Department to follow the line proposed by the British.”310 Obviously, this lobbying appealed directly to

President Truman to react and overrule its own Department of State.

Zionist lobbying in the U.S. had some effect. Some congressmen and senators actually supported Jewish immigration to Palestine, if only because they knew their constituents would not approve welcoming Jewish refugees into America. For example, Kansas Governor Andrew

F. Shoeppel wrote to Truman, as early as June 1945, to press him to act toward persecuted Jews

309 Harry L. Shapiro to the Members of the American Zionist Emergency Council, with attachment, September 12, 1946; 1945-June, 1947; Box 28; Displaced Persons and Immigration File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 310 Harry L. Shapiro to the Members of the American Zionist Emergency Council, with attachment, September 12, 1946; 1945-June, 1947; Box 28; Displaced Persons and Immigration File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 132 and consider mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, which he suggested should become a

“Jewish Commonwealth.”311 An important segment of U.S. public opinion also supported

Zionism. A Gallup poll of October 24-27, 1947, found that 65% of responders supported the creation of a Jewish state through the partition of Palestine, 10% opposed it, and 25% had no opinion. Support for partition was equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, and between college-educated and non-college-educated adults.312 Similar to Americans’ anti- imperialist stance based on their apprehension that territories inhabited by people of color might eventually become states, U.S. support for Zionism was partly due to their antisemitic prejudice against Jewish immigration.

Yet some did consider Jewish immigration to the U.S., such as Harry M. Warner from

Warner Bros Pictures Inc., who appealed directly to the President, suggesting using Jewish immigrants to settle Alaska.313 But more common were letters and demonstrations of support for

Truman’s efforts to convince the British to allow 100,000 Jews into Palestine, as shown by the

“Petition on Palestine among citizens of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California,” in

September 1946, or the energetic work of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, founded in December 1946 to lobby both U.S. citizens and Congress in favor of the D.P. Act of 1948, but also in favor of Jewish immigration to Palestine.314

311 Harry S. Truman to Andrew F. Shoeppel, Governor of Kansas, and related material, June 4, 1945; OF 204: misc. Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 312 Lydia Saad, “Gallup Vault: Americans Backed the 1947 Partition Plan,” Gallup Vault, November 29, 2017, https://news.gallup.com/vault/222974/gallup-vault-americans-backed-1947-palestine-partition-plan.aspx, consulted on October 20, 2018. 313 For alternative solutions to Zionism, see Adam Rovner, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 314 William D. Hassett to Matthew J. Connelly, with related material, June 18, 1946; OF 127: Political, Racial and Religious Refugees; Truman Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 133

Allowing Jews to immigrate to Palestine was not President Truman’s decision to make.

Truman pressed the British to grant 100,000 certificates for immigration to Jewish D.P.s, supported by the successive investigative committees (from the Harrison Report to the Morrison-

Grady Plan), but he avoided taking a clear stand on the future of Palestine. The A.A.C.I. report stated, “We know of no country to which the great majority can go in the immediate future other than Palestine. Furthermore that is where almost all of them want to go. They are sure that they will receive a welcome denied elsewhere.” All observers acknowledged that the Jews wanted, even needed, to leave Germany, and the report insisted that this should happen as soon as possible “before the end of 1946”, yet it also recognized that “Palestine alone cannot meet the emigration needs of the Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution; the whole world shares responsibility for them and indeed for the resettlement of all ‘displaced persons’.” The A.A.C.I. remained cautious not to press any country to “make a permanent change in its immigration policy” for the sake of the Jews.315

On the question of the future of Palestine, A.A.C.I. members carefully avoided to take a stand, except for the suggestion that a United Nations trusteeship eventually replace British

Mandate. “Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine. […]

Until this hostility disappears, the government of Palestine [shall] be continued as at present under mandate pending the execution of a trusteeship agreement under the United Nations.” The report considered that the political situation was not – at least not yet – favorable to partition:

“Partition has an appeal at first sight as giving a prospect of early independence and self- government to Jews and Arabs, but in our view no partition would have any chance unless it was basically acceptable to Jews and Arabs, and there is no sign of that today. We are accordingly

315 “AACI Report” Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Palestine AAC”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 134 unable to recommend partition as the solution.”316 They favored an increase in Jewish immigration but without altering Palestine’s political status quo, whereas London thought such increase would necessarily jeopardize its authority over the Arab population.

The State Department had been consistently and vehemently advising President Truman against Jewish immigration to Palestine, for a variety of reasons. It justified its position by emphasizing what mass emigration would imply for the Jews’ conditions in Europe, the rehabilitation of their rights and property, and their reintegration into the economic and social landscape. The State Department’s opposition was also based on its evaluation of Palestine’s inability to receive a large number of immigrants, physically, economically, and politically, in terms of transportation, housing, and employment of the potential immigrants. But above all, the

State Department worried about the U.S. involvement which Jewish mass immigration would imply. “This would require the allocation of troops and military supplies, and the tightening of control measures.” Therefore, since 1945, the State Department had advised that the U.S.

“should not favor mass or unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. […] This would seem to commit us to a definite policy in favor of the establishment of a Jewish state previous to consultations with the other interested powers and with the Arabs. […] The United States

Government should support a policy which would result in immigration into Palestine both restricted as to categories and limited as to numbers.”317

By August 1946, just after Truman rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan, the Soviet Union intensified their claims on the Turkish Straits. In addition to Turkish integrity, the State

316 “AACI Report” Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Palestine AAC”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 317 “Memorandum: Immigration into Palestine Previous to a Final Decision with regard to the Future Status of Palestine” Department of State, From Division of Near Eastern Affairs Mr. Loy W. Henderson to the Secretary of State, August 29, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 135

Department was concerned about the whole Middle East. “If we should make a decision on

Palestine which would further antagonize the Arabs against the US, Embassy Moscow predicts that the USSR would probably exploit this decision to the full in the Arab states in an endeavor to achieve a major political victory.”318 The Palestine issue had become an element to be considered in light of the Cold War struggle for influence in the developing world. “The political dangers consequent to such a policy [support for a Jewish state] would be real. The effect of such a policy on American interests and prestige would be harmful. The responsibilities which such a policy might impose upon the United States would be of a grave nature.”319

Rather than looking at the situation of the Jews or at Palestine, Washington scrutinized

Moscow’s policy to design its own. While military authorities in postwar Europe were still considering the Old Continent as the main Cold War field, the State Department already envisioned the developing world as the next battleground in the U.S.-Soviet struggle for influence. For this fight to come, the Arab states were more significant, in terms of number, strategic position, and natural resources, than a few hundred thousands of Jews claiming a homeland in Palestine from their camps in Europe. It would be detrimental to U.S. interests in oil-rich Middle East to anger the Arabs.

But in Europe, the sh’erit ha-pletah were increasingly upset at their unending stay in camps in Western Europe, and resented the occupation forces for their situation. When moving westward from hostile Eastern Europe, they had hoped that their time in camps would be just a transitional period, a short time in limbo between their wartime traumatizing struggle for survival

318 Summary of Telegrams, August 5, 1946; State Department Briefs Files, 1946 June-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 319 “Memorandum: Immigration into Palestine Previous to a Final Decision with regard to the Future Status of Palestine” Department of State, From Division of Near Eastern Affairs Mr. Loy W. Henderson to the Secretary of State, August 29, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 136 and a new future, which many envisioned in Palestine. They felt pushed away by the Soviet

Union, which did not protect them in Eastern Europe, and abandoned by the West, who seemed content to leaving them in camps. They reacted accordingly by a radicalization of their politics and the reinforcement of their determination to challenge the authorities, especially in the British zone. This radicalization took many aspects. Some of them remained internal to the Jewish D.P. community, such as their new divisions along political lines, which increasingly strengthened the revisionist over the more moderate parties. But some aspects of this radicalization were particularly problematic for the Allied forces, in particular the growing tendency to militarize the

D.P.s, to oppose more aggressively Allied and German authorities, and to challenge British immigration policy by recruiting more candidates for illegal immigration.

This militarization of the Jewish D.P.s, visible from drill formations and sometimes even uniforms, disturbed the U.S. military, who often viewed Jewish militancy as a threat to the local order and to their own authority. As Feinstein explained: “The increasing conflict between Jews and British forces in Palestine encouraged clandestine military training. […] Military preparation began immediately in the DP camps, led by former partisans and veterans. […]

Jewish Brigade soldiers aided in recruitment and training. Betar ran a training camp led by

Polish-Jewish veterans of the Soviet army and a Palestinian Jew.”320 Avinoam Patt confirmed that Brichah agents organized unmarried young men and women in Eastern Europe and smuggled them into Germany, where they received weapons training. Other D.P.s recruited for illegal immigration were sent for one week of “self-defense” training.321 Altogether, 37,000

Jewish D.P.s from camps in Austria and Germany attempted illegal immigration in the years

1945-1948, despite the hardships and the likely unhappy ending of being intercepted by the

320 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 275. 321 Avinoam J. Patt, Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), 237–53. 137

British Navy and sent to detention camps in Cyprus. Feinstein notes that this number is more than twice the number of Jews who attempted illegal immigration to the U.S. – which might also be connected to the greater risks due to the distance.322

This escalation of violent encounters between Jewish D.Ps and the authorities often revolved around the question of illegal immigration, as acknowledged in the A.A.C.I. report:

“Armed clashes are liable to arise from the efforts to prevent interference; a number have arisen from the search for illegal immigrants and arms.” The Zionists’ fight against the British in

Palestine increasingly threatened to spill over onto a new front within the D.P. camps. Although the report also favored “Jewish immigration under suitable conditions,” it did not specify how many immigrants would be allowed in the country after the initial 100,000. It confirmed that

Palestine was the “Jewish National Home,” yet declared that “any immigrant Jew who enters

Palestine contrary to its laws is an illegal immigrant.”323 That did not discourage sh’erit ha- pletah from trying, sometimes with the help of U.S. personnel and relief workers in Austria and

Germany, despite British authorities’ protestations. British General Frederick Morgan accused

Jewish employees of U.N.R.R.A. to “be doing all they could to subvert British policy on

Palestine.”324

Morgan’s suspicions were not unfounded: some American Jews working for U.N.R.R.A. were involved in illegal immigration. Saul Sorrin, U.N.R.R.A.’s director for the Munich area, helped Brichah’s efforts to smuggle East-European Jews into the U.S. zone and to escort transports of Jewish D.P.s from Germany to France, knowing that they were bound for Palestine.

322 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 284. 323 “AACI Report” Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Palestine AAC”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 324 Frederick E. Morgan, Peace and War: A Soldier’s Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961), 220–30; “UNRRA Diary,” May to July 1946; General Frederick Morgan; USHMM; cited in Shephard, The Long Road Home, 235–36. 138

Even director-general Fiorello LaGuardia is known to have threatened Marshal Tito to interrupt

U.N.R.R.A.’s aid to Yugoslavia if he did not assist the movement of Jewish refugees through his country to Palestine. 325 But this was not limited to U.N.R.R.A.

Diplomatic hesitations, manifested by successive reports and mixed signals from the

State Department, the War Department, and the White House, led occupation forces to improvise. Therefore U.S. military authorities in Europe, in view of their difficulties in dealing with Jewish D.P.s, often closed their eyes to – or even sometimes facilitated – the illegal movements of Jews out their zones toward France and Italy, from whence they knew that most would attempt to reach Palestine. An unwritten collaboration had taken root between the sh’erit ha-pletah, Yishuv agents, U.N.R.R.A. and U.S. personnel, to facilitate the brichah.326 U.S. personnel rationalized their attitude with the idea that rebuilding Europe around a strong

Germany required the removal of Jewish D.P.s, and this outweighed protecting British interests in the Middle East. But Zionist activism was not limited to the United States. Its most difficult task was to convince the Soviet Union.

Zionist activism’s diplomatic approach toward the Soviet Union

In their strategy to attract international sympathy, Zionist supporters faced a greater challenge than the United States, where they at least had some support. The Soviet Union was profoundly anti-Zionist. Yet Zionists needed to obtain from the other great power of the postwar landscape, if not diplomatic support, at least benevolent neutrality. Indeed, most potential immigrants to

Palestine emerged from the war in Soviet-controlled countries. In addition, the Soviet Union,

325 Frederick E. Morgan, Peace and War: A Soldier’s Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961), 220–30; “UNRRA Diary,” May to July 1946; General Frederick Morgan; USHMM; cited in Shephard, The Long Road Home, 235–36. 326 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 59, 276; Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 134–36. 139 with its influence over East-European countries, might determine the votes of at least five or six other countries, namely Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and to some extent Yugoslavia. Yet the U.S.S.R. traditionally opposed Zionist ideology, at least until the war pushed Soviet leaders to look for allies. As the wartime opened a window of communication between the Yishuv, Western Zionist institutions, and Soviet diplomacy, Zionist lobbying played on the Jewish question, which represented a problem for Soviet handling of Eastern Europe, to negotiate the departure of non-Soviet Jews for Palestine.327 Eventually, Soviet insecurity in the

Cold War context led Soviet leaders to consider Zionism as a potential asset to its European and

Middle Eastern policies.

The Soviet Union had always been, at least ideologically, anti-Zionist. Jewish nationalism was ipso facto in opposition to the communist vision that Jews should assimilate into modern society.328 One of the first acts of the Bolshevik government had been to instrumentalize

Palestine on the international scene and to denounce the Balfour Declaration as a hostile move and a tool of British imperialism. Yet until 1926 they tolerated and relied on Russian Zionists and Bundists, as the rare non-hostile organizations able to reach out to a Jewish audience, who represented an enigma for Soviet leaders.329 “The Jewish national culture is the motto of rabbis and bourgeois,” Lenin claimed.330 Based on their professions as small town traders and independent artisans, the Soviet state categorized a large percentage of Jews as “lishentsy” or superfluous, and did not immediately grant them citizenship. Communists perceived Jews as a

327 See above in chapter 1. 328 Enzo Traverso, Les Marxistes et La Question Juive. Histoire d’un Débat 1843-1943 (Paris: La Brèche, 1990); Annie Kriegel, Les Juifs et Le Monde Moderne (Paris: Seuil, 1977). 329 Joseph B. Schechtman, “L’URSS, Le Sionisme et Israël,” in Les Juifs En Union Soviétique Depuis 1917, Lionel Kochan, Ed. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1971), 141–74. 330 Vladimir Ilitch Lénine, Œuvres, vol. 20 (Paris: Editions sociales, 1958), 18. 140 reversed pyramid, lacking peasants or factory workers, who needed to be “productivized” and stripped of their bourgeois mentality.

Some Jewish designed the scheme of moving Jews to the countryside, drawing from the tsar Alexander I’s idea of remaking Jews into useful members of society. In

1928, Stalin designated Birobidzhan for this aim in the Amur region of eastern Russia, which in

1934 became the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (region), the first Jewish administrative unit since

70 C.E. As a Jewish proletarian territory, Birobidzhan was meant to undermine Zionism and limit its popularity, by providing a territorial solution to the Jewish question. From then on,

Moscow declared Palestine a territory for bourgeois-nationalist Jews and a tool of British imperialism.331 Having offered an alternative to Zionism, Stalin cracked down on other forms of

Jewish nationalism.332

He did so internally and externally. In Soviet foreign policy, Zionism was labelled

“social-fascism” and identified with Nazism. The Comintern instructed the Communist Party of

Palestine to lead anti-Zionist campaigns and to “Arabize” its leaders: “What image of Arab

Communism could a handful of Yiddishizing Jews give?”333 When the Communist Party cooperated with the Haganah, in 1929 and 1936-1939 to protect Jewish settlements from Arab attacks, Moscow denied any kind of anti-Jewish aspects to Arab violence and labeled it “anti- imperialist.”334 Therefore, Yishuv representatives as well as Russian Zionists were always uneasy in their negotiations with Soviet authorities. But the war opened windows of

331 Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924- 1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); David Shneer, “Zion Without Zionism: Birobidzhan and the Absence of a Birobidzhan Idea,” Jews in Eastern Europe Jerusalem (Winter 2002): 5–31. 332 Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs, 39–46, 58–59. 333 Alain Greilsammer, Les communistes israéliens (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1978). 334 Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs, 57. 141 opportunities as Stalin needed to find wartime allies and to set postwar goals. Zionism suddenly appeared as a potential tool.

Yishuv and Zionist leaders willingly pandered to Soviet instrumentalization. Indeed, the

1939 Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe from the Baltic states to Poland, following the secret

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, increased the Jewish population under Soviet rule from 3 to 4.8 million. Even before the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R. in June 1941, Nahum Goldman and

Chaim Weizmann, respectively president of the American Jewish Agency and president of the

World Zionist Organization, renewed contact with Soviet diplomats. They did so with two goals: first, they aimed to obtain emigration visas for Polish Jews, and second, to convince the

Soviets that the creation of a Jewish State was not against Soviet interests.335

But why did anti-Zionist Soviet leaders suddenly welcome Zionist bids? First, the Soviet

Union sought U.S. support for its war effort, and overestimated Jewish influence on the U.S. government. Second, they enlisted the Yishuv’s wartime support, in the form of medical supplies and media support. This agreement came hand in hand with the opening of a Jewish Agency office, negotiated between Jewish Agency representative Eliyahu Epstein and Soviet ambassador to Turkey Sergei Vinogradov in Moscow in December 1941.336 In other words, Moscow agreed to the presence in the Soviet capital city of a branch of one of the most overtly Zionist institution, whose goal, though perhaps toned down in wartime Moscow, was the immigration of world

Jewry to Palestine. The Committee in Support of the Soviet War Effort was a success in

Palestine, with 100 branches and 20,000 members. This wartime cooperation led to Soviet diplomats’ first visit to the Yishuv in August 1942, Sergei Mikhailov and Nikolai Petrenko, respectively first secretary and press attaché of the Soviet embassy in Turkey. Historian and

335 February 3, 1941; AVP RF, f. 17a, o. 1, p. 2, d. 8, ll. 17-19; SIO Vol. 1; 15-17. 336 December 31, 1941; AVP RF, f. 0118, o. 4, p. 3, d.1, ll. 2-3: 31; and January 20, 1942; AVP RF, f. 0118, o. 5, p. 3, d. 6, ll. 1-2; SIO Vol. 1; 27-28. 142

Labor Zionist leader Yitzhak Ben-Zvi recalled that they seemed impressed by Zionist progresses.337

But the highlight of wartime relations happened in early October 1943, when Ivan

Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London, became the first high level Soviet diplomat to visit the

Yishuv. He toured a couple of kibbutzim with Ben Gurion and expressed his admiration for

Zionist achievements, but he did so without engaging the Soviet Government.338 Despite his doubts about the land’s capacity to absorb 2.5 millions Jews, he suggested that the U.S.S.R. might support the Zionist project. Although his was a hypothetical and non-committal statement, he was the first Soviet official to do so.339 He sent a report to the Kremlin quite favorable to

Zionism.340 Then, in mid-1944, Goldman met with Konstantin Umansky, Soviet ambassador to

Mexico, who confirmed, talking not as an ambassador but “as a Russian and as a Jew,” that “the thinking was along the lines of furthering a Jewish state in Palestine.”341 Communication with

Moscow, although not always direct as the U.S.S.R. lacked a diplomatic representation in

Palestine, was open, and the Zionists would use it to access Jewish survivors in postwar Eastern

Europe and to design a diplomatic strategy toward the Soviet Union.

Soviet official discourse might have softened somewhat during the war, but prewar anti-

Zionism returned into the postwar era. In July 1945, Maxim Litvinov, chairman of the Soviet

Commission for the Preparation of Peace Agreements and Postwar Settlement, described

337 “Excerpts from the Diary of Y. Ben-Zvi” Jerusalem, August 31, 1942; CZA J89/125; DISR, Part I, doc. 16, pp.35-42. 338 “Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive” London, September 14, 1943; Weizmann Archive; and “Meeting with Maisky,” D. Ben Gurion’s Report to the Meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, October 4, 1943; CZA S100/40; DISR, Part I, doc. 29 and 31, pp.68, 70-72. 339 “Letter from Ben Gurion to Maisky” August 8, 1944; AVP FR, f. 017, o. 1, p. 4, d. 39, ll. 58-59; SIO Vol. 1; 93. 340 According to Dmitriy Manuilski (at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukraine SSR), who confided to Bartley C. Crum, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry; but this report has yet to be declassified; see Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, 65. 341 “Meeting: N. Goldmann – K. Umanskii” City, August 15, 1944; CZA Z6/2253; DISR, Part I, doc. 37, pp.79-81. 143

Zionism with negative words such as “Palestinophilism.” In his mapping of the Soviet Union’s strategy to end the British Mandate and claim a role in the resolution of the Palestine question,

Litvinov wrote: “The British have failed to carry out the conditions on which they were given the mandate [… which…] justifies the removal of the from British hands.

[…] The solution to the Palestine problem might best be undertaken by the USSR, which is free of both Arab and Jewish influence.” Knowing that this option would not be acceptable to the

Western powers, he suggested the transfer of Palestine to a U.S.-Soviet-British trusteeship:

“Together these three powers could take the necessary decisions, without deferring to Palestinian

Arab or Jewish opinion in Palestine as either British or American government would feel obliged to do if it were acting alone.”342 This cynical idea of disregarding the opinions of both peoples concerned by this issue must be kept in mind when analyzing the evolution of Soviet policy.

Almost a year later in April 1946, the Soviet official position had barely evolved. As former Soviet ambassador in Iran and chairman of the Foreign Ministry Middle East Department

Mikhail Alekseevich Maksimov stated, the U.S.S.R. still stood for a one-state solution – with an

Arab majority, since it opposed mass Jewish immigration. “The Jewish question in Europe can not be resolved by the immigration of Jews to Palestine. […] The British Mandate for Palestine must be annulled, since it […] creates a threat to security in the Middle East.”343 There is a typewritten note from May 20 at the top of the document, addressed to “Comrade Molotov,” in which Dekanozov approved these proposals as “generally acceptable” and asked for Molotov’s instructions. On May 27, Molotov answered the note: “Comrades Vyshinsky, Lozovoskii,

342 “Memorandum of the Commission for Preparation of Peace Agreements and Postwar Settlement: The Palestine Question” Moscow, July 27, 1945; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.29-38; DISR, Part I, doc. 51, pp.100-105. 343 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 144

Dekanozov: it should be discussed.” This suggests that Molotov might have already considered the possibility of a reorientation of the Soviet policy on Palestine.

Yet so far, public opinion as expressed by the elite, academics and journalists – which, in the 1940s Soviet Union, often reflected the official discourse – was also anti-Zionist. For example, in public conferences in the summer 1946, orientalist Vladimir Lutski declared:

“The Anglo-American ‘protectors’ of Zionism know that Jewish immigration to Palestine provokes in this country great economic hardship, threatens order, and triggers bloody responses, that it will inevitably lead to hundreds of victims, among the Jewish immigrants as well as among the local Arab population. But these victims’ blood, obviously, doesn’t trouble the Anglo-American ‘humanists’, as it should guarantee them military bases in Palestine and many millions from oil monopolies.”344

As late as 1946, Zionism was still seen as a puppet of Western imperialism, be it British or

American, and demonized by all segments of the population, even among assimilated Soviet

Jews.

Maksimov’s analysis of the A.A.C.I. report in April 1946, in a memorandum checked by

Foreign Minister Molotov and his deputy chief Dekanozov, accused the British of creating in

Palestine a bridgehead in the Near East, to ensure an outlet to the Mediterranean for British oil.

In a rare non-paranoid moment, Soviet leadership suspected the British to have involved the U.S. in the solution to the Palestine issue in order to divert Arab countries from blaming Britain alone, and to direct Arab public opinion against the U.S. instead.345 Whereas most analyses, including this dissertation, simply assume that the British could not financially and militarily deal with the

Palestine issue on their own, and wanted the U.S. to understand its complexity. Britain and the

344 “Palestinskaia Problema, Stenogramma publitchnoy lektsii protchitannoi 9 avgusta 1946” in Izdatel’stvo Pravda, Moscow, 1946, p.23. 345 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 145

U.S. also sought to prevent Palestine from falling under the responsibility of international institutions in which the Soviet Union had an important weight.

The same report analyzed U.S. willingness to get involved as a way to establish a foothold on the East-Mediterranean shores, close to sources of oil, and because of “Zionist capitalists” domestic pressure. “Britain and the US are working together but outside the United

Nations in an attempt to prolong the validity of the British mandate for Palestine.” It is unclear, from Soviet diplomatic documents, if they suspected more the British and Americans to conspire against each other or to work together against the Soviet Union. These tow options might not have been entirely incompatible in Soviet mindset.346

Zionists thought they were making breakthroughs with Soviet diplomats about the future of Palestine, while the Arab states and Palestinian Arabs were convinced that the Soviet Union would be on their side. This proved how deceptive, blurred, and/or undetermined Soviet diplomacy must have been at the time. Musa al-Alami, representing Palestinian Arabs in a meeting with Abdulrakhman Sultanov from the Soviet legation in , appealed to Moscow’s anti-imperialist stance and need for friendly governments in the Arab East. He claimed that the

British could have crushed Zionism long ago but let it spread only “to frighten us so much with the Zionist danger that Palestinian Arabs will ask the British to stay in Palestine forever.” Alami emphasized that “the Arabs place great hopes […] on the Allied peace conference and especially on the Soviet Union [… who…] has no imperialistic designs on the Arab states, and has a negative attitude to the Zionist movement.”347

346 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 347 “Conversation with Musa al-Alami, delegate of the Palestinian Arabs to the Conference convened by the Pan- Arab Congress,” A.F. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo, October 11, 1944; AVP RF, F.0118, Op.7, P.3, D.2, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 40, pp.85-88. 146

Arab hopes were legitimately based on the fact that Communist parties around the world, known to align their position to Moscow’s, were still ridiculing the idea of Jewish statehood and even nationhood.348 Most countries under Soviet authority regularly voted against proposals favorable to Zionism in the United Nations, as deplored by the Zionists themselves. “The Soviet bloc voted against anything which had to do with the Jewish problem. […] Well, except

Yugoslavia […] and the Poles […], but [in the] USSR they are absolutely definitely within the same camp as all the Arab states, and they do not realize that […] they are also at the same time fighting against any possibility of the solution of the Jewish problem.”349 Considering that

Yugoslavia and Poland were two exceptions in the Soviet bloc, for their greater independence from Moscow, it appeared that the entire Soviet world was perceived as anti-Zionist by both

Arabs and Zionists.

Yet, despite this Soviet official position, Zionist leaders kept pressing the U.S.S.R. to let

East-European Jews immigrate to Palestine, to some success. and David Ben

Gurion used the Soviets’ fear of Western attempts to keep them out of the Middle East. There was no single turning point but rather a slow adaptation of Soviet policy as a response to

Western powers’ political strategies. Driven by the need for stability and control over Eastern and Central Europe, Soviet policy in the Middle East was designed as a means to destabilize the

Western alliance, which seemed so solid when it came to dealing with Europe, at least in Soviet perception. Having failed to impose a Soviet presence in Iran and Soviet or collective control over the Turkish straits, Soviet leaders started to consider Palestine not just as another potential

348 “Minutes of a Report of J. Robinson at a Meeting of the American Zionist Emergency Council” New York, 19 November 1946; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 70, pp.150-157. 349 “Minutes of a Report of J. Robinson at a Meeting of the American Zionist Emergency Council” New York, 19 November 1946; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 70, pp.150-157. 147 access point to the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea, but as one of the rare issues that might breach the U.S.-British united front against the Soviet Union.

On September 17, 1946, ambassador to Washington Nikolai Novikov, former Soviet representative to Cairo, wrote a telegram assessing U.S. postwar goals and strategies, mirroring

George Kennan’s “Long Telegram.” He highlighted Palestine as “an example of the very acute contradictions in the policy of the United States and England in the Near East.” Novikov further considered that the U.S. demand for 100,000 visas for Jews into Palestine would “create many difficulties for Britain.” He considered that although the strengthening of the U.S. position in the

Middle East could, in the long run, threaten Soviet southern regions, in the present time it created an opposition between the U.S. and Britain that might benefit the Soviet position.350 After having long considered non-Soviet Jews as a liability in their East-European policy, the Soviets started to perceive uprooted Jews, because of their wish to immigrate to Palestine, as a useful tool in their fight against Anglo-American efforts to keep the U.S.S.R. out of the Middle East.

This participated in their liberal policy of facilitating non-Soviet Jews’ emigration as a way to aggravate the divisions among its Cold War adversaries, whether they took the roads to West-

European D.P. camps or the illegal routes to Palestine.

The first chapter showed that Soviet authorities allowed Jews to emigrate westward mostly as a way to deal with their own problems in Eastern Europe, especially their occupation of Poland, contested from within and without. Yet overcrowding the Western zones with homeless Jews had secondary benefits, which might prove useful to the Kremlin’s Cold War strategy. This was sufficient to embarrass the U.S. and Britain in Europe and drive a wedge

350 “Telegram from Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador to the US, to the Soviet Leadership,” September 27, 1946; History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVP SSSR, f. 06. op. 8, p. 45, p. 759, published in Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn' #11, 1990, pp.148-154; https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/novikov.htm consulted on October 21, 2017. 148 between them on the Palestine issue. However, Soviet manipulation did not end there. Moscow also encouraged and facilitated Jewish emigration by sea (the ha’apalah movement or Aliyah

Beth) through southeastern European ports of countries under their control, knowing quite well that these Jews’ destination was Palestine, though most would be intercepted by the British navy and sent to camps in Cyprus instead. Here again, Soviet leaders’ policies were not coherent, their actions contradicted their official discourse. Official anti-Zionism should have been supported by an on-the ground policy that forbade, or at least limited, Jews’ direct departure for

Palestine. On the contrary, foreign observers claimed that there was much evidence that the

Soviets pressured governments to allow Jewish illegal sailing to Palestine. By mid-1947, most

Westerners interpreted this Soviet policy as a way “to further complicate the DP problem and embarrass the British by aiding the Jews to go via the underground to Palestine.”351

Historians Arieh Kochavi and Gabriel Gorodetsky calculated that two fifths of Jewish illegal immigrants to Palestine, over 72,000 Jews, sailed from the Soviet-controlled Balkan states.352 There is evidence that the Soviets “suggested” to Romanian authorities to cooperate with Zionist organizations and let them operate on their territory, through Emil Budnaras, secretary general of the Council Presidium and head of the Secret Police, thought to have had the confidence of Soviet leaders and “to be the link between the Zionists and the Soviets” in

Romania.353 In addition, “false documentation or lack of papers apparently was no bar to the

351 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 352 Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 201; Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 353 Holman to Bevin, no.184, August 8, 1946; PRO, FO 371/52629/E8089; cited in Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 207. 149 release by the Soviets of shipping bound for Palestine with emigrants aboard.”354 Political

Counselor of the Soviet embassy in Warsaw Vladimir Iakovlev admitted to Zionist representatives that Soviet ambassadors in Eastern and Southern Europe had received instructions to pressure governments to allow Jewish Agency activities.355 In this way, Soviet authorities were both getting rid of the Jewish problem in the countries under their control and making sure that Jewish illegal immigration from Eastern Europe became not only overwhelming for Western powers in their occupation zone in Europe, but also unmanageable for the British in Palestine. This highlighted the link between the two issues of Jewish D.P.s in

Europe and illegal immigration to Palestine.

Yet Zionist institutions kept complaining that they did not have direct access to Soviet officials. In May 1946, Nahum Goldmann thanked Vincente Lombardo Toledano, Mexican

Labor leader and vice-president of the World Federation of Trade Unions, for his “willingness to discuss this matter [the lack of Soviet-Zionist contacts] with the Soviet government.” Goldmann also sent him a memorandum that Toledano agreed to transmit to the Soviet government. In this document, he expressed the fear that the Zionist project might be perceived as pro-Western by the Communist bloc, as a result of the absence of direct Soviet-Zionist communication. Indeed,

“all the conversations concerning Palestine are being held with the British and American governments which creates the impression that we on our side, want to discuss this problem only with these two governments and exclude Soviet Russia.” On the contrary, Goldmann claimed,

“the policy of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Zionist movement has always been to

354 Intelligence research project No. 3458 (Revision): “Study Showing the Relationship between Jews and Communism,” Second US Army, December 18, 1946; folder 46; box 94; 1899-1988; Albert C. Wedemeyer Papers; HIA. 355 V.Z. Lebedev to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Warsaw, July 12, 1946; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.42-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 64, pp.137-138. See also Pavel Soudoplatov and Anatoli Soudoplatov, Missions Spéciales. Mémoires Du Maître-Espion Soviétique Pavel Soudoplatov (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994), 364. 150 regard Zionism as an international problem and to get the support and good will of all the peoples and governments for it.”

Another concern expressed in this memorandum was that the Zionist project might be misrepresented to Soviet leaders and Soviet policy toward Zionism misunderstood by Jews.

Indeed, the Yishuv “not being a government and not having a normal representation in Moscow,” could not convey its side of the Palestine problem, so “the Soviet government knows only the

Arab side of the case and is not being presented with the Jewish side of the Palestine problem.”

As a result, Goldmann deplored, “Arab propaganda always tries to create the impression that the

Soviet government would support the Arabs. I do not believe that this is the case. […] Before the Soviet government takes a definite position on the Palestine problem, the Jewish Agency for

Palestine and the Jewish people have certainly a right to ask to be heard and be given an opportunity to state their views and arguments to the Soviet government.”356

Soviet representatives usually replied that misrepresentation of the Zionist cause was the result of the British not allowing the Soviet Union to send T.A.S.S. (Soviet News Agency) correspondents to Palestine.357 So Zionists looked for intermediaries to remedy this situation. In addition to the aforementioned request to Toledano, the Jewish Agency occasionally asked the

Polish government to intercede. As the Soviet ambassador to Warsaw Viktor Zakharovich

Lebedev wrote to Molotov in July 1946, a group of Yishuv leaders, who came to Warsaw to organize aid and immigration for the Jews, “made great efforts, through Berman and other Polish democratic politicians, to arrange a meeting with me. […] Their aim is to inform leading Soviet personalities about the situation in Palestine, and to gain the support of the government in

356 “Memorandum” N. Goldmann to L. Toledano, New York, May 21, 1946; CZA Z6/11/17; DISR, Part I, doc. 60, pp.128-130. 357 “P.” to the Political Department of the Jewish Agency: “Report of a discussion with Mr. A. Shvedov, first secretary of the Soviet Legation in Cairo” Cairo, 12 June 1946; CZA S25/486; DISR, Part I, doc. 62, pp.132-134. 151 organizing independent existence and statehood for the Jewish population of Palestine.” This document also attested that the Soviets were trying to avoid meetings between Zionist agents and important Soviets officials. Rather than accepting a meeting at the ambassador level, “they were seen by the embassy counselor, Iakovlev.”358

When Zionist representatives did manage to reach Soviet ears, whether indirectly through intermediaries or through official channels, their strategy to present the Zionist cause in a positive light was multipronged. First, they attempted to attract Soviet officials’ attention to the past suffering of European Jewry. The Soviet Army had witnessed this first hand, as liberators of most of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. The Soviet Union had been a shelter for East-European Jews, so the Zionists could raise the topic in a way that flattered Soviet national pride. They also pointed out the postwar homelessness of non-Soviet European Jews, as opposed to the Soviet Union being home to assimilated Soviet Jews. From the above-mentioned meeting, “Iakovlev understood […] that the [Zionist] representatives […] are struggling to save what is left of the Jewish population in Europe, and to send Jews to Palestine.”

Another aspect was to emphasize the common political grounds between the Soviet and

Zionist socio-economic ideals. They sent members of the most leftist and socialist elements of the Zionist movement: Poale Zion, a Marxist-Zionist movement founded in Russia after the

Bund rejected Zionism, and ha-shomer ha-tzair, a secular socialist-Zionist youth movement and a leading force in the development of the kibbutzim. The two groups “represent parties which stand for firm friendship with the USSR,” according to Soviet diplomats. It seemed to have had some success, if limited, as the international conference of trade unions in London in February

1945 adopted a pro-Zionist resolution, asking the U.N. to protect the Jews and declaring that the

358 V.Z. Lebedev to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Warsaw, July 12, 1946; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.42-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 64, pp.137-138. 152

Jewish people should be enabled to continue in the construction of Palestine as its national home, which the Soviet delegation supported. But soon Reuben Agaronov, Soviet vice-consul in

Beirut, claimed that “this should not be construed to mean that the Soviet government […] has become pro-Zionist. We have yet to be convinced that the Zionist movement […] is independent and autonomous. […] While we are aware that strong and influential progressive elements are represented in the Zionist movement, the movement as a whole is not independent.”359

The most important aspect of the Zionist strategy toward Soviet officials was to appeal to their sense of insecurity vis-à-vis the Western powers, their search for a strategic position in the nascent Cold War, and their need for allies in the Middle East, in order to firmly establish their country as a great power. From wartime discussions to postwar activism, Zionist leaders claimed that they favored Soviet involvement in the Palestine issue rather than a unilateral British, or

Western, settlement. For instance, Soviet ambassador in Warsaw Lebedev reported to Molotov that Zionist representatives “told Iakovlev that they were extremely worried by Britain’s intention to turn Palestine into an armed base for British imperialism in the Middle East and to involve the ruling clique in the Arab countries in its hazardous policy.”360 Although certainly true, Yishuv leaders used this argument because they knew the Soviets shared their suspicions of the British policy.

The A.A.C.I. report in April 1946 and the Morrison-Grady Plan in July 1946 confirmed

Soviet fears – if that was needed after the Iranian oil and the Turkish straits crises – that Western powers were doing their best to keep the U.S.S.R. out of the Middle East, by attempting to solve the Palestine issue without involving the United Nations. “They aim to prevent the interference

359 L. Tarnopoler to the Board of the League for Friendly Relations with the USSR: “Report of a conversation with Reuben Agaronov, Soviet vice-consul in Beirut, who visited Palestine in May 1946” Jerusalem, May 22, 1946; CZA S25/486; DISR, Part I, doc. 61, pp.130-132. 360 V.Z. Lebedev to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Warsaw, July 12, 1946; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.42-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 64, pp.137-138. 153 of other states in the solution of the Palestine problem, until Palestine is completely in British and American possession.”361 Referring to the Morrison-Grady plan, Moscow assumed that the

“main reason why Truman rejected the British plan is the detachment of the Negev region.

Confirmation of this may be found in the fact that the Americans do not reject the idea of a partition of Palestine in principle but only the British plan.” The Morrison-Grady plan, actually a U.S.-British initiative, would indeed maintain the Negev under British control, as part of “their strategic plan to turn Transjordan and the southern part of Palestine into a general military bridgehead,” whereas according to Soviet analysis “the Americans are seeking a solution […] which will enable them to bring the Arabian oil pipeline to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean without passing through […] territories under British influence.”362

The division between Britain and the U.S. became extremely important in Soviet strategy. Vyshinsky even claimed that it was the reason behind Soviet secrecy and reluctance to reveal their own position on the Palestine question. When the Polish government asked

Vyshinsky to authorize Poland to support the Zionist side in the United Nations, he replied: “At the present time, the USSR sees no need to take a stand on Palestine. […] Molotov believes that if the USSR took a stand on Palestine, the current disagreement between England and America would pale, and the USSR would bring about a rapprochement between England and

America.”363 After the A.A.C.I. report and the Morrison-Grady Plan, the Soviet government firmly believed that the Palestine issue could provide the main point of contention to exploit in order to jeopardize Western unity. Soviet consul to Egypt Daniil S. Solod, former ambassador to

361 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 362 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 363 “Cryptogram no. 5121” from Skrzeszewski to Olszewski, August 24, 1946; Dispatches, Paris 1946, series 6/77; AMSZ; cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 50. 154

Iran, who also served as an envoy to Syria and Lebanon, told the head of the Foreign Ministry

Near East Department Ivan Samylovsky that Palestine was “for many reasons the key issue in

Anglo-American differences on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.”364

The Soviet assessment of the conflict between the U.S. and Britain later proved to have been an optimistic overstatement, as the Palestine issue would not be enough to break the West’s anti-Soviet front. But Soviet officials’ analysis certainly helped reveal the secondary benefits of their Jewish policy in Eastern Europe. Indeed, the aforementioned document appeared to be the first (available) occurrence of Soviet diplomacy connecting the two issues of the Jewish refugees in Europe and the Palestine question, and used the former to justify their involvement in the latter. According to Solod, “we can and ought to demand to participate in the solution of this question [Palestine], since the Jews in Europe are to be found in the Soviet as well as the Anglo-

American occupation zones. Moreover, Palestine itself is situated not only on the route of

British imperial communications, but also on the sea routes of various ports in our own country.”365

However, it is obvious that the Soviet Union did not want to take a public stance on the issue of Palestine. In May 1946, Soviet Consul in Beirut Reuben Agaronov told Yishuv representative Tarnopoler that he could not offer a clear response to the question “What is the

USSR’s stand on the Palestine question?” but that when it will be raised at the U.N. General

Assembly, “naturally his government’s representatives will then clarify the USSR’s position on

364 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii, Beirut, January 3, 1946; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.6, Ll.6-10; DISR, Part I, doc. 56, pp.120-123. 365 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii, Beirut, January 3, 1946; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.6, Ll.6-10; DISR, Part I, doc. 56, pp.120-123. 155 the subject.”366 Was that Agaronov’s wishful thinking? In May 1946 when this conversation took place, the British had not yet handed the Palestine question over to the United Nations.

But was the Soviet position on Palestine kept secret only for strategic purposes, or because it was not firmly designed yet? It is unclear whether Stalin himself had already made up his mind on what the Soviet policy would be – at least there is no evidence of it in declassified archival documents. Was he cautious in revealing his policy in order to retain some leeway to adapt it to Western and/or Middle Eastern attitudes? Or was he just buying time before alienating the Arab states, but already knew that his final position would favor the creation of a

Jewish state in Palestine? As a matter of fact, some in Soviet diplomatic circles started to worry that Moscow’s “silence on the Palestine question could be interpreted by the US, Britain, the

Arabs and the Jews as a degree of compliance […] with the committee’s proposals.”367 In this memorandum approved by Dekanozov and Molotov, Maksimov emphasized that both Jews and

Arabs were counting on Soviet support and suggested that it was time to design – not just reveal – Soviet policy on the matter. This proves that even high-ranking officials were not aware of whether or not Stalin had already set a policy on the subject, and if he did, what position he had adopted.

Therefore, the Soviet strategy on the Palestine issue came from a Jewish problem in

Europe, but also from the idea that Palestine was the weak link in a united Western front. The

U.S.-British successive reports and general indecisiveness on the issue seemed to confirm the

Kremlin’s assumption. “A certain clash of interests between the British and the Americans could be detected over Palestine. […] True, one cannot yet infer that these differences will lead to a

366 L. Tarnopoler to the Board of the League for Friendly Relations with the USSR: “Report of a conversation with Reuben Agaronov, Soviet vice-consul in Beirut, who visited Palestine in May 1946” Jerusalem, May 22, 1946; CZA S25/486; DISR, Part I, doc. 61, pp.130-132. 367 “Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: The Palestine Question” Moscow, May 15, 1946; AVP RF, F.06, OP.8, P.42, D.694, Ll.1-4; DISR, Part I, doc. 59, pp.126-128. 156 deterioration of Anglo-American relations, but it is plainly a sign of things to come.”368 And in this conflict in Palestine, the Soviets started to see the Zionists as more efficient allies to deepen the U.S.-British conflict than the Arabs. Solod emphasized to Samylovsky that in the uncertainty about how the Palestine question will be resolved, “there is every reason to believe that the present Arab leaders will give way again.” Moscow viewed Arab leaders as British puppets: “no one among them will dare to raise his voice against the British. […] The appearance of such a cavalier and insolent British plan for the partition of Palestine […] has become possible, thanks to the position of capitulation to the British adopted by the heads of the Arab states […] and by the Arab political leaders.”369

On the other hand, Zionist leaders kept assuring Moscow that the Jewish State would remain neutral in the emerging East-West confrontation. As a proof, they were already taking arms against the British in Palestine. On the diplomatic scene, the Zionists were recasting the sh’erit ha-pletah stranded in Western Europe into their main weapon to attract international sympathy and isolate Britain.370 The Jewish D.P.s themselves were outraged by the A.A.C.I. report and the Morrison-Grady Plan. They were aware that these documents and the debate it created meant that D.P. camps would not close anytime soon but on the contrary consolidate.

This provoked despair, increased illegal immigration, and escalated Jewish D.P.s’ radicalization.

As a result, the Soviet ideological anti-Zionism that was still expressed by Soviet representatives and in most Foreign Affairs documents, would not reflect for long the reality of

Soviet policy and actions. In truth, policy related to the Jewish refugees did not seem to have

368 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii, Beirut, August 13, 1946; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.6, Ll.167-72; DISR, Part I, doc. 65, pp.139-142. The U.S. announced to the British ambassador that the President would not endorse the Morrison-Grady Plan on July 30, 1946: “Memorandum of a Conversation with the British ambassador” by the Acting Secretary of State (Acheson), Washington, D.C.; July 30, 1946; Document 520; FRUS, 1946, Vol. VII; 673- 674; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d520 consulted on November 2, 2017. 369 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii, Beirut, August 13, 1946; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.6, Ll.167-72; DISR, Part I, doc. 65, pp.139-142. 370 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 157 been handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but by the Red Army occupying Eastern Europe and/or the Secret Services policing it – both archival sources that are not available to foreign researchers as of the writing of this work. And the policy the Soviets had in mind for Palestine was either Stalin’s secret, or was still to be determined. Soviet leaders believed Jewish D.P.s could become the reason for the Western powers to involve the United Nations in the Palestine question. This would force the connection between the issue of Jewish homelessness in Europe and the question of the future of the British Mandate in Palestine. In case this would not be sufficient, Soviet diplomatic strategy could still count on the Arabs, increasingly angered by the successive Western proposals and by the steady legal and illegal Jewish immigration, to raise the issue themselves at the United Nations. Both paths would lead the U.N. to inherit the Palestine question, therefore giving the U.S.S.R. a voice, without having had to show its interest in the issue or to reveal its position.

Conclusion

As historian Dan Stone writes, “The sorrows of liberation […] forced survivors into ‘illegal’ immigration, into conflict with local populations and military and civilian authorities, and into psychological turmoil.”371 They built in D.P. camps a new identity of sh’erit ha-pletah and demanded a national homeland in Palestine. In parallel, Zionist lobbying pressured the U.S. on many fronts – in occupied Europe through the Jewish D.P.s, on the domestic side through public opinion and Congress members, and on the diplomatic scene. Toward the Soviet Union,

Zionists’ action was more limited – they could not mobilize Soviet Jews’ activism, not to jeopardize their situation, and contacts with Soviet officials were difficult without Soviet

371 Stone, Liberation, 218. 158 representation in Palestine. Yet they managed to reach Soviet ears, and succeeded in convincing the Soviets to keep the door open for non-Soviet Jews who wanted to leave, either toward the

Western zones or to British Palestine.

So the Jewish displaced persons, through their newfound identity of sh’erit ha-pletah, their situation stranded in camps in former enemy countries that outraged public opinions worldwide, their activism to press the international community to force Britain to open the doors to Palestine, their attempts at illegal immigration to Palestine which often ended with more Jews in camps in Cyprus, willingly became assets for the Zionist cause. The Yishuv and international

Zionist organizations seized this efficient tool to push their goal to plead the case of the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine with the United States and the Soviet Union. Based on the need to address the problem of Jewish homelessness in Europe, it had been the uncoordinated efforts of the sh’erit ha-pletah, the Yishuv, the Zionists organizations, the United States and the Soviet

Union which eventually led to the internationalization of the Palestine question.

159

CHAPTER 3

TURNING POINTS IN THE SPRING 1947:

HOW CREATING A JEWISH STATE IN PALESTINE BECAME A VIABLE OPTION

The second chapter explored how the Jewish presence in Europe and Palestine, along with the

Zionist activism of the sh’erit ha-pletah, Yishuv institutions, and various pro-Zionist organizations, led the United States and the Soviet Union to consider Palestine as an outlet for the Jewish problem in Poland and Germany respectively. Thus this works claims that the Jewish refugees created the bridge between U.S. and Soviet European policy and their strategy in the

Middle Eastern. Yet two obstacles remained before concretizing this link between Jewish homelessness in Europe and Jewish statehood in Palestine. Britain, who still held power in

Palestine under the terms of the Mandate, resolutely denied the connection between these two issues, and the Soviet Union still displayed a strong anti-Zionist rhetoric, which did not allow the international community to presume that its liberal policy toward Jewish emigration from Europe would translate into support for the creation of a Jewish state.

In the spring 1947, two turning points made the creation of a Jewish state in part of

Palestine a conceivable option. With the Cold War tensions escalating, U.S. pressure for the quick resolution of the Jewish D.P. problem, which Soviet policy on Jewish emigration kept making worse, forced Britain to acknowledge the inevitability of the connection between the

Jewish issue in Europe and the question of the future status of Palestine. In addition, the situation deteriorated in Palestine between Arabs and Jews, and every British proposal met both

Arab and Jewish opposition. Eventually, Britain resolved to renounce its Mandate over Palestine

160 in February 1947 and brought the question to the United Nations General Assembly.

Subsequently, and against all odds, the Soviet position, contrary to its ideological claims and usual rigidity, proved fluid and not uncompromisingly opposed to the Zionist cause. For the first time a Soviet official suggested the possibility of partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab states. Together these two developments made the creation of a Jewish state through the partition of Palestine a feasible, foreseeable solution to Jewish homelessness.

The internationalization of the Jewish D.P. issue and its irresistible ties to the Palestine question

Pressures from diverse sources, with different aims, converged into linking the Jewish D.P.s with the Palestine issue despite British resistance. Every group had its own goals and priorities, overlapping or contradicting each other’s. The Western powers wanted to keep the U.S.S.R. out of the Middle East but could not reconcile this aim with the U.S. priority of settling the question of the Jewish D.P.s. The Kremlin wanted to gain ground in the Middle East and realized that the weak point of the Western alliance was Palestine, and that East-European Jews, whom they wanted out of Eastern Europe for aforementioned reasons, might become their best tools for entering Middle Eastern politics. The sh’erit ha-pletah wanted to emigrate from Europe and recover their agency, and with most doors closed whereas the Yishuv wanted them, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was the best way to achieve these aims. The goal of Yishuv and

Zionist organizations was, obviously, to obtain the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine.

Everyone’s priorities intertwined and evolved, but three trends led to the internationalization of the Palestine issue by forcing Britain to bring the Palestine question before the United Nations

General Assembly. While Western powers attempted to keep the Soviets out of the debate on

161 the Palestine question, Moscow disrupted these plans by overflowing the West and Palestine with homeless Jews. This led the U.S. to prioritize Europe over the Middle East, or in other words, to favor solving the Jewish refugee issue over preserving the British order in Palestine.

After the first Allied Conference in which President Truman participated, at Potsdam, in

July-August 1945, the media asked him about Palestine. His response was that Palestine “has been discussed with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his successor, Prime Minister

Clement Attlee but not with Premier Stalin as there was nothing Stalin could do about it anyway.”372 True enough, Palestine was under British authority, so in theory there was nothing

Stalin could do about it. But, also in theory, neither could Truman – a fact that seemed to have escaped his own awareness. In 1945, the U.S. had no more responsibility or power over

Palestine than did the Soviet Union. Nor did the U.S. zones of occupation contain more Jews than the Soviet zones. Therefore, the deeper significance of Truman’s answer reflected his intention of keeping Moscow out of any world issue in which it was not already involved, whereas U.S. prerogatives should not be limited in such a way. U.S.-British cooperation on every matter of the postwar world seemed natural as Britain and the U.S. were closer allies than either of them had ever been with the Soviet Union. The wartime alliance had been the result of temporary military necessity. Yet the postwar Allied institutions still included the U.S.S.R., so excluding it publicly from the Palestine question betrayed Anglo-American intentions to maintain influence on Palestine and keep the Soviet Union out of it.

If Palestine had been discussed between U.S. and British leaders, it was nonetheless firmly in British hands. Yet Truman did not wait for a British invitation to seize on the heated topic and make suggestions and recommendations as to how the British should handle it. This

372 “Palestine”; Palestine 1945-1947; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 162 did not necessarily imply an interest in sharing influence in Palestine. But it showed that the

U.S. would not shy away from interference, especially since this British-controlled territory could be used to relieve all Western zones of their homeless Jews and the U.S. government from diverse domestic pressure. The Harrison Report, mentioned above for its evaluation of the Jews’ situation in Germany and Austria after the war, raised the question of their immigration to

Palestine. “The issue of Palestine must be faced. […] If there is any genuine sympathy for what these survivors have endured, some reasonable extension or modification of the British White

Paper of 1939 ought to be possible without too serious repercussions [emphasis is mine].”373

Truman wrote a letter to Attlee to accompany the Report, insisting that “the American people” supported this solution.374 From then on, he kept pressing Britain to allow 100,000 Jewish D.P.s to immigrate to Palestine. But for over a year, he did so while pretending that this would not presume the future status of Palestine.

The British opposed Jewish immigration to Palestine, but otherwise welcomed U.S. participation in solving the Jewish question in Europe, thereby indirectly inviting American opinion into the Palestine question as well. London involved the U.S. in a joint investigation of the Jews’ situation in Europe and options for their rehabilitation, hoping U.S. experts would understand and share their unwillingness to allow Jews into Palestine, and would support British policy. Attlee was soon disappointed. Truman publicly endorsed the A.A.C.I.’s recommendations favorable to Zionism, but ignored the others, despite the opposition of its own

State Department and Division of Eastern Affairs.375 His speech on April 30, 1946, emphasized

373 “Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached to the Letter from President Truman to General Eisenhower” August 31, 1945; Topics Files 1945-1953; Folder 19 “Refugees, War”; Box 197; PSF: Historical File, 1924-1953; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 374 “Letter from the President to Prime Minister Attlee, with Partial Report of Earl G. Harrison attached” August 31, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Jews DPs”; Box 159; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 375 See above in chapter 1; “Memorandum” by the Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas (Hilldring) to the Under Secretary of State (Acheson); Washington, May 3, 1946; Document 455; 867N.01/5–346; FRUS, 1946, Vol. 163 the importance of the development of a Jewish national home, along with the preservation and internationalization of the holy sites and the protection of the Arab population.376 Unable to find common grounds to move forward, the British and Americans kept trying to find solutions without involving the international community, especially the Soviet Union. But from this point onward, they entered a “dialogue de sourds” (dialogue of the deaf), in which neither party would take into consideration the other’s priorities.

London and Washington agreed on initiating consultations with Jews and Arabs on the basis of the A.A.C.I. report. Yet when the U.S. proposed an extensive list of the Jewish/Zionist organizations to consult, Attlee did not take the measure of the Zionist pressure on President

Truman and responded that only the Jewish Agency should be consulted, “in view of the special position conferred to it by Article 4 of the Mandate as the accredited representative of Jewry in matters relating to the Jewish National Home.”377 Then on May 27, 1946, the British sent a long list of topics to be discussed – but Truman did not take into consideration the fact that the British needed to fix the Palestine question at once, in order to be able to impose a solution on two peoples hostile to Britain and to each other. Instead, he picked the topic for which Zionist pressure on him was the strongest, and had Byrnes reply on June 5, “while it will take considerable time to find satisfactory answers to all the problems which you have listed, we feel it would be highly desirable that we begin immediately consideration of the question of the

VII; 591-592; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d455 consulted on November 12, 2017; “Memorandum” by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Merriam) to the Under Secretary of State (Acheson); Washington, May 8, 1946; Document 461; 867N.01/5–346; FRUS, 1946, Vol. VII; 597-598; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d461 consulted on November 12, 2017; and Michael Joseph Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 115–16. 376 “Statement by the President” April 30, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Palestine Press Release”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 377 “Telegram Acheson (acting) in the name of Truman, to Attlee” May 8, 1946; and “Telegram Prime Minister Attlee to the President of the United States” May 19, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 164

100,000 Jews whose situation continues to cause great concern” and assured him that the U.S. would assist in their transportation and temporary housing.”378

This continued over the next month, with Attlee rejecting this proposal on June 10, arguing that “it is necessary to consider not only the physical problems involved but also the political reactions and possible military consequences.” He wrote further on June 14: “We cannot contemplate accepting the proposal to admit large numbers of Jews to Palestine without very careful consideration of the effects which such a decision, when announced would have in the light of the other proposals we were making at the same time.” But Attlee then received, on the same day, Truman’s response: “nevertheless, I consider that our two governments should without delay endeavor to make detailed plans for the transfer of the 100,000 Jews to

Palestine.”379

These repetitive U.S.-British communications clearly show the misunderstandings between Truman and Attlee and their irreconcilable priorities, despite their general ideas on how to solve both issues of Jewish homelessness and Palestine, which were not radically opposed.

The U.S. sent a delegation to London to attend a joint conference on Palestine in July 1946. An internal memorandum in preparation of this meeting showed that the British and U.S. views were not essentially incompatible. The U.S. was in agreement with the A.A.C.I. report, but believed that early action should be taken on the immigration of 100,000 Jewish D.P.s – a deal breaker for

Britain, despite the fact that it also agreed with the general spirit of the report. The U.S. was also not willing to commit to military assistance, unless it would be in the framework of a United

378 “Telegram Prime Minister Attlee to the President of the United States” May 27, 1946; and “Telegram Department of State to Byrnes (London)” June 5, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 379 “Telegram Prime Minister Attlee to the President of the United States” June 10, 1946; and “Telegram Prime Minister Attlee to the President of the United States” June 14, 1946; and “Telegram Acheson (acting) in the name of Truman, to Attlee” June 14, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 165

Nations force. Therefore Washington could have been ready to follow London’s lead, as the

British thought military force would be necessary to impose any solution on Jews and Arabs in

Palestine and was seeking a solution that might prevent it.380

The U.S. sought a binational state, with parity of governmental power irrespective of the proportion of Jews and Arabs, but would explore the possibility of a partition plan “whereby the

Arab territory would be joined to Trans-Jordan and the Jewish territory made independent. If accepted by the two parties, this would be the speediest relief from the present impasse even if it were not theoretically as beneficial for either part of the population as a continued Palestinian state.” The U.S. had no desire to be the administering authority or even to be part of a collective trusteeship, but offered to participate financially, both directly and through the International

Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Export-Import Bank.381 The British also favored a binational state, but in a more federal framework under British supervision, where

Jews and Arabs would share power according to a provincial division, and therefore in proportion to their population.

The State Department and some branches of the War Department sided with the British against the White House on the question of Jewish immigration to Palestine. The abovementioned memorandum raised the risk of alienating the Arab world: “Americans have spent a hundred years in building an extraordinary degree of good will among the peoples of the

Middle East. There is strong military opinion that this is of importance to us. There is also a strong informed opinion that this structure is likely to be destroyed by our support of the Anglo-

380 “Memorandum of instructions to the Committee discussing Palestine, London Conference”; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Cabinet Committee, London Conference – July 1946; Box 151; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 381 “Memorandum of instructions to the Committee discussing Palestine, London Conference”; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Cabinet Committee, London Conference – July 1946; Box 151; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 166

American Committee Report.” It also highlighted the threat of “a permanent impairment of our relations with them [Arabs and Arab states] and a possible [r]approchement by them to

Russia.”382

The State-War-Navy coordinating committee concurred with this assessment, and strongly rejected the use of U.S. military in Palestine: “we believe that the political shock attending the reappearance of U.S. armed forces in the Middle East would unnecessarily risk such serious disturbances throughout the area as to dwarf any local Palestine difficulties.” It warned that implementation of the report “by force would prejudice British and US interests in much of the Middle East.” As a result, “the USSR might replace the United States and Britain in influence and power through the Middle East.” And this should not be allowed to happen, considering the importance of a friendly and stable Middle East as “the buffer between Russia and the British Mediterranean life line. If the peoples of the Middle East turn to Russia, this would have the same impact in many respects as would military conquest on this area by the

Soviets.”383

Yet, especially after Truman rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan, the State Department doubted the President’s ability or willingness to resist Zionist pressure for the creation of a

Jewish state. In the name of Secretary Byrnes and Ambassador Harriman, Acting Secretary Will

Clayton wrote: “You might wish to avoid making any further public statements with regard to

Palestine, and specifically with regard to the 100,000 Jews, for the time being. […] Any statement by this Government approving partition would mean that we had gone contrary to the

382 “Memorandum of instructions to the Committee discussing Palestine, London Conference”; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 1 “Cabinet Committee, London Conference – July 1946; Box 151; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 383 “British proposals in connection with the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine; Reference: J.C.S. 1684,” State-War-Navy coordinating committee, June 21, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 167 recommendations both of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and of the experts who drew up the Morrison-Grady scheme.”384

Here again, the danger was the potentiality of an Arab-Soviet rapprochement: “The attitude of the Arab world toward the United States has become progressively hostile in the last few months. Our Joint Chiefs of Staff, who feel that the United States has a vital security interest in the Middle East, have urged that we take no action with regard to Palestine which might orient the peoples of the entire area away from the Western Powers.” Truman responded that he hoped he would not have to say anything on Palestine in the near future.385 Increasingly, in the spring and summer 1946, the lead argument behind the State and War Departments’ opposition to Jewish immigration to Palestine became the threat of Soviet penetration of the

Middle East through Arab anti-Westernism, supposedly brought about by the Palestine issue – a supposition which ignored the history of anti-Westernism in the developing world and other decolonization movements.386 This also showed a Western misunderstanding of Soviet strategy regarding the Palestine issue.

The Soviet Union was in its own way getting rid of the Jewish problem by allowing Jews to leave the territories under its control in Eastern Europe. Moscow’s main goal was to solve its own dilemma of limiting antisemitism to prevent international questioning of its occupation, but without repressing its authors to avoid alienating further the peoples they were trying to control.

But while letting over 280,000 Jews leave Eastern Europe by land and sea, toward the Western

384 “Memorandum for the President: Subject: Statement in Connection with Palestine,” Department of State, from Acting Secretary Clayton, September 12, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 385 “Memorandum for the President: Subject: Statement in Connection with Palestine,” Department of State, from Acting Secretary Clayton, September 12, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 386 Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge University Press, 2005). 168 zones or directly to Palestine, Moscow realized that they could achieve other, not necessarily anticipated, objectives. 387 Seeing how this Jewish exodus perturbed U.S. and British occupation forces in Europe, disproportionately to their number because of their homelessness, and maybe also, because of the threat of the two million Soviet Jews who could have followed, Moscow started considering the side effects of its policy.388 Soviet documents available do not show any

Soviet intention to let Soviet Jews emigrate or use this perspective to scare the Western powers, but London and Washington did not know this and could only guess Soviet intentions.

Provoking some dissension between its two main Cold War adversaries and weakening their common front against Soviet penetration of the Middle East was the most significant benefit.

Destablizing his traditional enemy, Britain, by an influx of illegal immigrants both in its zone in

Europe and in its Mandate in Palestine, must have also been particularly satisfying to Stalin.

As the U.S. scrutinized the Soviet Union, the opposite was also true. Moscow analyzed the effects of its own policy of letting the Jews leave on the U.S.-British relationship and on

Western policies toward Jews and Palestine. They concluded that the A.A.C.I. report was not put into practice because of the strong Arab reaction against it. Moscow assumed, rightly in the case of Britain, that goodwill of the Arab states was deemed more important than that of the

Jews, in Palestine as well as in Europe. This analysis might very well have participated in shaping the Soviet decision to eventually support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, although it is never stated clearly in available Soviet material.

Maksimov considered the Morrison-Grady plan of July 1946 incompatible with the

A.A.C.I. report. Moscow found unacceptable that it would give Britain “complete control of the country, replacing the mandate system with a special federal structure in which Britain would be

387 Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics, 227. 388 Though Soviet documents available do not show any Soviet intention to let Soviet Jews emigrate, nor consideration of Soviet Jews’ departure as a potential tool to scare the Allies. 169 a permanent member of the federation alongside the Arabs and the Jews.” They understood

Arab rejection of the Plan as opposition to any kind of partition, even in a federal framework –

but not because of the power the Plan would conferred to Britain. The Soviets analyzed Jewish rejection of the Plan because of the lack of independence the Jewish entity would have had and the power the British would have retained. In sum, according to Soviet analysis, the Zionists and the Soviets opposed the plan for similar reasons, whereas the Arabs opposed it for different reasons.389

Around mid-1946, the Zionists noticed this change in Soviet apprehension of the

Palestine issue. Head of the Jewish Agency’s Arab Department Eliyahu Sasson analyzed that

“the Soviets cannot accept that Britain will try to resolve the issues of the East alone and according to its interests, without involving Russia at least to the same degree as it does the

United States.” He assumed that Moscow expected the Palestine question to remain unsolved and the Arab-Jewish dispute to deteriorates, so much so that Britain “cannot accede either to the requests of the Arabs or of the Jews” so that “ultimately the question will inevitably be raised in an international forum of which Russia is a member.” Therefore, Moscow “will then obtain the formal authority to intervene in the Palestine question, and through it in other Middle Eastern issues.” Sasson drew this analysis from the fact that Moscow instructed “all communist agents, ambassadors and parties in the Middle East to bring pressure to bear on all Arab statesmen to raise the Palestine question and every other issue relating to the Arab East before the Security

Council or the United [Nations] Organization.”390

This assessment of Soviet policy proves, if it were necessary, that the Zionists knew the

Soviets were not suddenly accepting Zionism out of conviction or sympathy for Jewish

389 M.A. Maksimov to V.G. Dekanozov, Moscow, September 6, 1946; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.7, Ll.9-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 67, pp.144-146. 390 E. Sasson to E. Epstein, Jerusalem, June 28, 1946; CZA S25/485; DISR, Part I, doc. 63, pp.135-137. 170 survivors, and that therefore this thin support was fragile. They also knew that the Soviets meant to use Jews and Zionism as a means to an end useful to them, but were willing tools of Soviet policy as long as it could serve their own cause. So far this policy, as inconsistent as it might have been with Soviet ideology, had many benefits for the Zionists. It was fueling the Jewish

D.P. population and the Jewish inmates in British camps in Cyprus who had failed at illegal immigration to Palestine. In the words of American Jewish Conference representative David

Wahl, “it was the cooperation of the Soviet government in repatriating many thousands of Polish

Jews which made it possible to build up the Jewish DP population now in Germany from 70,000 at war’s end, to almost a quarter of a million at the present time, and certainly no one will gainsay that it is the pressure of this large DP population which is of inestimable value to the

Zionist cause with respect to increasing immigration to Palestine and building towards a Jewish majority in Palestine.”391 In 1945, Palestinian demography was in favor of the Arabs; but by

1947, the accumulated number of Jews in Palestine and candidates to immigration from Cyprus and Europe was catching up with the number of Palestinian Arabs, therefore rendering the question of a Jewish state in Palestine more realistic.

Where the Zionist assessment was accurate is that Soviet policy toward Palestine was not determined by either pro- or anti-Zionist and/or pro- or anti-Arab convictions. It seemed to have been determined mostly by Soviet interpretation of Western powers’ policies. As far as available documents show, Soviet policy was reactive rather than proactive, with the aim of creating favorable conditions for Soviet influence in the Middle East. In December 1946, Soviet Consul to Egypt Solod wrote from Beirut that the U.S. wanted to allow the British to “arrange their own affairs” while acting in parallel “to seize control of all the most important leading economic positions in the Arab countries.” They wanted “regular air access” and an outlet on the

391 D.R. Wahl to A.H. Silver; New york, May 15, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 84, pp.196-197. 171

Mediterranean coast for the Arabian oil pipeline “free from direct British influence.” In sum, in

Soviet eyes, the British asked the Americans to participate in finding a solution to the Palestine issue, expecting U.S. support – instead they enabled an economic and diplomatic rival.

“According to all evidence, the British miscalculated, and Truman decided to act independently in the affairs of Palestine.”392

This U.S.-British rivalry was to be exploited, of course. And to do so, Moscow needed to figure out who stood with whom. Truman’s first cautious support for the Zionist project on

October 4, 1946, the Yom Kippur Statement (discussed below), was an opportunity to do so. “In the Arab world Truman’s statement aroused sharp criticism. […] The ‘courageous’ and vehement protests were made with the obvious encouragement of the British who, apart from anything else, wanted to stir up conflict between the Arabs and the Americans.”393 The Kremlin interpreted this Arab hostility to the U.S. as one more proof that Arab leaders were still under

British influence – rather than seeing them as potential Soviet allies. This seems like a Soviet failure at apprehending and using the growing feelings of anti-Westernism in the Arab world.

This is somehow puzzling, considering Arab reactions to Soviet ambassador to Washington

Novikov’s statement on the general issue of transforming former mandates into trusteeships, discussed in Committee Four of the U.N. General Assembly on November 11, 1946. Arab media and public opinions welcomed the Soviet position, which suggested “either to give

Palestine independence or to transfer it to United Nations trusteeship.” The Jaffa newspaper al-

392 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii: “On the present position with regards to the solution of the Palestine problem” Beirut, December 17, 1946 but delivered only on February 19, 1947, and registered at the Middle East Department in Moscow on March 4, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.15-26; DISR, Part I, doc. 71, pp.159-160. 393 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii: “On the present position with regards to the solution of the Palestine problem” Beirut, December 17, 1946 but delivered only on February 19, 1947, and registered at the Middle East Department in Moscow on March 4, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.15-26; DISR, Part I, doc. 71, pp.159-160. 172

Ittihad claimed that “the Soviet Union is not acting as an interested party, since it is demanding the same for all colonies.”394

Soviet consul Daniil Solod had a poor opinion of President Truman, whose attempts at a policy “proved to be timid, untimely and unsuccessful. Truman is not distinguished by far- sightedness, nor by a statesman’s breadth of view. His actions reflect the habits of a minor civil servant, who is used to counting the change left over in the morning for fear that the cook might have cheated him, but who has happened to land in a high position without losing any of his habits.” But in Moscow, Near East Department head Samylovsky gave Truman more credit.

The U.S. “has interfered and continues to interfere actively and openly in almost everything that goes on in the Middle East countries (by seizing oil resources, building airlines, supplying

Middle East countries with military goods […]).” Samylovsky also disagreed with Solod’s assumption “that Truman has given up direct handling of matters concerned with the Palestine question.”395 This exchange again confirmed that Soviet policy was determined by its scrutiny of U.S. policy rather than being firmly determined on its own terms.

It appeared that while the U.S. feared that Moscow was trying to seduce Arab governments, the Soviet leadership had already given up on them as lost to British influence.

U.S. diplomacy had not yet connected Soviet strategy in Western Europe – of funding

Communist parties to lead subversive actions and undermine local governments without actually trying to seize power except through elections – with Soviet Middle Eastern strategy. In the

Arab world too, the Kremlin was trying to disrupt local power by funding small groups, communist and/or other anti-imperialist parties, rather than seeking governments’ favors. This

394 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii: “On the present position with regards to the solution of the Palestine problem” Beirut, December 17, 1946 but delivered only on February 19, 1947, and registered at the Middle East Department in Moscow on March 4, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.15-26; DISR, Part I, doc. 71, pp.159-160. 395 I.V. Samylovskii to D.S. Solod, Moscow, March 26, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.104-5; DISR, Part I, doc. 76, p.173. 173 explains why Moscow refused to appear pro-Zionist in international forums, which would have been damaging for Soviet image in Arab public opinions, but could nonetheless pursue a somewhat pro-Zionist policy without revealing it publicly, such as altering Palestine’s demographics by letting Jews leave Europe.

The Zionists had understood this aspect of Soviet strategy. Sasson analyzed that “they do not want […] to take a stand in the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine either on the side of the

Jews or of the Arabs,” yet he claimed that in case the Palestine question was referred to the U.N.

Security Council or General Assembly, “not only is there no reason to expect Russian policy to be hostile to us, there are grounds for thinking it will be friendly. Not out of sympathy to us or out of hatred towards the Arabs, but in order to settle political accounts with England.”396 It is often assumed that the Kremlin’s main incentive for letting Jews leave was to create the international conditions which would bring about the termination of the British Mandate. This work argues that this was only a secondary, collateral benefit, after the main goal of getting rid of their own Jewish problem in Europe. Yet, as soon as the Soviets realized how the Jewish D.P. issue and the Palestine question created problems between the U.S. and Britain, they figured out how to use it to their own advantage… by doing nothing. Soviet policy was to wait and see how the Western powers struggled among themselves on these questions, to the point of bringing them to the United Nations. And if this failed, the Arabs, facing increasing Jewish immigration, would get some Arab states to seize the U.N. themselves. This Soviet strategy – or, more accurately, absence of strategy – while not jeopardizing Soviet image in the Arabs’ eyes, was a blessing for Zionist institutions and a source of concern for the U.S. and Britain.

As expected by the Soviets, the Jewish D.P.s in Europe were becoming a source of conflict between Western powers. U.N.R.R.A. had been a truly international agency, caring for

396 E. Sasson to E. Epstein, Jerusalem, June 28, 1946; CZA S25/485; DISR, Part I, doc. 63, pp.135-137. 174 over 750,000 refugees in 300 camps and relying on military supplies. It progressively shut down operation in 1947 and dissolved in September 1948. Most of its functions were transferred to the

International Refugees Organization, which was only supported by 18 of the 54 members of the

U.N. and was funded up to 40% by the U.S. alone, and therefore only operated in areas under

Western control. The D.P. question was becoming more urgent in Austria, as their presence might have jeopardized the conclusion of the Austrian Treaty. Counselor to the embassy in

London Lewis Clark even proposed to “move all inassimilable displaced persons from Austria to

Germany”397 – an idea that certainly would not please the French.

With antisemitism on the rise in Germany, and over 250,000 Jewish D.P.s in the U.S. zone, the issue was becoming more pressing. The Senate committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, wondered how the Soviets dealt with their displaced persons in the absence of camps. They suspected that Moscow either sent them “to us” or back home, or “liquidated” or “dissipated” them. The Committee concluded that “while we do not want to force involuntary repatriation, we also can not afford indefinitely to maintain this system on a level which is so comfortable that nobody wants to move.”398 The necessity for D.P. camps in the Western zones had already lasted far longer than the Allies had initially expected.

The Truman administration had no easy response to this increasing number of Jews, and was pressured on all fronts from contradicting forces. On the international scene pressure came from America’s most important ally in the nascent Cold War, Britain. At the regional level, the

German and Austrian populations developed growing hostility toward the Jewish D.P.s, stranded on their territory and draining their economic reconstruction. On the domestic landscape, both

397 Summary of Telegrams, February 6, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 January-May; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 398 Senate committee on Foreign Relations: “Executive session, Committee Procedure, Washington D.C.”; Chronological File; Folder 1947-02-18; Box 1; Records of the US Senate: RG 46; Federal Record; Truman Library. 175 the anti-immigration and the Zionist lobbies put pressure on the administration. In return, the

U.S. was pressuring Britain, even more so after the A.A.C.I.’s visit to the Egyptian capital, which had “confirmed the Americans in their dislike for British imperialism and distaste for the

Arabs.”399 Washington grew even more impatient vis-à-vis London after Prime Minister Attlee refused to implement the A.A.C.I.’s proposals.

As historian Nicholas Bethell emphasizes, allowing 100,000 Jews into Palestine might have divided the moderate Zionists from the more extreme ones. “The steam would have gone out of the maximalist demand for a Jewish state” and the Zionist movement would have lost its most powerful propaganda weapon in the West, Jewish survivors’ homelessness.400 But the

British refused to surrender to Zionist pressure by fear of Arab riots. Truman justified rejecting the Morrison-Grady Plan because of public opinion and congressional opposition to it, which would jeopardize U.S. assistance for its implementation. But he also quoted the Jewish

Agency’s opposition and counter-propositions. Jewish support was important to Truman, and the key to secure it was to give the Jews at least more autonomy and control over immigration, if not “the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine.”401

Had Britain accepted the immigration of 100,000 Jewish D.P.s to Palestine, the U.S. pressure might have ceased. But the British liberation policy toward Jews, and particularly firm opposition to their immigration to Palestine, undermined its own purpose. It created a broad

Jewish front and radicalized Zionist activism in the camps and in Palestine, while giving the

Jews a great narrative of continuous victimhood to raise public awareness to the Zionist cause internationally. This Zionist strategy worked wonders in the United States, trapping the

399 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 195–96. 400 Nicholas W. Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle Between the British, the Jews and the Arabs, 1935- 1948 (London: Futura, 1980), 237. 401 From the President to US embassy in London, August 12, 1946; Communications: AAC; Box 7; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 176

President in a corner. Some historians, such as Michael Cohen, even considered that Truman was the “resentful prisoner” of the nascent “Jewish lobby.”402 Although this work does not consider so-called Jewish lobby as powerful enough to influence international decisions, especially in front of the more organized and powerful oil lobby which was profoundly anti-

Zionist, it is undeniable that the Jewish institutions and organizations played a role in the fall

1946, with the midterm elections and some gubernatorial and mayoral elections oncoming, because of its potential influence on Jewish vote, especially in New York. Yet Jewish voters also knew that the Republican alternative, especially in the Senate, could derail U.S. aid.

Most of all, the anti-immigration lobby might have determined Truman’s move in

October. He could not jeopardize his administration’s work to obtain a modification of U.S. immigration laws, so he was still unable to secure Jewish D.P.s’ immigration to the United

States. Seeing that the Palestine Conference in London had been postponed from September to

December – thus condemning Jewish D.P.s to spend another winter in camps – Truman’s position evolved toward support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. He sought to end the impasse – his dialogue of the deaf with Attlee and the Jews’ ongoing homelessness which threatened to become a public relations and electoral disaster. Truman would reconcile

Americans’ postwar philosemitism with their anti-immigration feelings and relieve his administration from having to deal with the issue of the growing number of Jewish D.P.s in postwar Europe.

On October 4, 1946, Truman pronounced what became known as the “Yom Kippur

Statement,” his first public albeit cautious support for the Zionist project. Truman called for

Jewish immigration to Palestine, so that the D.P.s would not spend another winter in camps in

402 Michael Joseph Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 109–10. 177

Europe, and offered U.S. help for the transfer. He emphasized the Jewish Agency’s proposal for

“the creation of a viable Jewish State in control of its own immigration and economic policies in an adequate area of Palestine.”403 And of course, he reiterated his appeal to Britain to issue certificates for 100,000 Jewish immigrants. He assured that “a solution along these lines would command the support of public opinion in the United States” and that “to such a solution our

Government could give its support.”404

Until then, Truman had only spoken about the Jewish D.P.s, even when he pressed for their immigration to Palestine. This time he tied the Jewish issue to an alternative plan for

Palestine’s future. Truman wanted to be a humanitarian, to get rid of the Jewish issue in Europe, and to prevent unrest that could favor the rise of communism in Western Europe. He also wanted to avoid doing so by advocating massive Jewish immigration into the United State while the D.P. Act was under discussion. Truman had warned British Prime Minister Attlee before releasing the Yom Kippur Statement, but Attlee was not consulted about it.405 He had consistently opposed the link between the Jewish D.P.s and the Palestine question, but his closest ally, the president of the United States, had done just this.

Truman justified his move by highlighting his vain efforts to convince Attlee to allow

100,000 Jews into Palestine without altering the status of the country. “It is now well over a year since I first brought to your attention the recommendations of Mr. Earl Harrison in regard to the

European displaced Jews.” He regretted that London did not comply with “the unanimous recommendation made by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that the entry into

403 “Foreign Office to Washington, no.9552” October 4, 1946; PRO, FO 800/486; cited in Cohen, Truman and Israel, 137–46. 404 “Statement by the President: the Yom Kippur Statement” October 4, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Palestine Press Release”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 405 Message from Truman to Attlee” October 3, 1946; Communications: AAC; Box 7; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 178

Palestine of at least 100,000 displaced Jews be authorized at the earliest possible moment,” despite American commitment to finance their transportation and settlement. Then Truman reverted the responsibility, basically adopting Zionist claims that Britain had failed its obligation vis-à-vis the Mandate, and making this the basis for the new U.S. position:

“We realize that Great Britain is responsible for the administration of Palestine under the terms of the Mandate. […] We believe, however, that one of the primary purposes of the Mandate was to foster the development of the Jewish National Home. […] In our view the development of the Jewish National Home has no meaning in the absence of Jewish immigration and settlement on the land as contemplated in the Mandate. We therefore feel that the implementation of the Mandate, as well as the humanitarian considerations mentioned above, call for immediate and substantial immigration into Palestine.”406

This might have been a tipping point for Britain. The U.S. new policy was unacceptable to London, but Attlee knew that U.S. support was vital to Britain’s postwar economic recovery.

The Foreign Office believed the U.S. supported Jewish immigration to Palestine to prevent Jews from coming to the United States. It also suspected Truman to attack British imperialism and protectionism to divert attention from their own immigration laws – which the British considered the real obstacle to solve the Jewish problem. Yet the British did not admit many Jewish immigrants either. By 1949, Britain had welcomed 300,000 immigrants; 150,000 Polish servicemen and their families, 93,000 European voluntary workers, 15,000 German and 8,000

Ukrainian prisoners of war – and among them, probably many former Nazi collaborators. But very few Jews, considered “alien race and religion” and no black subjects from the British

Empire, who were not “good human stock,” had been allowed to immigrate to Britain. 407 These numbers contradicted the British claims that they refused to treat Jews differently from other

406 “Letter from Truman to Atlee’” October 10, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 10 “Attlee – Miscellaneous”; Box 149; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 407 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 191–92; Stone, Liberation, 189–90. 179

D.P.s so as not to single them out as Hitler had done, and that the solution to the Jewish question lay in U.S. immigration policy.

In any case, Truman’s new policy risked isolating Britain, which was bleeding financially on all fronts. When, in 1946, the British announced that they could not continue their financial and military aid to Turkey and , the U.S. government started to wonder if it should assume Britain’s former role in the developing world.408 The fear of a Soviet breakthrough in the Middle East and the Balkans, with the Iranian and Turkish crises, led to the Truman Doctrine of containment that undergirded America’s Cold War policy toward the Soviet Union for the following decade. But Washington’s greatest fear was the threat, if economic recovery did not happen quickly enough, that Communist parties could take power in Western Europe by democratic means (in France, Italy, and Germany as soon as independent politics would resume).

London had already proposed the division of Germany, in order to restore the country as the economic engine of Europe while preventing another war.409 The British zone had to import

70% of its food supplies and its management cost 80 million pounds per year. Faced with the

French desire to internationalize or annex the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, the U.S. suggested merging the British and U.S. zones to reduce the cost of occupation, keep the Soviets out of Western Europe and Western communists out of power, and reassure the French over

Germany’s future (in)ability to wage another war. Ultimately, these circumstances resulted in the Marshall Plan.

408 Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1987), 219; Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); David G. McCullough, Truman (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1994), 542; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 262–63. 409 Anne Deighton, The Impossible Peace: Britain, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 54–80; Michael Balfour and John Mair, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria, 1945-1946, vol. 8, Survey of International Affairs, 1939-1946 (London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1956); cited in Shephard, The Long Road Home, 250. 180

U.S. internationalism was fading away with the strengthening of the Cold War. The administration of Germany and relief work were under attack in the post-midterm elections conservative Congress. U.N.R.R.A. had already been accused of funding communist or anti-

American regimes. The I.R.O., which took over most of its functions in 1947-1948, was also contested. Washington entered in Cold War crisis mode, starting to detach from international institutions yet more involved in foreign policy than ever. The U.S.-British tensions over the

Jewish D.P. and the Palestine issues risked undermining the Western front against Soviet expansionism. London understood that Truman would not give up getting rid of the Jewish issue in Europe to prevent unrest in Germany that could favor communism, and would not alter U.S. immigration policy either.

Britain chose to preserve the Western alliance rather than maintain its colonial power in

Palestine, which it could not afford anymore without U.S. assistance. In addition, the situation was deteriorating in Palestine. Since mid-1946, Zionist terrorism flared up. On June 17, a

Haganah operation destroyed ten bridges linking Palestine to its neighbors, and on July 22, militants from the radical group Irgun blew up the British Military Headquarters at the King

David Hotel in Jerusalem. The Palestine Conference in London on January 27, 1947, was

Britain desperate attempt at resolving the issue. Bevin suggested a settlement that was quite favorable to the Arab side; both Jews and Arabs rejected it. After this last failure, stuck between

Britain’s financial struggle, Soviet leniency toward Jewish emigration, U.S. pressure to allow

100,000 Jews to Palestine, Zionist terrorism, and Arab uncompromising attitude and aggressive rejection of any Jewish immigration, on February 14, 1947, Bevin announced that Britain would transfer the question of Palestine to the United Nations.410

410 “Memorandum by the Jewish Agency: The background of the Palestine Problem” New York, April 28, 1947; ISA 93.3/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 80, pp.182-187. 181

The Soviet surprise: a shift in Soviet traditional anti-Zionism?

When Britain announced its intention to turn over the Palestine question to the United Nations,

Moscow initially believed it was a trick, most likely to waste more time in order to find a solution on its own or with U.S. cooperation. According to one internal Soviet memorandum,

“in these British statements nothing is clear except their desire to retain complete control of

Palestine. […] It has all been done to camouflage the horse-trading […] between Bevin and

Byrnes.”411 The Kremlin considered “largely demagogic” Bevin’s speech emphasizing that “the mandate had outlived its time and was in fact impracticable.” They rather believed colonial secretary Creech-Jones who stated that his country was not “going to the United Nations in order to give up the mandate” but “to raise the issue and to ask for advice on how to implement the mandate.” Therefore, the Soviets assumed “that Britain is not about to let go of Palestine.”

Instead, it is looking for “new ways of enabling it to go on with Palestine with the approval of the United Nations.”412 This move, rather than “genuine,” according to the Near East

Department in early March 1947, was a “very adroit and diplomatic manoeuver.” While the fate of Palestine would keep the U.N busy, Britain could maintain its presence and troops, thus

“gaining time and preserving its position.”413

These British manipulations, according to Soviet suspicions, were due to several obstacles Britain faced in Palestine. First, the negotiations between Britain, the Jews, and the

Arabs were at a “stalemate.” Second, maintaining the status quo in Palestine required the

411 D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii: “On the present position with regards to the solution of the Palestine problem” Beirut, December 17, 1946 but delivered only on February 19, 1947, and registered at the Middle East Department in Moscow on March 4, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.15-26; DISR, Part I, doc. 71, pp.159-160. 412 “The Palestine Question (October 1946-February 1947)” M.A. Maksimov, deputy director of the Near East Department, and S. Nemchinov, attaché of the Near East department, to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow; March 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.07, op.12A, p.42, d.6, ll.130-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 73, pp.166-168. 413 B.E. Shtein to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “The Palestine Question” March 6, 1947; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.134-41; DISR, Part I, doc. 74, pp.169-172. 182

“dispatch of substantial armed forces,” which was difficult in the present state of British finances. Third, the Anglo-Jordanian treaty, signed less than a year earlier in April 1946, provided London with the opportunity “to transfer Britain’s main strategic base in the Middle

East from Palestine to Transjordan.” Finally, London responded to increased pressure from the

United States.414

Then an analysis of U.S. policy followed, somewhat inaccurate and rather antisemitic.

Moscow assumed that U.S. policy on Palestine was determined by “the presence of oil and the role of Jews in the United States” since the Congress decided to support the Balfour Declaration in 1922. These assumptions grossly overestimated the power of the American Jewish community on foreign policy, especially in the post-World War I era. Furthermore, the Soviets claimed that “under Truman the United States came out decisively in support of Jewish demands for Palestine,” a statement that did not reflect the Administration’s resistance and internal oppositions, over the past couple of years, to take a clear stance on the future status Palestine.415

Eventually, Soviet diplomats scrutinized how the Palestine question divided the U.S. and

Britain, the latter blaming Truman’s demands for the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine as the “cause of the breakdown of negotiations” between Britain, the Arabs, and the Jews. They noticed the U.S.-British crisis over Bevin’s statement that “I cannot solve problems which are the subject of an electoral campaign,” which triggered the White House reaction “rejecting the view that ‘the American interest in Palestine is to be explained by party politics’.” Moscow, though, agreed with London: “Bevin was basically right, since the United States’ position on Palestine

[…] depends in good measure on the existence of two million Jewish voters, whose votes are

414 B.E. Shtein to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “The Palestine Question” March 6, 1947; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.134-41; DISR, Part I, doc. 74, pp.169-172. 415 B.E. Shtein to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “The Palestine Question” March 6, 1947; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.134-41; DISR, Part I, doc. 74, pp.169-172. 183 sought by both the Republican and the Democratic parties.” The Soviets concluded with an analysis, mistaken as we will see later, of what Palestine meant to the United States.

Supposedly, Palestine was “exceptionally important both strategically and economically. To leave Great Britain in power in Palestine would mean British control of the export of oil from

Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, possession of Palestine […] would give the United States an important stronghold on the Mediterranean.”416

According to historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, Stalin was slow to acknowledge the emergence of the U.S., rather than Britain, as “Russia’s mortal enemy,” and had troubles to adjust to the new reality of the Cold War. Historians Laurent Rucker and Geoffrey K. Roberts concur. Roberts claims that rather than Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton in February

1946, the first shot fired in the Cold War had been Truman’s speech to the Congress on March

12, 1947: “the language of power and force, Truman argued, was the only discourse that Soviet leaders understood and responded to.” Rucker also thinks that Stalin was still “driven by a perspective of cooperation with the West,” and needed more time to adjust to this new reality.417

To be fair, in early 1947, the Cold War had just begun. Nothing suggested that U.S.-Soviet tensions would become a permanent state of affairs for the next half century. Though it is obvious that Soviet leaders had some doubts, after the war, on whether to consider Britain and/or the United States as their number one enemy, especially when it came to Middle Eastern affairs, by the spring 1947 Soviet archives show that it was quite manifest that the U.S. was no friend either, and had interests in the region which were not conducive to cooperation with Moscow.

416 B.E. Shtein to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “The Palestine Question” March 6, 1947; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.134-41; DISR, Part I, doc. 74, pp.169-172. 417 Geoffrey K. Roberts, The Soviet Union in World Politics: Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991, The Making of the Contemporary World (London; New York: Routledge, 1999), 22; Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs; Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 184

Gorodetsky’s argument is based on the analysis of Soviet Consul to Cairo Daniil Solod, often an envoy to Lebanon and Syria as well. His opinion of Truman was so contemptuous and pejorative, his assessment of Truman’s Middle Eastern policy, so full of disdain, that Truman could not have appeared to Soviet leaders as a strategist capable of harming the Soviet Union able to deceit Soviet policies.418 But Gorodetsky seems to have disregarded Samylovsky’s response to Solod’s analysis. The head of the Foreign Ministry Near East Department wrote

Solod that his “conclusion that Truman’s efforts to ‘carry out his own policy in the eastern

Mediterranean have proved to be timid, ill-timed and unsuccessful’ (p.5), is plainly at variance with the facts.” He highlighted how the U.S. interfered in Middle Eastern countries, and contested Solod’s claim that Truman delegated the handling of the Palestine question.419

Many Soviet documents attempted to figure out U.S. interests in Palestine, and their conclusions, whether they were accurate or not, showed that Moscow worried about U.S. influence. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs identified U.S. motives exclusively in terms of economic and military interests. U.S. policy aimed at favoring “the seizure of the richest oil resources in the Near East by American cartels,” which would serve its “intention to establish the domination of American capital in Near Eastern markets.” The Soviets also assumed that

Palestine will receive the American pipeline and refineries. For the military aspect, they further suspected the U.S. of planning to “build[ing] air and naval bases in the Near East, particularly in

Palestine, in order to establish American domination of the world.”420

418 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” Based on D.S. Solod to I.V. Samylovskii: “On the present position with regards to the solution of the Palestine problem” Beirut, December 17, 1946 but delivered only on February 19, 1947, and registered at the Middle East Department in Moscow on March 4, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.15-26; DISR, Part I, doc. 71, pp.159-160. 419 I.V. Samylovskii to D.S. Solod, Moscow, March 26, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.104-5; DISR, Part I, doc. 76, p.173. 420 Memorandum by the Middle East Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The positions of the US, Britain, the Arabs and the Zionists on the Palestine Question (for the forthcoming discussion of the Palestine 185

Yet besides Soviet scrutiny of U.S. policy in Palestine, the region was still in British hands, and considered by Soviet leaders as Britain’s “strategic bridgehead, guaranteeing sea and air communications with India.” Although they believed that “Britain [was] trying to gain time while reserving its position with regard to the peoples of Palestine,” the referral of the Palestine question to the United Nations compelled the Soviet Union to define its rather diffuse ideas about the future status of Palestine. On March 7, 1947, the Soviet Near East Department issued a document in the perspective of the U.N. special session on Palestine. It defined the basis for

Soviet position in four points:

“1. The British Mandate for Palestine must be ended, since it makes a fundamental solution impossible and creates a constant threat to security in the Near East. 2. British troops must be withdrawn from Palestine in order to normalize the situation. 3. The United Nations must prepare the conditions necessary for the creation of a single, independent and democratic Palestine which will ensure that all the peoples living there will enjoy equal national and democratic rights. 4. The Jewish question in Western Europe cannot be resolved by immigration to Palestine, since only the complete eradication of the roots of fascism and the democratization of the countries of Western Europe can give the Jewish masses normal living conditions.”421

It is important to note that, as late as March 1947, there was absolutely no mention of the possibility of a two-state solution, partition, or a Jewish state in whole or part of Palestine. There was not even a sympathetic word toward Jewish immigration. The Soviet official position on

Palestine, as expressed internally – so supposedly truthful and accurate – was clearly the creation of a single binational state, democratic and therefore Arab-dominated according to Palestinian demographics in the spring 1947. This was the future that Moscow was envisioning for this

question at the United Nations)” Moscow, April 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.018, op.9, p.17, d.77, ll.6-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 78, pp.176-180. 421 “The Palestine Question (October 1946-February 1947)” M.A. Maksimov, deputy director of the Near East Department, and S. Nemchinov, attaché of the Near East department, to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow; March 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.07, op.12A, p.42, d.6, ll.130-3; DISR, Part I, doc. 73, pp.166-168. 186 territory at the end of the British Mandate, in spite of its awareness that Soviet policy in Europe was facilitating Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine.

This was the first instance of the Soviet Union taking “a clear stand on the political future of Palestine and the Jewish question” with the hope “to harness the support of the United States and perhaps Britain,” while countering “the British plot,” according to Gorodetsky. Yet

Moscow’s position was much more aligned with the Arab position than with the Jewish one, and therefore more likely to gain British, rather than U.S. support.422 In the aforementioned memorandum analyzing U.S. and British motives in Palestine in mid-April 1947, the Foreign

Ministry Middle East Department also explored the Jewish and Arab positions. The document had a clear anti-Zionist tone, such as talking about a “Zionist” rather than a “Jewish” state, and even sometimes antisemitic, for instance when it accused Truman of being under the influence of

Zionist circles and the puppet of two million Jewish voters.

Not surprisingly, it described the Jewish position without sympathy. “The Zionist organizations in Palestine are implacably opposed to the Arabs. Only two organizations, the

‘League for Arab-Jewish Cooperation and Rapprochement’ and the Communist Party of

Palestine, have come out for the creation of a bi-national Jewish-Arab state based on the full equality of Jews and Arabs, for the complete independence of Palestine.” On the other hand, the

Arab position was presented in rather favorable words. “Progressive Arab organizations such as the Arab League of National Liberation are struggling for the independence of Palestine and the annulment of the mandate, for the withdrawal of British troops and for the democratization of the country. The League stands for Arab-Jewish unity in the struggle against imperialism and

422 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 187

Zionism.”423 So as late as April 15, 1947, Soviet policy still appeared as resolutely anti-Zionist, whether internally or in front of other world leaders in the United Nations.

Over the following weeks, the Soviet Union was determined to use the referral of the

Palestine question to the U.N. not just as an opportunity to express its point of view “but also to play an effective part in deciding the fate of Palestine.” The four-point plan drafted in March was not altered, but later memoranda developed specific details. The abolition of the British

Mandate was the absolute priority, and should not be replaced by a British trusteeship, since

Britain “has ruled Palestine for almost a quarter of a century, […] has failed in its duty as the mandatory power, and has been unable to establish order in the country or to prevent almost continuous bloodshed.”424 British military withdrawal was a non-negotiable prerequisite to

Palestine’s future status. Moscow might consider the “establishment of a collective protectorate” or trusteeship, but did not favor this solution. Both peoples’ opposed the establishment of a protectorate, and according to the Soviets, were ready for independence. Acknowledging the

Jewish-Arab antagonism, the Kremlin suggested solving it by a “democratic constitution which would give full and genuinely equal rights (both civil-political and national) to the whole population of Palestine.”425

The result should fulfill the “demands of progressive groups for the creation of a single, independent and democratic” state in Palestine. Considering the demographic reality of the

423 Memorandum by the Middle East Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The positions of the US, Britain, the Arabs and the Zionists on the Palestine Question (for the forthcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the United Nations)” Moscow, April 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.018, op.9, p.17, d.77, ll.6-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 78, pp.176-180. 424 Memorandum by the Middle East Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The positions of the US, Britain, the Arabs and the Zionists on the Palestine Question (for the forthcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the United Nations)” Moscow, April 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.018, op.9, p.17, d.77, ll.6-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 78, pp.176-180. 425 B.E. Shtein to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “The Palestine Question” March 6, 1947; AVP RF, F.07, OP.12A, P.42, D.6, Ll.134-41; DISR, Part I, doc. 74, pp.169-172; and Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: “A possible position for the USSR in Discussion of the Palestine question at the United Nations” with handwritten “Sent to Comrade Malik by the 10th section on 12 Apr. 1947” Moscow, April 12, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.107-9; DISR, Part I, doc. 77, pp.174-175. 188 region, it would be an Arab-dominated state. Therefore the Soviet plan for Palestine was pretty much aligned with Arabs’ demands, especially if one took Soviet official discourse opposing

Jewish immigration to Palestine at face value. But Moscow never acknowledged this bias.

According to Soviet policy-makers, there was no Jewish problem in Eastern Europe, only in

Western Europe. This memorandum was meant to be an internal document – yet it conveys the

Soviet incoherence between their policy on the ground (letting Jews leave East-European countries under their control) and their official political orientation (no mass emigration of Jews from Europe).426 This was consistent with Soviet traditional gap between policy and practice when it came to the Jews: high rhetoric about equality and fighting antisemitism often coexisted with discussions about Jews’ control of Western governments and domination of Eastern Europe.

The memorandum for the preparation of the forthcoming discussion about the Palestine question at the U.N., although broadly repeating the same principles, seemed a bit more confused about the end result the Kremlin expected. It repeated the need “to discuss the establishment of a collective protectorate over Palestine under the United Nations.” But the memorandum’s last sentence showed some ambiguity: “the population of the country (both Arabs and Jews) is mature enough to be given full independence, and the creation of a Jewish (Jews’ demands) or an

Arab state (Arabs’ demands).”427 Both peoples’ claims were taken into account, yet “or” (“ili”) and the singular “state” implied either a Jewish or an Arab state. So was this just an awkwardness of language, or the first hint that the Soviets might actually be open to considering

426 Memorandum by M.A. Maksimov: “A possible position for the USSR in Discussion of the Palestine question at the United Nations” with handwritten “Sent to Comrade Malik by the 10th section on 12 Apr. 1947” Moscow, April 12, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.8, Ll.107-9; DISR, Part I, doc. 77, pp.174-175. 427 The Russian original omits “respectively.” Memorandum by the Middle East Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The positions of the US, Britain, the Arabs and the Zionists on the Palestine Question (for the forthcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the United Nations)” Moscow, April 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.018, op.9, p.17, d.77, ll.6-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 78, pp.176-180. 189 both peoples’ demands in Palestine? Apart from this rather confusing sentence, there is no sign, in available Soviet documents, of the soon-to-be turning point in Soviet policy a few weeks later.

In Zionist documents, there was also no sign of early knowledge of potential Soviet support. Historian Albert Kaganovitch claims that Stalin had given earlier assurances to Ben

Gurion of Soviet future support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, based on Ben

Gurion’s statements to British colonial secretary Oliver Stanley in May 1945 and again at a press conference in New York in June 1945.428 Kaganovitch argues that this information was kept secret out of concerns for the damage it could cause to relations with Britain and with the Arab states, but that it leaked on several occasions.429 There is no trace of such an agreement in declassified archival material. But even if there had been such a tacit understanding in 1945, orally and at the highest level between Ben Gurion and Stalin, what guarantee would there be that the Soviet Union in 1947 would honor this secret deal? The international context, the

Jewish problem, and the Palestine question evolved greatly during this couple of years. So did

Soviet policy.

In the days preceding the opening of the U.N. special session on Palestine, Zionist representatives had no idea of what to expect from the Soviet Union. They struggled with a strategy to approach the Russian delegation. David Wahl, an American Zionist, had a meeting scheduled with Gromyko, but he did not even know on whose behalf he was going to meet him.

He noted that “Jewish Agency people here are somewhat unprepared for direction on what should be discussed with the Russians on their behalf.” But then he pondered “it may be that the

428 Idea promoted by Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics” and based on Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making, 17. 429 The newspaper of the Histadrut, Davar, published a short note to this effect in July 1945, citing Imre Rosenberg, associate director of the Czechoslovakian office responsible for repatriating displaced Czechoslovakian citizens: “Yahas hiuvi shel Stalin le-Erets Israel,” in Davar, July 5, 1945. The Palestinian Jewish newspaper Maariv reported the conversation with Stalin in greater detail in April 1948, though without citing a source: David Lazer: “Viza le- Moskva” in Maariv, April 2, 1948. In October 1948 Israel’s future first president, Chaim Weizmann, told Polish ambassador Rafal Loc that Zionist activist Emil Sommerstein had told him about Stalin’s promise: Te’udot le- Yahasey Yisrael-Polin, 128–29. All three cited by Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 190

Agency people would not want me to discuss these matters with the Russians, in which case it should be decided whether I see Gromyko at all.” He also raised the option of “see[ing] him on behalf of the conference, representing American Jewish organizations and excluding from the discussions the Agency itself.”430

The confusion also appeared in the diplomatic strategy to adopt toward the Russian delegates and even sometimes of “finding proper written material for the Russian delegation.

Very little of the standard material we have in this office is suitable for them.” Isadore Hamlin from the D.C. office of the Jewish Agency suggested contacting the ha-shomer ha-tsair or the

Poale Zion in New York, who may have suitable printed material concerning social and economic questions.431 U.S. diplomats also perceived no sign of the imminent Soviet shift. On

April 28, 1947, they reported that “Moscow has instructed its satellite states in Eastern and

Central Europe to establish close ‘economic’ relations with Palestine” as if it anticipated a quick independence of the country.432 As late as May 12, 1947, the State Department believed that the

Soviets hoped for “the immediate independence of Palestine with its present Arab majority” and definitely opposed the creation of a Jewish state, “which might be used as an agent of the

Western powers.”433

Considering the four-point memorandum adopted as Moscow’s official policy, the plight of the Jews in Europe and the nature of the political settlement in Palestine seemed to be of secondary importance to Soviet policy. Great power rivalry might have been the true objective of Soviet diplomatic strategy when Gromyko entered the U.N. procedural meetings. He did so

430 D.R. Wahl to M. Grossman, Washington, April 29, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 81, pp.187-188. 431 I. Hamlin to A. Lourie, New York, April 29, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 82, pp.188-189. 432 Summary of Telegrams, April 28, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 January-May; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 433 Summary of Telegrams, May 12, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 January-May; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 191 with the guidelines from the memorandum he had received on March 5, 1947, but “the days of the memorandum were numbered,” as Gorodetsky notes. On April 28, 1947, the opening day of the Special Session of the General Assembly, Gromyko received a new memorandum.434 This must have been a surprise, even for him, as he had been defending the four-point program in the

U.N. for the past few months. These new instructions entirely reversed Soviet policy.

The termination of the mandate as implemented by London in Palestine since 1922 remained the main target. But Gromyko was also instructed to emphasize that “in the last war the Jewish people experienced unparalleled disaster and suffering” and that “one must take into account the needs of a people who has experienced such suffering.” Acknowledging Jewish suffering was a rarity in the U.S.S.R., let alone taking it into consideration to design its foreign policy. Yet, the new instruction suggested that two projects could meet Jewish needs. The first was the creation of a dual Arab-Jewish state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. But if this proved impracticable in view of the situation on the ground between Jews and Arabs, then “the second alternative must be put forward – the partition of Palestine into two independent states.”435 Gromyko had just been presented with a radical shift, for which declassified material did not yet provide explanation (maybe because the original memorandum containing

Gromyko’s new instructions is not accessible, but only reproduced in a later document – see footnote 434).

Furthermore, in a subsequent telegram Foreign Minister Molotov later reminded to his

Deputy Vyshinsky that suggesting these two solutions was only meant as a strategy to prevent the Arab states from seeing Russia as the initiator of the creation of a Jewish state, but that this

434 The original memorandum itself is not accessible, but its terms are repeated in a later document: Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235. 435 Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235. 192 was actually the Soviet ultimate end.436 Molotov also instructed Gromyko to unequivocally support the immigration to Palestine of 100,000 D.P.s, thus adding the U.S.S.R.’s voice to the most pressing U.S. demand to London. Whether these Jewish D.P.s were conceived as a Trojan horse against the British, or the Arabs, was never clearly established. In any case, this was a dramatic change in Soviet rhetoric on the Jewish question in Europe, and an even more dramatic shift in Soviet policy on Palestine.

Armed with these new instructions, Gromyko first observed U.S. and British positions in the U.N. General Assembly. He reported his impression that the suggestion to create yet another committee to study the Palestine situation was only a delaying strategy in order to reach an agreement among themselves. Then came May 15, 1947, the day Gromyko delivered his famous speech. He first highlighted the importance of the Palestine question and Britain’s failure to solve it. “It is an indisputable fact that the aims laid down at the time of the establishment of the mandate have not been achieved.” He used many sources, including some British officials’ speeches, to sustain his demonstration, in addition to the violence in Palestine and the very fact that the British had transferred the question to the United Nations.437 All of this was expected of him by the international community.

But then, the most unexpected happened: the Soviet delegate suddenly spoke of Jewish suffering in words that Jewish or Zionist leaders could have claimed themselves, even using the terms “Jewish people,” whose very existence Marxism-Leninism had always denied. He clearly made the link between the situation of the Jews remaining in Europe and their claim to a homeland in Palestine, for the first time on official record by a Soviet representative. “The

436 V.M. Molotov to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow, September 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.059, OP.18, P.17, D.116, L.109; DISR, Part I, doc. 95, p.227. 437 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. I: Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 28 April-15 May, pp. 127-35; New York, 14 May 1947; DISR, Part I, doc. 83, pp.189-196. 193

Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering. […] The Jews in territories where the Hitlerites held sway were subjected to almost complete physical annihilation. […] Only about one million and a half Jews in Western Europe survived the war. But these figures […] give no idea of the difficulties in which large numbers of Jewish people found themselves after the war [emphasis is mine].”438 In his introduction, Gromyko subtly announced that he was talking not only about the Nazi extermination, but also of the Jews who survived it.

Here Soviet diplomacy invented a new role for post-Holocaust Jewish refugees. As demonstrated above, surviving Jews had been instrumentalized by Soviet policy in Europe but never yet in the Middle East. This use of Jewish refugees to bridge Soviet policy in Europe and in the Middle East was new, unexpected, and came as a surprise to everyone in the General

Assembly, including to U.S. and Zionists representatives. “Large numbers of the surviving Jews of Europe were deprived of their countries, their homes and their means of existence. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are wandering about in various countries of Europe.” Gromyko then introduced a veiled reproach to the Western powers. “A large number of them are in camps for displaced persons and are still continuing to undergo great privations. […] The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference.” The international community had the duty to correct this wrong that the Western occupations forces had not properly addressed.

Gromyko’s speech completely ignored the reality that most Jews who died in the Holocaust were from Central and Eastern Europe, and that the Western powers did organize camps to care for survivors whereas Soviet authorities had left them fend for themselves in Eastern Europe, to the point that most had eventually emigrated.

438 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. I: Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 28 April-15 May, pp. 127-35; New York, 14 May 1947; DISR, Part I, doc. 83, pp.189-196. 194

The motives for such a shift in Soviet policy are still unclear. It might have been to undermine the British, who were still doing their best to avoid the association of the two questions of Jewish homelessness in Europe and Jewish nationhood Palestine, in order, among other aims, to prevent the Soviets from intervening in the latter. This seems rather unlikely, considering how abruptly the Soviet shift seems to have happened. Yet the fact that Gromyko further blamed Western Europe for the Jews’ national aspiration might sustain this hypothesis.

“Past experience […] shows that no Western European state was able to provide adequate assistance for the Jewish people. […] The fact that no Western European state has been able to ensure the defense of the elementary rights of the Jewish people, and to safeguard it against the violence of the fascist executioners, explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own state.”439

This is it for the emphatic, unexpected, and rarely repeated Soviet compassion for the

Jews’ fate. The Soviet Union had suffered more losses than the rest of Europe combined, so empathy was not its forte. In addition, highlighting one specific group’s suffering would undermine the national narrative of remembrance that the U.S.S.R. was constructing of the Great

Patriotic War, which was meant to foster Soviet patriotism rather than ethnic particularism. Yet this part of the speech might be the highlight of Soviet diplomatic manipulations. Gromyko preemptively justified the soon-to-be revealed Soviet shift on the Palestine issue by the Jews’ suffering and the inability of the West to ensure their protection and to offer them a viable future.

He uttered not a word of acknowledgment that most of the Jewish D.P.s he was talking about were actually East-European Jews fleeing East-European territories, where the Soviet occupation forces allowed post-Holocaust antisemitism to flourish.

439 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. I: Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 28 April-15 May, pp. 127-35; New York, 14 May 1947; DISR, Part I, doc. 83, pp.189-196. 195

Gromyko then discussed the concrete possibilities in Palestine: a single Arab-Jewish state, two independent states, a single Arab state, or a single Jewish state. He immediately ruled out the two latter options as unfair to one of the peoples involved. “Both have historical roots in

Palestine. […] Neither the historical past nor the conditions prevailing in Palestine at present can justify any unilateral solution. […] Neither of these decisions would achieve an equitable solution to this complicated problem, especially since neither would ensure the settlement of relations between the Arabs and the Jews.” So Gromyko declared that “the legitimate interests of both the Jewish and the Arab populations of Palestine can be duly safeguarded only through the establishment of an independent, dual, democratic, homogeneous Arab-Jewish state.” This solution would be most beneficial, but Gromyko acknowledged – not without blaming the British for it – that the present circumstances and feud between the two peoples of Palestine might make this solution unviable. He, therefore, suggested partition as an alternative: “If this plan proved impossible to implement, in view of the deterioration in the relations between Jews and Arabs

[…] then it would be necessary to consider the second plan […], the partition of Palestine into two independent single states, one Jewish and one Arab.”440

This was a revolution. All precautions taken, the Soviet Union had broached the perspective that it might consider supporting the creation of a Jewish state in the context of the partition of Palestine into two independent states. Gromyko made no promises but opened a window of opportunity for diplomatic negotiations with Zionist representatives. Even they did not expect such a favorable position from the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding its conditional tone, this speech marked the first public endorsement of the creation of a Jewish state by the

Soviet Union. By claiming that the Holocaust gave the Jews a right to create their own state,

440 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. I: Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 28 April-15 May, pp. 127-35; New York, 14 May 1947; DISR, Part I, doc. 83, pp.189-196. 196

Gromyko was in complete contradiction with the prior Soviet position that antisemitism should be eradicated at its roots in Europe in order to allow Jews to remain and resettle, and that the two issues of the Jewish problem in Europe and the Palestine question should not be intertwined.441

In this speech, Gromyko finally made the link between prewar and World War II persecutions of the Jews, their situation in postwar Europe, and Zionist aspirations.

The Soviet shift took the international community by surprise. The Jewish Agency took credit for it, unaware that up until late April, the previous Soviet plan calling for a single, democratic, and therefore Arab-dominated state, would have been catastrophic for the Zionist project. Ben Gurion commented: “It has been a long time since we heard the representative of a great world power – apart from the remarks of President Truman – speak in such shocking and accurate terms as did Gromyko on behalf of the Soviet Union about the suffering of the Jewish people, its appalling losses in the last world war, the tribulations and the impasse of hundreds of thousands of Jews, the remnants of European Jewry who are searching in vain for a haven.” But more than by the acknowledgement of Jewish suffering, Ben Gurion was astonished, and delighted, by the link Gromyko finally made between Jewish past persecutions, present homelessness, and need for statehood. “The importance and surprise of Gromyko’s remarks lay not in the description of the Jewish Holocaust, but in the practical conclusion he drew from the analysis of the Jewish situation – a conclusion in fact reached by the Zionist movement decades ago, but for the first time confirmed for the world to hear by an emissary of the Soviet Union: the

Jewish people’s aspiration to its own state.”442

Communist parties all over the world, and other Leftist, ideologically predisposed by

Moscow to be anti-Zionist, even in the Yishuv, denied the significance of the new Soviet

441 AVP RF, F.118, OP.5, P.3, D.1, LL.1-14; cited by Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs. 442 “Circular of the Mapai Central Committee to its Emissaries Abroad” Tel Aviv, May 29, 1947; CZA S53/12C; DISR, Part I, doc. 86, pp.197-202. 197 position. Without criticizing Gromyko, they kept opposing the partition of Palestine. But for the

Zionists in the U.S., it was obvious that the shift in Soviet policy was the result of a confluence of interests, and not a true support for the Zionist cause. David Wahl of the American Jewish

Conference wrote to Rabbi Silver, “it is only practical to realize that conviction [of the Soviets re- the creation of a Jewish state] was possible because there was also coincidence of interest and attitude. […] There is indeed much more compatibility between the Soviet delegates and

[Jewish] Agency aspirations [than between Soviet and Arab positions].”443

The pro-Zionist attitude of some East-European countries under Soviet influence might also have had an impact on the Soviet turnaround. Indeed, maintaining order in these countries, especially Poland, was important and problematic for Soviet leadership. Many East-European communist governments favored Jews’ emigration to achieve as monoethnic population as possible – yet not to appear antisemitic, they hid their wish for getting grid of their Jews under the guise of the fulfillment of Jewish statehood. Jewish Agency representative in Washington

Eliyahu Epstein reported a conversation with General Vlatco Velebit, deputy foreign minister of

Yugoslavia, which illustrate why. With or without antisemitic prejudice, caring for post-

Holocaust Jews who had been removed from the citizenry and economic life of their country for some years, was costly. Velebit “described […] the prevailing misery […] of the Jewish D.P.s, whose numbers are much larger than is officially admitted. […] The governments, while they are anxious to avoid any coercion against them, would be extremely relieved, especially in

Romania and Hungary, if at least a large part of the Jews were to emigrate elsewhere.” But mainly, East-European communist governments wanted the Jews to leave in order to reduce the

Judeokommuna myth undermining their own authority, and to avoid having to deal with antisemitism among its population. Velebit added, “this would also resolve the problem of

443 D.R. Wahl to A.H. Silver; New york, May 15, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 84, pp.196-197. 198 antisemitism, which facilitates and breeds all kinds of conspiracies against the new regimes among reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements.” He also evaluated at one to one and a half million the number of Jews who “would have to leave central Europe.”444

And indeed, even before Gromyko’s speech on May 14, East-European representatives, among others the Polish and Czechoslovak delegates, already showed some sympathy toward the

Jewish quest for statehood. For instance, they had favored allowing Jewish Agency delegates to present their case. They also emphasized the connection between Jewish suffering in D.P. camps in Europe and in British detention camps in Cyprus and Palestine. Their support for Zionism might have been initially driven by the need to deal with domestic issues. Yet for communist leaders of Soviet satellites – even the most independent ones such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia – to exhibit such an attitude in an international forum, the Kremlin must have sanctioned it, or there would have been traces of Moscow’s dissatisfaction. On the contrary,

Bulgaria, initially opposed to Jewish emigration and even to the sailing of Romanian Jews from its ports, alleviated its policy as soon as the Soviets, through the local Communists, had tightened their grip on the country in the fall 1947.

However, East-European officials had different interpretations of the Soviet shift of policy. The day after Gromyko’s speech, the Polish embassy to Moscow reported that

“Vyshinsky stressed that the Soviet position is intended merely for show, and importantly, means trouble for England.”445 The Poles were discrete but active supporters of Jewish emigration and of the Zionist project, for reasons described above, and Palestine was a regular topic between

444 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Dr. Vladimir Velebit, Yugoslav Under- Secretary of Foreign Affairs” Washington, June 25, 1947; CZA S25/6607; DISR, Part I, doc. 87, pp.203-205. 445 Naszkowski’s memorandum from talks with Minister Vyshinsky, May 16, 1947; AMSZ, ZSRR, series 6, file 521, bundle 33, leaf 1; cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 81. 199

Polish and Soviet delegates.446 On the contrary, Yugoslavian Velebit claimed that “the Russians and their allies have come to the conclusion that only in Palestine can central European Jewry be absorbed successfully, especially in view of the fact that no country in the world is willing to admit large numbers of Jews” – a statement in total contradiction with the former Soviet policies on Jews and Palestine. Was Velebit mandated by Moscow to convince the Zionists of the ingenuity of its recent policy shift? Maybe, since Velebit also claimed that the Zionists would be

“the victims of a cynical and distorted interpretation if we were to construe it simply as a temporary maneuver on the part of the Soviet government. The Soviet government would not risk engaging itself in a conflict with the Arabs for the sake of some temporary advantage.” He made sure to lift any doubt about Soviet intentions: “We have to take Mr. Gromyko’s statement as it stands, without highlighting what we believe to be a better solution. Undoubtedly, he meant to say that we should not indulge in wishful thinking by emphasizing the partition references over the bi-national state references.”447

Later that summer, Epstein reported a conversation with Mikhail Vavilov, first secretary of the Soviet embassy to Washington, which confirmed that Velebit’s statement was (or rather, had become) the official Soviet justification for its new policy. “The Soviet government understands the Jewish desire, as well as the necessity, for statehood, and our work in Palestine has convinced them that we are capable of achieving it. […] Also Palestine is apparently the only solution for the homelessness of the Jewish DPs in Europe.” He insisted that “it was only after a careful and comprehensive analysis of the situation that Gromyko had been authorized to make his statement.” Vavilov further “ridiculed the ‘vicious propaganda’ […] that Mr.

446 Protocol from a meeting with the Minister, May 5, 1947; AMSZ, Minister’s Cabinet, series 15, bundle 6, file 1, leaf 1; cited in Szaynok, 83. 447 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Dr. Vladimir Velebit, Yugoslav Under- Secretary of Foreign Affairs” Washington, June 25, 1947; CZA S25/6607; DISR, Part I, doc. 87, pp.203-205. 200

Gromyko’s statement did not intend to help the Jews but was the springboard for an attack on the

British, intended to cause further trouble for the British and American governments with the

Arabs.”448

Yet in the West, London and Washington believed that advocating partition and the creation of a Jewish state was only a strategy for the Soviet Union to embarrass the British and undermine its grip on Palestine. They thought that the real Soviet goal remained the creation of a binational state, in favor of the Arabs, and that eventually Moscow would align with the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs in demanding the independence of Palestine while the Arabs were still a demographic majority. But none of these hypothetical explanations justifies the suddenness of the Soviet shift. This might actually give some credit to the claims advanced by historians Laurent Rucker, Gabriel Gorodetsky, and Geoffrey Roberts, that Stalin had troubles to adjust to the new postwar order, and fully understood the terms of the Cold War in the spring

1947. The turning point Roberts uses is Truman’s Congress speech in March 1947, just a few weeks before the Soviet shift on Palestine.

In any event, the reasons for this astounding change of heart are still unclear. They certainly are the result of a combination of factors. The original Soviet agenda would most likely have discouraged the United Nations from even considering to put to the vote the creation of a Jewish state. Indeed, to make a decision, the U.N. needed a two-thirds majority, which could only be achieved if both US- and Soviet-influenced countries joined together. Gromyko’s speech made it a potential reality. Although there was still nothing to suggest that the U.S.S.R. would become a champion of the Zionist cause, the Soviet position in May 1947 allowed for the

448 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Mr. Mikhail S. Vavilov, First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington” Washington, July 31, 1947; CZA S25/9299; DISR, Part I, doc. 90, pp.217- 218. 201 creation of a Jewish state to become a more concrete potentiality to be discussed by the whole international community under the U.N. umbrella.

Conclusion

Many factors led the Palestine question to make its way to the General Assembly of the United

Nations, and to create the international context in which the creation of the Jewish state through the partition of Palestine became a potentiality. But everything originated in the statelessness of the Jewish refugees. Pushed by antisemitism in their prewar home countries, they either tried illegal immigration to Palestine or moved to Western-controlled territories, where they were stranded in D.P. camps. This situation induced their determination to emigrate from Europe, and with most doors closed, Palestine became their most sought destination. The Jewish D.P.s came to constitute an extraterritorial collectivity with the right to migrate, which eventually lent legitimacy to Jewish claims to nationhood.449

The Jews’ initial flight from Eastern Europe was allowed by the U.S.S.R., not out of humanitarianism, but because of its own difficulties to impose Soviet domination over the antisemitic populations of Eastern Europe. Yet this moved the Jewish problem westward, and

Jewish D.P.s became a source of tensions between the U.S. and Britain. So indirectly, by increasing the number of potential candidates for immigration to Palestine in the Western occupation zones, Moscow put pressure on Britain to connect the Jewish refugees in its

European zone and their flight to Palestine, thereby giving value to the Jewish claim for statehood. The Soviet policy also carried the secondary benefit of driving an edge between its

Cold War main adversaries.

449 Stone, Liberation, 179–80. 202

Traditionally the U.S. had followed Britain’s lead in foreign policy, especially in Europe and in the Middle East. Yet in the case of the Jewish refugees, the U.S. had a significant responsibility in allowing them into the Western zones and sometimes closing its eyes on their illegal emigration from Europe. The U.S. also had an important role in enabling these uprooted

Jews to dream of Palestine, when Truman started to press London to issue 100,000 certificates, which was the first step toward acknowledging the link between the Jewish D.P.s issue and the

Palestine question. The U.S. therefore applied direct pressure on Britain, and London’s stubborn refusal made the U.S. evolve from simply advocating for Jewish D.P.s’ immigration to favoring the partition of Palestine. This might reflect a more mature U.S. policy, emancipated from

Britain’s lead, in front of Cold War needs for strong leadership.

Overwhelmed by the Jewish problem and by the Palestine issue, and unable to keep these two questions separated, London eventually brought the future of Palestine up to the United

Nations. But the international forum might have been paralyzed from the start if the Soviet

Union had maintained its traditional anti-Zionism, and kept a policy favoring Arab independence. So when Moscow suggested it might not oppose the partition of Palestine, it opened a window for the United Nations to move forward and investigate the Palestine question.

These two turning points had achieved the necessary internationalization of the Palestine question to allow it to move forward.

203

CHAPTER 4

THE DIPLOMACY OF THE VOTE, MAY-NOVEMBER 1947

London brought the Palestine question up to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and the Soviet Union astonished the international community when Gromyko mentioned the possibility of Soviet support for the partition of Palestine. Despite the doubts on whether Britain would actually let go of its Mandate, and suspicions that the Soviet reorientation generated, the

General Assembly used this window of opportunity created by great powers’ willingness to debate about a solution to the Palestine issue. Up to that point, investigations had been led by

Western, rather than international, committees, and focused on the Jewish D.P.s, rather than on

Palestine. The international community now had the responsibility to design the future of

Palestine, and needed to begin with assessing the situation.

Although the U.S.S.R. permitted Jewish emigration toward Western Europe and

Palestine, thus allowing the Jewish problem to become overwhelming, and the United States pressured Britain for a settlement to the Jewish problem in Europe by a significant immigration to Palestine, neither superpower had yet dared to take a firm stance on the Palestine question, still a British prerogative. Their attitude toward Jewish refugees did not necessarily presume what policies the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would adopt toward Palestine itself, now that it was in the hands of the United Nations. Between encouraging Jewish immigration without altering the status of Palestine, and proactively supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, there was a large gap. How both powers closed this gap still needs to be explored. Why did the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. evolve from a position best described as somewhere between neutral/passive

204 non-intervention and humanitarian benevolence toward Jewish migrations, to redesigning the map of the Middle East and its geopolitical dynamics by voting for the creation of a Jewish state in the General Assembly of the United Nations?

This chapter starts by describing the U.N. investigation of the situation in Palestine and analyzing its proposals. It then explores the U.S. and Soviet paths toward their decision to vote in favor of the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish states on November 29, 1947.

The Special Committee on Palestine: the British, the Arabs, the Yishuv, and the Jewish D.P.s

The first move of the General Assembly was to create yet another committee to investigate the situation, this time focusing primarily on Palestine, and only secondarily on the situation of the displaced Jews of Europe. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (U.N.S.C.O.P., or Special Committee) was established, and most delegates agreed that the Big Five (the permanent members of the Security Council, U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, France, and China) should not participate. Eleven countries, including two from the Soviet sphere of influence, were selected to send a representative and an alternate: Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia,

Guatemala, India, Iran, the Netherlands, Peru, Uruguay, Yugoslavia, and Sweden (chair).

U.N.S.C.O.P. had three months to report to the Secretary General by September 1, 1947, and was given “the widest power to ascertain and record facts, and to investigate all questions and issues relevant to the problem of Palestine.” This implied that the Jewish D.P. issue might or might not

205 be part of its investigation. The delegates decided to postpone making the decision to visit the

D.P. camps.450

Prior to the creation of U.N.S.C.O.P., in the General Assembly, the international community scrutinized each other’s position vis-à-vis the Palestine question. Washington did not believe Moscow would support the creation of a Jewish state, which, it used to claim, would be a “Zionist tool of the West” hostile to the Soviet Union. Even after Gromyko’s speech, U.S. experts were divided. Some, such as Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk, kept believing that the U.S.S.R. was just playing a trick on the international community, but would eventually reverse to supporting the Arab side. Others, such as Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell

Smith, figured that the U.S.S.R. had shifted its position for good, in order to use the future

Jewish state to undermine British influence in the Middle East.

In the meantime, the Kremlin thought that the U.S. and Britain were just playing the U.N. card to gain time, and “not to permit a detailed discussion of the essence of the Palestine question. Evidently, they calculated that while the committee was carrying out its work in

Palestine, they would be able to reach an amicable agreement between themselves about the fate of Palestine.”451 To be fair, the international context shaped Soviet suspicions of the West’s supposedly hidden policy goals. Moscow had just discovered that the European Recovery

Program (E.R.P.), known as the Marshall Plan, which in theory did not exclude Russia or East-

European countries, came with conditions clearly revealing its ultimate end to forestall communist subversion by restoring Europe’s economy on the liberal and capitalist model. The

450 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 451 I.N. Bakulin to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “Concerning the upcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the General Assembly Session in September 1947” Moscow, July 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.10, P.5, D.3, LL.1-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 88, pp.205-211. 206 failed Conference of Foreign Ministers in Paris in July 1947 convinced Stalin that the peacetime alliance was no longer an option, if that had not already been made clear.

If scholars concur on the secrecy of the Soviet policy and the mystery on the decision to support partition, on the other hand there has been a presumption that the U.S. supported the

Zionists all along. This was simply not the case. In truth, the United States had not yet finalized its Palestine policy. Marshall justified withholding information about U.S. policy so as not to influence U.N.S.C.O.P.’s work.452 However, the Truman Doctrine was already bypassing the

U.N. on many topics, so why this sudden respect for the U.N.’s work in Palestine? In Greece and Turkey, and in Western Europe as well, the need to create a stronghold against communist disruption from inside and a potential take over by the Red Army had led to the Marshall Plan.

Therefore, U.S. timidity and unwillingness to divulge its Palestine policy was denounced as leaving the U.N. in the dark rather than allowing it to do its job, even by some pro-Zionist senators such as Owen Brewster (Maine, Republican), James E. Murray (Montana, Democrat), and Jacob K. Javits (New York, Republican).

Zionist activists and Yishuv officials were paradoxically more understanding of U.S. ambiguity. Jewish Agency representative Eliyahu Epstein wrote to Rabbi Silver that the

Marshall Plan had just been announced, so that U.S. foreign policy was entering a fluid phase, in which it was difficult to fit Palestine within the overall goals. But at the opening of the Special

Session on April 30, 1947, the U.S. president and government were not even willing to show sympathy to the Zionist cause. Truman rejected President of the American Jewish Congress

Rabbi Stephen Wise’s request to press the State Department and Ambassador to the U.N. Warren

452 Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, 1st ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 208–9. 207

Austin to plead for Jewish Agency representatives to be allowed to present the Jewish side and

“granted non-voting status before the assembly.”453

This initial absence of support for the Zionist request meant, in essence, that the Zionist position would be at a clear disadvantage. Indeed, the Arab position was embodied by the representatives of the six Arab states who had already been admitted to the General Assembly

(Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen). Eventually the U.S. reconsidered and favored allowing non-governmental organizations such as the Jewish Agency, and, pressed by the British, the Arab Higher committee, to present their case to the General Assembly with non- voting status.454 So Zionist institutions, during the summer and fall 1947, did not know what to expect from the United States.

They did not know what to expect from the Soviet Union either. Gromyko’s speech had created hope of convincing more Eastern bloc countries than the Zionists could have expected.

In February 1947, Jewish Agency representative in Jerusalem Walter Eytan wondered whether the Soviets’ opposition “may not be worth having more than their support.” He had assessed that the U.S.S.R., Belorussia, and Ukraine could not be influenced. If the U.N. put to the vote the creation of a Jewish state, the two latter countries would vote like Moscow, which the Zionists would not be able to influence. Eytan considered that Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, though they “normally vote with the USSR,” were more flexible on the Palestine issue, the two former for domestic reasons, the later because of the greater independence Marshall Josip Broz

Tito was maintaining from Moscow. Eytan suggested sending to Czechoslovakia a high profile

453 Matthew J. Connelly to David K. Niles, with attached telegram, May 1, 1947; 1945-June, 1947; Box 28; Displaced Persons and Immigration File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #6 “President Truman and the Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following WWII”; Truman Library. 454 Memorandum for the President from the Department of State: “Participation of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Special Session of the General Assembly” April 29, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3 “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 208

“special emissary,” to get at least “vocal support.” The emissary could then go to Warsaw, in the hope of persuading Poland to abstain, and if so, “intelligently.” Did this mean without anti-

Zionist rhetoric, or despite Russian hypothetical vote against the creation of a Jewish State? For

Yugoslavia, he had little hope but stressed that “we should do all we can […] to see that this government at least has all the factual information we can give it.”455

Despite almost discarding the Soviet vote as potentially prejudicial in February 1947, when the Special Session approached, the Jewish Agency tried to attract Soviet sympathy with a long, thorough memorandum recapitulating “the background of the Palestine problem.” The memorandum explained the disillusionment for the “homeless survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps” that the British Labour Party, which “vigorously attacked the White Paper,” did not cancel it when called to power and did not uphold Truman’s appeal to admit 100,000 Jews to

Palestine. London did not even comply with the conclusions of their own creation, the Anglo-

American Committee of Inquiry, to let 100,000 Jews into Palestine and set aside the White

Paper. It denounced the Morrison-Grady plan, “the old ‘federalization’ plan in a new dress,” that asked Jews to give up their rights under the mandate in exchange for the admission of 100,000 of them in Palestine, and left immigration subject to British authority.456

But most of all, this memorandum appealed to Soviet sympathy for Jewish survivors in

Europe, “unable to regain status and possessions on soil poised by Hitlerite antisemitism.”

Reminding that “the Jews […] are about to begin the third year of waiting,” it indicated that “the majority of the 1,500,000 Jews of Europe are determined to leave a continent which is little more than a graveyard for their 6,000,000 dead. They are resolved to begin life anew in a homeland of their own, where they will never again be the targets of intolerance and bigotry and where, as a

455 Memorandum by W. Eytan, Jerusalem, February 25, 1947; CZA S25/5343; DISR, Part I, doc. 72, p.165. 456 “Memorandum by the Jewish Agency: The background of the Palestine Problem” New York, April 28, 1947; ISA 93.3/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 80, pp.182-187. 209 free people, they may have a voice in their own future.”457 It is important to emphasize that by giving the number of 1,500,000 Jews determined to leave Europe, the memorandum did not include Soviet Jews, or the number would have been much higher.

In addition, the memorandum sought to fuel Moscow anti-Western fears and indirectly reassure Soviet leaders on the neutral stance the future Jewish state would adopt in the Cold War, by blaming and vilifying the British. “During the war Jews had sought to escape from the Nazis; now they were running the blockade of their ‘liberators’. […] Oblivious to their misery, the

British mechanically limited Jewish immigration to a mere 1,500 a month […], hunted down the refugees, who were at first herded into internment camps in Palestine and later deported to

Cyprus.”458 The Jewish Agency took every precaution to use a Soviet understanding of politics

(“Hitlerite antisemitism”), to flatter the Soviet self-image as a haven for Jews (by excluding

Soviet Jews from the candidates to emigration), and to show the Zionist anger at Soviet diplomatic enemies (by accusing Britain and the U.S., though not Truman himself, of being the new villains of European Jewry).

It is undeniable that Britain was not cooperative, and even U.N.S.C.O.P. was not optimistic. Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Alexander Cadogan announced that he could not “imagine His Majesty’s Government carrying out a policy it does not approve.” He later explained that he did not mean that London would reject the U.N.G.A.’s recommendations, but that it would not participate in carrying out decisions it felt to be wrong.

Britain would welcome any solution acceptable to both parties, but would not endorse the enforcement of a solution one or both rejected. Everyone knew that such a solution would be

457 “Memorandum by the Jewish Agency: The background of the Palestine Problem” New York, April 28, 1947; ISA 93.3/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 80, pp.182-187. 458 “Memorandum by the Jewish Agency: The background of the Palestine Problem” New York, April 28, 1947; ISA 93.3/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 80, pp.182-187. 210 almost impossible to achieve. As if to show to U.N.S.C.O.P. members that their presence and work would not alter the British agenda, London announced, the very day the Special Committee set foot in Palestine, that they would proceed with the execution of three Jews accused of anti-

British sabotage. Britain also made clear that it sided with the Arab side on many issues regarding Palestine. It had limited Jewish legal immigration, was doing its best to suppress

Jews’ illegal entry, and rejected the idea of a Jewish state and of partitioning Palestine.

Indeed the British and Arab positions were basically aligned with one another. Arab countries and Arabs of Palestine demanded that U.N.S.C.O.P. investigate the revocation of the mandate and consider the question of Jewish refugees separately from the Palestine problem.

Their intransigent position raised Soviet suspicions that Arab leaders were following instructions from their British patron. They assumed their boycott of U.N.S.C.O.P. was orchestrated by the

British “in order to hinder the work of the committee and diminish its authority.”459 They played the non-cooperation/intimidation card. Arab Higher Committee’s vice-chairman Jamal Husayni told U.N. secretary general Trygve Lie that the Arabs will not “collaborate” with the Special

Committee. 50 million Arabs were ready to back the Arabs of Palestine by force in case they did not get what they wanted, which was a fully independent Arab state in Palestine with no Jewish autonomy and no Jewish immigration.460 They refused to appoint the two liaison officers to represent the Arabs of Palestine and their interests. Of course the whole spectrum of political opinions coexisted among the Arabs of Palestine, but their leadership chose to meet the

459 Memorandum of I.N. Bakulin on UNSCOP: “Concerning the UN Special Committee on Palestine” Moscow, July 31, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.10, P.5, D.3, LL.9-14; DISR, Part I, doc. 89, pp.212-217. 460 The Consul General at Jerusalem (Macatee) to the Secretary of State, Jerusalem; June 23, 1947; Document 778; 501.BB Palestine/6–2347; FRUS, 1947, Vol. V; 1107-1112; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v05/d778 consulted on March 6, 2018; and “New War on Jews Forecast by Arab” in The New York Time, June 19, 1947, p.19. 211 international community with intransigence and hostility. This attitude proved to be a mistake, since U.N.S.C.O.P. members would nonetheless explore Palestine.

On the contrary, the Yishuv chose to show cooperation and gratitude toward

U.N.S.C.O.P. members and facilitated their investigation, in part out of pride for their achievements, and to appear nuanced and flexible in their determination. It is indeniable that the

Zionists had more to win than to lose from the involvement of the international community, which was not the case for the Arabs. True, the new Jewish Agency leadership was somewhat radical with Ben Gurion in Palestine and Rabbi Silver in the U.S., who replaced the moderate

Chaim Weizmann and Rabbi Stephen Wise respectively. They supported the continuing illegal immigration of European Jews, helped smuggled them into Palestine, and claimed that it was

British policy, not their own, which was in violation of the Mandate. Yet as radical as they might have been, in May 1947, out of a spirit of cooperation as well as political realism, Ben

Gurion and his allies publicly announced that if a Zionist state in the whole of Palestine was not feasible, the Jewish Agency would accept partition and the creation of a Jewish state in an

“adequate” part of Palestine.461 Not all Zionist groups accepted the idea of partition. Menachem

Begin’s Irgun and the Stern Gang rejected relinquishing any of Palestine and were turning into terrorist groups. They accused the Jewish Agency and the Haganah, the disciplined and based on self-defense underground armed forces of the Yishuv, of being “collaborators” with the British authorities for wanting to keep the peace during the investigation of the Special Committee.

The Zionists named two liaison officers to work with U.N.S.C.O.P., the economist David

Horowitz and the young Zionist Abba Eban. In the absence of Arab liaison officers, the task of establishing U.N.S.C.O.P.’s itinerary in Palestine fell to Horowitz, Eban, and the British liaison

461 Gene Currivan: “Zionists tending to middle course” in The New York Times, May 23, 1947, p.5; and “Ben Gurion favors Palestine division” in The New York Times, May 23, 1947, p.12; cited in Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven. 212 officer, Donald C. MacGillivray. Horowitz and Eban made sure to take U.N.S.C.O.P. members everywhere. In Tel Aviv, they were greeted with warmth, hope, and enthusiasm from the Jewish population. This is where Guatemalan delegate Jose García Granados “first really understood what the coming of our Committee meant to the Jewish people. We held in our hands life or death for all those men, women, and children who were gazing at us so eagerly, so hopefully.

We could give them peace and happiness, or we could plunge them into the depths of suffering and sorrow.”462 They took U.N.S.C.O.P. delegates to Haifa, to the Dead Sea, and to the Negev desert where they emphasized the miracle of irrigation in the Jewish settlements. They brought them to Mount Carmel and the Arab town of Ramallah. They toured factories, Arab and Jewish, agricultural exploitations, and harbor installations.463

At the end of their trip, the delegates were greeted with official speeches. First, Ben

Gurion emphasized that Arabs in a Jewish state would be safe, which could not be said for Jews in an Arab state. He claimed that Hitler had only been able to carry out his extermination plan because the Jews had no country of their own, nowhere to go, no diplomatic representation to protect and rescue them, and no military to defend them.464 Questioned by Czechoslovak delegate Karel Lisicky, he admitted once again that Jews “are entitled to Palestine as a whole, but we will be ready to consider the question of a Jewish state in an adequate area of

Palestine.”465 Horowitz’s speech followed, emphasizing that no Arab had been displaced by the

Zionist enterprise, which had even improved their situation with better living conditions and wages, lower infant mortality, and increased life expectancy than Arabs in surrounding countries.

462 Jorge García Granados, The Birth of Israel: The Drama as I Saw It, 1st ed. (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1948), 90– 91. 463 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 228–29. 464 The Consul General at Jerusalem (Macatee) to the Secretary of State, Jerusalem; July 7, 1947; Document 781; 501.BB Palestine/7–747; FRUS, 1947, Vol. V; 1117-1120; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v05/d781 consulted on March 6, 2018. 465 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 134. 213

Weizmann talked last. Contrary to the former two, he did not blame Britain but praised its efforts; he emphasized the special link of Jews to this land, and pleaded for partition.466

Yishuv leaders did a wonderful job illustrating their achievements in Palestine. They could not hide the presence of rampant Jewish terrorism, but distanced themselves from it. The

Palestinian press advertised the Haganah’s break with the Irgun, in an attempt to impress

U.N.S.C.O.P.’s delegates by their readiness to act as responsible statesmen. Haganah leaders later explained why the alliance with extremist groups such as Irgun or Lehi had been necessary in 1945 to counter British anti-Zionist policy, and why they just broke with them in reaction to the terrorist actions they had undertaken in a clear act of insubordination to Haganah leadership.467 They also conveyed that they could withstand attacks from Palestinian Arabs, and had developed an ammunition industry which would allow them to stand up to the surrounding

Arab states within a few years – assuming, of course, that the U.N. gave them the legal basis to defend themselves. In the face of such reasonable and tempered attitudes, the death sentences

Britain imposed on the Irgun youth seemed out of proportions. Their crimes had been to spread illegal leaflets and participate in a jailbreak. Horrified U.N.S.C.O.P. delegates then sought more information on British military rule. Learning that the British could confiscate homes, order deportation, and sentence an arrested individual without due cause, Guatemalan delegate

Granados called British Palestine “the only true police state remaining in the 20th century.”468

The British had done everything to confirm this assessment during U.N.S.C.O.P. investigation, if only by their disastrous handling of the Exodus. A ship chartered by the

466 The Consul General at Jerusalem (Macatee) to the Secretary of State, Jerusalem; July 14, 1947; Document 783; 501.BB Palestine/7–1447; FRUS, 1947, Vol. V; 1124-1128; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v05/d783 consulted on March 6, 2018; and David Horowitz, State in the Making (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1953), 177. 467 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 183–88. 468 García Granados, 123. 214

Haganah, transporting 4,500 illegal immigrants on board, was intercepted by five British naval destroyers and one cruiser, seventeen miles from Palestine’s shores. The British intervention, with live fire and gas bombs, left two Jewish refugees and one American crewman dead. The

British navy escorted the ship to Haifa, which looked like a war zone “with coils of rusted barbed wire, British Army tanks and trucks and some five hundred troops of the 6th Airborne Division,” according to Ruth Gruber.469 The refugees became prisoners, their belongings were confiscated, men and women sprayed with D.D.T. and separated. Strategically, Eban had taken the Swedish delegate Emil Sandström and the Yugoslav delegate Vladimir Simic to witness this scene.

This horrid spectacle was very bad press for the British mandatory authorities. It led

Sandström to announce that, according to U.N.S.C.O.P. investigators, “Britain must no longer have the mandate over Palestine.”470 Building on the delegates’ disgust at British policy against the Jews in Palestine, two journalists organized a meeting with John Stanley Grauel, a U.S.

Haganah volunteer aboard the Exodus. A former Methodist minister who made his life aim to help Jewish D.P.s reach Palestine, Grauel described the Exodus crew, comprised of 43 volunteers, all Jewish but himself, and mostly war veterans. He recounted the British assault and cried while describing how they clubbed to death his friend and chief mate, Bill Bernstein.471

The passengers expected the British authorities to send them to Cyprus, and so did

Zionist organizations and the international community. This would have represented a short

200-mile trip. But the British wanted to set an example to deter further attempts at illegal immigration. They knew that the most determined candidates considered these Cyprus camps as

“Erev Eretz Yisrael,” Hebrew for the Eve of the Land of Israel, a springboard for aliyah beth. So

469 Ruth Gruber, Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel, 1st ed. (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003), 272– 89; cited in Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 233. 470 Gruber, Inside of Time, 272–89; Stone, Liberation, 186. 471 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 173–82. 215 they sent the Exodus to its port of origin, Marseille, France. The French government had agreed to take the refugees, but would not force disembarkation. A few passengers, mainly the sick, old, and those with small babies, chose to unship in Marseille, but the great majority stood their ground. Out of options, London decided to return them to Germany. Soon enough the outrage was international. The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington published a sticker “S.S.

Exodus 1947: British Floating Dachau” and used the event to raise awareness within the

American people. The passengers were forced to land in Hamburg on September 8, 1947, but were then denied D.P. status. In response, Jewish D.P.s declared their solidarity with the imprisoned passengers and provided them material assistance.472

The Exodus incident had dramatically illustrated, if it were still necessary, the link between the fate of Palestine, which U.N.S.C.O.P. had set up to design, and the fate of the desperate homeless Jews of Europe. Sealing the connection between Europe and Palestine,

U.N.S.C.O.P. members decided to visit a few D.P. camps in Europe before making a decision.

Granados, Uruguay delegate Enrique Fabregat, and Australian delegate John Hood went to

Vienna, where over 1,000 “panic stricken Jews from Rumania and the Balkans” were pouring in weekly. As historians Allis and Ronald Radosh explained, when the U.S. closed the army camps to refugees, they flooded into hospitals and other shelters. Even Iranian delegate Ali Ardalan, quite anti-Zionist himself, was horrified and called their situation a crime against humanity.473

Asked by the delegates, Lieutenant Colonel Henry C. McFeeley, responsible for the D.P.s in the U.S. zone of Austria, said that he had seen in Palestine empty places that could provide a solution to this problem.474 Then U.N.S.C.O.P. delegates met with Jewish D.P.s from the British zone of Austria who had been allocated visas to legally immigrate to Palestine. Granados

472 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 61. 473 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 225. 474 García Granados, 226. 216 recalled thinking, “these are the only happy Jews I have seen in Europe.”475 No doubt could remain as to where the Jewish D.P.s wanted to go. They would have given up everything to go to Palestine, even knowing that they would most likely end up in other camps, in Cyprus, as over

60% of the Cyprus internees had been previously in camps in Germany, Austria, or Italy.476

The Zionists had done an excellent job at showing the maturity of their institutions and their achievements in Palestine. They already acted as a state in the making, and therefore signaled their readiness to achieve statehood. U.N.S.C.O.P. delegates had witnessed first hand the desperation of homeless Jews in Europe and their determination to reach Palestine by any means. They experienced and despised British authoritarian rule in Palestine, which was further confirmed when they heard that the British had hung the young Irgun members as soon as

U.N.S.C.O.P. left Palestine, and that in retaliation, the Irgun had hung British sergeants. But even more decisive to persuade the delegates that partition was if not inevitable, at least the safest solution, had been the attitude of the Arabs. Canadian delegate Ivan Rand, after having witnessed the Arabs’ attitude towards the Jews and knowing the plight of the Jewish refugees, told Horowitz, “I fully appreciate that you’re fighting with your backs to the wall.”477 In the words of British Foreign Office officer Harold Beeley, the Arabs’ “inept diplomacy” created sympathy for the Jews rather than support for Arab nationalism.

The Arabs had greeted U.N.S.C.O.P. delegates with a general strike protesting their very presence, despite Swedish delegate and chair Emil Sandström’s pacifying words that “this

Committee has come to Palestine with a completely open mind. […] We are impartial. […]

We have reached no conclusions.”478 The British and Zionist liaison officers took them to visit

475 García Granados, 232; Horowitz, State in the Making, 202–9. 476 Stone, Liberation, 186. 477 Horowitz, State in the Making, 171. 478 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 224. 217

Arab Palestine as well as Jewish Palestine, and their initial impartiality was soon overthrown by

Arab attitude, a mix of hostility and intransigence. When U.N.S.C.O.P. representatives toured an

Arab tobacco factory, the Zionist liaison had to stay behind because Arabs would not permit a

Jewish visitor. The committee members then could observe the poor working conditions and child labor that was going on in the Arab factory – maybe chosen by the Jewish liaison officers for this very reason. This did not make a good impression on the delegates. Jewish drivers, journalists, and photographers were further denied access to most Arab places the delegates visited, mayoralties, factories, some cafés, and last but not least places holy to Jews, such as the

Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron.479 Later when touring Jaffa, they met an English-speaking

Arab man, who was very hostile to the U.N.S.C.O.P. and claimed that he “knew” that three quarters of the delegates were Jewish. He told them “if it was up to me […] I would hang everyone who came here today.”480

After Palestine, U.N.S.C.O.P. went to Lebanon, and the delegates went to a party hosted by Foreign Minister Hamid Frangie. U.N. Lebanese representative Camille Chamoun told them that the Arabs would never accept a Jewish state, nor would they accept cantonization if the Jews were to control immigration in the Jewish cantons. Frangie went even further and claimed that all Jews who came to Palestine since the 1917 Balfour Declaration should be considered illegal immigrants and sent away.481 The Arabs rejected every solution the committee suggested: a binational state even though Arabs would represent the ethnic majority in such a state; a federal state; and partition. Polish delegate Lisicky summed up the Arab position: “We ask for 100% of our claims and the others can share the rest.” The obvious and aggressive Arab discrimination against Jews confirmed what Ben Gurion had claimed, and raised concerns among the delegates

479 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 78–84; Horowitz, State in the Making, 166–69. 480 García Granados, The Birth of Israel, 81–84. 481 García Granados, 198–207. 218 about the fate of a Jewish minority in an Arab or binational/dual state. The conclusion of many of the U.N.S.C.O.P. members was that “the Arab Higher Committee’s uncompromising attitude, its refusal to consider the possibility of any conciliatory course, was to prove a convincing argument for partition,” even for those initially leaning more toward Arab than Jewish demands.482

After their travels, U.N.S.C.O.P. representatives settled in , Switzerland, ironically in the former headquarters of the League of Nations, the Palais des Nations’

“monumental halls haunted by the ghost of international futility.”483 They debated the form of the future government of Palestine; geography; and the question of how to implement whichever solution they would reach. U.N.S.C.O.P. investigators managed to agree on most principles, yet found the need to submit two plans, soon to be called the majority and the minority plans, as a basis for the General Assembly’s work on Palestine. The first chapters analyzed the geographic, economic, and demographic factors and presented U.N.S.C.O.P. members’ appraisal of the Arab and Jewish claims. The fifth chapter presented their unanimous and almost unanimous recommendations which did not meet any strong opposition. The sixth and seventh chapters presented the majority and minority plans; and the eighth chapter provided a list of reservations and observations from certain delegates.484

U.N.S.C.O.P. members judged that investigating the conditions of the Jews in British camps in Cyprus, the methods of the British police, or the situation of Jewish refugees in Yemen

“fell outside of the Committee’s term of reference.” Yet some delegates claimed that although

482 García Granados, 31–39. 483 García Granados, 208–15. 484 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 219 they could not take any action for the liberation of the Cyprus detainees, they should assess the conditions of detention. Some delegates wished to explore the D.P. camps in Europe, while others thought that “it was improper to connect the displaced persons, and the Jewish problem as a whole, with the problem of Palestine.”485 They quickly ruled out either extreme solution that would satisfy the claims of only one of the two communities present in Palestine, as well as the binational or cantonal schemes which they deemed unworkable or unfair. They focused on the two remaining solutions, either partition with economic unity, or a federal-State plan – so along the lines of Gromyko’s suggestions of May 15.

U.N.S.C.O.P. unanimously agreed on certain principles, namely the termination of the

British mandate and the granting of independence to Palestine, after a transitional period, with an authority to insure the access of all religious communities to the holy places under the United

Nations’ umbrella. Other unanimous recommendations dealt with democratic principles that should undergird the constitution of the state/states of Palestine and the protection of minorities.

The committee also stressed that the future entities should respect the integrity of other states in the region and the purpose of the U.N. and that regardless of the solution, the economic unity of

Palestine was indispensable to its development.486

Addressing the D.P.s, the sixth recommendation endorsed the link between the Palestine problem and the “distressed European Jews,” but remained vague about how to connect the two issues. “It is recommended that the General Assembly undertake immediately the initiation and execution of an international arrangement whereby the problem of the distressed European Jews,

485 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 486 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 220 of whom approximately 250,000 are in assembly centers, will be dealt with as a matter of extreme urgency for the alleviation of their plight and of the Palestine problem.” Further lengthy but almost as unclear development awkwardly attempted to explain this statement. “It cannot be doubted that any action which would ease the plight of the distressed Jews in Europe would thereby lessen the pressure of the Palestinian immigration problem, and would consequently create a better climate in which to carry out a final solution of the question of Palestine.” In other words, the Special Committee indicated that the Jewish D.P.s issue was aggravating the

Palestine question, and that taking steps toward solving the D.P. issue would ease the pressure on the negotiations and allow them to successfully design a solution to the Palestine question.

Indeed, the fear was that Palestine would become the only place of resettlement for these

Jewish refugees. In order to “allay[ing] the fears of Arabs,” the committee “has felt justified in proposing a measure which is designed to ameliorate promptly the condition of the Jewish segments of the displaced persons as a vital prerequisite to the settlement of the difficult conditions in Palestine [emphasis is mine].” Yet the very fact that U.N.S.C.O.P.’s report mentioned Jewish D.P.s showed that the two issues were inextricably linked to each other. The last recommendation, approved by a substantial majority (two dissented and one abstained), confirmed this trend by stating that “any solution for Palestine cannot be considered as a solution of the Jewish problem in general” because of the country’s limited resources, and the collective responsibility for the Jewish refugees.487 So the U.N.S.C.O.P. adopted the British and Arab positions that Jews should not all resettle in Palestine, no matter what future the delegates would

487 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 221 suggest for the region. They were considering the potentiality of creating of a Jewish state, but already expressed that not all Jews, even among the uprooted ones, should hope to go.

Then the report presented two plans, every U.N.S.C.O.P. member having committed to one of them except Australia, who claimed that it was the General Assembly’s role to choose which plan to implement. The “majority plan” was supported by Canada, Czechoslovakia,

Guatemala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay. It suggested the partition of Palestine into one Arab state and one Jewish state, with economic union. This involved a political division but economic unity to take into account the two groups’ (650,000 Jews and 1,200,000 Arabs) intense nationalism and different ways of life, Arab-Jewish tensions, and the deal-breaking issue of Jewish immigration. The latter was considered “the one factor, above all others, that rules out the necessary cooperation between Arab and Jewish communities in a single state.” Partition would remove this issue. It suggested a two-year transition in which both states should constitute two independent governments, with common social and economic features and cooperation with the international government of the City of Jerusalem.

India, Iran, and Yugoslavia approved the “minority plan.” It proposed a federal state, based on the belief that after political and geographical disunity, expecting the two states to maintain economic unity would be impracticable, and without it, both states would be unviable.

This scheme also claimed that as no Arab leader supported partition, whereas Jewish leaders did, partition should be regarded as an anti-Arab solution and therefore prevented. The minority plan assumed that an imposed federal solution would force Jews and Arabs to develop more cooperation. The three nations suggested a two-chamber legislative body, one based on proportional representation of the population, the second based on equal representation for Jews

222 and Arabs.488 The majority plan was supported by most delegates from developed countries, one of the two delegates from the Soviet bloc, and all Latin American delegates; the minority plan received support from the other Soviet bloc delegate and the two Asian countries.

Both plans suggested provision for Jewish immigration, thereby confirming the inescapable link of the Jewish D.P. situation to the Palestine question. Partition with economic union proposed to admit in the Jewish state 150,000 Jewish immigrants at a monthly rate during the two-year transition period, and then at a rate of 60,000 per year. The federal state solution did not give specific numbers, but stated that “no claim to a right of unlimited immigration of

Jews into Palestine […] can be entertained. […] Jewish immigration shall be permitted into the borders of the Jewish state […], in such numbers as not to exceed the absorptive capacity of that

Jewish state” – a capacity that would be appraised by an international commission of three

Palestinian Arabs, three Palestinian Jews, and three U.N. representatives.489 Therefore, in the minority plan, the Jewish citizens and Yishuv representatives of Palestine would not have control over their own immigration policy. In any case, these two plans were to become the basis for diplomatic negotiations about the future of Palestine, as it was clearer than ever that the two issues of Jewish D.P.s and Palestine were inextricably connected to each other.

488 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 489 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine: “Report to the General Assembly”, Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11, Lake Success, New York, 1947; https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3, consulted on May 1, 2018. 223

The uneasy path to partition I: U.S. diplomatic hesitations

While the Palestine question was being investigated by U.N.S.C.O.P., every country started to build a policy toward it as well. They had to factor in moral considerations and diplomatic strategies. Some states were more involved than others. The four countries responsible for an occupation zone in Europe, namely the U.S., the U.S.S.R., Britain, and France, had to consider the Jewish displaced persons’ situation in their zones, in addition to their European policy in the early-Cold War context, and their wider Middle Eastern policy. The latter was inevitably linked to their energy needs for postwar reconstruction, since the Middle Eastern countries were the main producers of oil, which quickly replaced coal as the principal source of energy. They were subject to external and internal pressures, economic and oil lobbies, Jewish and Zionist lobbies, and in some cases anti-immigration lobbies as well. What were the diplomatic and domestic dynamics that led both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to vote for the partition of Palestine?

The transfer of responsibility for the future of Palestine into the hands of the United

Nations had contrasting effects on U.S. and Soviet policies. In the U.S., it allowed the government to distance itself from the issue and relinquish the leadership over the solution- finding process, while withholding its own decision. Yet all concerned actors maintained pressure on U.S. policy-makers, and the public debate over the U.N.S.C.O.P. report in the U.N.

General Assembly forced the U.S. to confront its internal contradictions in view of the vote planned for November 1947. For the Soviet Union, the shift from British-U.S. hands to the U.N. had the reversed effect. It gave the U.S.S.R. a legitimate voice on an issue which had been out of their reach. So Soviet involvement in the Palestine question grew to a crescendo during

U.N.S.C.O.P. investigation and the following debate in the U.N. General Assembly. Yet internal

224 divisions, though less significant in a non-democratic regime, appeared nonetheless. Jewish

D.P.s and increasing Cold War tensions influenced both powers’ decision-making process.

In the U.S., the State Department’s anti-Zionist trend increased between the end of World

War II and the creation of Israel. Just as Truman took office, Secretary of State Edward

Stettinius warned him against the pressure the President would encounter regarding Palestine, in a typical case of the bridging of domestic and foreign policies. “Efforts will be made […] to obtain from you at an early date some commitments in favor of the Zionist program,” which involved both Jewish immigration to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state. He insisted that the question of Palestine was “a highly complex one” that “go far beyond the plight of the

Jews of Europe” and reminded Truman of the vital interests the U.S. had in this area.490

Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew confirmed this view. Despite some occasional expression of sympathy for the Zionist project, “Roosevelt promised the King [Ibn Saud] that as regards Palestine he would make no move hostile to the Arab people.”491 Despite his early support for admitting 100,000 Jewish D.P.s in Palestine, Truman seemed to have initially followed this advice. In response to Senator Joseph H. Ball’s request to support the creation of a

Jewish homeland, he wrote: “I told the Jews that if they were willing to furnish me with five hundred thousand men to carry on a war with the Arabs, we could do what they are suggesting.

[…] What I am trying to do is to make the whole world safe for the Jews. Therefore, I don’t feel like going to war for Palestine.”492

490 From Secretary of State Edward Stettinius to President Truman, April 18, 1945; Palestine 1945-1947; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 491 From Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew to President Truman, May 1, 1945; Palestine 1945-1947; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 492 Letter from Senator Joseph H. Ball to the President, November 19, 1945; and President’s response, November 24, 1945; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 225

Over the next year, during the British-U.S. quest for a solution to the Jewish D.P. and the

Palestine issues, Truman named negotiators who were not particularly favorable to Zionism. For the latest of these British-U.S. efforts, the main U.S. representative was Henry F. Grady, who favored cultural over political Zionism (i.e. an early trend of Zionism not seeking statehood).

Although he claimed to have considered partition carefully before giving his support to a binational state, Grady was thrilled when the British proposed a federal government with semi- autonomous Jewish and Arab provinces. He thought this route would leave the door open to either solution depending on the development of Arab-Jewish relations. He denounced Zionist rigidity about the Negev. Grady blamed the American Zionist pressure for the plan’s failure. He claimed that the President initially favored the plan, but “the most intrusive lobby” convinced him to reject it.493 He even cited journalist James Reston for blaming Truman’s pro-Zionist turn on partisan politics. “Two Democratic candidates […] campaigning for the two highest political posts in the state of New York […] informed the White House that a statement favoring Zionism must be made it they were to win the election. On October 4, 1946, Mr. Truman issued the requested statement.”494 Grady’s position reflect the State Department’s stance toward Palestine and Zionism.

Even on the eve of the U.N. fall session, during which U.N.S.C.O.P. report would be the basis for discussions on Palestine, advisor David Niles had to warn Truman that U.S. delegation members for Palestine, Loy Henderson and George Wadsworth, were both unsympathetic to the

Jewish side, and suggested adding one “well-informed individual in whom you, the members of the United States Delegation, and American Jewry have complete confidence.” Niles suggested

493 Grady’s unpublished manuscript on Palestine, “Chapter IX” pp.151-166, and endnotes pp.328-342; Henry F. Grady Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 494 Grady’s unpublished manuscript on Palestine, “Chapter IX” pp.151-166, and endnotes pp.328-342; Henry F. Grady Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 226

General Hilldring and Truman approved.495 Regardless, the U.S. position in fall 1947 was unclear and did not seem favorable to the Zionist project. As historian Ben Shephard noted,

“anti-Zionist State Department officials mounted a last-ditch resistance,” probably spooked by the strong Arab opposition to the U.N.S.C.O.P. report. No Arab leader supported the plan, whether from their own conviction or due to the socio-political pressure from the entire Arab world. U.S. Consul in Jerusalem Robert Macatee suggested that a trusteeship for the Arab section of Palestine might be necessary, as “no responsible Arab would accept office in a government of a partitioned Palestine, this making himself the target of assassination.”496

Arab states’ leaders all opposed the majority plan and considered it pro-Zionist, notwithstanding that it did not satisfy fully the Zionist claims. They called it “mutilation” of

Palestine rather than “partition.” And they threatened any country supporting it with a break in bilateral relations. Regardless of American hesitations about partition, Arab leaders blamed

“Zionist-inspired American intervention and pressure” for having forced the issue on the General

Assembly, where Zionist influence was stronger, rather than letting the Arabs and Britain settle the problem themselves.497 Emir Faisal of Saudi Arabia could not see how “further American-

Arab cooperation was possible.” He warned that U.S. support for the majority plan would represent “the most dangerous step” the U.S. could ever take on the Near East political scene.

Syrian Faris al-Khoury warned that it would “seriously hamper[ing] Arab-American cooperation.” Lebanese Charles Malik and Iraqi Muhammad al-Jamali confirmed that U.S. support for partition could “lead to tragedy” as it might bring “American troops to Palestine in

495 “Memorandum” for the Under Secretary of State from the President, August 6, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 496 Summary of Telegrams, November 4, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 September-December; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 497 Memorandum to Ambassador Herschel Johnson from Mr. George Wadsworth: “Initial Arab reaction to Statement regarding Palestine Made in the Secretary’s September 17 Address to the General Assembly” September 18, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 227 support of Jewish aggression, […] which all Arabs will in honor and self-defense be forced to oppose, even by force of arms.”498 It was clear that the U.S. would be held responsible for the creation of a Jewish state despite its attempts to involve the international community.

On the other side, Zionist and pro-Zionist pressure was strong in summer and fall 1947.

An important liberal figure, Freda Kirchwey, editor of the magazine The Nation, lobbied

Congress. In May 1947, she produced “The Arab Higher Committee: Its Origins, Personnel and

Purposes,” a file compiling documents found by military authorities in Germany, substantiating the pro-Axis activities of the Grand Mufti and most of his associates now representing the Arabs of Palestine at the United Nations in Lake Success, New York. Niles, Truman’s most pro-

Zionist advisor, brought it to the President, sounding outraged that it got out, but perhaps just trying to attract Truman’s attention on it.499 A note on the document read: “A very damaging evidence that the Arab representatives now at UNO were allies of Hitler. There is also included in this material the diary of the Grand Mufti, found at Nuremberg. Copies of this document have already gone to all the Members of Congress. This contains very confidential material that is in the files of the State Department. I think it is important to find out how it got out.” This last sentence only confirmed, if it were necessary, that the State Department sided with the Arabs and had tried to keep this information hidden from public knowledge when the Arab Higher

Committee had been invited to the General Assembly on May 7 to testify on the Palestine question.500

498 Memorandum to Ambassador Herschel Johnson from Mr. George Wadsworth: “Initial Arab reaction to Statement regarding Palestine Made in the Secretary’s September 17 Address to the General Assembly” September 18, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 499 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 212. 500 Memorandum for the President from David K. Niles, May 12, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 228

The file presented most Arab Higher Committee members. The onslaught targeted first former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husayni, for his history of terrorism in the 1920s, including his role in the 1929 riots and the 1936-1939 Nazi-funded Great Revolt in Palestine. It detailed his time in Iraq, where he had instigated a pogrom that killed 400 Jews, as well as a failed pro-Nazi coup in 1941. Finally it denounced his collaboration with Nazi Germany from

November 1941 to the end of the war. His activities consisted of propaganda toward Muslim minorities, espionage, training of Arab students in wireless transmission and explosives, organizing Muslim military units and Axis Arab legions (wearing German uniforms with “Free

Arabia” patches), and fifth column activities in the Middle East, including sabotage. He had also visited the Auschwitz gas chambers with Adolf Eichmann, aborted the negotiations to ransom

Bratislava Jews, sending them to their death, and complained that Ribbentrop and Himmler had been too lenient, for allowing some Jews to flee Germany.

The file also presented the dark past of other Palestinian Arab delegates. Wasef Kamal collaborated with the Nazis, Rasem Khalidi worked with the Mufti in Palestine, Iraq, and

Germany, Emil Ghouri supervised terrorism in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and assassinated opponents of the Mufti and Arab citizens who sold lands to Jews, and Jamal Husayni was the nephew and right hand of the Mufti. The documents comprised photos, extracts of the Mufti’s diary, U.S. and German archives, pages of the Mufti’s payroll in Germany, and receipts of payments for sabotage services against the Allies.501 Arab leaders had made a strategic mistake by choosing the most radical and corrupt among them to represent their people’s interests.

Although it was never very complex and firmly established, the socio-administrative structure of the Arab society in Palestine had been decimated by the British repression of the Great Arab

501 Memorandum for the President from David K. Niles, May 12, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 229

Revolt of 1936-1939; in the lack of institutions where collective decisions could be made, Arabs often exiled leaders fought among themselves to represent the interests of Arab Palestine, leading the most radical and antisemitic to play this role, which influence the international community in the opposite way than they expected.

In addition to this type of wide-scale lobbying, individual pressure directly on the

President became more intense in the months before the vote. This proved largely counterproductive, as Truman was mostly annoyed by such heavy-handed tactics, sometimes to the point of provoking thoughts and comments bordering on antisemitism. When former

Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau tried to attract his attention to the Exodus affair, Truman wrote in his diary: “He [Morgentau] had no business, whatever, to call me. […] The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles,

Yugoslavs or get murdered or mistreated as DPs as long as the Jews get special treatment.” If this were not enough, Truman went as far as to compare Jews to their former executioners and to his own greatest enemy. “Yet when they have some physical, financial or political power neither Hitler nor Stalin has any thing on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. […] I’ve found very, very [few] Jews who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.”502 Yet in late August, after more pressure, notably from former first lady

Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman advised the British not to return the Jewish passengers back to

Germany, which would attract very bad press.

Truman’s reaction to a letter from Joseph Abbell also showed his impatience with Zionist pressure. “I fail to understand the policy of your administration in preferring fascist Arab elements in opposition to the democracy loving Jewish people of Palestine. Certainly this is not

502 “Truman’s Diary” July 21, 1947; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. Also available at https://www.trumanlibrary.org/diary/page21.htm consulted on August 9, 2018. 230 the way to secure liberal support for your administration in the 1948 elections.”503 Annoyed by the barely veiled threat, Truman wrote to David Niles: “It is such drivels as this that makes Anti-

Semites. I thought maybe you had better answer it because I might tell him what’s good for him.”504 About Congressman Emanuel Celler’s suggestion to pressure other governments to follow the U.S. in its now official pro-partition vote, Truman noted, “The pressure boys almost killed themselves. I did not like it.”505 And to Judge Proskauer’s prospect that “failure of partition would be a vital blow to the United Nations and I submit a defeat for you” Truman prepared a response, though never sent, expressing his resentment of Zionist pressure. “I don’t think I ever had as much pressure put on the White House, evidently under the belief that the integrity of the White House was not to be depended upon. It didn’t please me much because I don’t do business that way.”506

The heaviest lobbying did not come from Yishuv or Jewish Agency representatives themselves, but from American pro-Zionist groups, with a more or less coordinated strategy.

Chaim Weizmann wrote a letter to the President, on the eve of the vote, in order to disprove the unwarranted rumors that “our people have exerted undue and excessive pressure on certain delegations and have thus ‘overplayed’ their hand. I cannot speak for unauthorized persons, but

[…] there is no substance in this charge as far as our representatives are concerned. They have

503 Letter to the President from Joseph J. Abbell, August 19, 1947; and note from the President, August 23, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 504 Memorandum for David K. Niles, Administrative Assistant to the President, August 23, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 505 Telegram from Congressman Emanuel Celler to the President, November 26, 1947; and President’s response, December 1, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 506 Telegram from Joseph M. Proskauer to the President, November 26, 1947; and President’s drafted response, never sent; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 231 had a very limited number of contacts with all delegations.”507 Yet in his response to Weizmann,

Truman did not hide his displeasure by declaring that the pressure “didn’t please me a great deal but showed that evidently the people for whom we had done the most had no confidence in the integrity of The White House.”508

Yet despite Truman’s claims that the White House was always clear on its position in favor of partition, there is evidence that it was not the case. A few weeks prior to the crucial day of the vote, even one of Truman’s closest friends and former partner Eddie Jacobson, who rarely used his access to the president for political purposes, felt the need to weigh in, asking him to put pressure on other countries to insure a positive outcome to the vote for partition. “You will forgive me for [adding to the heavy burden on your shoulders] because tens of thousands of lives depend on words from your mouth and heart. Harry, my people need help and I am appealing to you to help them.” Truman’s response was ambivalent, showing also that he preferred not to be directly involved. “I don’t think it would be right or proper for me to interfere at this stage. […]

General Marshall is handling the thing. […] I don’t want to be quoted on the subject at all.”509

Was this a way of escaping the conversation, a proof of Truman’s own hesitation, and/or a desire to limit the damage already done to U.S. interests in the Arab world? Or could it have been a real – and in this case, misled – confidence in his State Department and in Secretary

Marshall to uphold instructions he already gave? In any case, it seems that Zionist and American pro-Zionist lobbying did not have the intended effect on Truman. So considering how anti-

Zionist his State Department was allowed to be, and Truman’s negative reaction to Zionist

507 Letter from Chaim Weizman to the President on a Plaza letterhead, November 27, 1947; and President’s response, December 1, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 508 Letter from Chaim Weizman to the President on a Plaza letterhead, November 27, 1947; and President’s response, December 1, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 509 Letter from Eddie Jacobson to the President, October 3, 1947; Palestine 1945-1947; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 232 lobbying, what were the factors that determined the eventual support for partition from the U.S. government?

Here again, one needs to look at the Jewish displaced persons stranded in postwar

Germany and Austria to find the main reason for the U.S. decision and for Truman’s personal support for the creation of a Jewish state. As he himself recalled years afterward, the Harrison

Report had been the trigger that led him to believe that “the Jews needed some place where they could go,”510 thus presenting this issue, indirectly, as a turning point in his support for a Jewish state. He held on to this idea of allowing 100,000 Jewish D.P.s to immigrate to Palestine even before talking about Jewish statehood – until he did, with his Yom Kippur Statement on October

4, 1946.

When on the following day, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Walter F. George asked Truman not to commit money or troops to Palestine, he responded: “I sincerely wish that every member of the Congress could visit the displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria and see what is happening to Five Hundred Thousand human beings through no fault of their own. […] There isn’t a reason in the world why One Hundred Thousand Jews couldn’t go into

Palestine.”511 A few months later, to an Arab League request that the U.S. took measures to end

Jewish immigration to Palestine, even the anti-Zionist State Department responded that “it would appear to be contrary to the humanitarian instincts of all peoples if the survivors remaining in displaced persons centers in Europe […] were denied the right to seek haven in other lands, including Palestine.”512

510 Harry S. Truman’s interview in At War with the Experts, Episode 6 “Decision: The Conflicts of Harry S. Truman” November 1964. Online: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/197078-1 consulted Friday July 21, 2017. 511 Letter from Senator Walter F. George, GA, Chairman of the Committee on Finance of the US Senate, October 5, 1946; and President’s response, October 8, 1946; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 512 Summary of Telegrams, January 14, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 January-May; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 233

The presence of these Jewish D.P.s in Germany and Austria was becoming increasingly problematic. Scholars such as Hannah Arendt pointed out that Jews were now regarded as people fit to be held in camps, and that although their persecutions in Europe were over, their separation from “normal” human beings had not yet ended.513 Indeed, German authorities put

Jewish D.P.s in concurrence with ethnic German expelled from the rest of Europe for living accommodations. For example in July 1947, the city of Weilheim requested that Jewish D.P.s be moved from the city to a camp in order to make room for German expellees.514 When the hopes raised by the A.A.C.I. report vanished with the British refusal to issue 100,000 immigration certificates – in other words, when the temporary Jewish D.P.s problem threatened to become a permanent feature of postwar Germany – frustrated Allied military government personnel and

German administrators grew impatient with the Jews’ refusal to contribute to the rebuilding of the German economy. As Allied personnel’s treatment of Jewish D.P.s hardened, Germans felt emboldened to express their own hostility toward the survivors.515

Thus for different reasons, Jews, Americans, and Germans viewed Jewish emigration from Germany as the solution to the Jewish and the German problems. To some extent, this replicated the tacit agreement, in Soviet-occupied Poland and other Soviet-controlled territories, between local communist governments and Moscow, that the most convenient solution to local populations’ antisemitism was to allow the Jews to leave. Germans did not care where the Jews went, the U.S. government faced a strong anti-immigration lobby at home, and Jews claimed that they wanted to go to Palestine – although many actually planned to join relatives elsewhere.516

513 Cited in Stone, Liberation, 185. 514 Dr. Machon, Ist Buergmeister, to Major Brown, Director, Liaison and Security Office, Weilheim, 19 July 1947; Samuel B. Zisman Papers, RG-19.047.02*23; USHMM; cited in Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 41. 515 Victor Cavendish Bentinck to Foreign Office, Telegram no. 56; 9 January 1946; PRO, FO 945/655 (microfilm); USHMM; cited in Feinstein, 44. 516 Feinstein, 62–64. 234

Yet it was obvious that “the Jewish DPs consider themselves a separate religious and nationalistic group,” according to the fall 1947 report Frank L. Chelf wrote for the Fulton Special

Subcommittee. The report also pressed the U.S. to permit the emigration of the Jewish D.P.s and to urge the U.N. to partition Palestine.517

As the Jewish D.P.s became an obstacle to the development of postwar Germany and to its morphing from a former World War II foe to an ally against the communist expansion of the

Soviet Union, everyone knew they had to leave. As Jewish D.P. leader Samuel Gringauz put it,

“what a pro-Jewish policy could not accomplish can be accomplished by the necessities of our present German policy. What a DP policy could not do a broad American policy-need can do.

What a Palestine policy could not give us can be obtained from a European policy. What as a humanitarian duty was trampled under foot may be respected as a move in the game of power politics.”518 Gringauz’s words also show that the sh’erit ha-pletah were aware that they were pawns in great power politics. Yet they also knew that they could claim some power of their own, if only as a nuisance in postwar Germany, by their sole presence and collective behavior.

With a deep understanding of the international context, the D.P.s’ power of pressure could be put to good use to influence, to some extent, some political decisions.

The new Cold War situation demanded a quick resolution to the Jewish D.P. crisis also because the suspicion of communist infiltration shadowed the issue, in both Europe and the

Middle East. But Europe was still a more pressing issue for U.S. foreign policy than Palestine, which, some thought, might not completely alter the Middle East region and U.S. relations with its many different countries. Although intelligence briefings acknowledged that the Soviet

517 “Report from Frank L. Chelf, M.C. Democratic member of the Fulton Special Subcommittee” October 13, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 3: “Palestine Jewish Immigration”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 518 Samuel Gringauz, “Our New German Policy and the DPs,” Commentary 5, no. 6 (June 1948): 508–14. 235 strategy of winning Western Europe through the democratic process was failing (Communist parties had been defeated in Italy, France, Denmark and Norway), and that the communist political standing showed signs of deterioration after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, the fear remained that Soviet efforts to undermine the E.R.P. could still meet success through the fostering of unrest. In addition, the establishment of the Cominform in September 1947 substantiated the identification of European Communist parties as agents of Soviet power.519

This fear of Communism in Europe outshined even the anxiety about the Soviet Union gaining ground in the Middle East, despite the awareness that the British/French colonial belt could easily become subject to Soviet subversion by exploiting native nationalism against the colonizing powers, though not through direct Soviet aggression.520 It seems that the problem in the American assessment of the danger of Communism in the Middle East resided in contradicting analyses. On the one hand, the U.S. anticipated Soviet subversion using Arab nationalism, turning its anti-Westernism against America’s closest allies France and Britain, and believed that U.S. support for Zionism would increase this risk. On the other hand, they suspected Communist infiltration through East-European Jewish refugees flooding into Western

Europe and Palestine with the blessing of the Soviets, and through the presence, under U.N. umbrella or not, of Soviet troops in Palestine, should a Jewish state be created there and the situation deteriorate.521 A couple of weeks before the vote, Assistant Secretary of State Dean

Rusk told a member of the Jewish Agency delegation to hold off the illegal immigration to

519 Special Evaluation no. 22: “Deterioration of Communist Political Position in Western Europe” November 7, 1947; CIA Files; Folder 2; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 520 “Review of the world situation as it relates to the Security of the United States” September 12, 1947; CIA Files; Folder 1; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 521 “Review of the world situation as it relates to the Security of the United States” September 12, 1947; CIA Files; Folder 1; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 236

“avoid any appearance of a tie-up with Russia. People were puzzled by Russia’s stand in favour of partition; by the novelty of what seemed to be a pro-Zionist policy.”522

Rusk mentioned the surprising attitude of the Soviets toward illegal immigration, which some considered humanitarian but “others might interpret as reflecting a Great Power manœuvre, in which the displaced persons were pawns, to embarrass the Anglo-American grouping.” Rusk warned the Jewish Agency against the detrimental effect that a special Zionist-Soviet relationship would have on the U.S. and the West. He not only meant that it would be detrimental, for obvious reasons, to the West’s willingness to support Zionism. But it would mostly jeopardize Western policy in the Middle East and in Europe, since Rusk added that if the

Soviets, whose aim was to undermine the Marshall Plan, gained Western Jews’ sympathy, “they would have swung to their side a powerful influence.”523

The Jewish Agency responded that the Jews had no reasons to be more grateful to the

Soviet Union than to the U.S., “since the Russians and the Americans were proceeding along parallel lines over Palestine. […] He [Rusk] thereupon admitted that Russian policy over the

Zionist issue could conceivably be a disinterested one – as he regarded that of the United

States.”524 In a similar attempt to reassure the Americans, the second rumor Weizmann wanted to dispel in his letter to Truman a few days before the vote was that the Zionist project “in

Palestine may in some way be used as a channel for the infiltration of Communist ideas in the

Middle East. Nothing is further from the truth. Our immigrants from Eastern Europe are

522 L. Gelber to the Jewish Agency Executive: “United States Policy: II” New York, November 5, 1947; ISA 93.03/93/6; DISR, Part I, doc. 101, pp.237-238. 523 L. Gelber to the Jewish Agency Executive: “United States Policy: II” New York, November 5, 1947; ISA 93.03/93/6; DISR, Part I, doc. 101, pp.237-238. 524 L. Gelber to the Jewish Agency Executive: “United States Policy: II” New York, November 5, 1947; ISA 93.03/93/6; DISR, Part I, doc. 101, pp.237-238. 237 precisely those who are leaving the Communist scene with which they do not wish to be integrated. Otherwise, they would not leave at all.”525

Overall, U.S. intelligence considered that partition as proposed by the United Nations would satisfy minimum Jewish demands “but will be bitterly resisted by the Arabs.” Therefore,

Arab solidarity would jeopardize stability in the Middle East. Yet, the Jewish D.P.s and concerns about Western Europe led Truman to support partition anyway, maybe because of these antagonistic fears the President was presented with, whether the U.S.S.R. could enter the Middle

East through the Arabs or through the Jews. In addition, the doubt remained, despite Gromyko’s speech and based on new Cold War developments over the summer 1947, that Moscow might reverse to supporting the Arabs and drop its surprising backing of Zionism.

The uneasy path to partition II: Soviet ambiguous policy

The Soviet policy was, indeed, ambiguous. American diplomats were not alone not to know what to expect from the Soviet Union. Despite Gromyko’s speech, Arab leaders too were convinced that the U.S.S.R. “will not agree to the project of creating a Zionist state.” According to Secretary of the Soviet Legation in Cairo Sultanov, in November 1947 the Arabs believed that

Soviet ideology should led Moscow to support the Arabs’ struggle for independence to uphold self-determination. According to Sultanov, “the governments of the Arab countries considered that the USSR ‘would always vote against the Anglo-Americans on any questions’.”526 Either

525 Letter from Chaim Weizman to the President on a Plaza letterhead, November 27, 1947; and President’s response, December 1, 1947; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 526 A. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Summary of the Letter of USSR Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, Comrade Sultanov, on the Palestine Problem” (summary written and filed on 2 February 1948 by A. Semioshkin, Foreign Affairs Ministry), Moscow, November 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.62; DISR, Part I, doc. 102, pp.238-240. 238 the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was already integrated into Arab diplomacy or Sultanov was lending his own lens of analysis to Arab leaders.

Like many Soviet diplomats and top-ranking officials, including deputy foreign minister

Vyshinsky, Sultanov was still influenced by the anti-Zionist ideological underpinning of the original Bolsheviks. “Democratic and communist parties have always rejected the Balfour

Declaration as an imperialist undertaking and have supported the struggle against Zionism – the agent of British and American imperialism; and have made it clear that the Soviet Union would support the Arabs.”527 It is not unlikely that some Soviet diplomats themselves might have thought that the Soviet position in the U.N. was a trick, but that Stalin would instruct a last minute reversal. In any case, they continued to advise supporting the Arabs rather than the

Zionists in Palestine.528

Sultanov in particular seemed to agree with the Arabs, who “consider British imperialism the weaker enemy compared to Zionism,” and with their claim that “the creation of a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab countries would threaten the achievement of the Arabs’ historic dreams of restoring the economic and cultural unity of the Arab countries.” In their reports,

Soviet officials emphasized that support for a Jewish state (more often called a “Zionist” state) would have negative consequences. It would alienate the Arab world and favor Western diplomacy toward the “reactionary leaders of the Arab League.” It would facilitate the suppression of pro-Soviet and communist elements, consolidate an anti-Soviet Muslim bloc, and

527 A. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Summary of the Letter of USSR Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, Comrade Sultanov, on the Palestine Problem” (summary written and filed on 2 February 1948 by A. Semioshkin, Foreign Affairs Ministry), Moscow, November 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.62; DISR, Part I, doc. 102, pp.238-240. 528 A. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Summary of the Letter of USSR Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, Comrade Sultanov, on the Palestine Problem” (summary written and filed on 2 February 1948 by A. Semioshkin, Foreign Affairs Ministry), Moscow, November 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.62; DISR, Part I, doc. 102, pp.238-240; and Yehoshua Freundlich, “A Soviet Outpost in Tel Aviv: The Soviet Legation in Israel, 1948–53,” Journal of Israeli History 22, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 37–55. 239 precipitate anti-Soviet agreements between the Anglo-Saxons and Arab governments. In addition, the “Zionist state” could and certainly would become a base for U.S. expansion in the

Middle East.529

On the other hand, Soviet analysts could only anticipate one positive aspect to the creation of a Jewish state: the sympathy it would bring for the Soviet Union among international

Jewry, notably in the United States. They also considered the fact that “if the Jewish state withdraws from Anglo-American banks and dollar diplomacy, then that could be a factor for revolutionizing the Arab East.”530 Yet contrary to Western fears that the U.S.S.R. was conspiring for the future Jewish state to become, if not a satellite, at least a willing ally, documents showed that Soviet leaders did not even expect it to remain neutral – thus invalidating this commonly accepted hypothesis as an incentive for the new Soviet pro-Zionist position.

Moscow still viewed the Zionist movement as a puppet of Western imperialism – it could not see it as a tool of the British policy anymore, but of the United States. Indeed, the Soviets perceived

American support for Zionism as deriving from the “two million Jewish voters in the US, and on

American Zionist capitalists” who saw Palestine as an important economic and strategic bridgehead in the eastern Mediterranean. “This is why there is exceptionally strong support for the Zionists’ aim to create a Zionist state in Palestine, even though it damages the United States’ relations with the Arab states.”531

529 A. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Summary of the Letter of USSR Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, Comrade Sultanov, on the Palestine Problem” (summary written and filed on 2 February 1948 by A. Semioshkin, Foreign Affairs Ministry), Moscow, November 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.62; DISR, Part I, doc. 102, pp.238-240. 530 A. Sultanov to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Summary of the Letter of USSR Chargé d’Affaires in Iraq, Comrade Sultanov, on the Palestine Problem” (summary written and filed on 2 February 1948 by A. Semioshkin, Foreign Affairs Ministry), Moscow, November 5, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.62; DISR, Part I, doc. 102, pp.238-240. 531 Memorandum by the Middle East Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The positions of the US, Britain, the Arabs and the Zionists on the Palestine Question (for the forthcoming discussion of the Palestine 240

Zionist archives confirmed that the Soviets were “well aware that the social and economic structure of the Yishuv is a capitalistic one and that our social experiments in collectivism ha[d] nothing to do with the Marxist interpretation of collectivism.” Zionist institutions envisioned their future state as neutral, benevolent toward both sides, and attributed the Soviet shift to their ability to convince them of their intention to remain neutral in the Cold

War. “They believe […] that we are building a peaceful, democratic and progressive community in Palestine which can block anti-Soviet intrigues, so easily hatched among the reactionary circles ruling the Arab countries.”532 Later in the fall, asked about how the Jewish Agency envisioned the Soviet-Jewish state relations, Epstein gave all the guarantees he could without betraying the essence of the Zionist project. He responded that for geographic, economic, and political reasons, the Jewish state would need to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union.

He mentioned past expression of Yishuv and Jewish sympathy for the U.S.S.R. in Yishuv press and through the V League, the wartime public committee to support the Soviet war effort. He did not conceal that “the structure of the Jewish community was that of a Western democracy and was likely to remain such,” but reassured that the Jewish state’s “outlook would be progressive and its aim those of construction and development,” which, he claimed, would be “in accord with the interests of the Soviet Union and with its desires and hopes for the area.”533

But the Arab press often presented the U.S.S.R. as supporting the Arab position, which

Zionist leaders struggled to reconcile with Gromyko’s official position. They complained that they “heard reports of a turn for the worse,” that the Soviets “intended to withdraw their support question at the United Nations)” Moscow, April 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.018, op.9, p.17, d.77, ll.6-11; DISR, Part I, doc. 78, pp.176-180. 532 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Mr. Mikhail S. Vavilov, First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington” Washington, July 31, 1947; CZA S25/9299; DISR, Part I, doc. 90, pp.217- 218. 533 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Mr. Mikhail S. Vavilov, First Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR, Washington” Washington, September 11, 1947; ISA 93.02/172/18; DISR, Part I, doc. 91, pp.219-221. 241 for the UNSCOP majority recommendations.” They told Solviet representative in Beirut Viktor

Khangulov that they “conjectured that this report was no more than a provocation, but there was no one to ask, and the ordinary reader could only wonder: on the one hand, there is Gromyko’s declaration, but on the other, there is a report like this.”534 Although understandable, this might have been a somehow paranoid position, or at least exaggerated, from the Zionists. The first sub-committee in charge of discussing the majority plan consisted of the U.S.S.R., the U.S.,

Uruguay, Venezuela, Guatemala, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Canada, and South Africa – all open, if not favorable, to the idea of partition. Yet Soviet diplomats kept their distance, sometimes informed Yishuv representatives that “under present circumstances the USSR could not make any clear-cut declaration regarding the future administration of Palestine”535 or were overall “non- committal” on the question of which of the two UNSCOP plans the Soviet would support.536

Despite Zionist complaints that the absence of a Soviet representation in Palestine made communication difficult, conversations between Soviets and Zionists did happen on occasions.

The Soviets consulted the Zionists on almost every topic related to U.N. matters regarding

Palestine. An internal document from October 23, 1947, mentioned a list of instructions

Molotov sent to Vyshinsky on October 15, among them “Jewish opinion must be consulted on all important questions concerning Palestine. In particular, this must be done on the matter of

Jerusalem.”537 In addition, a Zionist-Soviet agreement emerged for rejecting the trusteeship council, on which the U.S.S.R. was not represented, as supervisor for the transition period, in

534 A. Levavi to G. Meyerson: “Memorandum of a conversation with Mr. Viktor Khangulov of the Soviet legation in Beirut” Jerusalem, September 23, 1947; CZA S25/486; DISR, Part I, doc. 93, pp.222-225. 535 Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making, 8; Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 536 E. Epstein’s Memorandum of a Conversation with S.K. Tsarapkin, New York, September 19, 1947; ISA 93.03/92/35; DISR, Part I, doc. 92, p.222. 537 Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235; and Telegram from V.M. Molotov to I.V. Stalin, October 26, 1947; AVP RF, F.06, OP.9, P.22, D.267, LL.12-13; DISR, Part I, doc. 100, pp.235-236. 242 case partition was adopted.538 A telegram from Vyshinsky to Molotov, asking for the Soviet take on the transition period and approved by Stalin himself advocated a quick British withdrawal –

by January 1948 – and direct supervision from the Security Council.539

In other words, although the Soviet decision in favor of partition was only announced officially three days before the vote on November 26, 1947, there were signs in Soviet behavior that the decision had already been taken, most likely by Stalin himself. Probably this information was revealed very progressively to Soviet diplomats down the pyramid of power. In the first days of the General Assembly session in September 1947, Gromyko’s speech about the

Palestine issue was nothing like his speech in May. He emphasized that the General Assembly had adopted the suggestions the U.S.S.R. advised in the spring, recognizing Russia as a major power with an important voice in the international community, who bore special responsibilities in the world and maintenance of international peace.540

Why was the Soviet delegate so discreet about Soviet support for Zionism at this point?

Was he aware that the decision had already been taken at the highest level of Soviet leadership?

Was he instructed to keep a low profile in order to prevent Arab resentment by letting other powers take the lead in advocating partition? Because by then, there is no doubt that the die had already been cast, maybe as early as May 1947, if we are to trust Molotov’s words to Vyshinsky

538 M. Yuval to D. Ben Gurion (Jerusalem): “Memorandum of a conversation with Mr. S. Tsarapkin, Prof. [B.] Shtein, Mr. M. Shertok, Mr. E. Epstein, Mr. D. Horowitz” New York, October 26, 1947; CZA S25/5353; DISR, Part I, doc. 98, pp.229-232. 539 AVP RF, f.06, o.9, p.22, d.267, ll.12-13, cited in Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs, 106. Molotov’s assistant Podtserob had added by hand “The comrade Poskrebyshev says that the comrade Stalin approves.” And Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235; and Telegram from V.M. Molotov to I.V. Stalin, October 26, 1947; AVP RF, F.06, OP.9, P.22, D.267, LL.12-13; DISR, Part I, doc. 100, pp.235-236. 540 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 16 September-29 November 1947, 125th meeting, November 26, 1947, pp. 1358-63; DISR, Part I, doc. 104, pp.242-248. See also Ro’i, Soviet Decision Making, 97, who gave an interpretation of the Russian objectives long before the archival material was available, but could not reconstruct the policy-making process; and Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 243 on September 30: “Don’t oppose the majority opinion on the issue of the partition of Palestine.

[…] Confirm receipt.”541 The same day he sent more detailed explanations: “We were motivated by tactical considerations in suggesting the first option for the solution of the Palestine question – the creation of a dual state. We did not want to take the initiative in the creation of a

Jewish state, but the second option […], the creation of an independent Jewish state, better conveys our position.” In the fall, the United Nations committee favoring the creation of a separate Jewish state, “you [Vyshinsky] should support this majority opinion, which corresponds to our basic position on this issue.”542 This last message, if taken at face value, would definitely place the Soviet volte-face in (or before) May 1947. But historians are somehow left in the dark about the most decisive motives that led to this Soviet policy. It is clear though, that whenever the decision was made, only in September did it start to be widely shared with the different department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as shown by the distribution of these last two messages. Among others, it is interesting to note that in addition to the U.N. delegation, and to the director of the Middle East Department Bakulin, these messages were also sent to the director of the First European Department – which might confirmed the priority given to European affairs in Soviet decision-making even on Palestine.

Two elements stand out in Soviet decision-making. The first one, though not at the forefront of available archival material, is the consistency of Soviet policy toward Jewish

541 V.M. Molotov to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow, September 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.059, OP.18, P.17, D.116, L.101; DISR, Part I, doc. 94, p.226. This telegram sent to Stalin, one copy kept by Molotov, 2 preserved in the Tenth Department (coding), 2 copies filed; additional persons acquainted with the content of this telegram: Malik (deputy foreign minister), Vinogradov (director of the Department of UN Affairs), Golunskii (director of the Legal Department), Kozyrev (director of the First European Department), and Bakulin (director of the Middle East Department). 542 V.M. Molotov to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow, September 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.059, OP.18, P.17, D.116, L.109; DISR, Part I, doc. 95, p.227. Telegram sent to Stalin, one copy kept by Molotov, 2 preserved in the Tenth Department (coding), 2 copies filed; additional persons acquainted with the content of this telegram: Malik (deputy foreign minister), Vinogradov (director of the Department of UN Affairs), Golunskii (director of the Legal Department), Kozyrev (director of the First European Department), and Bakulin (director of the Middle East Department). 244 refugees. On the ground, Soviet authorities maintained their policy of letting Jews leave the territories they controlled, and East European Jews kept moving westward. But Soviet benevolence to aliyah preparation went much further. In September 1947, training camps for

Zionist fighters appeared in Poland, notably in Lower Silesia, like the one in Bolkow, led by

Haganah officers, but also military instructors who had served in the Red Army or the Polish

Army. Bożena Szaynok and Natalia Aleksiun concur that Soviet authorities must have agreed to this, if not encouraged it. Polish pro-emigration policy might have been independent from the

Soviet position, but at this point, leaderships in both countries wanted the Jews out of Poland, and the Soviets controlled the borders and oversaw the rest of the Polish territory.543

But in the fall 1947, Soviet policy on the ground, formerly at odds with their official claims that all D.P.s should return home, eventually reconciled in Soviet new policy. The

Kremlin instructed its U.N. delegates to systematically support proposals demanding the resettlement of Jews in Palestine, regardless of the country that proposed them. This stance first appeared in an internal memorandum recapitulating the Soviet position on Palestine based on

Gromyko’s speech, with the added element that “if a proposal is made for the Assembly to discuss the resettlement of 100,000 Jews in Palestine, we should support this proposal.”544 It was then confirmed in mid-October when the Soviets supported a Colombian proposal to permit

150,000 Jews to immigrate to Palestine, which, in Soviet words, had the added benefit of envisaging “a solution to the general problem of impoverished European Jews. […] If they [the

543 Memorandum from Smolar about the Haganah training camp in Bolkow, AAN, KC PPR, 295-VII-149, leaf 359; Letter from Franciszek Kuchta, acting district revenue inspector, to the District of Revenue Office in Katowice, September 22, 1948, AAN, KC PPR, 295-IX-407, leaf 120-121; see also Bożena Szaynok, “Żydowscy żołnierze z Bolkowa,” Odra 9 (1999): 22–26; Natalia Aleksiun, Dokąd dalej?: ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce (1944-1950) (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2002); Michał Chajn, “Stosunek Rządów Polskich Do Powstania Żydowskiej Siedziby Narodowej w Palestynie w Latach 1945-1948,” Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego. 195, no. 3 (2000): 356–73; all of the above cited in Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944-1968, 110–16. 544 I.N. Bakulin to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “Concerning the upcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the General Assembly Session in September 1947” Moscow, July 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.10, P.5, D.3, LL.1-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 88, pp.205-211. 245

Jews] are satisfied with the Colombian proposal, then don’t object to it.”545 The proposal was eventually rejected on October 22.

Then, in an internal document which must have appeared surprisingly favorable to

Zionism to most Soviet officials, Soviet delegates were instructed to “support or at least raise no objection to any plan in favor of early immigration,” such as Uruguay’s proposal for the resettlement of 30,000 children and families from D.P. camps and Yugoslavia’s proposal that all

Jews (by then 17,000) held in British camps in Cyprus be admitted to Palestine immediately, regardless of quotas.546 It was then obvious that the Soviets, after two years of inconsistency, had finally reconciled their policy of letting Jews leave with their claims in international institutions that Jewish refugees should be allowed to immigrate to Palestine. Documents even mentioned that “the question of Jewish immigration is also important in the Soviet view of

Palestine” and instructed Soviet delegates not to “be alarmed by a large minority of Arabs in the

Jewish state, provided that it is less than 50 per cent. This situation will not threaten the existence of an independent Jewish state, since the Jewish element in the state will inevitably increase,”547 thus acknowledging the Soviet pro-immigration stance.

In a public forum such as the U.N. General Assembly, the Soviets also emphasized

Jewish suffering as one of the factors for taking the decision to vote for the creation of a Jewish state – although, as shown earlier, this rare expression of acknowledgement of Jewish suffering would definitely have been overlooked if it had been in contradiction with Soviet interests. In the last speech Gromyko gave before the vote, he reminded the international community that the

545 V.M. Molotov to A.Ia. Vyshinsky, Moscow, October 16, 1947; AVP RF, f.059, op.18, p.17, d.117, l.60; DISR, Part I, doc. 97, p.228. This telegram was sent to Stalin, Molotov kept a copy, and noted to “apprise comrades Malik, Vinogradov, Golunskii, Kozyrev and Bakulin.” 546 Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235. 547 Memorandum by A. Timofeev: “The Palestine Question” Moscow, October 23, 1947; AVP RF, F.018, OP.9, P.17, D.77, LL.25-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 99, pp.232-235. 246 creation of a Jewish state was a necessity created by Western Europe’s inability to protect the

Jews against Nazi Germany – which, to be fair, is not without merits, as most East European

Jews who survived the Holocaust did so by fleeing East. “You know that there was not a single country in Western Europe which succeeded in adequately protecting the interests of the Jewish people against the arbitrary acts of violence of the Hitlerites.”

The Soviet exploitation of Jewish suffering as a means to blame the West for its wartime attitude should not obscure the fact that the postwar situation of the Jewish D.P.s was also mentioned in this speech, without the usual criticism that Western Europe did not follow the

Soviet Union in advocating forced repatriation of all displaced persons. “The solution of the

Palestine problem based on a partition […] will be of profound historical significance, because this decision will meet the legitimate demands of the Jewish people, hundreds of thousands of whom, as you know, are still without a country, without homes, having found temporary shelter only in special camps in some western European countries.”548 Somehow the Soviet claim that all D.P.s should be repatriated had vanished, at least concerning Jews, with Soviet support for the creation of a Jewish state – notwithstanding the hypocrisy of blaming West European countries for not rescuing Jews from Nazi Germany, while the U.S.S.R. had signed a pact with it in 1939.

The second element that stands out in Soviet decision-making is the scrutinizing of the

U.S. position. It seems that the Soviets were not trying to upset the U.S. or oppose it in any way, whereas they did not care about antagonizing the U.S.’s main ally Britain. In parallel, they appear to have attempted to divert Arab resentment for the pro-Zionist dominant position in the

U.N. toward the United States. Although Soviet troubles to handle Eastern Europe were the main reason that led the U.S.S.R. to let the Jews leave, the collateral benefits of dividing its main

548 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 16 September-29 November 1947, 125th meeting, November 26, 1947, pp. 1358-63; DISR, Part I, doc. 104, pp.242-248. 247

Cold War foes U.S. and Britain, and of embarrassing the latter in its Middle Eastern policy, were now fully revealed and became a driving force in Moscow’s policy. As London opposed the creation of a Jewish state, and, aided by the Arabs, hindered U.N.S.C.O.P.’s work, Moscow increasingly committed to supporting it.549 Member of the Polish Politburo Jakub Berman, who discussed Jewish issues with Stalin himself, recalled in the mid-1980s that Stalin supported the creation of a Jewish state as a source of troubles for Britain.550

Contrary to historian Albert Kaganovitch’s claim that there had been a secret agreement between Stalin and Ben Gurion on Soviet support for a Jewish state, the first acknowledgment from Soviet diplomats that it was also in Russia’s interest that the Jews achieve statehood in

Palestine came from secretary of the Soviet embassy in Washington Vavilov in the fall 1947.551

It is true though that in an internal document of November 1944 about Soviet policy in the Near

East read “Concerning J[ewish] home in Palestine, if England and US support, the USSR will do the same.”552 But even if such an agreement had existed formally, it is unlikely that Stalin would have felt bound by it toward the Zionist movement, a non-state entity which needed Moscow more than Moscow needed it. The effective preparatory work the Yishuv had done to convince the Soviets of the viability of the future Jewish state, its socialist leaning, and its potential use for

549 I.N. Bakulin to A.Ia. Vyshinsky: “Concerning the upcoming discussion of the Palestine question at the General Assembly Session in September 1947” Moscow, July 30, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.10, P.5, D.3, LL.1-8; DISR, Part I, doc. 88, pp.205-211; and Memorandum of I.N. Bakulin on UNSCOP: “Concerning the UN Special Committee on Palestine” Moscow, July 31, 1947; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.10, P.5, D.3, LL.9-14; DISR, Part I, doc. 89, pp.212-217. 550 Teresa Torańska, Oni (Londyn: Agencja Omnipress, 1990), 138; cited in Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics.” 551 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Mr. Mikhail S. Vavilov, First Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR, Washington” Washington, September 11, 1947; ISA 93.02/172/18; DISR, Part I, doc. 91, pp.219-221; E. Epstein’s Memorandum of a Conversation with S.K. Tsarapkin, New York, September 19, 1947; ISA 93.03/92/35; DISR, Part I, doc. 92, p.222. 552 I.V. Samylovskii and A.D. Shchiborin to V.G. Dekanozov: “Re: our attitude to the Pan-Arab Federation and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine” Moscow, November 25, 1944; AVP RF, F.0118, OP.7, P.4, D.5, Ll.26-28; DISR, Part I, doc. 43, pp.90-92. 248

Soviet policy in the Middle East, would certainly not have been enough to convince Moscow, considering its often expressed negative view of Zionism.

Yet by the time the Palestine question fell into U.N. hands, giving the Soviets a voice in its fate, the international landscape had shifted from the Grand Alliance of World War II to the confrontational context of the Cold War. Moscow was not shy to alienate London anymore. Yet it seems that Stalin was not ready to confront the U.S. on this topic. Soviet delegates even asked

Jewish Agency representatives about the reactions to the U.N.S.C.O.P. report in the United

States. When Vavilov asked Epstein about American Jews’ reaction, he responded that most of them supported Zionism except a few Bundists. When asked about non-Jewish Americans,

Epstein emphasized that from Wilson to Truman, U.S. presidents and Congress had been favorable to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.553

But the question remains as to why the Soviets cared so much about reactions in the

United States. According to historian Gabriel Gorodetsky, the Soviet policy reflected

“ambiguities and uneasiness concerning the role of the Powers and the U.N., characterizing the transition from the spirit of the Grand Alliance to the Cold War, about to erupt in full force.”554

Truman’s containment policy was indeed examined in Moscow. Historian Laurent Rucker, like

Gorodetsky, believes that Stalin was still struggling to adapt to the new postwar international scene in which the U.S., rather than Britain, would be the U.S.S.R.’s main rival, and that rather than opposing the West, the Soviets were attempting not to upset them too much, or at least not to provoke a direct confrontation. This work argues that the Soviet Union had already shifted to a Cold War strategy, and that this Soviet attitude was only meant to exploit Western opposition

553 E. Epstein to the Jewish Agency Executive: “Subject: Conversation with Mr. Mikhail S. Vavilov, First Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR, Washington” Washington, September 11, 1947; ISA 93.02/172/18; DISR, Part I, doc. 91, pp.219-221. 554 Gorodetsky, “The Soviet Union’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel.” 249 on the Palestine issue, thus killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand Stalin was fulfilling the old Russian dream of kicking the British out of the Middle East, but on the other hand, by adopting a position similar to the U.S. one, he was making sure that Arab anger would be directed toward the Americans – then, and for the predicted oncoming war of influence between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in the Middle East.

The previous chapters showed that the Cold War spirit was already present in Soviet and

U.S. minds and played a role in decision-making on the Jewish question and the Palestine issue, if only as shown by the way the Soviet government scrutinized U.S. policy before making its own. In addition, Arab reactions were also carefully analyzed through a Cold War lens by Soviet diplomacy. Vyshinsky reported to Molotov that the Soviet position in the General Assembly of the fall 1947 was welcomed by the Jews, but that “the Arabs […] would be inclined to stick with the minority plan; the majority plan is absolutely unacceptable to the Arabs. […] Although the

Arabs are dissatisfied with our position, at the committee session they directed their criticism mainly at the Americans.”555

The U.S. delegates were not fooled, as they tried to emphasize that the U.S.S.R. and the

U.S. had the exact same position. Vyshinsky pointed out that U.S. delegate “Johnson expressed satisfaction that the Soviet position on the Palestine question was quite similar to the American one.”556 Another element might have been used by Soviet delegates to mitigate Arab anger toward Moscow. The two countries under Soviet influence among U.N.S.C.O.P. members,

Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, adopted opposite positions, the former supporting the minority

555 A.Ia. Vyshinsky to V.M. Molotov, New York, October 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.059, op.18, p.41, d.301, ll.351-2; DISR, Part I, doc. 96, pp.227-228. Copies to Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Zhdanov, Malenkov, Mikoian, Voznesenkii, Vyshinsky and Malik. 556 A.Ia. Vyshinsky to V.M. Molotov, New York, October 15, 1947; AVP RF, f.059, op.18, p.41, d.301, ll.351-2; DISR, Part I, doc. 96, pp.227-228. Copies to Stalin, Molotov, Beria, Zhdanov, Malenkov, Mikoian, Voznesenkii, Vyshinsky and Malik. 250 plan and the latter the majority plan. However, it is hard to assess just how much influence the

U.S.S.R. had on its satellites’ position in the U.N. on this topic, and therefore whether we can, or not, interpret this divergence between the two East-European states as a Soviet diplomatic maneuver to present the Soviet bloc as neutral and non-biased, or even divided, on the question of Palestine.

Gromyko’s speech on the eve of the vote, November 26, 1947, justified the Soviet position in front of the international community. “Jews and Arabs […] both […] have deeply rooted historical ties with the land, cannot live together within the boundaries of a single state, there is no alternative but to create, in place of one country, two states – an Arab and a Jewish one.” But he added, in order to soften Arab reaction, “the opponents […] point to the fact that this decision would […] be directed against the Arabs. […] On the contrary, the USSR delegation holds that this decision corresponds to the fundamental national interests of both peoples.” Gromyko then reminded the Arabs that “the government and the peoples of the USSR have entertained and still entertain a feeling of sympathy for the national aspirations of the nations of the Arab East.” Gromyko invited them to further collaboration, expressing his conviction that “Arabs and the Arab states will still […] be looking towards Moscow and expecting the USSR to help them in the struggle for their lawful interests, in their efforts to cast off the last vestiges of foreign dependence.”557

For the time being, Stalin assumed that due to the close links between Britain and the

Arab states and Palestinian Arabs, a Jewish state would be a better option to counterweigh

British influence in the Middle East. After participating, for reasons explored above, in the

557 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, 16 September-29 November 1947, 125th meeting, November 26, 1947, pp. 1358-63; in Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1941-1953, Part I: 1941- May 1949, doc. 104, pp.242-248. 251 escalation of the Jewish refugees problem, Moscow realized what a conflict the Jewish D.P. problem and the Palestine issue had provoked among the Western Allies. And after the Soviet success in referring Palestine to the U.N. and in forging an effective coalition against the continued British presence in Palestine, this last step of supporting the effective partition of

Palestine, was only the logical follow up to build on the secondary benefits of its Jewish policy in Europe. It went further than Soviet leaders probably ever imagined. But it was successful in that it critically divided the British and the Americans, delayed a common Middle East policy, and created favorable conditions for a hasty withdrawal of the British from Palestine. As

Gorodetsky writes, “in Stalin’s impressive arsenal of Realpolitik maneuvers, placing Russian interests above all, support of the Jewish State was neither the first nor the last marriage of convenience.”558

Conclusion: the vote for the Partition of Palestine

The U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine drafted a resolution on the partition of Palestine into a

Jewish and an Arab states with economic union, and presented it to the General Assembly on

October 25, 1947. It roughly followed U.N.S.C.O.P. majority plan. It was debated between

November 26 and 29 by the General Assembly, where a two-third majority was necessary for the resolution to be adopted. It was increasingly clear that the two superpowers would support the resolution – and by their influence, would bring a few votes along with their own.

Most East-European countries voted for partition, except Yugoslavia, which abstained.

The Soviet influence was unclear but certainly played a role, whether Moscow directly imposed

558 “Circular of the Mapai Central Committee to its Emissaries Abroad” Tel Aviv, May 29, 1947; CZA S53/12C; DISR, Part I, doc. 86, pp.197-202; and D.R. Wahl to A.H. Silver; New york, May 15, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 84, pp.196-197. 252 it on its satellites’ governments, or they self-aligned on the Kremlin, or some actually supported

Zionism – if only to get rid of their Jews. After the U.S. clarified its position, there were rumors of unofficial pressure, on France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, through hints that the Marshall Plan might have to be revised. Latin American countries, although not a single bloc, were the largest group of voters (20) in the United Nations. While historian Edward Glick downplayed U.S. official pressures to influence their votes, there seem to have been some unofficial pressure through the United Fruit Company. Chairman Sam Zemurray had already helped the Jewish D.P. cause by chartering ships for the ha’apala, including the Exodus, and then used the Company’s influence to convince some Latin American countries to support the resolution.559

Britain abstained. Indeed, London thought that only the Soviets would benefit from the creation of a Jewish state. Resentful of Soviet tolerance for Jewish illegal emigration, which was flooding Cyprus with more inmates, the British recycled the Judeo-Bolshevik paranoia, claiming that communist agents were among the illegal immigrants. Not only British anti-Zionism labeled

East-European Jews as communists, it also considered that the Soviets were training secret agents to infiltrate the entire Middle East through Jews pausing as refugees. But most of its dominions, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada voted for the resolution – albeit not even Albert

Einstein could persuade India.560 Resolution 181 [II] passed with 33 yes, 10 abstentions, and 13 no, including all Arab countries. The Jewish refugees directly and indirectly made it happen.

559 Edward B. Glick, “Latin America and the Palestine Partition Resolution,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 1, no. 2 (1959): 211–22, https://doi.org/10.2307/165028; Ignacio Klich, “Latin America, the United States and the Birth of Israel: The Case of Somoza’s Nicaragua,” Journal of Latin American Studies 20, no. 2 (1988): 389–432; Ignacio Klich, “Cuba’s Opposition to Jewish Statehood in Palestine, 1944-49: A Critical Review of Varying Interpretations,” Middle East Journal 51, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 405–435; Rich Cohen, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King, 2013. 560 William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1984), 478–93; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 355. 253

Given more importance than their numbers could claim due to the Cold War context, their presence and activism influenced the policies of the two major powers, who brought with them enough votes to reach the two third majority needed in the U.N. General assembly for such occasion.

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CHAPTER 5

FROM PARTITION TO INDEPENDENCE: SIX MONTHS IN LIMBO,

NOVEMBER 29, 1947 – MAY 15, 1948

After both superpowers voted for the creation of a Jewish State on paper, through the United

Nations Resolution 181 for the Partition of Palestine with Economic Union of November 29,

1947, nothing was accomplished on the ground. The British had announced their withdrawal from Palestine for May 14, 1948. Until then, the creation of a Jewish state through partition was still a hypothesis. The Arab states, the Palestinian Arabs, and the British opposed the resolution.

They did their best to prevent its implementation, including, for the local Arabs, by starting an uprising that turned into a civil war, often call the “war before the war” as Israel’s War of

Independence only started after its creation on May 15, 1948.561

This upheaval led the international community to question its own decision and unendingly debate on how to proceed, whether to cancel the Partition resolution, or to establish a trusteeship on the region until they could find a peaceful solution. The United Nations created the Commission on Palestine to prepare the implementation of the resolution, with Bolivia,

Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Panama, and the Philippines as its five members, and U.S. diplomat

Ralph Bunche as its secretary. But the Arabs refused even to acknowledge the resolution and the

British informed the Commission that they would not allow it to set foot in Palestine until two weeks before the end of the mandate. As a result, the international community debated more than it could act, basically leaving it up to the peoples on the ground to decide their own fate.

561 An expression found in Alain Gresh and Dominique Vidal, Palestine 47: un partage avorté (Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1987), 139. 255

This chapter focuses on the six months between the vote for the Partition resolution and the creation of Israel, a period in which the Palestine question evolved in a state of diplomatic limbo. The Arab uprising in Palestine forced both superpowers to reassess their positions. The

Soviet Union remained unmoved by Arab pressure and kept supporting the resolution and the creation of a Jewish state, whereas the U.S. (re)entered a phase of diplomatic hesitations and messy divisions between White House advisers and State Department staff, which seriously jeopardized the cohesion of the Truman administration.

Reactions to partition: Jewish hopes, Arab resistance, Arab-British pressures, and the “war before the war”

U.N. resolution on Palestine’s Partition with Economic Union was threatened the minute it was voted. Manifestations of joy in the Yishuv and the D.P. camps were quickly interrupted. The three-day general strike declared by the Arabs turned into riots, which morphed into an uprising, which broke into a civil war between Jews and Arabs. The British authorities, soon overwhelmed by the fighting, rarely intervened. Yishuv Jews were much better organized than

Palestinian Arabs in this regard, as the paramilitary organization Haganah functioned as a centralized, yet unofficial, Jewish army. In addition, underground groups such as the Stern

Group and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, acted on their own in ways that sometimes complemented the

Haganah’s actions, and other times undermined its legitimacy as the soon-to-become Israeli army.

The Arabs were divided. The Army of the Holy War led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, the armed emanation of the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine, was devoted to the former Mufti

256

Haj Amin al-Husayni. Fighters were locals and remained in their villages.562 To prevent the

Mufti to take control of Arab Palestine, the Arab League had created the Arab Liberation (or

Salvation) Army under the leadership of Fawzi al-Qawuqji. It comprised foreign volunteers, among them Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Egyptians, British deserters, and former Nazis and other antisemitic groups who could or would not return to their Soviet-occupied countries, such as

Bosniaks and Germans.

The Arab Liberation Army entered Palestine by waves starting in January 1948, which help militarize the confrontation.563 In December Arab gangs attacked buses and snipers assaulted pedestrians and vehicles in traffic. The Irgun and the Stern Gang retaliated by raids on

Arab crowds and villages. In the spring, al-Husayni organized the blockade of 100,000 Jews in

Jerusalem, ambushing all Haganah convoys meant to bring them relief. 564 At first, the Haganah was reluctant to shift from its self-defense policy to an offensive strategy; official Zionist institutions wanted to appear as a reasonable entity and still hoped that the international community would find a way to impose and implement its own decision of partitioning

Palestine. In Palestinian Arab Walid Khalidi’s words, “the Jews at this stage are still trying to contain the fighting to as narrow a sphere as possible in the hope that partition will be implemented and a Jewish government formed; they hope that if the fighting remains limited, the

Arabs will acquiesce in the fait accompli. This can be seen from the fact that the Jews have not

562 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed., Cambridge Middle East Studies 18 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 563 Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939-1948 (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991); Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, 2nd ed., Cambridge Middle East Studies 15 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 564 Morris, 1948; Efraim Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 (Oxford: Osprey, 2002). 257 so far attacked Arab villages unless the inhabitants of those villages attacked them or provoked them first.”565

Eventually Yishuv leaders figured that no help would come anytime soon from abroad, and that they needed to prepare for war, at least with the Arabs of Palestine, probably with the

Arab states, and maybe even with the British. The bulk of the international community adopted a position of neutrality – and even of “unfriendly neutrality” as Zionist described their relations with the U.S. in the spring 1948. Most refused to sell them weapons or to intervene even diplomatically to limit the Arab invasion of Palestine ahead of the British withdrawal. “Large sections of the Yishuv will face the danger of annihilation and it is difficult to see how we will overcome it – even after a lengthy struggle. Therefore, political means must be sought to prevent the emergence of a situation such as we have described” [emphasis in original].566 As it was still unclear how much the U.N. Commission would be involved in the implementation of the resolution, the Zionists had to be ready to rely on their own forces. In addition to training in the

Yishuv, the Haganah had begun mobilization and military training in the D.P. camps, with. In

Italy, three battalions and 600 fighting men were ready to enroll.

Jewish D.P.s had been enthusiastic about the U.N. vote for the partition of Palestine.

Everyone knew, as expressed later by Chaim Weizmann to President Truman, that “when the

United Nations in November 1947 voted in favour of a Jewish State, it was motivated pre- eminently by the purpose of solving once and for all the Jewish question in Europe, to get rid of the concentration camps and of the aftermath of Hitler’s holocaust.”567 Therefore, Jewish D.P.s

565 Walid Khalidi, “Selected Documents on the 1948 Palestine War,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 3 (April 1998): 60–105, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537835. 566 Memorandum by W. Eytan, A. Levavi, Ch. Herzog, H. Berman, E. Sasson, Jerusalem, March 26, 1948; CZA S25/9383; DISR, Part I, doc. 116, pp.266-268. 567 “Letter from President Chaim Weizman to President Harry Truman,” Rehovot, June 24, 1949; Israel, State of; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 258 expected a speedy end to their life in camps. They looked forward to the prospect of, at last, being able to rebuild their lives after the uprooting of the war and the Holocaust, in a place that would become their permanent new home.

Not only was life in camps demoralizing, the Cold War context of winter 1947-1948 made remaining in Germany unbearable for former victims of Nazism. From the U.S. perspective, Germany was no longer a former enemy to be humbled, but a potential ally for a war that had hardly begun, so it needed to be rebuilt.568 Jewish D.P.s represented the leftovers of a war that Germans and Americans alike wanted to put behind them. The Jewish D.P. issue needed to be solved “if a healthy Europe is to be reestablished. This cannot be delayed further,” according to Congressman Robert Nathan in March 1948.569

Yet the British continued to fight Jewish immigration, if only to keep the Arabs in check.

Between November 29, 1947 and May 15, 1948, they intercepted twelve ships, and sent their

22,384 passengers to Cyprus. The U.N. recommendations instructed the mandatory authorities to facilitate Jewish immigration and provide the Jewish Agency with a port to receive refugees.

London complained to the U.N. secretary and to the U.S. State Department about “illegal immigration,” to which the Jewish Agency replied that it would be impossible to stop it unless the U.N. Commission departed for Palestine at an early date to facilitate legal immigration.570

The only result of London’s stubbornness against Jewish immigration had been to keep the

Jewish refugee question alive in international media, and to ruin Britain’s reputation, accused of perpetrating “Nazi practices… in order to complete the transformation of Palestine into an armed

568 Kurt R. Grossman, “Report on Germany” August 10, 1948, JDC NY AR194554/4/32/6/312; and Jacob Biber and Mary Wickizer Burgess, Risen From the Ashes (Asheville, NC: Star Publishers, 2005), 77; Gringauz, “Our New German Policy and the DPs,” 508. 569 “Letter from Robert R. Nathan to Robert A. Lovett, Under Secretary of State” March 24, 1948; Israel Affairs, 1948; General File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 570 Summary of Telegrams, December 11, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 September-December; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 259 fortress to safeguard British imperial interests.”571 And when the British could not control

Jewish immigration from within Palestine anymore, they would prohibit it from Europe.

In the camps, between the partition vote and the birth of Israel, the sh’erit ha-pletah closely followed the unfolding of the civil war and the international hesitations. “The DPs understood their hopes for emigration depended on the soldiers’ victory. For many DPs the fate of the Yishuv was the fate of the entire Jewish people. […] The identification of European DPs with Jews in Palestine was expressed […], as was the connection between the Holocaust and the

Zionist future.”572 Though not all Jewish refugees intended to go to the future Jewish state, and not all of them would, most of them supported its creation nonetheless. They were involved and engaged in the Yishuv’s fight in many ways. They created a War Fund to purchase weapons, and potential soldiers received priority for legal immigration. But those unfit to serve had to wait their turn, a disheartening prospect for some. Others, mostly survivors of Nazi ghettos and camps, refused to engage in another war, and some began to register for immigration to other countries, to the Zionists’ dismay.573 Voluntary enlistment was a failure.

In Germany, in March 1948, Haganah officer Nahum Shadmi told Jewish D.P. leaders that “every young man and woman, aged 18-35, must join the Haganah. […] There is no excuses. All those capable must mobilize and come to Eretz Israel and join the army.”574

Mobilization became almost compulsory, with sanctions for those who rejected it, such as denial of supplementary ration provided by the Joint, dismissal from public employment in the camps, and even the threat of future ineligibility for aliyah, which of course was never put into effect. It produced a strong debate among the Zionist leadership. Against those arguing that D.P.s should

571 Cited in Stone, Liberation, 187. 572 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 104. 573 Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 166–94; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 359–60. 574 Grodzinsky, In the Shadow of the Holocaust, 166–94. 260 be forced to enlist, others such as President of the Jewish Agency Nahum Goldmann and Chaim

Weizmann claimed that D.P.s had already “served their historical purpose.” They had made a decisive contribution, essential to the creation of a Jewish state, and should not be forced to fight physically for its establishment.

In the end, 13,000 troops from the D.P. camps reached Palestine between February and

August 1948.575 They came mostly from youth movements in the U.S. zone, where there were more young D.P.s, and because the U.S. authorities were more lenient on emigration. The

Americans even closed their eyes to the pressure which some Zionist representatives sometimes put on the D.P.s, as it would ultimately help to remove Jews from Germany.576 Their need to get rid of the Jews to rebuild an anti-Soviet Germany without alienating the Germans led them to tacitly cooperate with Zionist organizing illegal immigration. Mostly, though, the Jewish D.P.s started to disappear from the frontlines of the Palestine issue.

Zionist leaders focused on political and diplomatic activity toward the Western powers and the Arab states, while keeping a friendly attitude toward the Soviet bloc. They assessed that

Moscow had little influence in the Middle East, yet “in the event of a world war erupting in the near future, the Middle East is liable to be conquered in its initial stages by the Soviet army.”

The Yishuv might accept a delay in the recognition of a sovereign state by the international community, on the condition that a provisional regime would “facilitate the persistent expansion of the concrete foundations of our political sovereignty in the areas of immigration, defence, administration, and the economy.”577 They kept building the future state, to show their readiness for independence, and to prevent an institutional collapse when the British mandatory apparatus

575 See “Displaced Persons,” American Jewish Year Book 51 (1950): 319–20; Patt, Finding Home and Homeland, 250–52. 576 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 359–60. 577 Memorandum by W. Eytan, A. Levavi, Ch. Herzog, H. Berman, E. Sasson, Jerusalem, March 26, 1948; CZA S25/9383; DISR, Part I, doc. 116, pp.266-268. 261 would withdraw. On April 1, 1948, the Haganah would launch an all-out offensive despite its lack of heavy weapons, with the aim of altering the situation on the ground to allow for the creation of the state of Israel six weeks later.

In the meantime, the escalation of violence in Palestine was accompanied by Arab pressure on the U.N. and on individual countries. On the U.S. government, this pressure took three forms. First, raised the specter of direct danger to U.S. citizens and properties in Arab countries. The second and third aspects were conveyed through diplomatic channels. Arab leaders threatened to cancel future cooperation with the U.S., especially oil exploitation, but also cultural and religious activities and cooperation on projects regarding the economic development in Arab countries. Finally, Arab leaders over-emphasized the risk of Soviet penetration into the

Middle East.

Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam warned of the inevitable bloodshed, in light of Arab unity against the Palestine decision.578 Iraqi foreign minister Fadhil

Jamali asked the American delegates if the U.S. was going to send troops to enforce the U.N. decision, as if testing U.S. determination to support the creation of a Jewish state and if assessing the risks involved if/when the Arab states chose to oppose it by force.579 Turkish foreign minister Necmettin Sadak minimized Arab reaction; he thought Arab leaders would eventually accept partition, if only by fear of Soviet penetration.580

Immediately after the vote, State Department personnel, especially Under Secretary of

State Robert Lovett and staff of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affaires under the

578 Summary of Telegrams, December 4, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 September-December; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 579 “Memorandum of Conversation, November 30, 1947” from the United States Mission to the United Nations: Dr. Fadhil Jamali, Foreign Minister of Iraq, Samuel K. C. Kopper, Adviser, US Delegation; Memorandum written on December 1, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 September-December; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 580 Summary of Telegrams, December 15, 1947; State Department Briefs Files, 1947 September-December; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 262 direction of Loy Henderson, resumed their fight against the creation of a Jewish state. Taking their information from American businessmen and diplomats in the Arab states, they started drawing a dark picture of “the future of U.S.-Arab relations” for their hierarchy in the State

Department and for the White House. On December 8, 1947, Henderson advised transmitting the report that Aramco’s vice-president James T. Duce had sent to Mr. Moore, President of the

Oil Company. Duce worried about the “increasing gravity of the situation in Transjordan and

Syria” where all pipeline operations have been suspended and “increasing flood resentment against Americans may even force closing such institutions as American University of Beirut.”

By “pointing out that US policy not only affecting oil interests but creating situation which menaces lives and property all Americans in Middle East,” he requested the situation should be brought to the State Department.581

The State Department concurred, and was already working on a memorandum for the

President, summarizing the situation of U.S.-Arab relations in order to attract his attention to the potentially disastrous consequences of the U.S. vote for the partition resolution. It warned of

“several hundred casualties and millions of dollars worth of property damage. […] Americans

[…] are in danger of being attacked by fanatical Arabs. The substantial good will that has been built up for the US in the Arab world during the past 100 years by missionaries, educators, diplomats, technical specialists, and more lately by business men and oil companies has been almost entirely dissipated during the past few months.”

Arabs blamed the U.S. for betraying its own ideals of liberty, justice, and democracy.

According to the State Department, they believed that “the U.S. is more interested in the Zionists

581 Copy of a telegram from Arabian-American Oil Company’s Vice President James Terry Duce, Beirut, to President of the Oil Company Mr. Moore, dated December 3, 1947; transmitted with a memorandum to Mr. Latta on December 8, 1947, on the recommendation of Loy Henderson; Folder 5 “Middle East”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 263 than in its own security.” This first wave of anti-U.S. and anti-Zionist demonstrations was spontaneous, but the memorandum warned, Arab resistance would become more organized, with better leadership, training and equipment. “US interests will be irreparably damaged if US policy is further influenced by Zionist pressure.”582 This last sentence shows that the State

Department blamed Truman’s decision to support partition mostly on Zionist lobbying.

The memorandum then undertook to present an alternative option to the Partition Plan as voted by the U.N. just a few days earlier. Saudi Arabia was “the key to U.S. interests in the

Middle East” due to its oil concessions and air base rights, and Ibn Saud was also trying to reach an acceptable middle ground position. Despite Arab League’s pressures on Saudi Arabia to break with the United States, he would “attempt to follow a policy of moderation, provided the

US follows a policy of strict neutrality in the Palestine struggle.” He would maintain the

Aramco concessions, at the condition that the U.S. did not relax the arms embargo or provide supplies to the Yishuv, refused to issue passports to U.S. Jews volunteering for the Zionist cause, and obviously, did not send troops to enforce partition, even within the frame of a collective contingent under U.N. auspices. If this “moderation” was not maintained, Ibn Saud threatened cancelling oil concessions, dispatching Arab armies into Palestine, and warned that Americans in the Arab world faced the danger of assassination. U.S. enterprises and businesses would have to stop, along with all diplomatic relations.583

The same type of warning came from U.S. diplomats in the Middle East. In late January, ambassador to Iraq George Wadsworth emphasized to Henderson that for the Arab world, “we are today […] almost solely responsible for the United Nations recommendation for Palestine

582 “The Future of US-Arab Relations” December 10, 1947; Folder 1 “Arabian relations”; Box 10; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 583 “The Future of US-Arab Relations” December 10, 1947; Folder 1 “Arabian relations”; Box 10; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 264

‘Partition with Economic Union’.” They blamed the U.S. for yielding to Zionist pressure.

“Until this Arab fear is removed, there will be little if any constructive work in the field of Arab-

American relations” – among which he mentioned oil development, on which the Marshall Plan depended.

Henderson concurred, to the point of obtaining for Wadsworth a presidential meeting on

February 4, 1948. Wadsworth urged the President, “in order to prevent harmful action to US interests,” to give U.S. diplomats in the Middle East the assurance that the U.S. would not impose partition by force. He also argued that such pledge would allow U.S. representatives to

“exercise a beneficial moderating effect against the adoption of extremist policies.”584 Truman responded that the U.S. would not act unilaterally, but the Arabs “must first assure me, before I can give them any categoric promises that they won’t either.”585

Both documents also raised the threat of Soviet penetration in the Middle East. “The

USSR will be more than willing to assist the Zionists,” yet Zionist pressure for help would be directed primarily on the U.S. government.586 Wadsworth was even more explicit. Iraq was a key actor in the region “as ‘pivot’ between the Saadabad countries587 and those of the Arab

League in the evolution of a common policy of defense against Soviet aggression and communist infiltration.” But this role was contingent on “a mutually acceptable settlement of the Palestine problem.” If such an agreement was not found, Wadsworth warned that the “end results may well include eventual subjection of much if not all of the Arab world, and of Iran as well, to

584 “Memorandum to NEA Mr. Henderson from Ambassador Wadsworth: Proposed remarks to the President,” January 31, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 585 Memorandum by the Ambassador to Iraq (Wadsworth) to the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affaires (Henderson), February 4, 1948; Document 24; 711.90G/2–448; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 592-596; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d24 consulted on September 2, 2018. 586 “The Future of US-Arab Relations” December 10, 1947; Folder 1 “Arabian relations”; Box 10; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 587 Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, who signed in 1936 a pact of mutual assistance, and potentially Pakistan. 265

Soviet domination.” To prevent this, he suggested replacing partition with a U.N. trusteeship on

Palestine.588

The British also raised the specter of Soviet penetration to pressure Washington to limit

Jewish immigration to Palestine. London justified this blatant violation of the U.S. recommendation as a way to prevent bloodshed in which the Arabs would “massacre the Jews.”

Bevin warned Marshall that “the US Government might then find themselves required to provide forces and the Soviet Government might press to provide a force. […] I [Marshall] admitted that the greatest fear of the US military authorities in regard to the question was the presence of a

Russian force in Palestine.”589

The British went even further. Trafford Smith, in charge of Palestine at the Colonial

Office, and John Fletcher-Cook, from the Palestine Government, explained to ambassador Austin that the U.N decision could not be implemented. The U.N. Commission would not be able to delineate the frontiers between the Jewish and Arab states nor manage to reduce the fighting between Jews and Arabs without an army “at least as large as the British forces now in Palestine

(about eighty-thousand troops).” Although London did not expect large-scale Arab guerilla warfare until the end of the Mandate, the Commission would not be able to establish an Arab state. The Jewish state could only be imposed militarily, to include “no more than the coastal area between Haifa and Tel Aviv,” and thus would be unviable. Commission members would also need strong military protection. They should either come with large forces or not come at all, as Arab forces “would not be impressed by the international implications of shooting at UN

588 “Memorandum to NEA Mr. Henderson from Ambassador Wadsworth: Proposed remarks to the President,” January 31, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 589 Incoming telegram, London to Secretary of State, For Lovett from the Secretary (signed Marshall), December 6, 1947; Folder 8 “Council of Foreign Ministers”; Box 10; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 266 troops.” They projected – and likely, expected – that “the Commission would presumably report to the SC that the recommendation of the GA could not be implemented except by force and, therefore, must be revised.”590

Of course, the U.S. was not the only country to be targeted by these Arab pressures, or to resent the British lack of cooperation. The Soviet Union paid a heavy price for its vote in favor of the U.N. partition plan. Since Gromyko’s speech in May 1947, Communist parties and activists, in Palestine but also all over the Arab-Muslim world, witnessed the Soviet turnabout on the Palestine issue with disbelief. Incredulous at first, they hoped that the U.S.S.R. meant to embarrass the West but would eventually vote against the U.N. resolution, or at least abstain.

Soviet support for partition created an upheaval among socialists, suddenly divided from within, or/and assaulted from outside, often directly by their governments. The Communist Party of

Palestine, already divided between Arabs and Jews, and Zionists and anti-Zionists, became schizophrenic. Some activists remained true to Moscow, and therefore supported partition (after having denounced it for the past few years). Others were too anti-Zionist to accept Moscow’s position and lead on this topic.

A split happened yet again, pro-partition activists rallied behind Fouad Nassar, and Emile

Touma leading the anti-partition trend. Touma had already criticized Gromyko’s speech back in

May 1947, accusing him of paving the way to reactionary elements in the Arab states and ignoring Palestinian Arabs’ nationalist and anti-imperialist claims. How could the U.S.S.R. support Zionism, a puppet of British imperialism, and the instrumentalization of the Jewish masses by Western imperialism against Arab national liberation movements? Elsewhere in the

590 Memorandum to Ambassador Austin from Gordon Knox “Conversation with Mr. Trafford Smith, Head of the Palestine Department in the Colonial Office, Mr. Fletcher-Cooke, official in the Palestine Government, and Mr. Falls, adviser, UK, January 27, 1948”; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 267

Arab world, communists faced that same dilemma between following Moscow’s lead and breaking with the Soviet Union. The Communist parties who chose to follow Moscow faced immediate dissolution, such as the Syrian Communist Party in December 1947, the Lebanese one in January 1948. Their leaders faced repression, jail time, and death. In Iraq, three communist leaders were executed by hanging on February 4, 1949.

During the almost six months that separated the vote for partition from the creation of

Israel, Soviet representatives in Arab countries received daily complaints and threats. Soviet personnel and property faced great danger, such as in Damascus just after the vote, where an

Arab mob killed all the Soviet legation’s staff.591 If Arab leaders designated Washington as their main enemy, holding it responsible for bringing the idea of a Jewish state to the U.N. in the first place, neither could they understand the Moscow’s position. They saw it as a betrayal of the

Soviet Union’s own ideals of self-determination and anti-imperialism – the same accusation made against the United States. Why did the U.S.S.R. not remain at least neutral on this issue?

Maybe the Arab peoples considered the Soviet bloc as the decisive force in the vote, as they had expected the U.S. to side with the Jews, but not the Soviet Union.

Soviet reaction to pressure and criticism was unapologetic and did not try to pamper Arab sensitivity. Diplomats justified the Soviet policy in ideological terms. First, the U.S.S.R. had proved its friendship to the Arab world by supporting Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria in their conflict with Britain and France for more independence. Second, they (wrongly) claimed that only reactionary Arabs opposed partition, and considered that these reactionary leaders were using

Palestine as a way to divert the masses’ attention from their own status as puppets of imperialist

591 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 280. 268 domination. Third, democratic forces in the Arab world – which in Soviet jargon, meant Arab communists – supported the Soviet position.592

On the other hand, this period saw the continuation and development of constructive

Soviet-Zionist cooperation. Prior to the vote, Zionist-Soviet staff in the U.N. started to communicate often, and to collaborate on concrete actions. It is unclear whether the Soviets were still making up their minds by probing Zionist intentions in case of a positive outcome of the partition vote, or if they were just genuinely planning the after-vote. They discussed topics such as British evacuation. “We would not try to expel them by force of arms, but neither would we try to delay their departure,” Zionist representatives told Soviet delegates. “We will be ready to assume power immediately in the Jewish areas, but […] it is essential for the United Nations to appoint an authority which will be empowered […] to ensure that all sides uphold the UN resolutions. […] If the British cooperate […] power will be transferred gradually, but rapidly.”593

The Soviet government, at Vyshinsky’s suggestion, wanted the mandate to end on

January 1, 1948, and British troops to withdraw within three or four months. The transition period should not exceed a year, during which the Commission would establish the frontiers of the two states and supervise the Jewish and Arab Provisional Councils of Government while they held elections and designed constitutions. When Vyshinsky made such suggestions, he always indicated that “the above proposals are basically in agreement with the opinion of representatives

592 AVP RF, f.0106, o.7, p.8, d.7, l.58, May 10, 1948; cited in Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs. 593 M. Yuval to D. Ben Gurion (Jerusalem): “Memorandum of a conversation with Mr. S. Tsarapkin, Prof. [B.] Shtein, Mr. M. Shertok, Mr. E. Epstein, Mr. D. Horowitz” New York, October 26, 1947; CZA S25/5353; DISR, Part I, doc. 98, pp.229-232. 269 of the Jewish Agency,” and Molotov reported this to Stalin, as if this were a factor in the Soviet decision-making – or to show that they were following an earlier instruction.594

After the vote, while the Soviets stood their ground in the face of Arab indignation, cooperation with the Zionists deepened. Zionist representatives kept Soviet delegates in the loop regarding their relations with other states. Although they presented their policy in a light agreeable to the Soviets, Zionists did not hide their intention to maintain good relations with the

U.S. as well, by remaining neutral. “The main principle on which the constitution would be based was the neutrality of the Jewish state, on the Swiss model. […] The Jewish state had become a reality mainly thanks to the United States and the Soviet Union.” The unborn Jewish state invented the concept of non-alignment, unaware that it would not be able to hold this position for long and would never be admitted to the future movement. “The Jewish state would, of course, be highly dependent economically on the United States, since at present it was only there that it could buy arms, equipment and other supplies.” There was no attempt to hide the important connection and economic dependency of the future state toward the United States.

Zionists also did not shy away from pointing out when the advertising of association with

Moscow might be detrimental. Zionist representative Epstein “remarked that at this time they did not intend to ask the USSR to supply them with arms and equipment, in order not to give any occasion for insinuations, since the Jews had already been accused of making some sort of secret agreement with the Soviet government.”595

On the question of arms sales, the Zionists did not hesitate to convey to the Soviets their concerns about Czechoslovakia selling weapons to Arab governments, mostly to Syria.

594 Telegram from V.M. Molotov to I.V. Stalin, October 26, 1947; AVP RF, F.06, OP.9, P.22, D.267, LL.12-13; DISR, Part I, doc. 100, pp.235-236. 595 S.K. Tsarapkin to V.M. Molotov: “Conversation with Epstein, the Representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Washington” Washington, December 18, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, d.9, ll.219-21; DISR, Part I, doc. 107, pp.251-253. 270

Although part of the Syrian purchase was intercepted by the Zionists and sunk at sea,596 head of the political section of the Jewish Agency Moshe Shertok told Soviet delegate Arkady

Aleksandrovich Sobolev “the difficulties we found ourselves facing in the very pressing need for arms.” He argued that military support should benefit “those who undertake to obey the UN decision and to help in carrying it out.”597 Yet Czechoslovakia sold weapons to Syria but rejected a request from the Jewish Agency in November 1947. Far from being upset, the Soviets reacted positively to this Zionist concern. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia Valerian Zorin suggested Molotov “to draw [Czechoslovak Prime Minister Klement] Gottwald’s attention to the fact that the sale of weapons by the Czechoslovak government to the Arabs under present conditions […] could be used by the Anglo-Americans against the Soviet Union and the new democracies.”598 Soon afterwards, Czechoslovakia sold weapons to the Yishuv.

In addition, considering State Department staff’s opinion against partition, Zionist representatives chose to count on the Soviet delegates, rather than the U.S. ones, to keep them in the loop and provide them with information on what was happening within the Security Council.

Shertok asked Sobolev about the forming of an international force, and Sobolev confirmed that

Trygve Lie asked the Big Five if they were prepared to participate in such a force. Sobolev said the key was the U.S., as Britain already had troops on the ground, and France and Russia had already agreed. Shertok noted that the U.S. opposed sending their own troops, but also opposed the presence of Soviet troops. He also inquired what steps could be taken against states that violate the U.N. decision. Sobolev responded that the Security Council would first send a warning to those states. Then the type of actions to take would depend on the scale of assistance

596 Ginat, “Soviet Policy towards the Arab World, 1945-48.” 597 Report of a meeting of M. Shertok with A.A. Sobolev, New York, December 26, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 108, pp.253-255. 598 V.A. Zorin to V.M. Molotov, Moscow, January 22, 1948; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.60-1; DISR, Part I, doc. 109, p.256. 271 these states were sending to Palestinian Arabs. Sobolev warned, “one must realize that this is a slow process.” A force capable of military operation would take at least one month to organize.599

These ongoing debates about the aftermath and implementation of the partition vote and the Arab reaction led some diplomats, especially Palestine Commission members, to wonder whether the U.N.’s future credibility did not lay in how it would handle the Palestine issue.

Canadian delegate to the U.N. George Ignatieff told U.S. delegates that the Arabs were

“convinced that the United Nations will never take enforcement action against them.”600 The only contact the Commission had with Arabs was through Lebanese delegate to the U.N. Charles

Habib Malik, who suggested that the Commission interpret the resolution “broadly” and establish “some kind of a federated state of Palestine.” Danish Commission member Per

Federspiel informed that no Arab state in Palestine could “be carried out until the Mufti is displaced.” Commission secretary Ralph Bunche blamed the British for “torpedo[ing] its task” by refusing that the Commission enter Palestine until two weeks before the end of the Mandate.

He was outraged that London also threatened Commission members that without heavy protection they would be assassinated immediately on arrival.601

U.S. delegates to the U.N. did not seem perturbed by the British obstruction, probably because they approved of it. They suggested gathering the General Assembly to reverse its recommendation. It should either create a federal state with Jewish autonomy, put Palestine under some kind of international trusteeship, or persuade London to keep the Mandate until the

599 Report of a meeting of M. Shertok with A.A. Sobolev, New York, December 26, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 108, pp.253-255. 600 Memorandum of a Conversation: “Subject: Palestine; participants: Mr. George Ignatieff, Canada, C.P. Noyes, United States Mission to the United Nations” January 27, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 601 Memorandum to Ambassador Austin from Gordon Knox: “Conversation with Mr. Per Federspiel, Danish representative on the Palestine Commission” February 3, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 272

General Assembly reviewed the situation. Instead of backing the Commission members, who proposed radical steps to implement the resolution, they seemed willing to go alongside the

British in undermining its work and the viability of the partition resolution.

Federspiel noted that without an international force, the Commission would not be able to establish an Arab state, but only a Jewish state, smaller than planned. The latter could only defend itself if the Jews were “allowed to purchase arms abroad.” In this aim, Federspiel suggested a recommendation by the Commission that all governments sell arms to the Jewish state to make it politically easier for the U.S. to recuse the arms embargo it had declared on all fighting parties in Palestine.602 This embargo mostly penalized the Yishuv, since the Arab states all had ongoing contracts to purchase arms from Britain or France. It is interesting to note that

Commission members talked of a “Jewish state” as if it already existed, whereas U.S. and British representatives did not – the formers did not doubt that the U.N. would uphold its decision.

Czechoslovak chairman of the Commission Karel Lisicky also raised the issue of future

U.N. credibility. “The problem of Palestine is now a problem of the effectiveness and vitality of the United Nations, not only of the validity of the General Assembly recommendation, but also of the ability and willingness of the Security Council to use force to carry out political decisions.” He tried to obtain a reaction from U.S. delegates by adding that since many thought that the resolution was made under its leadership, Washington had a distinct responsibility regarding the situation in Palestine. “If there should be chaos and bloodshed in Jerusalem, he

[Lisicky] believed that the effect on public opinion and public regard for the United Nations would be very bad.”

602 Memorandum to Ambassador Austin from Gordon Knox: “Conversation with Mr. Per Federspiel, Danish representative on the Palestine Commission” February 3, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 273

Lisicky suggested sending a force to maintain the international status of Jerusalem and its corridor to the sea. He also advised designing a British-U.S. agreement with King Abdullah, which would allow him to send troops in Palestine to maintain order, with the project of a plebiscite in Arab Palestine regarding its possible annexation to Transjordan. In exchange,

Abdullah would tolerate a Jewish state in the approximate frontiers of the resolution. Lisicky also urged the British to maintain the Mandate until the Commission could delineate the two states.603 An undated document, likely soon thereafter, stated that Britain “declines any action which might be interpreted as involving implementation of the plan.” Considering that the Jews had accepted the partition resolution but the Arabs had rejected it, the Commission should be able to establish a provisional council of government only for the future Jewish state, which would be functional at the end of the Mandate. It would be impossible to do so for the Arab state, due to the opposition of the Arab Higher Committee the resistance of Palestinian Arabs.604

The State Department’s efforts to prevent partition

Rather than protecting U.N. credibility and legitimacy, which would require designing the means necessary to implement its resolution, U.S. foreign policy-makers were primarily concerned about American influence in and relations with the Arab states. A relations with the U.S.S.R. deteriorated quickly, the State Department apprehended Soviet penetration in the Middle East.

In January 1948, the U.S. shrank the size of the Soviet embassy staff in Washington,

603 Memorandum to Ambassador Austin from Gordon Knox: “Conversation with Mr. Per Federspiel, Danish representative on the Palestine Commission” February 3, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 604 US Mission to the UN: “Questions of the four permanent members of the SC and answers approved unanimously by the Palestine Commission” no date, but between the first and second monthly reports of the Commission, so mid- February to mid-March 1948; CIA Files; Folder 2; Box 4; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 274 reciprocating the 120 U.S. personnel allowed in Moscow. The first Berlin crisis was underway, and in March, the U.S.S.R. withdrew from the Four Power government of Germany. Moscow initiated the in June 1948. As U.S.-Soviet tensions reached new highs in

Europe, both powers were concerned about the Middle East as well. Though Moscow and

Washington voted together for partition in November 1947, they kept suspecting each other’s motives and intentions in Palestine, especially when it became clear that the resolution could not be implemented peacefully.

In early February, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Warren Austin reported a conversation in which Federspiel informed him that the Commission was about to announce to the General

Assembly that its recommendation could not be implemented without the use of force. He expected Gromyko to react to this announcement by proposing to send Soviet troops and encouraging other permanent members to do likewise, so the U.N. could send an armed contingent. “And I hope, Federspiel added, that the State Department will have an answer to that one.”605

The State Department was extremely worried about the Palestine issue becoming the window of opportunity through which the Soviet Union would finally be able to penetrate the

Near East. If partition is enforced, and led to a war, the U.S.S.R. could exploit it in various ways, George F. Kennan warned in a report. Kennan used to be W. Averell Harriman’s deputy chief of the mission in Moscow in 1944-1946. Together they participated in forging the containment policy.606 Director of Policy Planning under Marshall, he participated in drafting the Marshall Plan. His report on Palestine warned that if the U.N. sent an international force

605 Memorandum to Ambassador Austin from Gordon Knox: “Conversation with Mr. Per Federspiel, Danish representative on the Palestine Commission” February 3, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 606 Through Kennan’s “Long Telegram” in February 1946 and his article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” signed X in Foreign Affairs in July 1947. 275 comprising Soviet troops, they would be in position to infiltrate communist agents and spread propaganda not just in Palestine but in neighboring countries as well, creating the ground for replacing Arab states’ governments by “popular republics.” It would be a direct threat to U.S. interests in Greece, Turkey, and Iran, and a long-term threat to the eastern Mediterranean area.

The arms sales that a war in Palestine would trigger could give Moscow a point of entry to destabilize the region. Kennan concluded that backing away from the partition plan might be the safest route.

In early April, the C.I.A. built up the case that as the Soviet Union was being checked in

Europe, it was becoming a greater danger in the Middle East, as the “belt of countries along the underbelly of Russia […] is in a political mess that beggars description.” The regimes only remained in power by going along with the rallying cry “Down with the foreigner” – a cry that could not hurt Russia, who was absent from the region. The U.S.S.R. could foment nationalism by denouncing these countries’ links with the West. The report concluded that “the Middle East presents a vast belt of people open to invasion without effort. […] Yet they sit on a crossroads of the world, and an oilfield to which the West cannot afford to be denied.” The report also blamed the British for being totally out of touch with the realities, engaged in a “treaty mania” with countries hoping for neutrality in the new bipolarization of the world. “The Egyptians […] will not sign in any circumstances except the actual appearance of a Russian force in Palestine.”

Indeed, although Middle leaders shared the West’s fear of communist infiltration, “the people would kowtow to a new and determined master with a knout.”607

The U.S. attitude at that time was wavering, if not incoherent. On the one hand, it rejected direct intervention in Palestine, and seemed even reluctant to intervention under U.N.

607 “Foreign Report” from the CIA, April 8, 1948; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 276 auspices. On the other hand, the State Department declared an embargo on weapons sales, denying the Yishuv weapons from all Western powers, and therefore condemning them to purchase arms from East European countries or to rely on a hypothetical (and as yet unlikely) international willingness to enforce the U.N. decision. U.S. diplomats vaguely attempted to ask the British to suspend arms sales to the Arab states in early 1948, not out of a spirit of balancing the forces on the ground, but as a way to release domestic pressure. “Unless the British clearly stopped sending arms to the Arab states it would be impossible for us to withstand pressure being brought to force a lifting of the US embargo on shipments of arms to Palestine.”608 The U.S. seemed content with a vague answer from the British that they would “continue its policy of stalling on deliveries.”609

Zionist representatives felt this faltering attitude from the Defense and State Departments.

Shertok rightfully perceived that the U.S. was worried about the need to intervene in Arab states, because it would send a green light to the U.S.S.R. to do likewise and to feel free to intervene in the region when and where Soviet interests would be in danger. Shertok also knew the U.S. was reluctant to create an international force which would include Soviet troops, by fear that it would allow infiltration and subversion of Soviet agents in the aim of provoking revolutions, even long after the Soviet forces would have left.610

As a result, the Zionists turned toward Moscow for support. They even shared with

Soviet delegates the evolution of their relations with the United States. Epstein summarized for

Semion Tsarapkin, the Middle East specialist of the Soviet embassy in Washington, a conversation he and Shertok had with Henderson and Lovett from the State Department. Shertok

608 Summary of Telegrams, January 27, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 January-April; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 609 Summary of Telegrams, January 28, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 January-April; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 610 G. Ruffer to M. Shertok, New York, February 12, 1948; ISA 93.03/65/13; DISR, Part I, doc. 113, p.263. 277 raised the issue of the U.S. embargo on military material, a discriminatory measure directed solely against the Jews, since Transjordan and Iraq provided weapons to the Arabs. Epstein explained that “pro-Arab and anti-Jewish sentiments are strong in the State Department.

Moreover, the American oil monopolies […] are putting great pressure on the State

Department.” When Shertok inquired about a U.N. force to protect the resolution against the

Arab states, Henderson responded that this was a U.N. issue. Shertok countered that as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the U.S. could not evade its share of responsibility in this issue.611

This relative openness of Zionist representatives with Soviet delegates was often accompanied by specific requests. Epstein told Tsarapkin about the likely conditions for the

U.S. to accept the deployment of Soviet troops within the framework of a U.N. force. He claimed that Washington would only allow Soviet troops to participate if they joined Palestine by sea and not overland through Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. He expressed his expectation that the

Kremlin would take into consideration the U.S. position in a spirit of compromise.612

Surprisingly, Zionist presentation of U.S.-Zionist relations to Soviet representatives reflected the reality. They tended to be somewhat dramatic in order to establish trust and strengthen Soviet support, or perhaps out of genuine fear of the shift in U.S. policy.613 Zionist representatives did use the East-West conflict for their own cause, but blamed mostly British policy and hypocrisy –

except when emphasizing Western oil interests in the Middle East, in which the U.S. had an

611 Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, January 26, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.65-71; DISR, Part I, doc. 111, pp.258-262. 612 Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, January 26, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.65-71; DISR, Part I, doc. 111, pp.258-262. 613 See for instance Report of a meeting of M. Shertok with A.A. Sobolev, New York, December 26, 1947; ISA 93.03/2268/16; DISR, Part I, doc. 108, pp.253-255; Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, January 26, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.65-71; DISR, Part I, doc. 111, pp.258-262; and Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, February 9, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.86; DISR, Part I, doc. 112, pp.262-263. 278 important role. Epstein highlighted the connivance of Forrestal and Lovett, whom he considered resolutely pro-Arab, with vice-president of Aramco James T. Duce. Though without a official mission, Duce was reportedly touring the Middle East to reassure Arab leaders that U.S. support for partition might be reversed, and compiled a report arguing that a Jewish state in Palestine would become a Trojan horse for the Soviet Union.614

For other matters, Britain remained the main target of Zionist strategy for raising fear of the West in Soviet circles. Did they sense that some Soviet diplomats were still reading international relations through the Great Game lens? Or did it originate from a genuine feeling that it was London who convinced the State Department to oppose partition and reverse the U.S. policy? In any case, Epstein told Tsarapkin that “there was no doubt that the British were firmly resolved to undermine the United Nations’ decision on Palestine. The British support and incite the Arabs’ riots and public statements against the Jews.” Epstein suggested, without certainty, that “what was going on in Palestine and the Near East could well be the result of directives from

London.”615

Epstein gave details about British involvement in the fighting, pointing out a trio of

British agents. Brigadier Clayton was the founder of the Arab League and an “instrument of

British policy.” Sir Walter Smart was a diplomat specialist of Arab Affairs and oriental secretary. And General John B. Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, commanded the Arab Legion, officially in the service of King Adbullah. He described the three types of armed units the

British were using to destabilize Palestine: the Mufti’s forces of Palestinian Arabs led by Hasan

Salame; armed detachments of 5,000 Muslim volunteers, among which some former Nazi

614 Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, February 9, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, l.86; DISR, Part I, doc. 112, pp.262-263. 615 S.K. Tsarapkin to V.M. Molotov: “Conversation with Epstein, the Representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Washington” Washington, December 18, 1947; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, d.9, ll.219-21; DISR, Part I, doc. 107, pp.251-253. 279 collaborators from Yugoslavia, Crimea, and the Caucasus; and men from General Anders’s army, Poles who refused to return to Soviet-occupied Poland. The two latter forces certainly emphasized that the Zionists and the Soviets shared common enemies, whom the British supported, which showed “indisputable evidence” of their “duplicitous behavior […] on the

Palestine question.”616

Whether British influence was the reason for U.S. reassessment of partition, or not,

Zionist representatives were not wrong to suspect the State Department of attempting to reorient policy on Palestine. The President felt that he had already established his view on the issue when he bypassed the State Department and led the U.S. into supporting the U.N. resolution for the partition of Palestine. Afterward, Truman returned to relying on his State Department to handle the matter, without suspecting that its staff remained resolutely opposed to partition and would try to undermine Truman’s decision to support it. The State Department exploited every trouble in Palestine as a pretext to question the viability of the U.N. resolution. Henderson especially put all his energy into reversing the U.N. resolution. He was the one who led Marshall to institute the arms embargo in December 1947. The President only learned about it when it was made public.617

The civil war unfolding in Palestine, Arabs’ rejection of the resolution, and British obstruction of the Palestine Commission’s work, constituted enough difficulty to provide the

State Department and the National Security Council with the pretext to withdraw U.S. support for partition. In January 1948, the State Department went on the offensive. Henderson and

Kennan prepared a report, “U.S. Security Interests in the Mediterranean and the Near East

Areas,” and submitted it to the National Security Council. The authors accused partition of

616 Report of a meeting of S.K. Tsarapkin with E. Epstein, Washington, January 26, 1948; Diary: AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.65-71; DISR, Part I, doc. 111, pp.258-262. 617 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 278. 280 being a violation of the principles of self-determination forged by the League of Nations. They warned against its implementation, arguing that moderate Arab leaders would be overthrown by extremists such as former Grand Mufti al-Husayni or leader of the Arab League Azzam Bey.

Their anti-Zionism would extend to the entire West “in direct proportion to the latter’s support of

Zionist armies.”618

Henderson and Kennan, of course, raised the threat that the partition of Palestine would promote Soviet aims of “sowing dissension and discord in non-Communist countries.” This was the first of a series of memoranda proactively building the case for withdrawing U.S. support for partition. But as Dean Rusk pointed out, “a major change in our Palestine policy would require the approval of the President as well as of leading Members of Congress.” Thus partition opponents would need to demonstrate that the situation had changed enough to justify such a shift.619 Lovett sent the report to Defense Secretary James Forrestal, who concurred that the U.S.

“should attempt to have the plan withdrawn as soon as possible.”620 Although some of these memoranda were on occasion transmitted to the President, there is no evidence that the White

House was involved in the strategy to undermine partition.

On February 11, 1948, a State Department memorandum announced the reorientation. It underplayed Truman’s political decision to support partition, reducing his motivation to “the trend of U.S. public opinion,” which, stirred up by the mistreatment of Jews in Europe and their desire to go to Palestine, “practically forced official U.S. support for partition.” Dismissing

618 Memorandum by the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan) to the Secretary of State, copy to Lovett, January 20, 1948, with attached memorandum “Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” January 19, 1948; Document 10; PPS Files, Lot 64 D 563, Near and Middle East, 1947– 1948; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 545-554; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d10 consulted on September 2, 2018. 619 Memorandum by Mr. Dean Rusk to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett); January 26, 1948, with attached “Notes on PPS/19”; Document 13; 867N.01/2–648; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 556-562; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d13 consulted on September 2, 2018. 620 James Forrestal, The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 300. 281 public opinion in a democracy was in itself ironical enough, and omitted the fact that Truman too, was moved by the Jewish D.P.s’ ordeal. Then the memorandum blamed Jewish leaders, who misled the U.S. that “they would be able to handle the situation in Palestine if partition took place.”621 This was even more cynical, considering that Britain was uncooperative with the

Commission in charge of preparing the ground for partition, that partition had not taken place yet, and above all that the State Department’s embargo was denying the Yishuv the possibility to obtain even defensive weapons.

Another memorandum followed soon thereafter on February 17, looking for what pretext the U.S. could use to reverse its decision to support partition. Only “a demonstration of the incompatibility of our present position with the security of our own nation” could justify such a shift. Highlighting once again the dangers that Communist expansion in the Middle East would represent for U.S. access to oil and therefore to the success of the Marshall Plan, it used the Joint

Chiefs of Staff’s analysis that “the most unfavorable [… eventuality in Palestine …] would be the intrusion of Soviet forces, second only to that the introduction of US troops in opposition to possible Arab resistance.” The State Department memorandum warned that Moscow intended to exploit the Palestine situation to introduce “Soviet or Soviet-controlled forces under the guise of some UN action” to infiltrate the region with “a considerable number of Communist operatives.

Such operatives are already at work within the Jewish community […] and their number will be increased if the Jewish State is established.”622 The U.S. was not exempt of its own

Judeokommuna suspicions.

621 “Policy Planning Staff: The Problem of Palestine” Department of State, February 11, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 622 “The Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” February 17, 1948; NSC Staff, February-March 1948; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 1 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 282

After the oil and Cold War arguments, the memorandum addressed the question of U.N. credibility. “It is not clear that the prestige of the UN will be better served by intransigent insistence upon the implementation of the Plan for Partition” than it would by a peaceful solution. “Sever fighting […] raise grave doubts that the proposed solution […] is the one most conducive to the security of the US, the increased prestige of the UN, and to the peace of the world.” It then questioned the “doubtful legality” of the use of military forces to enforce partition. One might wonder on what basis it would be illegal for the U.N. Security Council to allow an international force under U.N. auspices to enforce a decision voted by the U.N. General

Assembly. Regardless, the two memoranda then suggested four different courses of action the

U.S. could now pursue.

The first option would be to support partition, including by the use of armed forces. This would lead the U.S. to sell arms to the Jews, and maybe to send troops under U.N. auspices.

Since Russia would also send troops, the U.S. would have to match its participation. It would maintain a coherent U.N. and U.S. policy and solve the issue of the Jewish D.P.s in Europe.

Still, it would be “a declaration of war against the Arab world” and “alienate the Moslem world,” which would jeopardize U.S. air base rights, British military facilities, and cancel commercial concessions, including oil, cultural education, religious and philanthropic institutions. Moreover, it would likely lead to assassination of U.S. citizens and damages to U.S. interests. It would impediment the success of the Marshall Plan, open the region to Soviet expansion, and deploy

U.S. troops, yet it would fail to provide a peaceful solution to the Palestine question.

The second option, favored by some N.S.C. staff, would be to support the partition plan by all means short of the use of force. This would maintain policy coherence and solve the

Jewish D.P.s problem. It would prevent the U.S. from taking too much responsibility for the

283

Palestine issue, which would remain within the U.N. framework. It would not fix the continuing deterioration of U.S.-Arab relations, and might encourage the Arabs to increase their resistance.

It would also permit “further exploitation of the interests of world Zionism by the USSR” and if partition was implemented, provide a vehicle for Soviet expansion and threaten the Marshall

Plan.623

The third option would be to adopt a “passive or neutral” role, maintaining the arms embargo, declining bilateral assistance to all parties involved, and opposing sending forces “even under the U.N. banner.” Basically, “we would leave it to the peoples of Palestine to give effect to the General Assembly resolution.”624 It would maintain U.N. and U.S. policy coherence, avoid sending U.S. troops, and stop embittering U.S. relations with the Arab world. But it would not prevent the Palestine situation from deteriorating, because it would surrender all initiative in the task of finding a solution, thus opening the way to Soviet intervention or to a solution that could harm U.S. interests. It would allow “profit-seeking arms smugglers” or Communist assistance to either side, which could jeopardize U.S. interests in the area. Bloodshed might follow, and pressure on the U.S. to intervene would increase. In addition, a passive attitude on this question would make it impossible to justify an intervention on legal or moral grounds in

Greece or Italy.625

623 “Policy Planning Staff: The Problem of Palestine” Department of State, February 11, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library; and “The Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” February 17, 1948; NSC Staff, February-March 1948; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 1 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 624 “Policy Planning Staff: The Problem of Palestine” Department of State, February 11, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 625 “The Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” February 17, 1948; NSC Staff, February-March 1948; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 1 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 284

The last option, obviously favored by most authors of the memorandum, would be to

“alter our previous policy of support for partition and seek another solution to the problem.”

Arguing that partition had become unworkable and that the peoples of Palestine were not ready for self-government, the Security Council would explore other avenues. The General Assembly would propose an international trusteeship or a federal state, with provision for some Jewish immigration. In this case, the disadvantages represent a shorter list than the advantages. It would produce violent Zionist opposition, but the Arabs would support it. It would “give Russia and its Communist satellites a sounding board for further vitriolic vituperations” but would prevent Soviet expansion in the Middle East. “Our prestige in the Middle East would immediately rise and we would regain in large measure our strategically important position. […]

Our national interests would thus be served and our national security strengthened.”626 It would also lessen the chance of using U.S. military force.627

As illustrated by this memorandum, the main, and almost sole incentive to keep supporting partition was that it would finally resolve the Jewish D.P. problem. On the other hand, there were many incentives for advising a shift of U.S. policy on Palestine. The chief ones were to prevent any Soviet participation and expansion, to avoid U.S. military intervention, and to maintain good relations with the Arab states in order to preserve U.S. interests. The U.N. should urge Britain to maintain its mandate long enough to give the General Assembly the time to reconsider the question and establish a trusteeship.

626 “Policy Planning Staff: The Problem of Palestine” Department of State, February 11, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 627 “Policy Planning Staff: The Problem of Palestine” Department of State, February 11, 1948; State Department Policy Planning; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library; and “The Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine” February 17, 1948; NSC Staff, February-March 1948; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 1 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 285

New York Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington, D.C., James Reston, reported the State and Defense Departments’ fear of Zionist pressure, which led the U.S. to support partition and might now convince the administration to send troops to implement it.628

Despite Reston’s emphasis on the fact that Washington was not backing away from partition, his article precipitated pro-Zionist pressure on Truman. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to the President about the need to strengthen the United Nations as an instrument of peace by upholding its decisions. Sensing the State Department’s shift from upholding its support for partition to actively favoring trusteeship in Austin’s draft speech, Truman uttered some reservation, which he cabled to Marshall: “I want to make it clear, however, that nothing should be presented to

Security Council that could be interpreted as a recession on our part from the position we took in the General Assembly. Send final draft of Austin’s remarks for my consideration.”629

Despite Truman’s “consideration,” Austin’s speech at the Security Council was ambiguous. It confirmed U.S. commitment to the U.N. resolution while betraying the State

Department’s search for a way out of partition. Austin assured that the U.S. would not act unilaterally and would uphold U.N. decisions. However in a very confusing manner, he raised the idea that with regard to the hostilities between British, Jews, and Arabs, “the Security

Council […] would normally attempt to use, measures short of armed force to maintain the peace, it is authorized under the Charter to use armed force if it considers other measures inadequate. […] But the Council’s action must be directed solely to the maintenance of international peace […] and not to enforcing partition.” It is very unclear whether Austin advised the use of force or not, and to which end. The construct of maintaining peace while not enforcing partition was vague. One might wonder what type of action a military force could take

628 James Reston: “Bipartisan policy on Holy Land Seen” in The New York Times, January 27, 1948; 8. 629 President Truman to the Secretary of State, February 22, 1948; Document 52; Elsey Papers; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 645; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d52 consulted on September 2, 2018. 286 to maintain peace among a population so intertwined and yet unable to coexist – to the point that the U.N., after long deliberations, had opted for partition and separation, as the best solution.

Then, after highlighting the Arab refusal to cooperate, he cited the Commission’s conclusion that “it can not fulfill its functions […] unless armed forces are provided.” Austin advised the Security Council to explore the question of restoring international peace, which seemed to require the use of force. Then he suggested to give “effect to the recommendation of the General Assembly with the full use of, but within the limitations of, the power of the Security

Council under the Charter,” limitations which Austin said earlier forbid the use of force for this aim.630 This idea that the Security Concil does not have the power to enforce partition, or any decision voted by the General Assembly for that matter, was debatable, but the President did not challenge it, probably relying on the State Department for the procedures and legal matters within the U.N. framework.

Truman had approved this speech despite its confusing phrasing and lack of clarity, as it precautiously emphasized that the U.S. would maintain its support for the partition resolution.

Even after it was delivered and had caused a public uproar, Truman confirmed his endorsement, therefore dismissing Freda Kirchwey’s assumption that the State Department was about to double-cross him.631 Of course there were also some positive reactions to Austin’s speech.

Former Under Secretary of State William Phillips wrote to Henderson on February 25 that “the whole country except the fanatical New York Zionists is sighing with relief this morning with the news that we are not committed to enforce the decision with respect to Palestine. […] The

630 “For the Press: Text of Statement by Ambassador Warren R. Austin, to the Security Council of the United Nations,” February 24, 1948; State Department Policy Planning;; Subject Files; CIA Files; Folder 2 “Palestine”; Box 13; SMOF: National Security Council File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 631 Kirchwey to Truman, February 25, 1948, CZA L35/137. 287 increasing violence and bloodshed in Palestine has proved […] that a Jewish State is not practicable.”632”

However, the majority despised Austin’s statement. The volume of mail to the White

House in support of partition swelled, exceeding 70,000 telegrams, postcards, letters, and petitions in the first quarter of 1948 alone – it had already been 65,000 in the last quarter of

1947, when the vote for partition was on the U.N. table.633 Senator Francis J. Myers emphasized that Austin’s speech gave the impression, not just to Jews but also to non-Jews, that “our country is ‘selling out’ the Jewish people and undercutting the UN structure.” Myers told Truman that some lower level Democratic leaders in Pennsylvania resigned from the party in protest of the speech. He blamed Austin’s blurred wording: “Why can’t we come right out and say what we mean instead of hedging the thing around with such phraseology that even the trained newsmen and commentators can’t seem to penetrate the fog?”634 He stated that if the government was

“ducking” on the Palestine issue, the American people should be told clearly. Truman responded that he was not “ducking.”

The president resented this renewed pressure and complained that “individuals and groups asked me, usually in rather quarrelsome and emotional ways, to stop the Arabs, to keep the British from supporting the Arabs, to furnish American soldiers, to do this, that, and the other.”635 He became so annoyed that he refused to meet with any Zionist leaders. When Chaim

Weizmann sought an appointment with the president, Matthew Connelly, Truman’s Appointment secretary, replied that such a meeting was out of the question. Then Zionist leaders asked

632 “Letter from William Phillips (former Under Secretary of State and later member of the AACI) to Loy W. Henderson, Department of State” February 25, 1948, transmitted to the President on March 16, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 9 “Palestine 1948-1952”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 633 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 288. 634 “Letter from Francis J. Myers to the President” March 4, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 9 “Palestine 1948- 1952”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 635 Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 373. 288

Truman’s lifetime friend Eddie Jacobson, to obtain for Weizmann an appointment with Truman.

The latter replied that “there wasn’t anything he [Weizmann] could say to me that I didn’t already know” and complained that “the situation has been a headache to me for two and a half years. The Jews are so emotional, and the Arabs are so difficult to talk with that it is almost impossible to get anything done. The British have, of course, been exceedingly noncooperative.”636

Jacobson did not give up. He went to the White House in person on March 13, and put

Palestine at the heart of the discussion despite Connelly’s urge not to mention it. “Truman said sharply that ‘he didn’t want to discuss Palestine or the Jews or the Arabs or the British; that he was satisfied to let these subjects take their course through the United Nations’.” Highlighting that Weizmann was old and sick and went to Washington only in the hope of meeting with

Truman. Jacobson added: “Now you refuse to see him because you were insulted by some

American Jewish leaders, even though you know that Weizmann had absolutely nothing to do with these insults and would be the last man to be a party to them.” Truman gave in, as Jacobson recalled “You win, you baldheaded son of a bitch. I will see him.” He did so off the record, without press coverage or public knowledge.637

The meeting took place on March 18, 1948, and was very friendly. Weizmann had requested and received 25 minutes, but Truman found this insufficient and extended it to 45 minutes. According to Jacobson, “President Truman pledged Dr. Weizmann his word that the

Negev would become and remain a part of the Jewish State, a pledge he kept regardless of the many, many pressures for him to either modify or abandon it.” He also agreed to instruct the

636 “Letter from the President to Eddie Jacobson” Key West, Fla., February 27, 1948; Correspondence File: Harry S. Truman; Eddie Jacobson Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 637 Edward Jacobson: “I Too Have a Hero”; letter from Edward Jacobson to Josef Cohn, on March 30, 1952, published in “Two Presidents and a Haberdasher” in American Jewish Archives, Vol. XX, No. 1, April 1968; pp.3- 15. 289

State Department to reconsider the grounds for the embargo. When Weizmann asked him about free Jewish immigration, Truman reiterated the role of the Jewish displaced persons in convincing him of the importance of partition. In Truman’s policy-making, the Jewish D.P.s remained a prominent factor, which became increasingly visible as the White House and the

State Department started to diverge on Palestine.

But during these weeks between Austin’s February 24 speech and the Truman-Weizmann meeting, the State Department had not quit its efforts to undermine the partition resolution.

Marshall told Austin that the interests of Jews, Arabs, and British were irreconcilable, and that

Austin would soon have to emphasize the impossibility of implementing partition and the need for establishing an international trusteeship over Palestine. McClintock, Rusk’s special assistant for U.N. affairs, drafted a new speech for Austin, which was approved by Marshall on March 5,

1948.638 Then Marshall sent this draft to Austin, assuring him that the president had approved it as his next statement to the United Nations, “for use if and when necessary.”639 Truman had indeed approved the draft, on the day he announced his candidacy for president. According to

Radosh, “in all likelihood, Truman signed it while he was aboard his presidential yacht, […] believing that he would have the final say in any policy change as important as this one would be.”640

As the General Assembly announced it would convene a special session, the State

Department was ready to reverse Truman’s Palestine policy and the partition resolution, and had already drafted a trusteeship agreement. Diverse sources claim that Truman and his White

638 The Secretary of State to the United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin), March 5, 1948; Document 74; 501.BB Palestine/3–548: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 679-685; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d74 consulted on September 2, 2018. 639 The Secretary of State to the United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin), March 8, 1948; Document 80; 501.BB Palestine/3–848: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 696; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d80 consulted on September 2, 2018. 640 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 292. 290

House staff, if they were aware of the State Department’s preferred orientation, did not know about their specific plans. First, a couple of memoranda from Clark Clifford, one of the

President’s closest counselors, argued that it was unthinkable that the United States could fail to back the Palestine resolution. He recommended that the U.S. and the U.N. work to press the

Arab states to accept partition, brand them as aggressors if they refused, and require Britain comply with the resolution. Clifford suggested lifting the embargo to allow the Haganah to arm for self-defense. He advised helping the U.N. to set up an international security force for

Palestine, made up of volunteers.641

Clifford’s second memorandum to Truman called the State Department’s arguments

“completely fallacious,” and assured Truman that partition was “the best hope to avoid war.” He also argued that partition was the best route to strengthen the U.S. strategic position and weaken the Soviet Union in the Middle East. The U.S. could not back away from its commitment in the

U.N. on Palestine, if only for fear of losing its allies’ trust, especially if a West-European security alliance was to be created in the wake of the Marshall Plan (the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization was already in the making). On the oil argument, he was also reassuring: “the Arab states must have oil royalties or go broke; […] their need of the United States is greater than our need of them.” He advocated firmness, in support of the Truman Doctrine, if only to be taken seriously by our allies, by the Arab states, and even by the Soviet Union.642

The shift in the State Department’s policy was obvious to all in the Security Council

(short of Britain, which declined to participate). Soviet delegate Gromyko asked Ambassador

641 Memorandum by the President’s Special Counsel (Clifford): “Proposed program on the Palestine Problem,” March 6, 1948; Document 78; Clifford Papers; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 687-689; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d78 consulted on September 2, 2018. 642 Memorandum by the President’s Special Counsel (Clifford) to President Truman, March 6, 1948; Document 79; Clifford Papers; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 690-696; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d79 consulted on September 2, 2018. 291

Austin if his questions to Arab, Jewish, and British representatives “aimed at changing the recommendations of the G.A.?” Austin denied. Even U.N. secretary general Trygve Lie concluded “only the Soviet Union seemed to be seriously intent upon implementing partition; the

United States clearly was not.” He recalled telling Austin that partition had to be enforced. If it were not, “the U.N. would go downhill rapidly to nothing.”643 Austin rejected both suggestions.

He reported to Marshall,644 who maintained that partition could not be implemented. He claimed that the Council must “dispose one way or another of the partition issue.”645 Austin was not comfortable overturning Truman’s decision, but his own deputy John Ross and Assistant

Secretary of State Dean Rusk persuaded him, and in McClintock’s words, Austin was “back on the track.”646

While the State Department’s attitude was obvious for the Zionists, the Soviets, and the

U.N., it was not so clear for the White House. As a result, just as Truman was reassuring

Weizmann about U.S. commitment to partition, the next day Austin delivered another speech to the Security Council, this time clearly advising to reverse it. He claimed that “it had become evident that it was impossible to implement the General Assembly partition resolution” as Jews,

Arabs, and British could not agree on it. The region would fall into chaos when the British leave. “The Security Council could not permit that to happen,” which justified that “a temporary trusteeship for Palestine should be established under the Trusteeship Council of the United

643 Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace: Seven Years with the United Nations (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 169. 644 The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State, March 11, 1948; Document 89; 501.BB Palestine/3–1148: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 707-710; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d89 consulted on September 2, 2018; and The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State, March 11, 1948; Document 91; 501.BB Palestine/3–1348: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 712-719; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d91 consulted on September 2, 2018. 645 The Secretary of State to the United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin), March 16, 1948; Document 96; 501.BB Palestine/3–1648: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 728-729; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d96 consulted on September 2, 2018. 646 Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by Mr. Robert M. McClintock, Washington, March 17, 1948; Document 97; 501.BB Palestine/3–1748; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 729-731; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d97 consulted on September 2, 2018. 292

Nations to maintain the peace and to afford the Jews and Arabs of Palestine […] opportunity to reach an agreement.”647 Rusk doubled up by holding a press conference, in which he confirmed that the State Department was officially recommending a change in policy from partition to trusteeship.648

This was a bombshell. Jacobson was shocked by “our country’s reversal of position.”

He wrote that “all blamed Truman for Austin’s statement” except Weizmann, “who expressed the utmost faith in the word of President Truman. ‘Mr. Jacobson, don’t be disappointed and do not feel badly. I do not believe that President Truman knew what was going to happen in the

United Nations on Friday when he talked to me the day before. […] Keep the White House doors open’.” As it turned out, Truman himself was astonished by Austin’s statement, according to his own diary.649 “The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. I didn’t expect what would happen.” On March 20, he continued, “I find that the State Dept. has reversed my

Palestine policy. The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! I am now in the position of a liar and a double-crosser. […] There are people on the third and fourth levels of the State

Dept. who have always wanted to cut my throat. They’ve succeeded in doing it.” Truman felt embarrassed and humiliated by his own State Department. The following day, he wrote: “I spend the day trying to right what has happened. No luck. Marshall makes a statement. Doesn’t

647 Statement Made by the United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) Before the Security Council on March 19, 1948; Document 105; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 742-744; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d105 consulted on September 2, 2018. 648 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 302. 649 Truman’s diary entries of March 19 and 20, 1948; https://www.trumanlibrary.org/exhibit_documents/index.php?pagenumber=5&titleid=177&tldate=1948-00- 00%20&collectionid=berlin&PageID=1&groupid=3405 and https://www.trumanlibrary.org/exhibit_documents/index.php?pagenumber=6&titleid=177&tldate=1948-00- 00%20&collectionid=berlin&PageID=1&groupid=3405 consulted on September 12, 2018. 293 help me a mite.” Jacobson claimed that Truman “reaffirmed, very strongly, the promises he had made to Dr. Weizmann.”650

One might question whether the State Department had indeed bypassed Truman’s policy unilaterally. The president did approve a draft of Austin’s speech a couple of weeks before it was delivered and Marshall claimed he understood this as a green light. But Clifford contended that Truman put three conditions to this change of policy – the exhaustion of all conciliatory measures to implement partition, the recommendation of alternatives, and the rejection of partition by the Security Council itself. These conditions were not met when Austin made this speech and nobody warned Truman that Austin was about to deliver the statement. Clifford believed Truman’s genuine surprise, despite having himself warned the president that State

Secretary Marshall and Under Secretary Lovett were working to change the his policy. A few days before Austin’s speech, Truman still refused to believe it. “I know how Marshall feels and he knows how I feel. They are not going to change our policy.”651

Truman called two meetings, which seemed to confirm his genuineness. On March 20, he gathered his personal secretary Matthew Connelly, with Special counselor Clifford, his adviser Charles Bohlen, Dean Rusk, and White House Press Secretary Charles Ross. The problem was that Truman thought the alternative of trusteeship would not be announced until after the Security Council had renounced partition by a formal vote. As a result, the public would have expected some kind of policy reversal. Now Truman was in an embarrassing position, forced to accept the fait accompli or reveal a vacillating Administration by repudiating

650 Edward Jacobson: “I Too Have a Hero”; letter from Edward Jacobson to Josef Cohn, on March 30, 1952, published in “Two Presidents and a Haberdasher” in American Jewish Archives, Vol. XX, No. 1, April 1968; pp.3- 15. 651 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 304. 294 his own State Department.652 On March 24, Truman gathered Marshall, Henderson, Rusk,

Clifford, Connelly, and Niles, among others. He charged them to reconcile support for partition with the trusteeship proposal. Henderson claimed that “partition should be considered dead and buried” – which Truman rejected.653

The next day, Truman issued a statement assuring that partition was not abandoned, and that a trusteeship was only proposed as a temporary solution to keep the peace in the vacuum of power that British withdrawal would leave in Palestine on May 15. “With such a truce and such a trusteeship, peaceful settlement is yet possible; without them, open warfare is just over the horizon.”654 This did not help. Outraged messages started to pour in, such as Congressman

Robert Nathan’s letter to Lovett on March 24. Nathan claimed that the State Department did not even try to impose the U.N. decision. The U.S. should have warned Arab countries unequivocally that it would not condone armed interference. The trouble in Palestine came from

“vacillation and uncertainty and constant shifting of policies.” Opponents of partition within the administration, such as Henderson and Wadsworth, had remained influential, whereas advocates of partition had not had a voice in the matter since partition had been voted. Nathan warned of the loss of moral status of the United State and the sabotage of the United Nations’ prestige.

“There are rumblings that the whole United Nations secretariat is talking of resigning.” He advised to lift the embargo “so that there will be the possibility of defense by those who are being attacked.”655

652 Charles Ross: “Memorandum” March 29, 1948; Box 6, Charles Ross Papers; Truman Library. 653 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 305. 654 “Statement by the President” March 25, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Palestine Press Release”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 655 “Letter from Robert R. Nathan to Robert A. Lovett, Under Secretary of State” March 24, 1948; Israel Affairs, 1948; General File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 295

Eleanor Roosevelt did threaten to resign from the U.S. delegation to the U.N., and Trygve

Lie suggested to Austin that the two of them both resign together. On the other hand, “high officials of the Syrian, Iraq and Saudi Arabian governments have indicated their appreciation for the recent US statement on Palestine,” and London also welcomed the revised U.S. policy but raised their fear that Palestine Jews might attempt to establish a state before a trusteeship can be set up.656 A high government official in Jerusalem even predicted that “if the partition decision is allowed to stand, […] the Jews will proceed to form a state regardless of UN deliberations; but if partition is revoked by the General Assembly, he does not think the Jews will act counter to the United Nations.”657 Therefore, Britain pressed the international community to go even further and officially revoke the partition decision.

Saving partition: Zionist actions on the ground, Soviet firmness in the United Nations

From their perspective, the Zionist representatives analyzed the “switch” in U.S. policy. Chaim

Weizmann questioned John Ross on the catalysts. Weizmann suggested it might be from fear of the Arabs, which he dismissed as divided and weak. Was it oil? He argued that the Arabs had no other choice than sell to the U.S. (“what good is the ruble?”). Was it fear of Russia? There was no chance it could ever infiltrate the Jewish state: “Bolshevik agents had tried very hard in the 1920s to get a foothold in Palestine and had failed miserably.” Afterward Weizmann explained that the Jews “were granted independence in November and independence was withdrawn in April.” He then confirmed the British assumption that the Jews would establish a

Jewish state, but might be reluctant to violate an international decision if the partition resolution

656 Summary of Telegrams, March 23, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 January-April; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 657 Summary of Telegrams, March 31, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 January-April; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 296 was cancelled or suspended by a trusteeship. “Assuming that there were no two-thirds majority in GA for trusteeship, the Jews would have the legal, and if not the legal certainly the moral right to go ahead with their plans to establish the Jewish state.” Ross added that he tried to convince him otherwise.658

After Austin’s statement on March 19, the Zionists knew without a doubt that no international authority was going to come to Palestine to impose, implement, and secure the U.N. decision. It led them to shift the Haganah policy from limited self-defensive actions to an all-out offensive. Indeed, though Moscow was much more steady and coherent than Washington and resolutely stood by the partition resolution, there was no sign that Moscow would ever come to the rescue, in more than just words in the U.N. and encouragements to its satellites to sell arms to the Yishuv. At a Security Council meeting, Gromyko accused the U.S. of trying to bury the partition plan because of “their oil interests and military-strategic positions in the Middle East.”

Shertok doubled down, denouncing “Arab aggression from outside” and claiming that the Jews were “ripe for independence.”659 Rabbi Silver pointed out that the U.S. was not prepared to use force to enforce the legally voted U.N. resolution, so why would it be ready to use force to establish a trusteeship when the British have had a trusteeship over Palestine for 25 years and were unable to produce a solution.660

Gromyko received Molotov’s instructions to for the General Assembly special session.

Aside from making sure that the Soviet Union and its allies would be well represented in all instances and committees, Molotov told the Soviet delegation to “defend the resolution of the

658 “Incoming Telegram” US Mission to the UN, New York, to Secretary of State – Rusk from Ross; April 15, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “W”; Box 167; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 659 Editorial Note, Document 132; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 776-777; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d132 consulted on September 2, 2018. 660 “Silver exhorts US to Back Partition,” in The New York Times, April 10, 1948; 8; cited in Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 312. 297

General Assembly of 29 November 1947 on the partition of Palestine. […] Great Britain has obstructed its implementation by every means […], the Security Council […] has not exhausted all the resources at its disposal for putting this resolution into practice.” He also instructed the delegation to criticize the U.S. trusteeship proposal, on the basis that it would lead to an aggravation of the struggle between Jews and Arabs and compromise the future of the U.N.’s authority by making it “a pawn of US ruling clique.” In addition, both Jews and Arabs, whose level of development should “grant self-determination,” opposed it.661

Stalin approved Molotov’s instructions to defend the partition plan and reject trusteeship.662 Accordingly, Gromyko declared that the only way to prevent a bloodbath was the creation of two states in Palestine. If the international community withdrew from this commitment in favor of a trusteeship, Palestine would become a warzone. Yet, in a private exchange, Molotov agreed with Vyshinsky that the British mandate will expire on May 15, 1948, and that “the future of Palestine is still unknown.”663 This suggested that the Soviet Union had no plan of its own to uphold partition, other than the support it was lending the U.N. resolution in the international forum. Did this mean that the U.S.S.R. was only prepared to oppose the U.S. orally, for show, but not to risk suggesting something that Washington might disapprove, such as a U.N. military operation to implement partition? Did Moscow plan to watch how the events would unfold as mere observers? As much as U.S. diplomats saw an evil Soviet Union trying to take over the Middle East through the Palestine question, the Soviet attitude, though rhetorically aggressive, was actually quite noncommittal.

661 V.M. Molotov to I.V. Stalin, Moscow, April 9, 1948; AVP RF, f.06, op.10, p.15, d.160, ll.4-7; DISR, Part I, doc. 117, pp.269-270. 662 AVP RF, f.06, o.10, p.15, d.160, ll.4-7, April 9, 1948, published in Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’, #10, 1998, p.89. 663 AVP RF, f.089, op.1, p.2, d.15, l.4, March 17, 1948; this document is not accessible but is mentioned in K. Seirgeichuk to A.Ia.Vyshinsky; Moscow, 6 March 1948; AVP RF, f.089, op.1, p.2, d.15, l.2; DISR, Part I, doc. 115, pp.264-265. 298

It is possible that the Zionists felt empowered by Soviet diplomatic support for the resolution to shift their strategy on the ground and launch their offensive to secure the territories allocated to the Jewish state by the partition resolution. The unending deliberations showed that no concrete, military help would come from the U.N., the West, or even from the Soviet sphere, to and allow the birth and insure the safety of the Jewish state. In addition, the international community seemed too divided to reach any decision, so the Jews had to take matters into their own hands, and most likely would not face too harsh a condemnation, thanks to international divisions and Soviet diplomatic commitment to the U.N. resolution. Finally, the Yishuv needed to act quickly, to prevent the idea of trusteeship from becoming a legal reality that would undermine the international community’s commitment to the partition plan and might then condemn any Jewish attempt at implementing the resolution unilaterally by declaring statehood when the British leave.

It might also be the timing of Operation Balak, a smuggling network purchasing arms in

Europe to bypass embargoes, which had secured enough weaponry for the Haganah to launch its offensive. The most important arms deal had been signed with Czechoslovakia under Moscow’s umbrella, and supplied the Yishuv with 23 Avia S-1999 fighters. The first shipment of rifles,

MG-34 machine-guns, and bullets, reached Palestine clandestinely in the night of March 31-

April 1 by cargo plane. The second, with the same type of weapons but in much larger quantity, reached Tel Aviv by sea on April 2.664 Zionist forces still lacked heavy weaponry, but for the first time, the Haganah could arm its soldiers rather than borrow weapons from local units, who were reluctant to lend their only means of self-defense, even temporarily.665 In addition, conscription, active since November 1947 for men 17 to 25 years old, was extended to men 26 to

664 Eliezer Cohen, Israel’s Best Defense: The First Full Story of the , 1st American ed. (New York: Orion Books, 1993), 504. 665 Morris, 1948, 117. 299

35 and single women in March, and to all men under 40 in April 1948. In the spring 1948 Ben

Gurion had reorganized and transformed the Haganah into the army of the future Jewish state.

Plan Daleth, or Plan D, which historians still debate whether it was more of a defensive plan to protect the Yishuv from Arab invasion and potential fifth column, or an offensive plan to rid the future Jewish areas of too great an Arab population, was partially implemented.666 The

Yishuv regained control of most roads, including the road to Jerusalem in April, which relieved the besieged Jewish population for a few days before the road was blocked again. In April, the death of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and the debacles of Fawzi al-Qawuqji, such as the loss of the

Jezreel Valley, provoked the flight of many Arab civilians. In April, the Irgun and Lehi perpetrated a massacre of the villagers of Deir Yassin, with whom the Haganah had a non- aggression agreement. The Haganah and Yishuv authorities unanimously condemned the massacre, but Arab leaders mediatized it, so many more defenseless Arab civilians fled. The disorganization and divisions of the Arab forces added to civilians’ fears and retreat.

By late April-early May 1948, the situation on the ground had radically evolved toward a greater separation of the two populations. Yishuv forces held most of the territory meant to become part of the Jewish state except for the Negev desert, and had even seized some of the areas attributed to the Arab state, such as western Galilee and part of the corridor to Jerusalem.

In addition, the Yishuv had set up all the premises of a functioning government. The Zionist forces were concretely implementing partition single-handedly and getting ready to avoid a

666 See among others, Rogan and Shlaim, The War for Palestine; Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Morris, 1948; Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited; Karsh, The Arab-Israeli Conflict; Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987); Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Macmillan, 2000); Sayigh and Shlaim, The Cold War and the Middle East. 300 vacuum of power when the British administration would withdraw on May 15 – or collapsed before this date.

Yet despite these facts on the ground in Palestine and the two meetings in which the

President reasserted that partition was his ultimate goal, the State and Defense Departments did not give up their aim of having the partition resolution revoked by the United Nations. Having failed to convince the British to remain in Palestine long enough to give time to the international community to figure out an alternative solution, they undertook to convince the president that partition would require U.S. armed forces on the ground. James Forrestal asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a memorandum presenting the forces necessary to maintain order in Palestine, assuming the Jewish Agency, the Arab Higher Committee, and the British agreed to cooperate.

The result was over 100,000 Army, Navy, Airforce, and maintenance personnel combined, which might be 45% U.S., 45% British, and 10% French. That would require partial mobilization and a supplementary budget, and over-extend the armed forces by increasing their dispersion. And it could not deployed by May 15, 1948.667

Early April, the U.S. introduced a new resolution calling for an immediate truce in

Palestine, which was unanimously approved except for Ukrainian and Soviet abstentions.

Moscow knew that the Zionist forces were on the offensive and wanted to give them time to consolidate their gains. The General Assembly called for an emergency session, which convened on . The State Department recommended that Truman approve “a temporary trusteeship, […] without prejudice to the eventual settlement of the Palestine question.” The

U.N. would be the administering authority. The U.S. would provide its share of military forces alongside other countries. And the agreement would have a specific provision for Jewish

667 Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered by James Forrestal for the President: “Subject: Provision of U.S. Armed Forces in Palestine,” April 4, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 9 “Palestine 1948-1952”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 301 immigration, with an initial 100,000 D.P.s, to be agreed upon by Jewish and Arab communities.

Land ownership and sale would be attributed regardless of race, nationality, or creed. The agreement would protect the holy sites, and this trusteeship would end as soon as the two communities agreed on a plan of government.668

The State Department drafted its recommendations. If the partition resolution was to be amended, the U.S. should support the changes susceptible to bring about a peaceful implementation. If a new resolution providing for a temporary trusteeship was approved by a two-third vote, the U.S. should support or initiate the suspension of the old partition resolution.

If a new resolution providing for a political settlement was approved by a two-third vote, the

U.S. should initiate the withdrawal of the partition resolution. In other words, all three scenarios implied amending, suspending, or withdrawing from the U.N. resolution on the partition of

Palestine, on the basis that “the Security Council was not prepared to accept or implement the

Assembly’s resolution of November 29.”669

Truman asked his Naval Aid Robert L. Dennison to analyze the State Department’s draft on April 20, which Dennison found “to be ambiguous, confused, irrelevant and unnecessary.” Its first recommendation was unrealistic: the partition resolution could not be “amended” as it would modify the principle of partition. The second recommendation was also unlikely, as to obtain a two-third vote for a temporary trusteeship would require the U.S. to commit to contributing military support. The third recommendation was just useless: if the General

Assembly was able to design a new resolution acceptable by both sides and providing for a

668 Memorandum from the Acting Secretary of State to the President: “Subject: Palestine,” April 3, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 9 “Palestine 1948-1952”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 669 “Action on the General Assembly’s Resolution of November 29, 1947 on the Palestinian Question,” April 13, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 302 political settlement, the Partition Resolution would become obsolete, so its withdrawal would be unnecessary.670

As a result, Austin’s following speech at the U.N. special session was slightly more balanced. He first regretted that partition could not be carried out peacefully, and distributed the blame between the Arabs, the Jews, and the British. “The primary reason why the General

Assembly’s resolution […] could not be carried out by peaceful means was Arab resistance.”

Yet despite noting that the Jewish Agency accepted the resolution, he added, “we must recall, however, that irresponsible elements in the Jewish community have resorted to widespread terrorism and willful murder since November 29, 1947.” The speech, though balanced between

Jews and Arabs, had clearly an anti-partition tone.

Austin then proposed a trusteeship. John Ross had obtained Weizmann’s unofficial agreement for it, provided that the trusteeship would be temporary and include “Jewish immigration, land settlement, and economic development.”671 Austin claimed that “since the truce itself would not ensure the continuance of governmental authority in Palestine” the General

Assembly should establish “a temporary trusteeship which might provide a government and essential public services in that country pending further negotiations.” To prevent any misunderstanding – as supposedly happened the last time – Austin added: “the truce and

670 “Memorandum for the Record: Comments on State Department Memorandum” by Robert L. Dennison, April 20, 1948; Folder 9 “Palestine”; Box 14; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library (see “Action on the General Assembly’s Resolution of November 29, 1947 on the Palestinian Question,” April 13, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library). 671 “Incoming Telegram” US Mission to the UN, New York, to Secretary of State – Rusk from Ross; April 15, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “W”; Box 167; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 303 trusteeship would be entirely without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties or the character of the eventual political settlement” and called Jews and Arabs to cooperate.672

This was where the Soviets really saved the Yishuv’s leeway to legally establish a Jewish state. Had the international community decided to go along with the U.S. proposal of a trusteeship for Palestine, the partition resolution could have been revoked, or at best postponed

(“suspended”), making the creation of a Jewish state illegal with regard to the international law.

Moscow used its influence to prevent a two-third vote in favor of trusteeship. On April 13, an aide-mémoire set the Soviet strategy. First, it justified and supported the Jews’ need for an armed militia for defensive purposes, denouncing the U.S. embargo and the British blockade.

Though the Kremlin viewed the “Jewish war cabinet” (possible reference to the Provisional council of Government) as led by “right-wing bourgeois parties,” Moscow appreciated the

Jewish Agency’s rejection of the U.S. proposal, as trusteeship “would hand Palestine over to a foreign military regime.” They welcomed the Irgun’s threat that “if US forces are sent to

Palestine to put trusteeship into effect, we shall enter into a bitter struggle against them and treat the Americans just as we treated the British aggressors” and the Lehi’s statement that “American imperialism does not differ in any way from British imperialism.”673

The aide-mémoire further denounced the British refusal to provide a port for Jewish immigration by February 1, 1948, as required by the U.N. resolution, and its blockade of the coast to prevent the Yishuv from receiving weapons, while their loose border controls allowed

Arabs to get arms from neighboring countries. Moscow called the Arab Higher Committee and

672 “Draft proposed remarks by Ambassador Austin to Plenary Session, Special Session on Palestine,” April 19, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 8 “Palestine 1945-1947”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 673 A.S. Semioshkin to A.A. Gromyko: “The Situation in Palestine after the UN Resolution on the Partition of the Country (Aide-Mémoire)” Moscow, April 13, 1948; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.123-31; DISR, Part I, doc. 118, pp.271-277. 304 the Arab Office “the basic Arab feudal-bourgeois organizations […] backed by the British.” It noted that the Arab forces were made of foreign fighters, among them “the riff-raff of Anders’ army, Bosnian Muslims from DP camps in Germany, German prisoners-of-war who escaped from camps in Egypt and ‘volunteers’ from Franco’s Spain.” Moscow also denounced Jordanian

King Abdullah’s intent to seize Palestine when the Mandate expires, as proof of the hypocrisy of

British neutrality. Abdullah, this “British puppet,” did not even rescue the Jews besieged in

Jerusalem’s Old City. “The British police and army are therefore either doing nothing or are secretly assisting the Arabs. […] British soldiers are selling weapons and ammunitions to Arab detachments, and cases of ‘lost’ armored cars have become more frequent.”674

This aide-mémoire gives an idea of Gromyko’s spirit when he entered the U.N. special session. He reminded the delegates of the U.S. moves against the partition resolution. He accused the Security Council of not even trying to implement partition, and blamed the U.S. for the Council’s inaction. Then Gromyko denounced the U.S.’s real plan, revealed in Austin’s

March 19 statement, to replace the partition plan by a trusteeship. He claimed that partition could have ended the cycle of violence, and reiterated that it satisfied “the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish people which had suffered so much under the Hitler regime.”675 But it seems that the Jewish refugees were not anymore at the center of Soviet concerns.

Finally, Gromyko deployed a Cold War rhetoric. He first blamed “certain states” – by which he meant the U.S. and Britain – for being “guided neither by the needs of the population of Palestine, nor by the common interest of the United Nations, but by the political, economic,

674 A.S. Semioshkin to A.A. Gromyko: “The Situation in Palestine after the UN Resolution on the Partition of the Country (Aide-Mémoire)” Moscow, April 13, 1948; AVP RF, f.0118, op.2, p.3, d.11, ll.123-31; DISR, Part I, doc. 118, pp.271-277. 675 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. II, Main Committees, Summary Records of Meetings, 16 April-14 May 1948, pp.17-20; New York, April 20, 1948; DISR, Part I, doc. 119, pp.277-280. 305 military and strategic interests of one or two powers.” The countries following the U.S. lead were also targeted. “Those states were ready to sacrifice the aspirations of the peoples of

Palestine if they did not tally with the interests of the rulers of the United States.” Gromyko accused “certain powerful circles behind those interests” who “were trying to transform Palestine into a strategic and military base and into an economic dependent of the United States.”676

One can wonder whether this represented the first acknowledgment that the interests of the Yishuv actually converged with the interests of the Soviet Union, or if it was just a strategic speech to induce the international community to oppose the U.S. trusteeship proposal, by blaming Washington for all the troubles in Palestine. Eventually, Gromyko accused the U.S. of undermining the U.N. General Assembly’s authority by supporting its resolution and then allowing its lobbies to jeopardize its implementation.

Of course, Gromyko also targeted Britain for its lack of cooperation with the Palestine

Commission. London’s behavior toward the United Nations showed its real intention of

“nullifying the partition decision and thereby to favor those elements in the Near East which wished to destroy the partition plan.” These “elements” which Gromyko did not name, might have referred to the Arabs of Palestine, the Arab states, and/or U.S. lobbies. He concluded by announcing that the Soviet Union would vote against the U.S. proposal to establish a trusteeship, and would stand by the partition resolution.677 Moscow’s firm attitude might have saved the legal basis on which the Yishuv would be able to establish a Jewish State less than a month later.

676 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. II, Main Committees, Summary Records of Meetings, 16 April-14 May 1948, pp.17-20; New York, April 20, 1948; DISR, Part I, doc. 119, pp.277-280. 677 A.A. Gromyko’s Speech at the Second Special Session of the UN General Assembly; Official Records of the Second Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. II, Main Committees, Summary Records of Meetings, 16 April-14 May 1948, pp.17-20; New York, April 20, 1948; DISR, Part I, doc. 119, pp.277-280. 306

In the U.S., in early May, few voices still encouraged the State Department in its quest for a trusteeship. Rabbi Judah Leon Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told McClintock on May 4 that “a bi-national parity might be established.”678 A memorandum by Frank P. Corrigan also tried to convince Niles that the Jewish legal claims for a state, based on the Balfour Declaration and the U.N. resolution of November 29, 1947, were weak, and that they should be convinced to accept an international temporary tutelage.679 After the Soviet and

Zionist speeches condemning the State Department’s proposal for a trusteeship, opponents to partition recognized their defeat and focused on the terms of a truce.

Indeed, U.S. diplomats in the Arab world were now raising the fear of an all-out war about to start on May 15. Ambassador in Iraq George Wadsworth reported that “fanaticism is generally in the saddle throughout the Arab world” and that “political leaders must satisfy a surging popular demand for direct action if they are to stay in power.”680 Trying to achieve a truce despite all odds, Lovett failed to convince Azzam Bey not to invade Palestine after May 15.

Arab leaders’ conditions for a truce included Britain maintaining its responsibilities and Jewish immigration limited to 1,500 per month.681 Even King Abdullah, considered the most reasonable among Arab leaders and the least hostile to the creation of a Jewish state, advised the Jews “to content themselves and live as citizens in an Arab state,” and threatened that his “army is an

Arab army.”682

678 “Memorandum of Conversation: The Secretary, Dr. Judah Magnes, Mr. Robert McClintock” May 4, 1948; Palestine 1948-1952; Foreign Affairs; Subject File; PSF; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 679 “Memorandum: Summary of Palestine Problem” authored by Frank P. Corrigan; Israel Affairs, 1948; General File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 680 Summary of Telegrams, April 30, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 January-April; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 681 Summary of Telegrams, May 6, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 May-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 682 “Arab King warns Palestine Invasion … is set” in The New York Times, April 27, 1948; p.1; cited in Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 320. 307

On the other side, John Ross also failed to convince Yishuv’s leaders to cease the fighting. He reported Rabbi Silver’s comment on U.S. pressure: “how could we ask them to accept a truce […] if we were not prepared to support the creation of a Jewish state and defend it against external aggression?”683 A few days later, hearing rumors that he had agreed to a truce,

Shertok felt the need to set things straight. He wrote to Marshall that “this was not the case,” as he already told him in on April 29. He added that the Jews were not to blame for the absence of truce. Shertok explained that the Jews “are ready to accept an immediate ceasefire throughout

Palestine provided the Arabs do likewise. We are ready to negotiate a more comprehensive truce agreement, on the understanding that it would not jeopardize fundamental Jewish rights, and place us, in relation to our defense preparedness, at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the Arabs.”684

For most observers, except for State Department staff, it seemed obvious that the Jewish state was already born. “The problem of a Jewish state is no longer really one of being born but of getting a birth certificate,” Dana Adam Smith, New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem, told on April 28.685 Zionist representative Abba Eban pronounced a speech at the U.N. General

Assembly confirming that “Jewish statehood is a reality in everything but name. More force would be needed to prevent Jewish statehood than to let it take its course. […] How absurd would it be […] to ask a nation that had advanced to the threshold of independence to retreat back to tutelage!” After this speech, Eban reported that Gromyko told him “Congratulations.

You have killed American trusteeship.”686

683 Mr. John C. Ross to the Secretary of State, May 6, 1948; Document 225; 501.BB Palestine/5–648: Telegram; FRUS, Vol. V, Part 2, pp.917-920; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d225 consulted on September 2, 2018. 684 “Letter from Moshe Shertok to George Marshall, Secretary of State” May 7, 1948; Israel Affairs, 1948; General File; David K. Niles Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 685 Thomas J. Hamilton, “U.N. Morale Sagging Under Heavy Strains” in The New York Times, April 28, 1948; p.E4. 686 Abba Solomon Eban, Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes (New York: Putnam, 1992), 140–41. 308

Even U.S. consul in Jerusalem Thomas Wasson reported to Marshall that since the

Palestine government had ceased to function, “the Jews have established effective control in

Jewish areas, preparations for the establishment of a Jewish state are well advanced, and morale is high. In the Arab areas there is merely local administration with no central authority.” It is undeniable that the Yishuv had already set up the institutions necessary to morph into a functioning state, whereas the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt and its harsh repression by the British had sent most of the Arab elite into exile, and left the Arab population without a leadership. Wasson added that despite the Haganah’s offensive, “True to the partition line […] the Jews had not tried to seize any territories outside the boundaries proposed in the partition resolution.”687

The State Department’s last attempt at securing a truce failed yet again. As it did not include the recognition of a Jewish state, the Jewish Agency rejected it, leaving Rusk with the impression – at last! – that the Jews’ intention was “to go steadily ahead with the Jewish separate state by the force of arms.”688 Through Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the Arab states told Rusk that a

Jewish state would be “an abscess to the political body of the Arabs.”689 On the State

Department’s memorandum explaining its attempt at securing a 10-day truce, Clifford handwrote: “Lovett brought this in May – in high excitement – but this whole scheme flopped at

Lake Success and no action was ever taken.”

At a last meeting with Epstein, Marshall, Lovett, and Rusk, on May 8, Shertok told

Marshall that the Jews wanted U.S. support, but would not “commit suicide to gain friendship.”

687 The Consulate at Jerusalem (Wasson) to the Secretary of State, May 3, 1948; Document 206; 867N.01/5–348: Telegram; FRUS, Vol. V, Part 2, pp.889-891; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d206 consulted on September 2, 2018. 688 Draft Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk) to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett), May 4, 1948; Document 210; 501.BB Palestine/5–448; FRUS, Vol. V, Part 2, pp.894-896; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d210 consulted on September 2, 2018. 689 The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State, May 3, 1948; Document 205; 501.BB Palestine/5–348: Telegram; FRUS, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 886-889; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d205 consulted on September 2, 2018. 309

That blunt statement showed the confidence the Yishuv gained from their own military victories on the ground and from Moscow’s diplomatic support. He told Marshall that the Jewish Agency did not even know whether the U.S. wanted the creation of a Jewish state, or not. He added that the U.S., by calling a truce at this very moment, would allow the Arabs to regroup. “Not having helped us, why should the United States Government now try to prevent us from attaining what was so imminently within our reach?” Marshall raised the risks involved in making decision relying solely on a short-time military success. He advised against declaring statehood, yet he appeared to Shertok as sympathetic to the Zionist cause.690

Contrary to the State Department, still sensitive to the British request that “the legal basis for the proclamation of a Jewish state in Palestine should be removed,”691 President Truman was already moving forward. Only Marshall’s hostility led Truman to reject requests to issue an early statement announcing that the U.S. intended to recognize the Jewish state when it would declare statehood. Philip J. Schupler suggested going ahead on May 9, in order to dissuade the

Arabs from invading when the British would leave.692 Freda Kirchwey, again blaming the

British and the State Department for undermining Truman’s policy and praising the president’s attitude, suggested that “action be taken by you to insure the recognition of the Jewish state,” to put an end to “Arab gangsterism, British sabotage” and to “safeguard the authority of the United

Nations.” She emphasized that the Jews “set up an agency to safeguard the properties of Arabs

690 Report of a meeting of Shertok and Epstein with Marshall, Lovett, and Rusk; May 8, 1948; DIFR, Doc. 483, pp.757-769. 691 Summary of Telegrams, May 11, 1948; State Department Briefs Files, 1948 May-August; Box 22; SMOF: Naval Aid to the President Files; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 692 “Telegram from Philip J. Schupler to the President,” New York, May 9, 1948; OF 204: misc. Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 310 fleeing from towns and villages.” She concluded that “not the United Nations, but the Jews themselves, have implemented the United Nations decision.”693

A letter signed by 39 Congressmen urged the President to uphold the resolution of

November 29, 1947, and to cease any attempt at obtaining a trusteeship, for the prestige of the

United Nations. They claimed that only the threat of sanctions, or even of expulsion from the

U.N., might keep the Arab states from invading Palestine, with a special emphasis on the Arab

Legion which “exists only by virtue of a British subsidy and is under the command of a British commanding officer.”694 A letter from Dean Alfange to Major General Harry H. Vaughan, transmitted to Truman, threatened that “the President could not carry the State of New York in the present circumstances. […] Only a dramatic move on the President’s part that would electrify the Jewish people could change that situation. Such a move might well be the recognition of the Jewish State. […] The President would be on firm legal ground […] because of the UN decision.”695

Even David Niles advised Truman to make an early statement announcing his intention to recognize the Jewish state, but Truman ignored it. Marshall had just firmly opposed it in a meeting on May 12, 1948, prepared and led by Clifford, with the assistance of Niles and

Lowenthal. The latter wrote a memorandum presenting all the alternatives, with a note to

Clifford reading “please do not let anyone else read this dynamite.” He raised the possibility of an agreement between King Abdullah and the Zionists, in which Abdullah would take over the

Arab portion of Palestine and tolerate the Jewish State. He wondered what would be the result in

693 “Letter from Freda Kirchwey to the President,” May 10, 1948, announcing the publication in The Washington Post of May 11, 1948 of an “Open Letter to The President requesting the implementation of the November 29 resolution on Palestine” May 10, 1948; OF 204: misc. Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 694 “Letter to the President” from a group of 39 Congressmen, May 7, 1948; OF 204: misc. Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 695 “Letter to Major General Harry H. Vaughan, from Dean Alfange” May 5, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 9 “Palestine 1948-1952”; Box 161; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 311 case of a war. Would the Jews be swallowed or could they scare the Arab troops or play them against each other?

Lowenthal wondered what the U.S. attitude would be toward the Jewish state: friendship, neutrality, or force? What policy should the U.S. adopt if the Jewish state were created and started relations with the British, Transjordan, and others? If the U.S. chose a policy of hostility, how far would it be ready to go? “To issue public denunciations of the Jewish Agency, or the

Jewish State, to the Jewish leaders? […] To threaten the imposition of economic sanctions?

[…] To send warships to blockade Jewish Palestine? […] What do we do about immigrants being brought into Palestine while we blockade? […] To send troops to unseat the Jewish

State?”696 Basically, he demonstrated that it would be as difficult a position to hold if the U.S. chose not to support a Jewish state.

In a prior statement on May 9, Lowenthal had stated his own mind. “Now it is clear that partition is an accomplished fact. Everyone realizes this except the State Department [This last sentence has been stricken in the draft].” Everyone, including the British, the Egyptians, the

U.N., and even the Arabs (although they will not admit it), realized it. He reported that a Syrian

Parliament member admitted: “the battle is all over. The Jewish state has arisen.” Another influential Arab added that “we have saved the Arab half of Palestine.” After acknowledging that the Jewish state was a functioning reality, with essential government services, Lowenthal concluded that the only remaining question about partition was not whether it could be implemented or not, but “whether it can be reversed.” He acknowledged that “it is unrealistic to

696 Memorandum transmitted from Lowenthal to Clark Clifford: “Palestine” May 11, 1948; Subject File; misc. Correspondence; Clark Clifford Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 312 believe that the Jews of Palestine could be persuaded to relinquish the State which they achieved largely through their own efforts.”697

Lowenthal then demonstrated why an early announcement that the U.S. would recognize the new state could help “derive the maximum advantage for the President and for the U.S. government from the existing situation.” He insisted that it would be a “diplomatic defeat” to recognize it after the Soviet Union and its satellites did. Lowenthal remarked that as the Jews were only seizing the territories that the U.N. had allocated to them, “any remaining contest for territory will be, not between Jews and Arabs, but between Arabs and Arabs.” He pressed for adjusting the U.S. position to the rest of the international community. “If […] we accept realities, we will not be used by Arab or Republican politicians, we will help to retrieve the prestige of U.N. and U.S., and we will cease to subject President Truman to unjust and unjustified losses and sacrifices.” As if it was not clear enough, he blamed again the State

Department. “If we continue instead to seek to retrieve the reputations, or to satisfy the amour propre of a few State Department officials, the opportunity to undo the damage to the President may fade out.”698

The meeting with Marshall was confrontational. Marshall expressed his views, that the creation of a Jewish state was a mistake, and that the U.S. should pursue its efforts to obtain a trusteeship instead. Clifford disagreed: partition had already happened on the ground, and the only way to restore the President’s firm position would be to recognize the Jewish state without waiting for British withdrawal. He raised the issue of the Jewish D.P.s’ fate and repeated

Truman’s words “there must be a safe haven for these people.” Marshall was very angry and even questioned Clifford’s legitimacy to be present at that meeting, let alone to lead it. Lovett

697 Lowenthal, statement, May 9, 1948. Clark Clifford Papers, Box 13, Harry S. Truman Library. 698 Lowenthal, statement, May 9, 1948. Clark Clifford Papers, Box 13, Harry S. Truman Library. 313 tempered by addressing content again, stating that it would be “injurious to the United Nations to recognize the Jewish state before it actually existed.” Marshall reportedly said: “if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President.” Clifford thought the meeting was a failure, but Truman told him “Let the dust settle. I still want to do it. But be careful. I can’t afford to lose Marshall.”699

Clifford and Lovett cooperated to keep alive the communication between the White

House and the State Department, and continued to build on the meeting’s uncertain conclusion.

They worked out an agreement. Truman would not make an early statement recognizing the

Jewish state. Eventually, Clifford obtained what Truman needed. “General Marshall says he cannot go along with Truman’s policy […] but he will not publicly oppose it.” Neither would he throw his resignation into the equation. Truman also agreed to limit U.S. involvement, by giving the future state de facto, rather than de jure, recognition. Lovett and Clifford then worked together on Truman’s statement. But when Lovett learned that the recognition would be given at

6:00 p.m. on May 14, and that the U.S. delegates to the U.N. would only be warned of that decision at 5:45 p.m., he concluded that “the President’s political advisers, having failed last

Wednesday afternoon to make the President a father of the new state, have determined at least to make him the midwife.”700

Though Truman withheld from announcing his intention to recognize the Jewish state, he still wanted Weizmann to know, in secrecy, that he would do so. This might have been what led

Weizmann, known as a moderate within the Zionist movement, to strongly advise Jewish

Agency delegates to keep fighting the U.S. trusteeship proposal. He also summoned Shertok to

699 Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 330–34. 700 Memorandum of Conversations, by the Under Secretary of State (Lovett), May 17, 1948; Document 283; 867N.01/5–1748; FRUS, Vol. V, Part 2, pp.1005-1007; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d283 consulted on September 2, 2018. 314 tell Ben Gurion, “Proclaim the Jewish State, now or never!” According to Weizmann’s wife, he was putting his trust in Truman’s words.701 Weizmann also wrote a letter to Truman on May 13, to thank him for his efforts. “The leadership which the American government took under your inspiration made possible the establishment of a Jewish State.” More formally, he informed

Truman that the Yishuv was proceeding along the lines of the U.N. resolution, and asked for formal recognition of the Provisional Government of the Jewish state. “The world, I think, would regard it as especially appropriate that the greatest living democracy would be the first to welcome the newest into the family of nations.”702

Conclusion: the creation and recognition of Israel

“I have the honor to notify you that the state of Israel has been proclaimed […] within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November

29, 1947,” Epstein sent to Truman on May 14, 1948.703 Shortly after, the White House released this statement, “The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.”704 Of course there had been Weizmann’s letter the previous day, but one can only notice the difference between Epstein’s official announcement to the U.S. president and Shertok’s telegram to Molotov.

701 Vera Weizmann and David Tutaev, The Impossible Takes Longer: The Memoirs of Vera Weizmann, Wife of Israel’s First President, as Told to David Tutaev, 1st US ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 231; cited in Radosh and Radosh, A Safe Haven, 328. 702 “Letter from Chaim Weizmann to the President” on The Waldorf-Astoria letterhead, New York, May 13, 1948, and President’s response, May 15, 1948; OF 204: misc. Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 703 “Letter to the President from Eliahu Epstein, Agent of the Provisional Government of Israel, Jewish Agency for Palestine” May 14, 1948; OF 204: misc. Jewish State; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 704 “Statement by the President” May 14, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 4 “Palestine Press Release”; Box 162; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 315

First, Shertok gave Moscow assurances about the democratic nature of the State of Israel,

“open to immigration of Jews from all country of dispersion” but also upholding “full social and political equality of all citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex” and calling upon Arabs to “play their part in its development with full and equal citizenship and due representation.”

Then he requested official recognition and hope for friendship. But Shertok added:

“I take this opportunity of expressing feelings of profound gratitude and appreciation of Jewish people of Palestine, which are shared by Jews throughout the world, for firm stand taken by USSR delegation to United Nations in favour of establishment of independent sovereign Jewish state in Palestine; for its consistent championship of this idea despite all difficulties, for its expression of genuine sympathy with sufferings of Jewish people in Europe at hands of their Nazi tormentors and for upholding principle that Jews of Palestine are a nation entitled to sovereignty and independence.”705

This difference shows how the Soviet Union had become, in the past few months, the best ally of the Zionist movement and the “only world power supporting our cause,” to quote

Abba Eban.706 He recalled meeting with Soviet representatives, including Gromyko, Tsarapkin, and Jacob Malik, in order to work together at defeating U.S. successive proposals. By this attitude, even more so than by its vote for Partition on November 29, 1947, the U.S.S.R. fathered the birth of Israel by safeguarding its legality in the United Nations, and therefore in the eyes of international law. “I hereby beg to inform you that the Government of the Union of the Soviet

Socialist Republics has adopted a decision officially to recognize the State of Israel and its provisional government.”707 The Jewish state was born and recognized by the two superpowers.

705 M. Shertok (now signing Foreign Secretary) to V.M. Molotov, Tel Aviv, May 15, 1948; ISA 130.02/2424/19; DISR, Part I, doc. 120, p.281. 706 Abba Solomon Eban, Abba Eban: An Autobiography, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1977), 84. 707 V.M. Molotov to M. Shertok, Moscow, May 18, 1948; ISA 130.02/2391/5; DISR, Part I, doc. 122, p.283. 316

EPILOGUE

AFTERMATH

A quarter million Jewish refugees, stranded in postwar Europe, had been important actors in the creation of a Jewish state and in the making of U.S. and Soviet broader foreign policies. The day

Israel was born, their situation changed. Jews in Europe were now free to immigrate to Israel, yet their right to emigrate from Europe depended on their place of residence. The Soviet policy remained different for Soviet Jewish citizens and for non-Soviet East-European Jews from territories under its control, for the reasons analyzed earlier. Jews in D.P. camps, whose presence and activism had been so influential in the U.S. policy that led to the creation of a

Jewish state, faced different obstacles depending on which zone their were in. But they also faced the dilemma of honoring their wish to go to Israel or immigrating somewhere else.

The day the Yishuv declared statehood, Arab armies entered Palestine and tried to undo its creation, starting Israel’s War of Independence. During the war Soviet and U.S. policy- makers reacted differently to the new problems it created. Among them, the question of Israel’s definitive borders, as it soon appeared that the partition resolution’s borders were not sustainable, is still an issue today. The question of the future status of Jerusalem remained, as no international force was set up to impose the U.N. resolution. The war created a wave of Arab refugees and the debate about their future return or resettlement is still dividing the international community today and an obstacle to peace in the area. In other words, all the problems that made and still makes the Arab-Israeli conflict intractable.

317

After Israel won its War of Independence in January 1949, consolidating the existence of a Jewish state, the Middle East as a whole was radically transformed. In the tense diplomatic context at the dawn of the 1950s, both superpowers had to reassess their policies on Israel, the

Arab states, and non-Arab Middle East in a way that fit the new landscape of the region and the new direction of the Cold War.

The Jewish refugees in Europe

The founding of Israel meant that the sh’erit ha-pletah was a nation like all others, and that their life in camps should end soon. 70% of them registered to immigrate with the Jewish Agency.

But just as the D.P.s thought they could at last leave post-Holocaust Europe, move out of the camps, and immigrate to the Jewish state, the British authorities put restrictions on their emigration, on the basis that they should not let any one of military age leave for a war zone and therefore fuel the fighting in Palestine. They convinced the U.S. and French authorities to also apply such restrictions to Jewish emigration from their zones. The U.S. and Britain prohibited aliyah from May to August and November respectively. The three Western powers also banned emigration for men of military age 18 to 45 until mid-February 1949.708

Despite the war, in 1948 alone around 102,000 survivors made aliyah, or 80% of the almost 120,000 immigrants who came to Israel. In 1949, over 95,000 survivors made aliyah, or

67% of the almost 142,000 immigrants who came that year. Together, the sh’erit ha-pletah made up 70% of the over 260,000 immigrants in the first two years of Israel’s existence,

708 “Displaced Persons,” 319. 318 according to Hanna Yablonka.709 In the period from July 1, 1948, to June 30, 1949, 86,356

Jewish D.P.s from Germany, Austria, and Italy, and 10,000 from Cyprus went to Israel. Only

28% of the D.P.s who left the camps in the same period went elsewhere (60% of these to the

United States).710 Altogether, 177,109 Jews made aliyah from the D.P. camps of Germany,

Austria, and Italy.711 Despite slightly diverging numbers, historians and demographers agree that about 62-64% of Jewish D.P.s immigrated to Israel, legally or illegally.

These figures, though very large, fell short of the 80 to 95% of Jewish D.P.s who had indicated their wish to go to Palestine in prior surveys and questionnaires. Yet it was significant enough to prove the sincerity of the Jewish D.P.s’ Zionism and the honesty of Zionist leaders in their demands for open immigration to Palestine as the solution to the Jewish refugee problem.

On the contrary, some claim that this number demonstrated that Jewish D.P.s were manipulated by the Zionists and did not really want to relocate in a hypothetical Jewish state.712 Others argue that the Holocaust, postwar antisemitism, and Jews’ resulting homelessness, created a need for

Jewish unity and statehood, which they expressed through claiming their determination to resettle in Palestine, irrespective of their real plans.

The sh’erit ha-pletah’s support for a Jewish state was not fake, even if all of them did not plan on living in it themselves. Their claims in the various surveys was a form of activism.713

Their reasons to choose other destinations were diverse, from reunion with family members already established elsewhere, health issues, or often impatience to leave Germany when the

709 Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 18–42. 710 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 293. 711 Abraham S. Hyman, “Displaced Persons,” The American Jewish Year Book 50 (1949 / 5709 1948): 455–73; Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 294; see also Kochavi, Post-Holocaust Politics; Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust; Bauer, “The DP Legacy.” 712 Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, Cambridge Middle East Studies 21 (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–50. 713 Alexander J Groth, John R Owens, and Marilyn A Groth, Holocaust Voices: An Attitudinal Survey of Survivors (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2003), 116; cited in Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 299–300. 319 doors of Palestine were still closed. They made these choices according to personal need rather than out of political convictions, sometimes ideologically supporting Zionism while choosing a different new home. As Margarete Feinstein wrote, “personal consideration often outweighed political allegiances, although the survivors remained committed to furthering the ideal of a

Jewish national homeland.”714 A lot of them developed and cultivated a strong bond with Israel.

Of course, harsh conditions in Palestine also discouraged some refugees, especially the ones with young children. So did the fear of resettling in a war-torn country and take the risk to lose their remaining or newfound loved ones.715

Eventually 22,000 of the sh’erit ha-pletah fought as soldiers in the War of Independence, comprising about one third of the Israeli Defense Force. These soldiers did not engender the best reputation. They were seen as melancholic, cowardly, prisoners of their past, and sidelined from the “brotherhood of arms” according to Tom Segev. Many did not speak Hebrew. They later complained of having been used as “cannon fodders.” Yet records show that they were mostly used as support troops rather than fighting men; “only” 5% of the 22,000 survivor soldiers died, a rate slightly lowed than the general losses for the whole armed forces.716

In peacetime as well, the survivors did not necessarily receive a warm welcome. Nothing was set up to meet their special needs, medical and/or psychological. Ben Gurion regretted,

“unfortunately, I cannot – nowadays less than at any other time – deal with the integration of immigrants.”717 None of the three main Israeli institutions, the army, the kibbutz movement, and trade unions, were equipped to accommodate the 200,000-odd survivors who came to Israel in its first years of existence. Survivors were not expected to play an important role in the new Israeli

714 Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 279. 715 Feinstein, 79–82. 716 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 360–61. 717 Ben Gurion in February 1948, cited in Segev, The Seventh Million, 160–61. 320 society, which on the one hand had a lack of faith in their human qualities, and on the other hand considered that the past should be swept under the carpet for the young state to be able to look forward.718 Some historians argue that as a result, they did not make a collective mark on the

Israel society, while others consider them as the link between life in diaspora, the Holocaust, and the Jewish state. They might not have produced leaders, but their presence among the staff of all institutions imbued Israeli society with a sense of emotional connection to their world.719

The D.P. population reduced quickly, which fulfilled the main reason for which the U.S. had supported the creation of a Jewish state. From 165,000 in Germany in May 1948, they were down to 30,000 in 1951. I.R.O. transmitted responsibility of the D.P. camps to the Federal

Republic of Germany, which renamed them Government Transit Camps for Homeless

Foreigners. The remaining residents were gathered in Feldafing, Landsberg, and Lechfeld, and in 1952 all Jewish D.P.s moved to Föhrenwald, the last Jewish D.P. camp, which eventually closed in 1957. Their position marginalized with the Cold War-driven rehabilitation of West

Germany as an anti-communist ally, and their claim to self-government and extraterritoriality eroded.720 10,000 Jewish D.P.s eventually stayed in Germany, either because they had built a life and career there, or because they refused to move to Israel and were not eligible for immigration elsewhere. A handful of those who went to Israel eventually returned. Most did so for personal reasons (family or medical), but a minority was just disillusioned with the new state, whether this disappointment was due to the harsh material living conditions or to the ideological aspect of the state.721

718 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 395. 719 Patt, “Stateless Citizens.” 720 Stone, Liberation, 193–94, 199. 721 Hal Lehrman, “The Last Jews in the Last German Camp,” Rescue, Fall 1953; cited in Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors, 295. 321

Other Jewish were still stranded in Eastern Europe, without the D.P. status. With the absence of restriction to immigration to the newly-born state of Israel, the Soviet bloc’s choice to allow some 300,000 Jews to emigrate during the years 1948-1950, gained a political dimension.

It participated in fueling the Israeli armed forces for the war effort, and allowed the Jews to become a demographic majority.722 Non-Soviet Jews were still allowed to leave Soviet- controlled territories, but over the winter 1948-1949, the spirit changed and the Communist bloc’s positive attitude of 1947-1948 disappeared. For instance in Poland, the authorities ceased to issue passports and the Haganah training camp had to shut down in late 1948 and early 1949, after having trained seven thousands volunteers.723

Yet what Szaynok called the “state of Israel option” reopened a window of opportunity for Jews to leave in the following years. It is difficult to determine whether the policy originated in Moscow or with the East European governments.724 Romania allowed 90,000 Jews to leave between September 1949 and April 1952. Hungary let 3,000 Jews leave in 1949, and another

2,000 in 1950. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria issued permits to emigrate in early 1949.725 But

Soviet Jews were still excluded from emigration. Despite Israeli diplomats attempts to negotiate, only 131 Soviet Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union in 1948-1955.

In Israel, new immigrants found housing and work shortage, and a country at war. The creation of Israel and the resulting warfare with neighboring Arab states led to the “Arab miracle” – from the Israeli point of view obviously. Many Arab civilians fled, leaving houses empty of inhabitants but full of furniture, clothes, books, pets, and some job opportunities. They

722 Rucker, Staline, Israël et les Juifs. And Rucker, 2001. 723 She got this from the tone of the “Letter from Franciszek Kuchta, acting district revenue inspector, to the District of Revenue Office in Katowice,” September 22, 1948, leaf 121; AAN, KC PPR, 295-IX-407; Szaynok, Poland- Israel 1944-1968, 114. 724 Szaynok, 203–4. 725 Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-1956, LSE Monographs in International Studies (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 61–90. 322 thought they would return soon, after Arab armies would have won the war and undone the

Jewish state. It created new problems in the region that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., alongside the rest of the international community, would have to address. In many ways these problems are still the same today. The war uprooted the first wave of Arab refugees, increased the urge and pressure of Middle Eastern countries to purchase arms from the great powers, raised the issue of the viability of the borders that the partition plan had envisioned and/or the cease-fire lines of the spring 1949, and reopened the question of the status of Jerusalem, which the U.N. had projected to hold under an international administration or trusteeship.

Israel’s War of Independence and its regional consequences

On the Arab refugee issue, Moscow and Washington had very different attitudes. Moscow did not seem to care much about them. In the U.N., Soviet delegates defended the Israeli war effort no matter its human consequences. The Kremlin even adopted the Israeli rhetoric, which considered the Arab refugees as collateral damage of a war the Arabs themselves had chosen to launch. Had they welcomed U.N.S.C.O.P. experts in the summer 1947 and cooperated with the

Palestine Conciliation Commission in the winter and spring 1948, these Arab refugees would be citizens of an Arab state in part of Palestine. In addition, the Soviets saw no difference between the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine, therefore considering that the Arab refugees would soon resettle in their new country of residence. As a side note, it is undeniable that

Stalin’s Soviet Union was the champion of forced population displacement, so it is safe to assume that the relocation of 550,000 to 750,000 Arab refugees did not appear as a significant matter.

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On the other hand, the Americans were very concerned about these Arab refugees. They kept pressing Israel to take them back without conditions, whereas Israelis, still at war and with the uncertainty of what the final borders of the new state would be, refused to allow them to return until a general peace agreement was signed with the Arabs of Palestine and the Arab states involved in the fighting. The Israelis argued that the birth of Israel did not create the refugee problem, but the Arab attempt to prevent it by armed force did. Therefore Israel felt no responsibility toward them, and their return would risk the creation of a fifth column within the

Jewish state.

Israelis also weighed in their ongoing efforts to empty the D.P. camps of Europe and the financial and economic burden that reintegrating the Arabs, whose level of economic development before the war of Independence was not as advanced as the Yishuv’s, would add to the process. The State Department soon remarked that the Arab refugees were now in higher numbers than the Jewish D.P.s in Europe, but Israelis rejected the claim that the Arabs were refugees in the same sense of the term. However, Israel accepted the principle of compensation for land abandoned by Arabs and of readmitting members of Arab families separated by the war.

Israel eventually accepted between 250 and 350,000 Arab returnees in the few 1950s.

The State Department worked at convincing Congress to fund relief for these Arab refugees, as “an opportunity for the United States to strengthen the friendship of the Arab people for the people of the United States and to enhance the prestige of the United States, both of which have suffered as the result of recent events in connection with the Palestine situation.”726

In other words, either because they had interiorized the blame that the Arabs put on the U.S. for having participated in the creation of Israel, or as a way to instrumentalize the problem for their

726 Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to the President, October 1, 1948; with attached a Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Subject: Relief of Arab Refugees from Palestine” September 22, 1948; Foreign Affairs Files; Folder 5 “Arabia 2”; Box 149; PSF: Subject File; Truman Papers; Truman Library. 324 own benefits, the U.S. was counterbalancing its support for the creation of a Jewish state by helping the Arab refugees.

On the issue of arms sales to the warring parties, the U.S.S.R. also stood, if indirectly, with the Jewish state, while the U.S. adopted a neutrality that was beneficial to the Arab states.

Moscow did not want to break the embargo that the U.N. had declared on all states involved.

But the Kremlin confidentially conveyed to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that they should consider selling artillery and airplanes to Israel. The Soviet Union argued that arms sales contracts with France and Britain had already filled up the arms depots of Transjordan, Iraq,

Egypt, and Syria, so that the embargo was really one-sided.727

Soviet delegates also successively supported and opposed the imposition of cease-fire, or opposed it, depending on Israel’s need with regard to the military situation. They called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Palestine, which clearly targeted the Arab armies, as the

Arab Palestinian forces by the fall 1948 were close to useless on the battlefield and only able to maintain some pockets of guerilla warfare. In the same spirit, they opposed the plan designed by

U.N. negotiator Count Folke Bernadotte, which was in favor of the Arabs with little consideration for how the Jews had altered the situation on the ground. Bernadotte’s plan was indeed disconnected from the reality and would have reverted the full independence of the

Jewish state in favor of a union of the two states, and would have conditioned Jewish immigration to Arab approval.

The U.S. rejected lifting the embargo to supply Israel with weapons or to allow other countries to do so. To justify this position, Washington also kept asking London and Paris to stop arming the Arab states – and, in the case of Britain, to stop allowing British officers to

727 I.N. Bakulin to V.A. Zorin, Moscow, June 5, 1948; AVP FR, F.089, OP.1, P.1, D.1, L.3; DISR, Part I, doc. 127, p.291. 325 participate in the fighting on the Arab side. This policy survived the end of the War of

Independence in January 1949, and led to the “Tripartite Declaration” in which the U.S., France, and Britain in May 1950, affirmed the importance of regulating the supply of arms to the entire region. This aspect of the declaration was unfavorable to Israel because of the bilateral agreements Britain already had with Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. In the U.N., American diplomats did their best to appear balanced and compensate for the pro-Zionist stance that the President had forced on them twice in November 1947 and again in May 1948.

On the question of the future borders of the Jewish state, both superpowers were quite attached to the partition resolution, although the military operations had proven it unviable.

Therefore, the U.S. supported that despite Israel’s initial lack of control over the Negev, its attribution to the Jewish state would not be altered without Israel’s approval. The Soviets supported Israel’s front movements during the war, but ambiguously, did not officially agree nor disagree with the territorial modifications that the war caused to the partition plan. On the other side, the U.S. did give de jure recognition to Israel in January 1949, after the fighting stopped and free elections replaced the Provisional Government with an elected assembly, the first . On May 11, 1949, the U.N. voted for the admission of Israel, in its January 1949 borders, which were actually the result of troops movements, some armistice lines bilaterally recognized as such and which no other party had definitively agreed upon.

On the question of the future status of Jerusalem, both powers were quite flexible. Both remained attached to its internationalization, but as they were reluctant to intervene in the fighting, they eventually reconciled with Israel and Transjordan finding their own agreement on sharing the administration of the city – they would renounce an international government of the city as long as the holy sites could be under international supervision. Eventually the

326

Transjordanian Arab Legion and the Israeli Defense Forces agreed on a no man’s land within the city. In the face of the Israeli military superiority, some Arab leaders had to accept the situation on the ground and the existence of a Jewish state, if only to limit the damage.

Most of them, alongside many within the international community, believed that the best outcome for the Arabs of Palestine would be the annexation of what was left of the Arab part of

Palestine to Transjordan. But no Arab leader, although King Abdullah of Transjordan came the closest, was ready to assume being the first one to recognize the absence of a viable Arab state in

Palestine, which would indirectly amount to acknowledging the existence of a Jewish state.

Leaders were paralyzed by the fear of the blame from the other Arab states and from the Arab peoples. Therefore, only armistices could be signed, but no peace treaty which would have included mutual recognition.

Between fall 1948 and spring 1949, it became obvious that inter-Arab rivalries were a liability to any peace negotiations. Rather than supporting the rights and wellbeing of the Arabs of Palestine, the Arab states were claiming more territories for themselves. This attitude not only undermined the Arab unity that would have been necessary to obtain any concessions for the

Arabs of Palestine, it also gave a diplomatic advantage to Israel to keep the territories it had secured militarily in a defensive war. Israel had a stronger claim on these than Egypt or

Transjordan, and nobody was representing the rights of the Arabs of Palestine at this point. For the next two decades, Egypt occupied and controlled the Gaza strip and Transjordan occupied, and even officially annexed, the Arab part of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria on the West

Bank of the Jordan river, now commonly called simply “the West Bank.” Armistices were signed with Egypt on February 24, 1949, with Lebanon on March 23, with Jordan on April 3,

327 and with Syria on July 20. No cease-fire agreement was ever signed with Iraq, but without a common border, it was not necessary to restore peace.

The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. reassess their policies in the Middle East in the Cold War context

The creation of the Jewish state was permitted by the combined support of both superpowers.

Most Zionist movements outside of the Yishuv were American, or at least American-funded, so there was a special connection of Israel with the United States. But many of the early Zionists had come from Eastern Europe and Russia, and the major political force in the Yishuv was the socialist-oriented Labor Zionism (represented by several parties, youth movements, and unions).

Both superpowers were also home to the two largest Jewish communities outside of the Yishuv.

And as a newborn state in a hostile environment, Israel would need to count on the assistance of all willing partners, for its economic development, for financial aid, for military purchases, and for diplomatic support in the international institutions.

As a result, Israel basically invented the concept of non-alignment by claiming its aim to follow a non-identification policy and to remain neutral in the growing East-West confrontation.

Arieh Levavi, head of the Eastern European Department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, wrote that the main goal of his department was to maintain the goodwill of the Eastern bloc while preserving friendship with the United States. Aware that this would be a difficult task in the current context, he added, “our aspiration, therefore, is to become a factor that moderates potential tension between the United States and the Soviet Union regarding the Israeli issue.”728

728 Memorandum by A. Levavi, Jerusalem, June 13, 1948: “Urgent tasks of the East European Division”; CZA S25/5634; DISR, Part I, doc. 130, pp.302-304. 328

But with the quick escalation of the Cold War as the diplomatic landscape of the late 1940s and early 1950s, this would soon reveal an impossible position to uphold.

The democratic institutions of the new state and its capitalist economy, though partly state regulated, gave it a natural leaning toward the West. In spite of it, many in the government aimed to maintain balance. Israel’s first trade attaché to Moscow Moshe Bejerano wrote to

Moshe Shertok – Sharett since August 1948, now Minister of Foreign Affairs – “as soon as our people at home become more used to thinking eastwards and not always westwards in commercial matters, the commercial relations which you desired with the USSR will be established.”729 A genuine desire to maintain neutrality and openness toward the Eastern bloc outlived the Zionist strategy to gain support for the creation of a Jewish state.

However, while Israel tried to remain neutral, the U.S. kept suspecting it of socialist leaning and the Soviet Union kept associating it with the capitalist West. The concept of non- alignment was yet to be accepted by the superpowers – it did not fit the bipolar vision of the world of either the Zhdanov or the Truman doctrines. Maybe this also perpetuated the ideological antisemitism that both associated Jews with capitalist usurers and communist militants. In addition, Israel was increasingly marginalized among the developing countries, and was never admitted to the Council of the Third World.730 Indeed, despite Zionism’s self- perception as a movement of national liberation, many former colonized peoples, or still fighting for independence, perceived it as a colonial state. Both had some ground for it. The creation of a Jewish state was indeed the achievement of Jewish national aspirations, and it happened in a place where Jews were always present and to which the diaspora remained mentally and

729 Bejerano to Shertok, November 15, 1948; ISA 130.02/2389/29; cited in a note to M. Menshikov to V.M. Molotov, Moscow, October 30, 1948; DISR, Part I, doc. 190, pp.393-394. 730 Avi Shlaim, “Israel Between East and West, 1948–56,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 04 (November 2004): 657–73. 329 spiritually attached. But it did develop initially within an imperial context (Ottoman and then

British) and presented some aspects, but not all, in common with what has been since conceptualized as “settler colonialism.”

The reality of the bipolarization of the world was exacerbated in 1948-1949 by the Berlin crisis and the early negotiations for a Western military alliance that would soon become the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Outside of Europe, the Chinese civil war was already ongoing. Despite the circumstances that led to its creation, Israel’s intention to maintain a non- aligned position was not realistic. In the early 1950s, Israel’s incentives to quit its non- identification policy raised questions. For historian and political scientist Zach Levey it was a gradual process, driven mostly by Soviet refusal of financial and military assistance and Israel’s needs to obtain vital economic aid from Washington,731 whereas revisionist historians attribute it mainly to external pressure, such as the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.732

Eventually both powers reassessed their entire Middle Eastern policies in view of the new regional context created by the birth of Israel, the first Arab-Israeli war and its aftermath, and the geographic reorientation of the Cold War from Europe toward the developing world. For both superpowers, support for Israel became a liability in their policies of swaying as many countries as possible to their side of the East/West confrontation. There was only one Jewish state, but already many independent Arab and/or Muslim states, two overlapping groups profoundly hostile to Israel (despite a handful of exceptions). These reassessments did not happen overnight, and took different forms in the case of the Soviet Union and the United States.

In the United States, the White House took a back sit and let the State Department resume its policy in favor of recruiting Middle Eastern countries to the Western side. In the international

731 Zach Levey, “Israel’s Quest for a Security Guarantee from the United States, 1954-1956,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 22, no. 1/2 (1995): 43–63. 732 Bialer, Between East and West; Shlaim, “Israel Between East and West, 1948–56.” 330 context, this policy was necessarily biased in favor of the Arab states, more important in terms of resources and geopolitics than the isolated Jewish state. Of course, there remained some people in the administration who held the view that supporting Israel, on the basis that the Arab states were the ones not abiding by the U.N. resolution, would force the Arab states to accept Israel and therefore participate in ending the war of Independence, and later the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But the fear of communism became overwhelming. By partitioning Palestine, the international community had the feeling that it sided with the Zionists once, so the idea developed that compensation was necessary not to drive the Arab world away from the United

Nations. For the U.S., this same phenomenon translated into avoiding to drive the Arab peoples away from their – so far – pro-Western leaders. Washington suspected that the Soviet Union would soon shift its Middle Eastern policy back to favoring the Arab states over Israel, and that maybe it had supported the creation of a Jewish state only to create despair in the Arab states and later support their fight against Israel to win them to the Soviet side.

But the U.S. policy remained fairly balanced. Whereas revisionist historians see it as already favoring Israel – in light of the important financial support received by the Jewish state, though the administration made sure it could not be used for military purposes – most political initiatives seemed at best ambiguous. Avi Shlaim, a revisionist historian himself, admits that the

May 1950 Tripartite Declaration – in which France, Britain and the U.S. stated that the supply of arms to Middle Eastern countries should be regulated and the territorial status quo preserved – received mixed feelings in Israel. The guarantee of the existing borders was of some value in discouraging the Arabs to launch a second round, but the arms-control regime was unfavorable

331

(as the British had prior bilateral agreements to provide arms to Israel’s enemies, such as Jordan,

Iraq, and Egypt).733

In late 1952, Western plans for a Middle Eastern version of N.A.T.O., the Middle Eastern

Defense Organization, did not include Israel. The U.S. was trying to attract Egypt, which would never agree to participate in an organization with Israel. The Jewish state was clearly considered as a liability to the U.S. aim of unifying the Middle East against the Soviet Union. Even after

Gamal abd el-Nasser declined the invitation, Israel was offered only a passive role of providing facilities in wartime, while hoping for a membership in a regional alliance that would force its

Arab neighbors to recognize its sovereignty.734

During the Eisenhower administration, this trend consolidated. Historians talk of a reversal from his predecessor’s “friendly” attitude toward Israel (despite the State Department’s attitude already under Truman) in an attempt to strengthen America’s position in the Arab world.

Levey confirms that the new administration did not want close ties with Israel and repelled

Israeli requests for a security guarantee. Some historians, such as Isaac Alteras, claim that the

Eisenhower administration only took a rhetorical distance from Israel, and Abraham Ben-Zvi considers the Eisenhower era as the incubation period for the future U.S.-Israeli alliance that would develop after the and its aftermath in 1956-1957.735 The State Department viewed Israel as more aggressive than its enemies and aimed at improving the attitude of the

Muslim states toward Western democracies – which could only come at Israel’s expense. On the other hand, historian Uri Bialer affirms that both the U.S. and Israel were reluctant to clarify their relations and to become formal allies. Shlaim confirms that State Secretary John Foster

733 Shlaim, “Israel Between East and West, 1948–56.” 734 Levey, “Israel’s Quest for a Security Guarantee from the United States, 1954-1956.” 735 Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953-1960 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American- Israeli Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 332

Dulles was not as hostile to Israel and as inflexible on the arms question as most Israelis thought, but feared that the U.S. might become Israel’s sole supplier of offensive weapons.736

Dulles revived the idea of a regional defense organization that would exclude Israel, the

Baghdad Pact. In spite of U.S. efforts, the Pact alienated both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict and heightened inter-Arab rivalries. Israel and Egypt felt threatened and isolated, which pushed the former to tie its fate to French and British archaic colonialism and campaign against

Gamal Abd el-Nasser in the Suez Crisis, and the latter to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence.

Dulles failed to understand Arab nationalism. He also tried to convince Nasser to join an alliance dominated by its former colonial power – for satisfying Western fear of Communism, whereas the only communist threat Nasser saw was internal. And Dulles tried to lead Egypt to make peace with Israel, which Nasser considered a much more concrete threat than the Soviet

Union. On the contrary, Nasser could use Israel as the big evil to consolidate the concept of

Arab unity, which he was building and promoting behind Egypt’s leadership.737 But Dulles also failed to measure Israeli fears of its neighbors – Iraq, armed by the U.S. and Britain, and Egypt, who announced its arms deal with Czechoslovakia in September 1955. In March 1956 the U.S.-

Israeli relations were in a ragged state. Only after the Arab revolutions of 1958, successful in

Iraq and failed in Jordan and Lebanon due to Western assistance to the governments in place, would the U.S. start to consider Israel as a potential asset in the region.

On the Soviet side, the reversal of policy was slower yet paradoxically more radical. The

Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel de jure the day of its independence and to

736 Levey, “Israel’s Quest for a Security Guarantee from the United States, 1954-1956”; Bialer, Between East and West; Shlaim, “Israel Between East and West, 1948–56.” 737 Mohrez Mahmoud El Hussini, Soviet-Egyptian Relations, 1945-85 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987); Michael B Oren, Origins of the Second Arab-Israel War: Egypt, Israel, and the Great Powers, 1952-56 (London: Cass, 1992); Levey, “Israel’s Quest for a Security Guarantee from the United States, 1954-1956”; Shlaim, “Israel Between East and West, 1948–56.” 333 open a legation in Israel on August 14, 1948, whose staff received a warm welcome. The Jewish state could not have been born without Soviet support to Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe and Soviet diplomatic backing for Zionism in the United Nations. Yet, after the creation of the state, bilateral relations were never smooth. Even when the Soviet Union was still the most solid advocate of Israel’s military effort in front of the international community, the relations between the Israeli legation in Moscow and the Soviet Foreign Ministry were not as friendly as they appeared in the international institutions. There were a variety of reasons for this contradiction.

First, even at the climax of Soviet support for the Yishuv and then Israel, Moscow’s ideological contempt for Zionism never disappeared. Ro’i notes that “its attempt to draw a distinction between Zionism, which it opposed, and the Jewish state, to which it gave practical support, inevitably led to fundamental misunderstandings between the two parties.” Szaynok claims that Stalin did not think as incompatible his pro-Jewish diplomacy in Palestine and his anti-Jewish and antisemitic policy at home. Both historians agree that part of the problem related to the status of the Jewish community in the Soviet Union.

One aspect came from Soviet Jews themselves, who felt empowered by the official

Soviet policy toward Palestine. If their leaders supported the creation of a Jewish state, nothing should keep them from expressing their own enthusiasm for Israel’s creation and war effort.

Some even inquired about volunteering as foreign fighters in the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.), and others were bolder in claiming their wish or even their right to immigrate to the Jewish state.

The second aspect was that Soviet antisemitism, which grew more virulent in the postwar era and climaxed with the Doctors’ Plot in 1952-1953, pushed Israel to intervene for the defense of

Soviet Jews and to press Moscow to authorize their immigration, a topic they had carefully

334 avoided before the creation of the state.738 Both the Soviet Jews’ support for Israel and Israel’s plea for the Soviet Jews were deemed to provoke a negative reaction from the Kremlin.

Soon Stalin would reconcile his domestic antisemitic policy with a new anti-Israeli diplomacy. But in the meantime, Soviet support for Zionism did not stop abruptly when the

British left Palestine. The Soviet bloc had supported the Jewish state in three ways, all three essential to Israel’s creation and survival. First, by allowing non-Soviet Jews to leave, Moscow and its satellites provided a much-needed demographic support, as the Yishuv would never have been able to increase enough from natural growth or from other immigration waves to claim statehood, convince the international community to grant it by a U.N. resolution, and to establish an independent state almost singlehandedly. Then diplomatically, by shedding its traditional anti-Zionist stance from Gromyko’s speech in May 1948, and later by standing firm in the U.N. for the Partition Plan. Through Czechoslovakia, it provided the last element to consolidate statehood, weapons to win its War of Independence and establish itself as a state capable of sustaining the uncoordinated attack of many Arab armies.739

Yet, the fact that Soviet policy toward Zionism shifted so radically after the establishment and consolidation of the State of Israel is further proof that the Kremlin never supported Zionism for ideological reasons, contrary to its contemporary claims and to Western fears. It also gives an additional hint that it was the situation in Europe, rather than concerns over the Middle East, which initially drove this short-lived Soviet support for Zionism. Indeed, sealed by opportunism and real politik, the Soviet-Zionist alliance was based on a brief coincidence of interests, which did not erase a deep and long-rooted incompatibility between Soviet communism and political

Zionism.

738 Golan, Soviet Policies; Ro’i, “The Deterioration”; Freundlich, “A Soviet Outpost.” 739 Freundlich, “A Soviet Outpost”; Golan, Soviet Policies. 335

Exploring why the Soviet-Israeli relationship started to deteriorate helps to understand why Moscow did support Zionism in the first place. There are three sets of reasons: the problems that emerged within Soviet-Israeli bilateral relations, the unexpected interactions between Soviet foreign and domestic policy, and the repercussions of the Cold War context on the U.S.S.R.’s perception of the Middle East. The relative importance given to these aspects determines when one sees the start of the deterioration. The older diplomatic historiography, used to read the world through the lens of the Cold War, dates it when Israel’s leaning toward the

West became visible. In 1949, Israel asked the United States for economic development loans and aid, and in 1950 it chose to side with liberal democracies by its vote condemning North

Korea’s invasion of South Korea and authorizing an international force under U.N. auspices to intervene in 1950.740

Yet, the cooling of relations started much earlier (fall 1948) and materialized much later

(late 1952-early 1953) than the vote on Korea. From its arrival in Israel in August 1948, the

Soviet legation worked mostly behind the back of the Israeli government. These elements tend to invalidate the thesis that support for Israel was the result of a proximity of ideologies, and was meant to recruit the Jewish state to the Soviet side or as “fellow traveler.” In addition, Israel voted on Korea with the great majority of U.N. member states, and not against Moscow, which had boycotted the meeting and did not cast a vote on this issue. In addition, the Soviet Union made little issue of Israel’s position, which allows to conclude that it was not the main cause for the deterioration of relations.741

Today, the importance of bilateral and domestic issues has been reevaluated, as the

Soviet Legation’s activities show that the U.S.S.R. never considered Israel as a potential satellite,

740 Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship; Krammer, “Soviet Motives”; Voth, Moscow Abandons Israel. 741 Ro’i, “The Deterioration.” 336 not even a potential ally or neutral country. Official contacts were limited and the main minister,

P. I. Ershov, disliked and despised the Jewish state. In other words, the U.S.S.R. never expected

Israel to become truly socialist. Instead, the main problem in Soviet-Israeli relations came from the Jewish question – namely Soviet Jews’ enthusiasm for Zionism and Stalin’s virulent antisemitism in the postwar years, and Israel’s insistence for Soviet Jews’ immigration.742

However, while some attribute the degradation to the collision of conflicting ideologies, others consider that the U.S.S.R. distanced itself from Israel because its short-term objective was attained, so support for Israel ceased to be useful.

This historiography tends to see Moscow’s abandonment of Israel as a means of winning over the Arab states.743 However, it seems that the Soviet shift of policy toward favoring the

Arab states was slower, and happened much later, than its break with Israel. Most Arab states were still too close to the West, if not under direct influence. And Soviet rigid vision of a strict two-camps division of the world prevented seeking opportunities in the Middle East. Most of

Soviet activities in the Arab world were limited to infiltration and subversion until a coincidence of goals emerged, mainly after Egyptian leader Nasser had proven his anti-Western orientation and emerged as one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement after the Bandung Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries, Indonesia, in 1955.744 This followed the consolidation of Nikita

Khrushchev’s power over the Soviet Union, a couple of years after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Khrushchev presided to a reappraisal of how the “bourgeois-nationalist” regimes of the Third

742 Freundlich, “A Soviet Outpost”; Golan, Soviet Policies; Ro’i, “The Deterioration.” 743 Voth, Moscow Abandons Israel; Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship. 744 El Hussini, Soviet-Egyptian Relations, 1945-85; Ginat, “Soviet Policy towards the Arab World, 1945-48”; Golan, Soviet Policies. 337

World could be used in Soviet Cold War strategy, which historian Aleksei Vassiliev called a turn toward pragmatism.745

The U.S.S.R. deliberately distanced itself from Israel when it no longer needed it, when the factors against continued support – Zhdanovist antisemitism and long-lasting tradition of anti-Zionism – outweighed the temporary reasons which dictated support, i.e. undermining

British control of Palestine, according to historian Galia Golan. This work tends to agree with her analysis that support for Israel stopped being useful to Soviet foreign policy, but adds a

European factor to the Middle Eastern one that Golan advances.

Indeed, if Soviet support for Israel had stopped immediately after the signing of the armistice agreements in the Spring 1949, this could confirm the mainstream idea that Soviet support for Israel was solely intended to undermine British authority in Palestine. On the other hand, if Soviet support for Israel had ended only after Nikita Khrushchev asserted his authority as Premier of the U.S.S.R. in the mid-1950s, it would suggest that this shift was a consequence of the U.S.S.R.’s new Cold War strategy of currying favor with the developing countries. The fact that the U.S.S.R. stopped supporting Israel before it started to support non-aligned countries and neutralism in general, on the contrary, shows that the Soviet pro-Israeli stance was, to a certain extent, due to non-Middle Eastern factors.

Indeed, the end of the First Berlin Crisis in 1949 marked the stabilization of the European theater of the Cold War (up to the unrests in Hungary and Poland in 1956), in parallel to its shift towards Asia (the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the Korean War in 1950), and to a lesser extent to the Middle East and Africa in the process of decolonization.

As the U.S.S.R. did not start to capitalize on decolonization movements in the Arabo-Muslim

745 Aleksei M. Vassiliev, Russian Policy in the Middle East: From Messianism to Pragmatism, 1st English ed., Translated from Russian (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1993). 338 world for another few years (it missed the opportunity to support anti-West movements such as

Muhammad Mossadegh’s in Iran in 1951-1952 and Nasser’s Free Officers’ coup in Egypt in July

1952), it seems reasonable to assume that the stabilization of the European status quo might have had a certain impact on Soviet shift away from its pro-Israeli policy.

Conclusion

The Cold War initially pushed the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to allow Jewish emigration from Europe

– in order to solve their problems in Europe – while domestic issues and Zionist lobbying also pushed them to support the creation of a Jewish state. Yet, over the course of a few years, it was also their Cold War strategies – now in the Middle East – that led both superpowers to shift in the early 1950s to a pro-Arab stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Whereas the Soviet shift is more radical due to ideological divergence with Zionism, the U.S. shift is moderate, yet determined, but more balanced between Israel and the Arab states. Despite being unmistakably driven by U.S. national interest, it seems that ethics and equilibrium was more important to U.S. policy-makers than it was for Soviet leaders, who juggled between pure ideology and practical real politik without shame. This study bridges the U.S. and Soviet policies in Europe and the

Middle East and situates these into their broader foreign policies, and shows how the early-Cold

War and the first years of the Arab-Israeli conflict transformed each other by influencing Soviet and U.S. policy goals.

Understanding this early phase of the Arab-Israeli Conflict through the lens of the Cold

War might help to explain why, among all the decolonization struggles and the many dramatic wars of the second half of the twentieth century, this conflict has taken such an important place in the international arena despite its proportionally low life cost and the almost insignificant 339 economic weight of most of its direct protagonists. Historian Peter Hahn successfully demonstrates that the U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Middle East – respectively undermining pro-

Western governments’ authority or combatting Soviet subversion – took priority over resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.746 Indeed, in a region full of oil, the black gold of the twentieth century, neither Israel, nor the main Arab actors – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon – have such resources. Of course, the religiously charged Holy Land might explain some of the interest; but the Cold War rivalry has been a much more powerful driving force for the strong focus on this region.

746 Hahn, Caught in the Middle East. 340

GENERAL CONCLUSION

By highlighting the role of Jewish refugees in post-World War II Europe in the great powers’ policies toward the creation of Israel, this dissertation puts the Holocaust and its aftermath in a diplomatic perspective, and bridges the gap between the U.S.’s and the U.S.S.R.’s European and

Middle Eastern policies. By their very presence in Europe and their Zionist activism, Jewish survivors were able to influence Soviet and U.S. policies, on both Europe and Palestine. For both superpowers, Europe was the main Cold War field, and their policies on the Middle East were contingent on their goals for Europe.

On the Soviet side, the non-Soviet Jews returning to post-Holocaust Eastern Europe were initially perceived as more loyal and less hostile to Soviet occupation. Then as victims of antisemitism, they became useful to discredit movements of resistance against the postwar Soviet occupation, especially fragile and contested in Poland, in the eyes of the Western Allies.

Eventually, Jews became a liability when the Soviets attempted to impose their influence, as repressing local antisemitism would fuel the association between Jews and communism, whereas not policing it might trigger a strong international outcry against Soviet occupation. The Jews were then allowed to leave, which displaced the problem to Western Europe, where they flocked into the D.P. camps that Western powers had set up to deal with postwar population displacement. So the Cold War aims of subduing Eastern Europe for the U.S.S.R., and for the

U.S. of rebuilding a healthy Western Europe as a fortress against communism, determined their policies toward Jewish survivors.

341

Gathered in these D.P. camps for longer than they expected, the Jewish D.P.s, deemed non-repatriable, built a common identity of sh’erit ha-pletah and claimed their need for statehood and their determination to immigrate to Palestine, then under British mandate.

Supported and mediatized by Yishuv and international Zionist organizations, the Jewish D.P.s lobbied the U.S. while the Zionists approached the Kremlin. By their combined actions, they managed to impose Palestine as the only viable solution to both powers’ Jewish problem in

Europe. Growing Cold War tensions convinced the U.S. that Germany needed to be rebuilt into a solid anti-Soviet stronghold and a healthy economic ally. Jews could not remain as an extraterritorial entity in Germany, as their presence aroused the Germans’ antisemitism and their association of Western occupiers with Jewish survivors. The Soviet Union realized how their policy on the emigration of non-Soviet Jews, initially designed to solve its own occupation issues, increased problems for the Western occupation forces and created strife between its main adversaries, the U.S. and Britain.

This Cold War context, Zionist lobbying, as well as the impossibility for Western Allies to find a solution for the Jewish D.P.s stranded in camps, created the conditions for the internationalization of the Jewish D.P. problem, and led to its inevitable connection to the

Palestine issue. But considering the new international institutions, Palestine could not be considered seriously until London brought the question to the U.N. General Assembly. But this would not have been enough if the U.S.S.R. had not officially announced that despite its traditional anti-Zionism, it would be ready to consider the solution, among other options, of partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Followed a diplomatic battle in the

U.N., that divided the U.S. administration and threatened the U.S.-British alliance, in which

Jewish D.P.s were a major factor.

342

After the partition of Palestine was enacted in the U.N., the international community did nothing to implement it, while resistance to its implementation fused from Britain and the Arab states, and to some (diplomatic) extent from the U.S. State Department. The Yishuv almost singlehandedly partitioned Palestine, with the international legitimacy of the partition resolution, which Soviet diplomatic backing kept legal. In addition, the Soviet Union indirectly supported

Zionism and the newborn Jewish state, by allowing its satellites to provide them with men and advising some countries under its influence to sell them weapons. The creation of Israel permitted to resolve the Jewish problem in Europe, while it created other problems and redesigned the Middle East, which led Moscow and Washington to reassess their entire approach of the region within the broader context of the Cold War.

This work therefore bridges the gap between the Soviet and American policies in Europe and in the Middle East, with the Jewish refugees as the bridge between the two regions. Their presence and activism in Europe created the conditions for a coincidence of goals between themselves, the Yishuv and Zionist organizations, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Without this context, it is unlikely that the Jewish state could have been created with some international legitimacy and at this time. However this coincidence of goals did not last, as the

Cold War now shifted its main focus from Europe to the developing world. Both superpowers undertook to extend their influence over the Arab world, for its geopolitical advantage and energetic resources.

In the context of the emerging Cold War – which led to the Soviet need of a strongly pro-

Soviet Poland and the U.S. need of a strongly Western-anchored Germany – and the decolonization era – with the decline of the British and French empires and therefore of Western influence in the developing world – the rather minor issue of the Jewish D.P.s took on

343 considerable significance and influenced the Soviet and U.S. policies both in Europe and in the

Middle East.

So, were the Jewish refugees cynically used by the great powers for their Cold War aims, as claimed many historians, such as Dan Stone and Atina Grossman?747 Did they become bargaining chips between the Western Allies and the Soviets? This work argues that this was not the case. The Jewish D.P.s themselves, and the Zionist movement which increasingly came to represent them, had an influential role in defining both powers’ policies toward the D.P.s and

Palestine. The sh’erit ha-pletah’s presence and activism, their unwillingness to remaining in

Europe, their anger at what they perceived as the world’s failure to help them, and their desperation from continued incarceration in Europe and Cyprus, advertised and supported by

Zionist and pro-Zionist lobbying, helped keep the question of Jewish homelessness and nationhood at the forefront of great power diplomacy.

Were the Jewish refugees “pawns on a political chessboard”748? Most definitely. But they themselves used this position in order to achieve their goals and to influence Soviet and

U.S. policies. They used the 1947 escalation of tension between East and West. After the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March, the failure in April of Moscow’s Conference of

Foreign Ministers, and the presentation of the Marshall Plan in June, the Kremlin reacted by creating the Cominform in September 1948. Moscow’s move discredits the hypothesis that

Stalin’s struggle to adapt to the new diplomatic reality in which the U.S., not Britain, was the prime adversary, actually played a role in Soviet support for the creation of a Jewish state. In addition to the role of the Jewish D.P.s, Zionist/Israeli policy-makers and Arab leaders also manipulated the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. for their own national agendas, by playing on their

747 Stone, Liberation; Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies. 748 Ira Arthur Hirschmann, The Embers Still Burn: An Eye-Witness View of the Postwar Ferment in Europe and the Middle East and Our Disastrous Get-Soft-with-Germany Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949). 344 ideological claim of universalism and by utilizing their rivalries for securing spheres of influence

(and, in the U.S. case, by influencing their public opinions). Rather than great powers instrumentalizing Jewish refugees in a one-way exploitation, this dissertation argues that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. used each other. Britain was the target, rather than one another. The Cold War was the larger context in which a policy struggle centered on Europe allowed the Jewish D.P.s to influence great powers’ policy on Palestine.

Despite their divergent discourses, it became clear that Moscow and Washington, contrary to London, actually tended toward similar solutions, for similar reasons. The Jewish refugees were a problem in Europe, which they both considered the main Cold War front at the time. Their presence was a liability for Soviet plans for Poland and for U.S. plans for Germany.

Was Britain, due to its imperialist history of world dominance, ahead of the other powers in thinking globally and anticipating the developing world as the next Cold War battlefield? The

United States and the Soviet Union accepted Jewish and Zionist claims that the creation of a

Jewish state in Palestine was the most convenient and immediate solution to solve their Jewish problem in Europe. In the process, they both undermined British policy, which was easy to criticize, giving the unfortunate image of a harsh great power cracking down on desperate survivors of genocide. The Soviets emphasized the failure of the British Mandate in Palestine and the still ongoing Jewish suffering in Western Europe, but left the U.S. to take the blame for the partition of Palestine in the eyes of the Arabs. The U.S. also criticized British imperialist policy, while espousing a moral cause, diverting attention from their own quota-regulated immigration laws, and hoping – but failing – to roll back Soviet influence.

Yet the D.P.s made all of this possible through their underground brichah and ha’apalah movements, supported financially and sustained diplomatically by the Yishuv and international

345

Zionist and pro-Zionist movements. However, had the Middle East itself been the U.S.’s and the

U.S.S.R.’s number one priority in their Cold War struggle, it is unlikely that either power would have supported the creation of a Jewish state. For the Soviet Union, it was a strategic move, not an ideological shift, to solve one of its problem in Europe while creating more troubles for its

Cold War adversaries. For the U.S., it was the lesser of two evils, solving a problem in Europe, keeping the pro-Zionist and anti-immigration lobbies quiet at home, and airbrushed with a touch of humanitarianism – yet weakening its closest ally and angering the entire Arab world in the process. Indeed the U.S. did not manage to divert Arab resentment toward the British, the

Soviets, or the international community as a whole.

Both superpowers, though in opposition on almost any topic and in an open crisis in

Berlin, then the focal point of the Cold War, and growing tensions in Asia, eventually voted for the partition of Palestine in order to allow the creation of a Jewish state. And both Truman and

Stalin did so despite the opposition of most of their respective administrations. Although for obvious reasons, Soviet Foreign Ministry and Middle East Department were not as vocal against their leader’s political line, their reluctance appeared between the lines through their anti-Zionist vocabulary. Truman did what he thought was right with regard to Jewish past suffering and present homelessness, even if his State and Defense Departments believed it was a Cold War mistake given the U.S. economic and strategic interests in the Middle East. Yet they did not suggest an alternative solution for the Jews stranded in Europe. The president was accused of playing the domestic political card for winning the Jewish vote in the 1948 presidential election, although de jure recognition of Israel only happened in January 1949, after the elections. His defenders and most trusted advisers suspected State Department’s anglophiles to follow the

British policy without consideration for U.S. interests. The guilt was attributed mostly to Loy

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Henderson and Robert Lovett.749 The American attitude seems based on concerns about the management of postwar Europe, and on domestic issues – its public opinion and some of

Truman’s close advisers – as much as it was thought within the U.S. Middle Eastern strategy.

Stalin’s Palestine policy seemed even more Cold War-driven. He worsened a refugee crisis that divided his two most important Western enemies, the U.S. and Britain, and sought the end of the British mandate on Palestine. Yet he did so while his Near East advisors’ and diplomats’ still used the communist lens and an anti-Zionist rhetoric to analyze the situation.

They thought support for Zionism might undermine Soviet policy in the wider Middle East.

Stalin presided over two decisions that could be considered anomalies within the broader Soviet policy. First was the fact that the Soviets allowed the non-Soviet Jews to leave Eastern Europe directly to Palestine or to the Western zones, and second was the sudden decision to support the two-state solution and therefore participate in the birth of a Jewish state, which they had opposed for so long. These two anomalies only make sense when they are taken together as the two sides of the same coin: on the first side, the Soviet policy of solving the Jewish problem in Eastern

Europe, and on the second, the Soviet reaction to the consequences of its Jewish policy on U.S.-

British relations, unintended but beneficial for Moscow.

Paradoxically, although the Grand Alliance has been long dead, it was a convergence of interests, if not of goals, between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., but also the Jewish D.P.s’ countries of origin or residence and the Zionist institutions, that allowed the partition vote and the creation of a Jewish state. But the Jewish D.P.s themselves, whether they were in D.P. camps in Europe or Cyprus or made it illegally to Israel, because of their statelessness and their determination to

749 See for instance “Telegram from Arthur G. Klein Member of Congress, to the President, and President’s response” Washington, May 3 and 5, 1948; OF 204: misc. Correspondence re-Palestine; Truman Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library; and “Diary” of Eben A. Ayers, pp.97-101, May 12-15, 1948; Diaries 1948; Eben A. Ayers Papers; Student Research File #25 “Recognition of Israel”; Truman Library. 347 emigrate, participated in creating the international conditions for the founding of Israel. Their presence in Europe, as a liability to both superpowers’ European policies, was most likely the reason why Stalin even considered an alliance, instrumental if temporary, with the Zionist movement, and why Truman took the risk of alienating his entire State and Defense Departments and his most trusted ally in Europe and the Middle East, Britain. After the creation of Israel, the

Jewish refugees would progressively disappear from discussions about the non-repatriable displaced persons. They had become “repatriable.”

348

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Subject file, 1940-1953

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