in the middle of the Holocaust (1943-1944), Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency blocked Britain's attempt to rescue >1,000 ultra-orthodox rabbis & their wives and children, because they were anti-Zionist.
https://x.com/History__Speaks/status/2013706297456160828
Through months of work in the archives, I have discovered and confirmed that in the middle of the Holocaust (1943-1944), Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency blocked Britain's attempt to rescue >1,000 ultra-orthodox rabbis & their wives and children, because they were anti-Zionist.
The rescue scheme envisaged getting these rabbis and their family members Palestine visas. The goal was not really to get them to Palestine, but rather to get them Turkish transit visas. However, granting them the Palestine visas would count against the White Paper quota , preventing the JAP from granting visas to, for example, Jewish immigrants from safe countries who could contribute to the Zionist project.
The Turkish transit visas could sometimes be used to forestall deportation of the visa holders by the Germans, who recognized Turkish visas (though not British), until Turkey declared war They needed the Palestine visas to get the Turkish transit visas.
However, the JAP had veto power over the issuance of Palestine visas to Jews, owing to their agreement with the British Mandatory authorities. They exercised this right to block the issuance of Palestine visas to Jews under Nazi occupation during the Holocaust, because they assumed they - as ultra-orthodox - would be anti-Zionist Jews.
Because of the JAP's intransigence, the British (pic related) had to come up with a new rescue scheme for the rabbis: granting them visas for Mauritius, with which they would obtain Turkish transit visas.* However, the change in plans caused a critical delay in the obtaining of Turkish transit visas; one question I am pursuing is whether anyone was sent to the gas chambers due to this delay.
I'll provide much more detail on this in the coming months, including specifying sources, dates, etc for the existence of this plan and the Jewish Agency's veto of it. I have a lot of projects I am juggling right now. But I preview what I have found now, because it deserves public attention. Indeed, it should change the historical narrative about the Jewish Agency and WWII, which is already a controversial one (Tom Segev and other serious scholars note the JAP did not prioritize rescue, even if it generally favored and facilitated it; but they haven't found what I found).
*Note: this scheme to rescue Orthodox rabbis has no connection to the British deportation of other Jewish refugees from Nazism to Mauritius in late 1940.
posted by Satish Sharma at
05:59
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