Holocaust Studies: From Siberia to Palestine

Everybody probably knows this but I had no idea, and I’m really taken by the story. Throughout WWII, the British prohibited Jews from coming to Palestine. Still, a group of Zionist Jews managed to get there and start fighting for a Jewish state.

These Jews had been kept by Stalin in concentration camps in Siberia. When Stalin allowed Polish prisoners in the GULAG to form an army to fight against Germans, these Polish Jews joined.

For obvious reasons, Stalin couldn’t let Poles fight on the Eastern front, so he sent this small Polish army to the Western front. The Jews who were part of this Polish military force marched all the way from Siberia, through India and Iran, and to Palestine. Menachem Begin was actually one of them. These Jews entered Palestine because they were wearing the Allied forces uniform, and the British could do nothing.

This is such a powerful, beautiful story that I can’t get over it.

5 thoughts on “Holocaust Studies: From Siberia to Palestine

  1. “wearing the Allied forces uniform”

    Are you referring to the uniform of the Red (Soviet) Army? (There was no single “Allied forces” uniform.)

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    1. They would have been Polish army uniforms. The Polish citizens including Jews released through Iran in 1941 were part of one of three Polish armies. The others were the Home Army in occupied Poland and a Soviet based Polish army that eventually established a government in Lublin.

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    1. He didn’t want to send Poles to fight for Poland. Instead, they had to go as far away from Poland as possible. Having them anywhere near it would have made them want to reestablish their nation-state there. So the Poles had to go in a roundabout way to the West.

      I’m sure Stalin knew that the Polish Jews would end up in Palestine and didn’t mind. He still hoped at that time to establish Israel there as a bastion of his influence.

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