Of close to 300,000 Jews in the DP camps and in Central Europe in 1947/8, roughly two-thirds ultimately arrived in Israel; one-third went to the US, Latin America and elsewhere. Zionist leaders such as Ben-Gurion, Tabenkin, Yachil, Ya’ari and many others expressed great fears between 1946 and 1948 that the survivors would undergo two parallel processes; demoralization and dispersion in the Diaspora. There were good reasons for these apprehensions: the survivors’ stay in DP camps, where they were kept and fed but where only a few were able to find work, caused a deepening process of demoralization, which expressed itself in black marketeering, escapism and increasing cynicism. There was what one might call a large hard core of idealistic Zionists, especially youth, who fought against these phenomena, but the prolonged stay in the camps from 1948/9 deepened the crisis. On the other hand, there was a clear tendency of many to seek a personal solution in the West, especially in the United States. The rationalization was that many had suffered too much to want to undergo the further troubles expected in a Jewish Palestine struggling for independence through war and economic dislocation. There appeared a dichotomy clearly observed for instance by the members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry early in 1946, between the overt pro-Zionist enthusiasm on the one hand, and the quiet preparation for a westward emigration on the other hand. This process affected the leadership of the She’arit Hapleta no less and perhaps more than the rank and file. Not many of the first-rank leadership went to Israel or stayed there. The story, apocryphal or not, has it that a survivor told a member of the AngloAmerican Committee that he wanted the Jewish people to go to Palestine; he himself was going to Montevideo. The point of the story is that his response was probably not cynical at all, but quite genuine: his only surviving relative may have been living overseas.
President Harry Truman, in his directive of December 1945, intended to permit inmates of DP camps to enter the United States. But the administration of this directive was handled in such a way that only about 12,000 Jews from the camps entered the United States by June 1948. Other countries were equally barred. In effect, therefore, Palestine while it may not have been the desired choice, remained the only real one, despite all the difficulties. It was the United States policy that finally opened up Palestine for the survivors.
In June 1948, the Displaced Persons Act was passed by the 80th Congress; it was amended in June 1950 by the 82nd Congress. The first act discriminated against the Jews, and the second abolished this discrimination. Despite these difficulties, large numbers of Jews still went to the United States and elsewhere. I would venture to surmise that had the declaration of the State of Israel been postponed by two years, or had America opened her gates earlier, the proportions might well have been reserved: instead of two-thirds of the survivors going to Israel and one-third elsewhere, the opposite might well have been the case. The Zionist core might have failed to pull the majority along with it. As it is, one suspects that a disproportionately large group of survivors is to be found among the approximately 250,000-300,000 emigrants from Israel from 1948 until today -- another point worth investigating.
Source: Gutman, Yisrael and Saf, Avital (eds.), The Nazi Concentration Camps, Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1984, pp. 502-503.
