Berihah
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BER : Berihah
- For the effort by the Yishuv to bring Jews into the British Mandate of Palestine (1930-1948), see Ha'apala
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The movement of Jewish refugees from the DP camps in which they were held (one million persons classified as "not repatrifiable" remained in Germany and Austria) to Palestine was illegal on both sides, as Jews were not officially allowed to leave the countries of Central and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and its allies, nor were they permitted to settle in Palestine by the British.
At times, Berihah had unofficial support from the American army, as Jews were frequently smuggled through the American occupation zone in Germany, but the organization never received official recognition.
In late 1944 and early 1945, Jewish members of the Polish resistance met up with Warsaw ghetto fighters in Lubin to form Berihah as a way of escaping the anti-semitism of Europe, where they were convinced that another Holocaust would occur. It was originally led by Abba Kovner, but soon joined up with a similar effort led by the Jewish Brigade and eventually the Haganah.
Almost immediately, the explicitly Zionist Berihah became the main conduit for Jews coming to Palestine, especially from the displaced person camps, and it initially had to turn people away due to too much demand.
After the Kielce pogrom of 1946, the flight of Jews accelerated, with 100,000 Jews leaving Eastern Europe in three months. Operating in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia through 1948, Berihah transferred approximately 250,000 survivors into Austria, Germany, and Italy through elaborate smuggling networks. Using ships supplied at great cost by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, then the immigration arm of the Yishuv, these refugees were then smuggled through the British cordon around Palestine. The effort came to be known as , and ended with the establishment of Israel, after which immigration to the Jewish state was legal, although emigration was still sometimes prohibited, as happened in both the Eastern Bloc and Arab countries, see, for example refusenik.
Berihah has been called the largest illegal mass movement of people in modern times, and the movement never had to publish a single pamphlet or piece of written material to find people willing to make the journey to Palestine.
References
- [Beriha from Yad Vashem]
- [Illegal Immigration in the Aftermath] from the Wiesenthal Center
- [Immigration to Palestine]
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