The interrupted chain: traditional receiver countries, migration regimes, and the East European Jewish diaspora, 1918–39

Abstract

This article focuses primarily on countries that had been, prior to 1914, among the most favored destinations for East European Jewish migrants: chiefly the United States, Canada, Palestine, Brazil and Argentina. In the inter-war years, these ceased to be the only ports of final entry for Jewish migrants. However, despite restrictive migration regimes and unfavorable economic conditions, traditional receiver countries continued to absorb the largest share of such migrants (the U. S. and Palestine, between them, accounting for over 800,000). Jewish migration to countries other than the United States peaked around 1933; was just about equal to the U. S.-bound migrant stream by 1938; and fell off in 1939–1940. The Jewish case raises several theoretical and methodological issues, including the definition of migrant motivation as well as the framing of immigration policy as products of mixed factors – both political and economic.

Keywords:

• Jews
• migration
• United States
• Palestine
• Russia
• refugees

Notes on contributor

Eli Lederhendler is the Stephen S. Wise Professor of American Jewish History and Institutions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a fellow of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is the author of several published monographs on East European and American Jewish history.

Notes

1. Gur Alroey, Hamahapekhah hashketah.

2. See, e.g.: Brown and Foot, Migration; Tichenor, Dividing Lines; Fahrmeir et al., Migration Control in the North Atlantic World; Hatton and Williamson, Global Migration and the World Economy; Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design; McKeown, Melancholy Order; Gabaccia, Foreign Relations; Brinkmann, Points of Passage.

3. McKeown, Melancholy Order, 10–13, 90–184, 239–67; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 150–75; Zolberg, A Nation by Design, esp. 185–242; idem, “The Archaeology of ‘Remote Control’;” cf. Torpey, “Passports and the Development of Immigration Controls in the North Atlantic World During the Long Nineteenth Century;” Neuman, “Qualitative Migration Controls in the Antebellum United States;” Caestecker, “The Transformation of Nineteenth-Century West European Expulsion Policy;” Feldman, “Was the Nineteenth Century a Golden Age for Immigrants?” Wüstenbecker, “Hamburg and the Transit of East European Emigrants.”

4. Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 38–69; Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth, 84–101; Goldscheider and Zuckerman, The Transformation of the Jews, 158, 162–4, 166–7.

5. McKeown, “Global Migration,” 156; Carpenter, Immigrants and Their Children, 495–6; on the importance of return or circular migration in this era, see McKeown, Melancholy Order, 56–7, 61–4.

6. See note 3 above.

7. Tartakower and Grossman, The Jewish Refugee; Liebman Hersch, “Jewish Migrations during the Last Hundred Years;” Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations.”

8. Green, “Immigrant Jews in Paris, London, and New York; idem, “A Tale of Three Cities;” Alroey, Hamahapekhah hashketah; Kobrin, Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora; Brinkmann, Points of Passage; Lavsky, “German Jewish Interwar Migration in a Comparative Perspective.”

9. Dekel-Chen et al., Anti-Jewish Violence; Kieval, “Blood Libels and Host Desecration Accusations.”

10. Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States;” Stampfer, “The Geographic Background of the East European Jewish Migration to the United States before World War I;” Alroey, Hamahapekhah hashketah, 51; Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, xx–xxii, 3–18.

11. Klier, “Emigration Mania in Late-Imperial Russia.”

12. Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews;” cf. Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 143–56.

13. Cohen, Not Free to Desist; Sanders, Shores of Refuge; Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom.

14. See, e.g., Tyrrell, Transnational Nation, 55.

15. McKeown, Melancholy Order, 48.

16. Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews;” Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1565; on some other groups and return migration as well as the crucial economic impact of money remitted back home, see, e.g., Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 72–7, 103–6.

17. Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1563.

18. Ibid.,” 1556.

19. Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers; Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 64, 73; Caestecker, “Nineteenth Century West European Expulsion Policy;” Wüstenbecker, “Hamburg and the Transit of East European Emigrants;” Bader-Zaar, “Foreigners and the Law in Nineteenth Century Austria;” Weber, “Transmigrants between Legal Restrictions and Private Charity;” Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 141; Alderman, Modern British Jewry, 110–12, 133, 135.

20. Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers.

21. Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1554.

22. Lederhendler, Jewish Immigrants, 35, 99–109.

23. Brinkmann, “From Immigrants to Supranational Transmigrants and Refugees.”

24. Hatton and Williamson, Global Migration, 181–2.

25. In Vienna alone, some 60% of the 137,000 war refugees who sought safety in the capital were Galician Jews. An additional 75,000 found refugee in the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia). These are partial data: no figures were provided for Hungary. Many of the Galician Jewish refugees in Vienna were deported to Poland in 1920. See: Ansky, The Enemy at His Pleasure; Tartakower and Grossman, The Jewish Refugee, 14–17, 23–5; Tcherikower, Di ukrainer pogromen in yor 1919; Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom, 75–97; Sanders, Shores of Refuge, 282–379; Korzec, “Antisemitism in Poland.”

26. Nove and Newth, “The Jewish Population;” Pinkus, Yehudei rusia uvrit hamo'atsot; Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land.

27. Brinkmann, “From Immigrants to Supranational Transmigrants and Refugees.”

28. Hersch, “Jewish Migrations,” 409.

29. Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1556, 1566.

30. Feingold, A Time for Searching, 27.

31. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 175; McKeown, Melancholy Order, 318–35; Marrus, The Unwanted; Zolberg et al., “International Factors in the Formation of Refugee Movements.”

32. Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1592–3; Korzec, “Antisemitism in Poland,” 62; Trunk, “Der ekonomisher antisemitismus in poyln tsvishn di tsvey velt-milkhomes,” 14; Mahler, Yehudei polin bein shtei milhamot ha'olam, 131.

33. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, 73–6; Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918–1941, 142–4; Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 40–1.

34. Tomaszewski, “The Role of Jews in Polish Commerce,” 156.

35. On other migrant groups' search for available alternative destinations within Europe, see Hatton and Williamson, Global Migration, 188.

36. Tartakower and Grossman, The Jewish Refugee, 44.

37. Lestschinsky, “Jewish Migrations,” 1572.

38. Cohen, Palestine; Esco Foundation, Palestine, vol. 2, 671–3.

39. Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 12, 33–44, 49–50.