Israel on the Baltic

[Leo Caesius]

In 1928, Stalin established a "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" around the city of Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East, as a solution to the "Jewish Question" and a secular, Yiddish-speaking alternative to British Palestine. Birobidzhan, located in freezing and otherwise inhospitable swamplands on the border with China, was never a very successful enterprise, and today its Jewish inhabitants number less than 4% of the population.

WI the Allies, after WWII, had decided to establish a Jewish state in the former German territories? While they were carving up East Prussia, they certainly could have set aside some land for the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia, and, in fact, OTL Kaliningrad Oblast is roughly the size of Israel.

One immediate ramification of this would be that the new Jewish state in East Prussia would have competed with British Palestine for new immigrants. I suspect that ATL Herzlshtot (OTL Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad) would have been very popular with secular, Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia, homeland or no homeland. As a corollary, ATL Israel might have become less secular and more Oriental/Sephardic, when (and if) it emerged in 1948.

 

[Xen]

In 1928, Stalin established a "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" around the city of Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East, as a solution to the "Jewish Question" and a secular, Yiddish-speaking alternative to British Palestine. Birobidzhan, located in freezing and otherwise inhospitable swamplands on the border with China, was never a very successful enterprise, and today its Jewish inhabitants number less than 4% of the population.

WI the Allies, after WWII, had decided to establish a Jewish state in the former German territories? While they were carving up East Prussia, they certainly could have set aside some land for the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia, and, in fact, OTL Kaliningrad Oblast is roughly the size of Israel.

One immediate ramification of this would be that the new Jewish state in East Prussia would have competed with British Palestine for new immigrants. I suspect that ATL Herzlshtot (OTL Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad) would have been very popular with secular, Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia, homeland or no homeland. As a corollary, ATL Israel might have become less secular and more Oriental/Sephardic, when (and if) it emerged in 1948.

With an alternative Jewish Homeland in Europe its not likely the allies would recognize Israel in Palestine. When and if Israel attempted to declare independence it could not buy weapons from the west and would most likely get crushed. The best potential for the Jews here would be a Jewish Autonomous Region under the control of the Palestinian government, this would probably be around Tel Aviv where the Jews made up the majority. So in short Zion on the batlic would not be very successful in the shadow of the USSR. Maybe a million or so inhabitants. Most other Jews would flee to the west, the US being the most likely spot.

 

[carlton_bach]

An 'Israel' in a different place would be thinkable (though I guess 1945 would make a very late POD - the infrastructure of Jewish settlement and militant resistance to eviction was already on the ground in Palestine).

But can you really imagine any Jew in 1945 willing to move into German territory?

Not to mention the nasty twist that would give the German political scene - especially the right spectrum.

 

[mishery]

Not to mention the nasty twist that would give the German political scene - especially the right spectrum.

My thoughts exactly. It would be the rallying point for the far right. They would portray themselves as the friends and supporters of the ordinary East Prussian Germans who were ethnically cleansed from E. Prussia and use this to draw attention away from their history.

Would the Soviets allow this Baltic Israel to be Capitalist? Would they leave it be at first but slowly turn the screw and turn it into a communist country? With Jewish Soviet stooges oppressing religious Jews?

 

[Leo Caesius]

An 'Israel' in a different place would be thinkable

Yes, it almost happened at several points in history. Herzl lent his support to establishing a Jewish state in Uganda before the 7th Zionist Congress settled upon Palestine in 1905. My "Israel upon the Baltic" was meant to be just such a Jewish state - along the lines of Birobidzhan.

But can you really imagine any Jew in 1945 willing to move into German territory?

Former German territory, that is. The Soviets pushed 10 million Germans out of Eastern Europe; the German population of Koenigsberg was deported to Siberia, and the Soviets took control of it in 1945. They renamed it Kaliningrad, resettled it with Russians, and today the population is almost entirely Russian. In OTL, Kaliningrad is an enclave of Russia, entirely separated from Russia today by Lithuania and Poland.

My hypothesis is that this newly depopulated territory might not have been settled by Russians but instead offered to the Jews of Eastern Europe. Certainly such an offer would not have been rejected by all Jews. Jewish "territorialists" maintained that a Jewish state need not be established in Palestine; various (failed) attempts were made at establishing a Jewish state in Eastern Europe between the wars (in the Crimea and Ukraine), under the aegis of the Soviet government.

The last such territorialist organization, the Freeland League, was founded in the US after Hitler came to power, but was rendered obsolete after the establishment of the State of Israel.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Would the Soviets allow this Baltic Israel to be Capitalist? Would they leave it be at first but slowly turn the screw and turn it into a communist country? With Jewish Soviet stooges oppressing religious Jews?

The Soviets would probably not allow it enough to independence to be capitalist. As OTL Kaliningrad is so important to the Russians (being a major Baltic port, and free from ice year-round) I would think that the ATL Soviets would want to hold onto it. I envision it as a sort of a sort of Jewish DDR. It could be either be a constituent republic of the Soviet Union or nominally independent like East Germany (probably the latter, but not necessarily). Its current status, as an oblast of the Russian Federation, is somewhat anomolous.

 

[Xen]

The Soviets would probably not allow it enough to independence to be capitalist. As OTL Kaliningrad is so important to the Russians (being a major Baltic port, and free from ice year-round) I would think that the ATL Soviets would want to hold onto it. I envision it as a sort of a sort of Jewish DDR. It could be either be a constituent republic of the Soviet Union or nominally independent like East Germany (probably the latter, but not necessarily). Its current status, as an oblast of the Russian Federation, is somewhat anomolous.

I dunno the Soviets could let it go if its under treaty with the west to do so, which might be the only way to really establish a state there. Look at Finland.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

A silly idea, if you ask me. A rival attempt at a Jewish state only months prior to Israel's establishment would have had few takers. As a puppet of the USSR? No takers at all. And to do this they would have to rob Poland of some of the poor compensation for what the Soviets took in the east, OR forfeit some Soviet gains. Hard to see the Western Allies agreeing, especially France, which backed new-born Israel out of revenge for the British stealing Syria/Lebanon(French colonies awarded their independence before Paris could attempt a comeback).

Leo, I can assure that the Jewish population of the oblast is more like non-existant than 4%. Not that the non-Jewish population was ever much to speak of. Nor would any other Stalinist puppet state enjoy any degree of success. Millions endeavored to flee the Soviet Bloc, none were especially eager to move in.

However, the British foreign policy establishment post-WWII seemed to stumble from one disaster to the next, so perhaps London would agree to a plan guaranteed to offend France, West Germany, Poland, and the Jews of what would soon be Israel in return for nothing but some vindication towards Stalin's latest redrawing of boundaries. Just an examination of London's policies on West Germany 1945-1949 explains why Adenaur and De Gaulle were united in contempt of England.

Xen, recognize Israel in Palestine? It was the UN which made the determination, not the Western Allies, and it is impossible to imagine any of them seeing a Soviet puppet state as something to support. Also, Israel didn't get weapons from the West in the first war, other than WWII scrap which would have been available regardless and a dozen Hotchkiss tanks from France in 1949. It was the SOVIETS through Czechoslovakia which provided the weapons, and no oblast would have changed the fact that arms sales to Israel would badly disrupt the British in the Middle East, so Stalin would have done it.

 

[Leo Caesius]

A silly idea, if you ask me. A rival attempt at a Jewish state only months prior to Israel's establishment would have had few takers. As a puppet of the USSR? No takers at all.

I don't know that I'd call it silly, Grimm. To start with, Israel's independence in 1945 was far from certain. The British were still waffling, fearful of enraging their Arab allies. They didn't turn Palestine over to the UN until 1947. I don't know whether the feasibility of such a project would have decreased as the ATL approached this event, but in the months immediately following the war, with shifting borders, martial law, and transfers of population being the norm in Europe, I would think that such an idea would seem far from silly.

There were perhaps a quarter of a million Jewish DPs in Europe after the end of the War. In OTL, they naturally wanted to get out. Some followed the route of nearly 150,000 Polish Jews and fled to the USSR (and I'm sure that, despite your objections above, these same Jews would have chosen life in a free Jewish state or even a puppet state just as certainly as they chose to flee to the USSR). Between 1946 and 1950, 165,525 European Jews migrated to the Americas and Western Europe, rather than Israel. One of these was Prof. Dr. Hugo Falkenheim, the leader of the Koenigsberg Jewish community, who escaped to the US via Spain and Cuba. Clearly, Israel was not the inevitable destination for all European Jews after WWII.

If these Jews had the opportunity to move to a country of their own, in familiar territory (the center of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe being located in Poland and Lithuania, and Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad being located between the two), then why would they choose to move to the US (105,000), Canada (nearly 20,000) or Sweden (over 7,000)? I believe that many of these Jews, and perhaps even some of the ones who ended up in Palestine, would have settled in Koenigsberg.

I'm not arguing that this was necessarily the best solution for Europe's Jews. In OTL, the majority of them ended up in Israel (nearly 750,000 between 1946 and 1950). However, considering that over 300,000 Jews opted for the West or the USSR instead of Israel, I do not think that this POD is so improbable as you would have it. 300,000 in 1950 would come quite close to the population of the city of Kaliningrad today (ca. 435,000).

Furthermore, I don't see how establishing a state for Jewish DPs in Kaliningrad oblast would offend West Germany and Poland any more than the outright seizure of it did in OTL. In fact, the Poles retaliated against Stalin's repatriation of Polish Jews by instigating a pogrom in 1946. Clearly this could have been avoided, had he resettled them in Kaliningrad, without offending Poland. As for the Germans, Potsdam gave the Soviets northern East Prussia in 1945, to do with as they pleased; West Germany ratified this in a treaty.

 

[wkwillis]

Hong Kong?

Two zones for the Baltic Zion, a socialist Kaliningrad agricultural state, and a Capitalist Danzig, a la Hong Kong. Neutral, and buying lots of agricultural products from the agricultural area. Manufacturing using imported oil from the Estonian shale fields and the Galician coal fields? It's right on the Vistula for shipping, and right across the Baltic from iron ore, lumber, fish, etc.
Yiddish survives as a language?

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Come on, guys. The idea of STALIN allowing any kind of freedom or capitalism goes beyond simple points of divergence.

Leo, didn't think you were suggesting this was a better way, not to worry.

The British didn't turn anything over to the UN, the UN automatically inherited all League Mandates, so unless the British were able to restore order and come up with some solution, some kind of two-state solution was going to happen.

Leo, two questions:

Did the Polish Jews immigrate to USSR or were they in the part of Poland annexed?

Did the immigration to the West take into account the British limitations bordering on an outright ban up to 1948, and obstacles placed until 1949?

Poland might have been irked since Stalin was stealing half their nation and now reneging on part of the compensation. And Yalta would have proven that to the Poles.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Leo, two questions:

Did the Polish Jews immigrate to USSR or were they in the part of Poland annexed?

Did the immigration to the West take into account the British limitations bordering on an outright ban up to 1948, and obstacles placed until 1949?

The Polish Jews didn't properly immigrate; these were DPs who fled to Poland after Sept. 1939. I would imagine that many of them fled to the USSR because they viewed Stalin as the lesser of two evils, and not out of any particular love for him.

We can certainly assume that some of the people who immigrated to the West rather than to Israel might have moved to Israel instead, had there not been a ban and various obstacles. It is impossible to say - but, if we look at immigration trends since the fall of the Soviet Union, nearly 900,000 Russian jews have settled in Israel. Nonetheless, in the same time, roughly half a million Russian Jews came to the US. The proportions are similar, despite the absence of the ban.

I remember a chilling story that developed when the British were considering resettling the Jews in Israel. They asked the Jewish DPs to fill out a form indicating where they would like to be resettled. In nearly all cases, the DPs wrote Palestine as their first choice and Palestine as their second choice. When the Brits redistributed the forms and requested the DPs to choose another destination for their second choice, a disturbing number of them wrote "crematoria."

 

[Leo Caesius]

Di Yiddishe Shtot

Two zones for the Baltic Zion, a socialist Kaliningrad agricultural state, and a Capitalist Danzig, a la Hong Kong. Neutral, and buying lots of agricultural products from the agricultural area. Manufacturing using imported oil from the Estonian shale fields and the Galician coal fields? It's right on the Vistula for shipping, and right across the Baltic from iron ore, lumber, fish, etc.
Yiddish survives as a language?

You betcha Yiddish would survive! It would be the official language, as it still is in Birobidzhan. I envisioned this hypothetical Yiddishe Shtot to be a sort of secular, Yiddish-speaking analog to a religious, Hebrew-speaking Israel - and as a way to allow Yiddish to survive without denying Israel its existence.

As for Danzig/Gdansk, I can't see the powers-that-be agreeing to attach it to any country but Poland, unless they restored it as a Free State, as it was before the War - in which case, certainly its neighbors (this Baltic Zion, in addition to Germany, and Poland) would play a large role.