Jewish state in Europe?
- Thread starter Eivind
- Start date
Not exactly the most neutral source, considering he spent his whole life trying to establish a homeland in Eretz Israel. However, if East Prussia was still under Stalin's thumb, then... yeah.
Israel's roots lay in WWI, not WWII. So a Jewish state in Europe would be redundant since there were already plans for such a thing in Palestine.
Generaloberst
Banned
You'd be more likely to set them up somewhere in Africa. The Balfour Declaration had already supported the movement of the Jews to Israel.
It's a stretch, but maybe Stalin turns the region into a Jewish state for propaganda. Probably would work out as well as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, but still.
Yes, I have thought about the area around East Prussia myself, although it might have been natural somehow to include the Vilnius area too. As far as I understand, Vilnius was added to the Lithuanian SSR after the war and there were few Lithuanians in the city at this time. As late as 1897, 40 % of the population were Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius#Demographics) and Vilnius was known as the "Jerusalem of the north, Another possibility could have been Silesia, including Kraków as the capital, although I believe there were traditionally more Jews in Vilnius. Of course, the hitch is that both these two areas came under Soviet control, so somewhere in West Germany might have been a better choice.
But one could have used as a counter argument that there were already another group of people living in Palestine and they were still the majority. After all, the Germans were the ones with a historical debt to the Jews, not the Palestinians.
But then the Africans living there would have had to pay the price for the crimes of Nazi Germany.
Well of course, but the British policymakers of the era were dismissive to the Arabs at best. They were deemed too backwards to matter due to the racism of the time.
There's a few extra problems:
a) Where in Europe isn't going to have been trashed by WW2, that wasn't a neutral state? And you can't put them in one of the Allies.
b) Is it a state Jews want to live in? The Red Army aside, East Prussia is Germany. How many Holocaust survivors want to live in Germany, who weren't already German?
c) What happens to the people already living there? That was a question in Palestine as well but Europeans are Europeans & this is 1945. Double standards would apply
a) Where in Europe isn't going to have been trashed by WW2, that wasn't a neutral state? And you can't put them in one of the Allies.
b) Is it a state Jews want to live in? The Red Army aside, East Prussia is Germany. How many Holocaust survivors want to live in Germany, who weren't already German?
c) What happens to the people already living there? That was a question in Palestine as well but Europeans are Europeans & this is 1945. Double standards would apply
What about the non-Jewish majority of the city's population, and overwhelmingly non-Jewish population of the surrounding area? No way this would be natural unless it is assumed that Jews are more equal then others.
Kraków and the surrounding areas had a smaller percentage of Jews then the area you mention above before WWII.
Of course, by the end of WWII the Germans had killed off virtually the entire Jewish populations of those areas, making such propositions even more untenable.
A few extra Big, Dealbreaking problems.
There is also no emotive, religious/historical call connected to East Prussia that might offset some of the issues brought up.
Bonnie Prince Charlie
Expulsion of the existing population probably wouldn't have been too much of a problem, esp. if this is a project happening under Stalin's aegis. Remember the Czechoslovaks (under Beneš, no less) expelled most of the Sudenten Germans from '45-'48 and nobody really blinked an eye. Population transfer was not exactly considered an outré policy in the immediate post-war period.
Doesn't solve the other problems, of course.
This is of course a good point. In our time line the majority of the population of Vilnius was in fact expelled. The majority had traditionally been Poles and Jews and the majority of the Poles were expelled to post-war Poland. The proportion of Jews also fell drastically between 1931 and 1959, but I assume that this might have been a result of holocaust and possibly some migration to Israel. As far as I know there was no expulsion of Jews from Vilnius. Theoretically, therefore it might have been possible that this also would have happened in the case of a Jewish state in East-Prussia and the Vilnius-region.
Not going to happen. The Jews won't want to go to East Prussia, even if ALL the locals are removed, especially if it is part of the USSR or definitely controlled by Stalin. While many Jews were socialist or even communist, very few had "good feelings" about Stalin and the USSR in 1945.
If this happens, then what goes on with the "Doctors Purge" in the early 50s which hit Russian Jews very hard...
If this happens, then what goes on with the "Doctors Purge" in the early 50s which hit Russian Jews very hard...
Cyprus was a crown colony and had some key bases on it, so only if Britain wants to give it up - which we wouldn't. (It took quite a bit of violence for the Cypriots to achieve it) It also has a majority Greek Cypriot population who want to reunify with Greece and a minority Turkish Cypriot population who want to reunify with Turkey, both of whom went for political violence OTL and would fight like hell against an attempt to make them a Jewish homeland. (I'm not sure there'd be room for all the incomers either)
Deleted member 1487
East Prussian weather is dreadful. Palestine is much nicer and has historical/emotional draw plus an established European Jewish community and is in the British Empire, so is already linked into a decent trade situation with decent governance vs. an area that would be under Soviet rule, which given the situation in Soviet held areas for Jews after WW2 they'd rather stay in the DP camps in Germany.
The Cosmonaut Cat
Banned
There were plans to turn Crimea peninsula into a Jewish Crimean Republic. Even post WW2 it seems.
Maybe it could come to be if Stalin dies earlier and Molotov takes over.
Maybe it could come to be if Stalin dies earlier and Molotov takes over.
The problem is that by 1945 there already were significant number of Jews in the Mandate, and relations between the Jews and Arabs were deteriorating. There had been violence since the 1920s as attempts to make a binational state failed.
Regardless of the issue of what to do with the European Jewish victims of the Holocaust, there was going to be a crisis in Palestine.
