Israel and the Holocaust

Avinoam J. Patt examines the relationship between the two most significant events in modern Jewish history. Is there a causal relationship between these two events, separated by only three years? Was the creation of the state of Israel made more or less likely by the Holocaust? This book carefully considers this question, not just from the perspective of historical causality, but also with regard to its major political implications. How did Zionist political leadership respond to the threat of Nazism in the years leading up to World War II? What efforts did leaders of the Yishuv make to rescue European Jews during World War II? And in what ways did the aftermath of the Holocaust help or hinder the Zionist effort to create a Jewish State after World War II? Avinoam J. Patt argues that the State of Israel has always existed in an uneasy relationship with the Shoah. On the one hand, Israel was faced with the challenge of taking in hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors as new citizens of the state, many of whom were discouraged from sharing their traumatic wartime experiences with their fellow citizens. On the other hand, the destruction of European Jewry and the failure of Western democracy to protect the Jewish minority in Europe seemed to vindicate the Zionist worldview. Israel and the Holocaust documents this tension and analyses the changing nature of Israel's relationship to the Shoah, revealing that it only seems to strengthen with the passage of time.

Avinoam Patt is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at New York University, USA. He is the author of Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (2009); co-editor (with Michael Berkowitz) of We are Here: New Approaches to the Study of Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (2010); co-editor of Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust (2020) and co-editor of Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust (2020). His most recent book is The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt (2021).

List of Illustrations Introduction: Between History and Memory 1. Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Creation of the State of Israel 2. The State of Israel and the Memory of the Holocaust, 1948-1961 3. From Eichmann to Begin, 1961-1977 4. The Centrality of the Shoah, 1979 to 2000 5. 'We Are All Survivors': Israel and the Holocaust in the 21st Century Conclusion: Israel and the Holocaust, the Future of the Past Notes Index