Chapter 1 New Times, New Tunes

Jewish Migration during World War I

World War I put a sudden end to eastern European Jews’ immigration to the United States and cut off immigrant families from their relatives who had remained behind. The Jews who had settled in the United States, worried about the news from war-torn Europe, pressured Jewish aid organizations for ways of restoring contact and suggestions as to how their relatives could be brought over to America. Parents, children, and other concerned relatives requested assistance in locating family members who had fled from the battle zones and who had vanished without a trace.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) was established in New York in 1892 by eastern European Jewish immigrants who wanted to assist other Jews just starting out in the United States. It was based on a similarly named organization founded in 1881, which disbanded in 1883. The second HIAS was founded the same year that the US government opened the immigration station on Ellis Island. This was no coincidence. The HIAS hoped to ease immigrants’ shock on arrival in the United States as much as possible and help them get through the entry procedure smoothly and without undue hardship. One of its first activities was to station representatives on Ellis Island to mediate between the immigration officials and the Jewish immigrants. The representatives, wearing blue hats with the letters HIAS embroidered on them, greeted the newcomers with a warm, calming welcome that expressed solidarity and brotherly concern. The representatives explained the laws governing entry into the United States, translated the immigration inspectors’ questions from English to Yiddish, helped immigrants convert their rubles or kronen into dollars, and even gave legal advice to those who were turned back. The HIAS representatives also had a restraining influence on the Ellis Island authorities, who were inclined to reject immigrants and prevent them from entering New York. Representatives of HIAS would continue to assist immigrants as they adjusted to their everyday lives in the United States: they helped them find work, enroll in English classes at night, and wire money to their relatives in Europe. The organization expanded its activity during World War I and especially afterward in the 1920s and 1930s; it also started operations beyond US borders, providing aid to emigrants before they left their countries of origin.1

During World War I, HIAS was the natural organization to turn to for those searching for relatives with whom they had lost contact during the chaos of the war.2 The following two examples are typical of hundreds of letters sent to the HIAS leadership during this time: On September 13, 1915, Celis Levitt contacted HIAS asking for help finding her father so that she could resume contact with him. “Perhaps you can help me make contact with my father, whom I have not heard from in almost a year.” Her father, Leib Rubinstein, lived in the Suwałki Governorate in Poland. Levitt noted, “I sent him money at the beginning of the year, but the money never reached him, according to a trace by the bank here that wired the money to Russia. I last heard from him in November 1914. He was suffering from terrible hardship and lacked the absolute necessities of life.”3 Levitt added that she had also lost contact with her sister-in-law Rosa Seriesko and her eight children, who lived in the war zone on the Polish-German border; the last news of her had come from Białystok. In another letter, Rabbi Abraham Halevi Lipschitz of Fall River, Massachusetts, asked HIAS to help him locate his “unfortunate [sons] who remained in Russia and from whom I have had no word for several months.” Rabbi Lipschitz wrote,

They lived in the small town of Slabada, known as Miraslov, in the Suwałki Governorate. They then traveled from the Vilna Governorate to the home of my brother-in-law, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Finkelstein. I sent them money and received a reply, but I have not heard anything in months. They may have been exiled from there or remained under German protection. In any case, according to numerous sources you are in touch with many organizations and benevolent institutions in Europe. I therefore hope you will be so good as to support me with your good, sound advice regarding how I should go about achieving my goal of finding out where they are.4

World War I caused chaos, confusion, uncertainty, and economic hardship among the Jewish (and non-Jewish) population in eastern Europe. Following the Russian invasion of Galicia, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were expelled to western Austria, especially Vienna. Those who remained under czarist occupation were exiled to the Russian interior. This was a personal and community trauma and an economic catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Jews who became destitute refugees overnight, at the mercy of Jewish aid organizations in Europe and the United States. There are no accurate figures regarding the number of Jewish refugees during World War I. Mordechai Altshuler estimates the number at around half a million, whereas Jonathan Frankel believes there were a million Jewish refugees by the end of 1915.5 The relatives of Celis Levitt and of Rabbi Lipschitz were no doubt part of that wave of refugees that inundated Europe, losing all contact with their families overseas.

Leon Sanders, the president of HIAS from 1909 to 1917, described in his annual address how the war had affected European Jewry. In his overview of his organization’s activity in 1915, he expressed profound concern for the fate of the Jews of eastern Europe, depicting their terrible plight in bleak tones.

Fate, ever cruel to the Jews, has picked out with unerring hand the Jews of Russia, of Poland, and Galicia for a special unmerited place in this world-tragedy. Their homes have become the battleground of Eastern Europe. . . . Six hundred thousand Jews were suddenly, without warning, expelled from their homes in the war zone, and compelled to leave, often at dead of night, without conveyance, or inhumanly boxed in freight cars—the young, the aged, the crippled, the sick, the mother in labor, even the soldiers in their country’s cause—and to wander into the interior of Russia.6

Source: Hersch, “International Migration,” 474.

Jews continued to immigrate to the United States even during the war, despite the hardships of refugee life and the closure of maritime routes. However, they did so in smaller numbers than before, and the decrease in Jewish immigration was sharper than that in non-Jewish immigration.

Approximately sixty-two thousand Jews entered the United States during World War I, constituting 6 percent of total immigration. Some arrived on the West Coast from Chinese and Japanese ports. These Jews were part of a larger group of twenty thousand refugees who fled the Bolsheviks and the war zone in Europe and reached the Ural Mountains. A small number of them took the Trans-Siberian Railway across the Siberian prairies to Vladivostok and Harbin; some then continued to the port city of Yokohama, Japan. The presence of Jewish refugees in these three Far Eastern cities led to increased activity by HIAS: for the first time in the organization’s history, it opened an extension outside the United States. In the years that followed, additional branches were opened in Europe.7

Jewish migration from the Far East stopped when the war ended and the maritime routes from western European ports reopened. Jewish refugees no longer traveled to Harbin, Vladivostok, and Yokohama, and HIAS gradually scaled down its activity. In 1920, the organization’s representatives returned to the United States, and the HIAS branch in Yokohama was closed.8 HIAS activity in the Far East was important not only in the context of Jewish migration during World War I but also in terms of the organization’s strategic decision to aid Jewish migrants outside the borders of the United States. Through its work in China, Japan, and Russia, HIAS consolidated its status as a leading organization involved in Jewish migration, which in the 1920s and 1930s became the most pressing issue for the Jewish people.

The Social Composition of Jewish Migration in the 1920s

Between 1920 and 1929, more than 620,00 Jews emigrated from eastern Europe to all destination countries. Until 1924, the United States was the preferred destination for Jewish migrants, but after it closed its gates, immigration to other countries increased: more than one hundred thousand Jews immigrated to Palestine, more than sixty-seven thousand to Argentina, forty thousand to Canada, twenty-one thousand to Brazil, and eight thousand to South Africa.

We see from table 1.2 that the United States’ closure of its gates in 1924 triggered a change in Jewish migration trends: total Jewish migration dropped by more than 40 percent. New migration routes opened up and alternative destinations were found, especially in South America, and Palestine’s share of immigrants increased. The quota law directly impacted all destinations, especially Palestine.

Source: Linfield, Jewish Migration, 40.

As we can see in figure 1.1, more than 342,000 Jews arrived in the United States in the 1920s, constituting 55 percent of all Jewish migration in that period. Table 1.3 shows that Jewish immigration to the United States declined in the 1920s as a proportion of total immigration. In 1921 and 1922, Jews accounted for 15 and 17 percent of total immigrants, respectively, whereas after 1925, the figure was less than 4 percent. In Canada, Jews constituted 3.7 percent of immigrants on average, and in Argentina, they accounted for an average of 4.8 percent of total immigration.

Source: Linfield, Jewish Migration, 40; Kaznelson, L’Immigrazione degli ebrei, 78–81.

The outstanding feature of Jewish immigration to all countries was its family nature. Between 1899 and 1914, 56 percent of Jewish immigrants to the United States were male and 44 percent were female. In contrast, among non-Jewish immigrants, males were estimated at 68 percent and females at 32 percent. The trend changed in the 1920s, when more Jewish females (54.5 percent) immigrated to the United States than Jewish males (45.6 percent). The main reason for the change was family reunification after the closure of the US gates: as part of the quotas stipulated in the law, visas were issued to women whose husbands had immigrated before the war.

A high proportion of female immigrants generally indicates a high proportion of children as well. Indeed, as figure 1.3 shows, the age distribution of Jewish immigrants to the United States differed from that of non-Jewish immigrants. Between 1899 and 1914, the proportion of children among Jewish immigrants to the United States was twice that among non-Jewish immigrants. About 24 percent of the Jews were aged fourteen and under, compared with only 12 percent of the non-Jews. In those same years, 70 percent of Jewish immigrants were between fourteen and forty-four, and 6 percent were over forty-four. After World War I, the age composition of the Jewish immigrants changed. The proportion of Jewish children shot up to 30 percent in 1921–1924, dropping to 23 percent after the quota law took effect in 1924. The proportion of immigrants aged fourteen to forty-four before and after the enactment of the quota law is estimated at 58 and 54 percent, respectively. And the proportion of immigrants over age forty-four increased steeply compared with the period of free immigration: 23 percent in 1925–1927 versus 13 percent in 1921–1924.

US immigration statistics divided occupations into three categories: professional, skilled, and miscellaneous. Skilled workers included tradespeople, industrial workers, and white-collar workers. The “miscellaneous” category was broad and diverse, encompassing farm workers, unskilled workers, and domestic workers as well as industrialists, merchants, and middlemen.

Two-thirds of Jewish immigrants in the United States in the 1920s (more than half a million individuals) were skilled workers, most of them (329,000) employed in the garment industry. The rest worked in the wood, food, metal, paper, and textile industries.

The occupations of Jewish immigrants to the United States, too, differed before and after the war. Table 1.4 shows the changes in the occupational composition of Jewish immigration to the United States in the 1920s. The proportion of unskilled workers rose, especially due to the large number of newly arrived women and children, while the proportion of industrial workers dropped. In addition, the proportions of Jewish immigrants working in commerce and the liberal professions increased in the 1920s.

Source: Hersch, “Jewish Migrations,” 424.

The Butterfly Effect: The Quota Laws of 1921 and 1924

When I got the departure papers, I borrowed 25 million marks, and I went to Warsaw to get information about my trip to America. Unfortunately, however, I didn’t get any good news in Warsaw. I went to HIAS and showed them my papers, but they said that the quotas for 1924 and 1925 had already been filled by people in the first and second categories. If I wanted to, they said, I could register for 1926, but it could turn out that the 1926 quota will also be filled by those in the first and second categories. It could well be that we will never get to go at all.9

This is how Wolf Lewkowicz of Łódź described to his nephew Sol Zissman in America being turned down for a visa to the United States. In the first half of the 1920s, the US government toughened its immigration policy, enacting two quota laws that drastically reduced the number of immigrants, and especially the number of Jews, admitted into the country. Like many Polish Jews, Lewkowicz was trying to leave Poland due to his dire financial situation but encountered bureaucratic and legal obstacles posed by American consuls applying the policy rigidly, preventing him and many others from entering the United States.

The roots of the stringent American immigration policy, which led to the closure of the country’s gates in 1924, lay in American attitudes toward immigrants during the second half of the nineteenth century. Between 1820 and 1880, some ten million immigrants arrived in the United States. A quarter million of them were from Asia, most of them Chinese, and these gradually became an unwanted ethnic minority. They were different from the surrounding society, with a unique culture, a different way of life, and even their own justice system. The native-born white population persecuted them, seeing them as an inferior ethnic group that threatened the character of American society. In the 1870s and 1880s, fear of Chinese domination led to the enactment of several laws intended to limit immigration from Asia. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed on May 6, 1882, stopped migration from China to the United States almost entirely. In many senses, this law was a watershed in US immigration policy, the harbinger of a long series of restrictive immigration laws.10

The Immigration Act of 1882, passed on August 3, further limited immigration to the United States. This law banned not only Asians but also criminals, the mentally ill, the intellectually disabled, and all those who could not take care of themselves and their families and were liable to become a burden on society.11 The laws of May and August 1882 illustrate the change in US legislative policy, which became increasingly tougher until the final closure of the gates in 1924. Each law expanded on the previous one and was usually more stringent. The various immigration laws passed until the quota laws of the 1920s set forth eight categories whose members were barred from entering the United States: contract workers, Asians, criminals, “moral degenerates” and people with bad reputations, the ill or disabled, the poor, revolutionaries, and the illiterate.

In his book World of Our Fathers, Irving Howe maintains, “Irksome as such laws were from the point of view of the immigrants and their defenders, none constituted nearly so great a threat as the recurrent proposal that persons unable to read or write their own language be barred.”12 According to Howe, this would dramatically reduce free immigration, and whenever such a bill came up for debate in Congress, the ethnic communities that would be affected mobilized to fight it. Three times literacy bills reached Congress, and three times presidents vetoed them: Grover Cleveland in 1897, William Howard Taft in 1913, and Woodrow Wilson in 1915. One American Jewish leader who opposed such legislation was Louis Marshall, an attorney with German-born parents who for many years headed the American Jewish Committee. Marshall argued that not knowing how to read and write was in itself an insufficient reason to consider an immigrant “undesirable,” as educated immigrants were not necessarily more beneficial. In fact, the anarchists and socialists whom many Americans were afraid of tended to come from the educated classes and were often fluent in more than one language.13

The quota laws of 1921 and 1924 were the last laws enacted to limit immigration to the United States. In the 1880s, Americans had been worried about Chinese immigrants, and the exclusion laws had been directed against them, but forty years later, it was the Jews and Italians who concerned them. Between 1907 and 1910, a congressional committee headed by Senator William Dillingham studied the impact of immigration on American society. In 1911, the Dillingham Commission issued a thorough, comprehensive report that filled forty-two volumes. It addressed a long list of topics: the relationship between immigration and crime, the integration of immigrants in major industrial cities, literacy skills in English, housing conditions, and occupations.14 The authors of the report warned against continued free immigration from Europe and recommended limiting it by means of quotas. The conclusions of the report, published before World War I, were the main motivation for the enactment of the quota laws a decade later.

Senator Dillingham was the first to introduce the idea of quotas. The first quota law, introduced by chair of the House Immigration Committee Albert Johnson, would suspend immigration to the United States for two years until a permanent immigration policy could be drawn up and enshrined in law. At first there was to be an annual quota for each country of 5 percent of the number of nationals of that country living in the United States in 1910. The House passed the bill but with the annual quota reduced to just 3 percent. The quota did not apply to foreigners under eighteen who were descendants or first-degree relatives of US citizens. Nor did it apply to intellectuals, artists, and professionals; these groups were given special status. President Wilson opposed the bill, but he was nearing the end of his term. When Warren Harding became president in 1921, he promoted the bill and signed it into law.15

Some of the arguments of the senators opposed to immigration were antisemitic, xenophobic, and anti-European. They were afraid that the immigrants coming to the United States en masse posed a threat to the majority society and would undermine its stability. They argued that the immigrants—particularly Jews and Italians—had been unable to integrate in the host society and had created threatening ethnic enclaves. Representative Albert Johnson of Washington quoted US Consular Service director Wilbur Carr as describing the Jews as filthy, dangerous, and unpatriotic.16 Johnson added that the United States was inundated with “abnormally twisted,” “unassimilable” Jews who were “filthy, un-American and often dangerous in their habits.”17 The term un-American had undergone a transformation over the years. At first it had been used to describe opponents to immigration on the grounds that they were undermining the American ethos of a nation of immigrants open to all; by the 1920s, however, it was used derogatorily to refer to immigrants who would apparently never be Americans.

The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 (the “Johnson Act”) allotted to each country an immigration quota equal to 3 percent of the number of its nationals living in the United States in 1910. The bill, passed in the Senate by a vote of 78–1, did not include in the quota asylum-seekers persecuted on religious grounds in their countries. The Immigration Act of 1924 (the “Johnson-Reed Act”) then reduced the quota to just 2 percent and changed the reference year. It had become clear to the authors of the bill that the results of the 1910 census permitted the entry of too many immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, so they set 1890—when the number of Jews and Italians in the United States was much lower—as the base year. The new law also stipulated that visas would be issued in the countries of origin instead of at Ellis Island; the US consuls in those countries were authorized to reject or approve immigration applications.

These changes in US immigration laws had a tremendous impact on eastern European Jews who wanted to emigrate, as they now were unable to enter the United States. The story of Rachel Tauber is typical: After fleeing to Romania in 1920 from Myastkovka, Ukraine, she waited in vain for a visa to the United States. Eventually, she moved to Palestine instead. “Until aid came from America, until the letters went there and back and they arranged for the money, it took five months. When the money arrived, we went with Avraham and Otti to Bucharest, where we received the money and the visa.” But in Bucharest they were told by the American consul, “Just yesterday the order came from America not to let immigrants from Russia enter America. . . . So we wrote to America . . . and we remained in Bucharest and waited for the visa to come from Palestine.”18 Tauber was not the only one who waited in vain. In the following chapters, we will see that tens of thousands of refugees and migrants like her who hoped to go to America were rejected by the American consuls and finally went to Palestine for lack of any other choice.

Table 1.5 shows that 86.5 percent of the quotas were reserved for immigrants from northern Europe and Scandinavia; 11.2 percent were for eastern and southern Europeans; and 2.3 percent were for people from the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific. Only 8,230 people were permitted to immigrate to the United States from Poland and Russia. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the quotas were filled quickly and obtaining a visa became a complicated, nearly impossible bureaucratic task. Long lines of prospective immigrants stretched outside American consulates in the hope of obtaining longed-for visas. Lillian Gorenstein recounts how her mother set out early in the morning to stand in line at the US consulate, leaving her small children in a tiny rented apartment on Nalewki Street. She waited weeks to get a visa.

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Commerce, US GPO, 1929), 100.

One’s place in line was valuable, and hustlers and thieves took advantage of the situation to cheat the people waiting. Sometimes they stole their numbers in line and sold them on the black market. Gorenstein said, “One day while Ma was standing in line, a man came over to her and told her that he could help her reach the consulate much faster, if she would just give him her number. He showed her a few other numbers and so she believed him and handed him hers also. She never saw the man again. She had to start all over, and it took her over six weeks to reach the same place in the line.”19

The masses of Jews hoping to emigrate did not find tolerant, accepting officials at the American consulates. In most cases, their requests, entreaties, and pleas did no good, as the consular workers abided by every clause of the immigration law. Visa applicants encountered arrogant officials and sometimes even antisemitic ones who were repulsed by Jews. The historian Tara Zahra gives an example of the discriminatory attitude of the US consul in Warsaw: A Jewish woman named Esther Reisfeld was applying for visas for herself and her two daughters, ages fourteen and fifteen. Her husband was already a US citizen, so according to the Johnson-Reed Act, she was eligible for a visa. At the consulate, she was given an intelligence test, which she failed because she did not correctly answer such questions as the following: What is more necessary, the fly or the butterfly? How many feathers does a goose have? How many stars are there in heaven? Which is heavier, one pound of corn or one pound of feathers? How many legs does an American cat have? Reisfeld was labeled mentally defective and was denied the visa.20

The quota laws dramatically changed the procedure for entering the United States. Until World War I, the entry procedure had taken place within the United States. Even after immigrants disembarked, they did not know whether the American immigration officials would let them in. After quotas were set and immigrants had to get an official visa from the US consulate before embarking, the center of gravity moved to the country of origin, and the immigrants set out knowing that they would be admitted into the United States.

The new immigration laws also posed a challenge for American Jews, who had to contend with their ramifications. The restrictions on immigration prompted Jews to try to enter the country by various illegal means: they slipped across the Mexico-Texas border, entered on false passports via Cuba, and paid smugglers to take them in. The American Jewish leadership faced a dilemma: on the one hand, they felt solidarity with the plight of the Jewish refugees from eastern Europe; on the other hand, as law-abiding US citizens, they could not give their imprimatur to lawbreaking. The historian Libby Garland maintains that the efforts of the American Jewish leadership at that time focused mainly on mitigating the law and finding loopholes that would enable individuals and special groups to enter the country.21

For want of an alternative for the thousands of Jews hoping to immigrate to the United States, Palestine became a destination in demand. In the space of one decade, the Yishuv tripled in size—from a population of 60,000 in 1919 to 180,000 in 1929. The year 1925 was a turning point in the history of Jewish migration: for the first time, more immigrants entered Palestine than the United States. What Zionism had failed to do in four decades was accomplished by two antisemitic US senators who closed the gates of the United States, making Palestine the main destination for Jewish migration.

Jewish Immigration Societies

Barriers to emigration also existed in the countries of origin. Freedom of movement in Europe was limited, and the right to travel from country to country became a political tool for the new countries that had arisen after the war.22 The restrictions on movement were anchored in an official set of travel and border-control documents that made it possible to identify citizens. These papers became ideal means of closing borders and keeping out ethnic groups that did not belong to the country’s nationality. Passports became a visible sign of a country’s sovereignty and translated the abstract presence of the sovereign into everyday reality.23 This “belonging on paper,” as the historian Yaron Jean terms it, was particularly problematic for eastern European Jews, many of whom had become refugees during the war and were wandering through Europe without any papers. These people had difficulty finding a place for themselves in the new order. Furthermore, the new immigration laws confused them, leaving them to rely on rumors and dubious advice from travel agents with their own agenda.

An article titled “The Migration Crisis,” printed in the journal Ha-Tsefira, succinctly expressed the migration difficulties of the early 1920s in the countries of origin and destination. “The chief immigration official in America announces that he sees no way out of the crisis other than stopping the issuance of travel papers.” Similarly, the Zionist Executive issued an “order to the Palestine Offices to stop migration.” Canada imposed obstacles for immigrants, “threatening to send them back to their places.” “Everywhere the migrants go . . . we hear the locking of gates.” But there were difficulties in the countries of origin as well: “In addition, doors are being shut somewhat even in the countries the migrants are leaving. New orders are being promulgated in Poland regarding the issuance of travel papers,” while Soviet Russia “is not allowing anyone to leave the country at all.”24 These circumstances made things difficult for migrants in general, and Jewish migrants in particular:

Everywhere, most of all, and to the greatest extent, the Jews are suffering. [This is] already [the case] simply because they are forced to emigrate because their homes have been burned on top of them, because death pursues them, because people’s cruelty gives them no rest. . . . The emigration crisis is obvious. Soon the sound of the cry of the wretched condemned to annihilation will break out. Yet in the final hour there is hope, namely, the organization and resolution of emigration. We must establish committees for the Jewish emigrants. Be aware that future generations will hold you to account, because when arrangements and order could have helped, you did nothing.25

Even experienced immigration activists who had been experts in the intricacies of the immigration bureaucracy before World War I had a hard time understanding the new laws and the impact they would have on Jewish migration. A HIAS representative in Germany, for example, asked the American consul a series of questions even before the first quota law was passed, to understand what migrants had to do in order to enter the United States: “First, regarding the Polish travel documents . . . what type of travel documents do you accept? . . . And do you issue visas immediately based on travel papers issued by the Polish consul? Second, regarding travel papers from Ukraine, White Russia . . . and other countries that previously belonged to the Russian Empire . . . do you accept all these travel papers for the purpose of issuing visas?”26

The Jewish emigrants’ suffering and helplessness in the face of geopolitical changes led to the establishment of dozens of Jewish migration societies throughout Europe in the 1920s. Their primary mission was to provide prospective emigrants with reliable, authoritative information and help them carry out their decision. In early June 1921, the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) organized a conference in Brussels to find solutions to the prevailing migration problems. Thirty-two delegates representing twenty organizations took part in the conference—the first in the 1920s and one of many that would take place in the coming years. The conference delegates exchanged valuable information and reiterated the need for coordination among all organizations dealing with migration. They called for the establishment of a single emigration council that would coordinate and streamline the work of the migration societies. The conference ended without any real results. In late September of that year, however, another emigration conference was held in Prague at the initiative of HIAS. At the end of this conference the participants decided to establish the Faraynigten Komitet far Yidishe Oysvanderung (United Jewish Emigration Committee, or Emigdirect).27

Prominent Jewish public figures were elected to the board of directors, secretariat, and plenum of Emigdirect, including Leo Motzkin, Ze’ev Latzky-Bertholdi, Myron Kreinin, Vladimir Tiomkin, Ilja Dijour, Elias Tcherikower, Jacob Lestschinsky, and Dr. Julius Brutzkus.28 Motzkin opened the conference, describing its objective as being “to send abroad the Jews who have been harmed by the pogroms and to open the immigration countries to them.” Kreinin described the bleak situation of Russian Jewry: “Four million Jews are in the most dire state of emergency. Antisemitism is increasing. The pogroms in Ukraine and White Russia are going on regularly. The government is helpless to fight the various groups.”29 Latzky-Bertholdi spoke of “the need to establish an emigration bank that will try to coordinate all emigration-related activities.”30

Source: Szajkowski, “American Jewish Overseas Relief,” 246.

The founding conference of Emigdirect passed a series of resolutions that immediately and directly made life easier for Jewish emigrants, helping them make the decision to emigrate and to carry it out. The participants voted to ensure collaboration among the various migration societies; publish reliable, up-to-date information for Jewish emigrants; negotiate with consuls from immigration countries for entry visas; aid Jewish emigrants in the ports of departure; and help immigrants find work in their new land. The greatest challenge for Emigdirect was to establish a bank that would handle the financial management of Jewish emigration, particularly exchanging and transferring money in various currencies, selling tickets for the voyage, and providing loans and financial aid to emigrants.31

Emigdirect took on responsibility for negotiating with the shipping companies for lower fares and better conditions on the voyage. Until the founding of Emigdirect, each migration society had operated individually, and their successes had been limited. The united organization was able to exert more pressure on the shipping companies, with good results. When the United States closed its gates to immigrants, Emigdirect worked on lowering fares to South America. It purchased hundreds of tickets from the various shipping companies and sold them directly to the immigrants at reduced prices, thus sparing them from having to deal with travel agents or shipping companies themselves.32

One of Emigdirect’s first activities was to publish a Yiddish-language migration newspaper titled Di Idishe Emigratsie, which provided the emigrants with the information they needed. Migration-related newspapers were nothing new in the Jewish world. At the start of the twentieth century, the ICA information bureau had put out a twice a month entitled Der Yudisher Emigrant, with articles on a range of topics related to emigration to various countries. Printing and distribution of the Der Yudisher Emigrant stopped when World War I broke out and did not resume after the war. The new Emigdirect publication became a vital source of information for Jewish emigrants. The articles and commentary dealt with all aspects of Jewish emigration: Jewish communities in South America, Jewish emigration via France, emigration from Russia, the emigration bank established in Kishinev, immigration to Palestine and the cost of living in Tel Aviv, the US immigration laws and efforts to repeal them, the struggle against the shipping companies, and much more.

In late 1926, HIAS, the ICA, and Emigdirect merged to form a single society by the name of HICEM. The name of the new organization reflected all three of its components: Hias-ICa-EMigdirect. Twenty-three local migration societies in eighteen countries collaborated with HICEM and made use of its services.33 In its first nine months, 70,000 people passed through the society’s offices, 12,000 received legal advice, and more than 31,000 emigrants were sent by HICEM to various destination countries.34

At a press conference held by HICEM a year after its founding, Elias Tcherikower, a member of the board, explained its importance and its method of operation: “After the war, which completely halted Jewish emigration, committees and societies were established in many countries to come to the aid of the Jewish emigrant.” These migration societies “varied in their outlooks and methods, but in the end all arrived at the clear recognition that emigration is a field of action in which one cannot work in isolation.” Only through joint, coordinated work can anything be achieved, Tcherikower maintained. “Protecting Jewish migrants from the shipping company scoundrels, settling them in a foreign land, seeking new lines of work and immigration locations—these are all matters that can be resolved only by uniting all the societies in one center.”35

HICEM spent time and money on training the migrants before their departure for their destination. “Agricultural courses have been established, and we are sure that those who attend these courses will become pioneers of Jewish productivization in the immigration countries and will not do some other sort of work there,” Tcherikower explained to the Jewish journalists. “We have established courses in crafts, taking into account the crafts needed in the immigration countries. Courses have been offered in English and Spanish, and 750 migrants have learned these languages in them.”36 HICEM helped the migrants after they arrived at their destinations, too. It remained in touch with Jewish organizations in the destination countries and sent them money to offer vocational courses so as to help the immigrants find work and integrate in the surrounding society.

One of HICEM’s main activities was to find new destinations for Jewish emigrants. A delegation that traveled to South America concluded that Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay would be good countries for Jewish immigration. Conditions in these countries were better than they had been in the United States in the 1880s, when the first immigrants from eastern Europe had arrived. In these South American countries, landsmanshaftn (associations of people from the same town or region in the old country) and other aid organizations sprouted up to support the immigrants and help them make a new start in the new land. The HICEM delegation estimated that South America could take in 20,000 Jewish immigrants a year. In Argentina, an association by the name of Soprotimis, founded in 1922, helped immigrants purchase and settle land, as well as find work in the colonies of Baron Hirsch. Soprotimis also operated in Montevideo, Uruguay, and two other associations were established in Brazil: Benficiente in Rio de Janeiro and Ezra in São Paulo.37

Emigdirect, HICEM, and Immigration to Palestine

The Jewish migration societies did not assist those who wanted to go to Palestine; instead, they referred them to the Palestine Offices, run by the Zionist Executive in all the countries of origin of Jewish emigration. The Palestine Offices (which will be discussed at length in chapter 4) were not established ex nihilo; they operated in the same geographical regions as the international migration societies, contended with the same difficulties, and sometimes even collaborated with them. A comparison of the patterns of activity of the Zionist Organization’s Aliya Department with those of the international Jewish migration societies shows numerous similarities: the Zionist movement encouraged emigrants to enroll in Hebrew-language courses and agricultural training programs in Europe before going to Palestine, provided financial support for Jews considering immigration to Palestine, offered reliable, up-to-date information about settlement in Palestine, negotiated with the shipping companies for better conditions on the voyage, and was in ongoing contact with the Mandatory government in Palestine regarding immigration policy.

The establishment of Emigdirect and HICEM inspired hope in the Aliya Department that cooperation between the Zionist movement and the non-Zionist migration societies could further and assist in immigration to Palestine. Although HIAS, the ICA, and Emigdirect were not Zionist organizations, they advocated aid to Jewish emigrants irrespective of their destination and political or ideological worldview. An opinion piece printed in Doar Hayom argued that collaboration between HICEM and the Yishuv in Palestine was essential, and that HICEM had no choice but to support and aid the Zionist settlement enterprise. “Whereas the attitude of HIAS, Emigdirect, and the ICA toward building the national home in Palestine was until now passive if not negative, the merger of these three associations is not physical but chemical and the joint association created from them has new properties” that none of the individual organizations had before the merger. According to this opinion piece, HICEM’s success was contingent “not only on its financial means” but also “on the extent of the psychological understanding of the character and true needs of the Jewish people” and on the new geopolitical situation. “These days, [HICEM] will not come across big industrial lands in the United States of America with cities that are developing from one day to the next, that can swallow millions of Jews one by one and give them a quick, ready-made livelihood. In such times, our immigrants need to conquer nature and the primordial wilds, settle bit by bit in empty wilderness countries, and bear on their backs the entire heavy, dangerous burden of the New Yishuv.”38

The migration societies had learned from experience that it was almost impossible to settle Jews in remote, unfamiliar countries and turn them into farmers against their will. “The cities of Australia, South Africa, and the like can take in only a few immigrants. A spacious receptacle for our emigrants can only exist today in new localities that are based on Jewish agriculture.” “[HICEM] will seek out empty corners for settlement in all ends of the earth, and Palestine will, by hook or by crook, be within its field of vision.” HICEM, the article in Doar Hayom argued, would conclude that Palestine was the only suitable destination for Jewish emigrants. “The new settlements can only be built on autonomous foundations, which will require great expenditure of finances and energy—and the Yishuv in Palestine, which already has an administrative apparatus and a ready-made political platform, will no longer look extremely dear and harsh in comparison.”39 The migration society must immediately and without delay enter into “negotiations with the Zionist Executive in London and with the aliya offices in the Diaspora and in Palestine regarding coordinating and sharing the work.”40 In such a way, “our international migration workers [will] come to participate in building up the Land of Israel, not based on a national consciousness but on external, objective necessity.” The collaboration, however, should focus on settlement, and not on arrangements for migration: “We have enough aliya offices, whereas we do not have sufficient means to conquer the land we are standing on. . . . Broad horizons for large-scale national work are available to [HICEM] for the migration that is taking shape—and if it does not stray, its path will lead to Zion.”41

Although the Jewish migration societies focused most of their efforts in the 1920s on South America, they did cooperate with the Zionist Organization. In 1926 Professor Hermann Pick, director of the Aliya Department, was asked at a press conference for details of the negotiations conducted by Emigdirect and HIAS with the Zionist Organization. He replied, “The negotiations cannot yet be publicized, but it can almost be determined that they have had positive results and that activity in this regard will begin soon.”42

Emigdirect, HIAS, and HICEM indeed helped the Zionist movement and immigrants who chose to go to Palestine. They supported halutzim whose aliya had been delayed and who were stuck in Europe with no source of livelihood; they raised funds in the United States for immigration to South America and Palestine; and they provided financial support for immigrant homes in Europe that the Zionist movement sometimes had difficulty funding.43 Sometimes the Jewish migration societies asked the Palestine Offices to help a particular individual. In August 1926, for instance, the Palestine Office in Warsaw asked the Aliya Department in Jerusalem to expedite the aliya of “the orphan Svintzky, a refugee from Ukraine.” According to the letter, the request had come from the ICA and HIAS. “To this day this letter of ours has not been answered. Nor does the English consulate have any instructions regarding an entry permit for this orphan. Both the HIAS migration society and ICA are demanding that we enable this orphan to immigrate.”44

In 1924, the Zionist Organization offered HIAS an original outline for collaboration in sending immigrants to Palestine. The Mandatory immigration laws limited the number of Jews permitted to enter the country, but they allowed unlimited entry of “persons of means.” According to the Mandatory definition, a “person of means” was someone in possession of 500 pounds sterling ($2,250) or the equivalent in property (jewelry, goods, tools, etc.). The Zionist Organization proposed using American Jewish money to bring in as many immigrants as possible under the category of persons of means. “American Jewry can help a lot with this. . . . The immigrants have relatives in America who can lend them the money they lack, and thus enable them to be classified in one of the aforementioned categories and obtain a visa for Palestine. HIAS, which is in touch with all the American Jews who are interested in Jewish migration, whether for general humanitarian reasons or national reasons and by virtue of its sense of connection to their people there, is the organization best suited to embark on such an action and raise the funds for immigration to Palestine.”45

The Zionist Organization pledged to provide HIAS with lists of candidates who had relatives in the United States and had been found suitable for immigration to Palestine, and HIAS would be asked to locate their relatives in America. With American Jewish money, loans from their relatives in America, and the help of HIAS (which was based in the United States), the Zionist movement hoped to move the Jewish immigrants into the category of “persons of means.” From a Zionist perspective, the proposed plan had another advantage: by recruiting American Jews to support immigration to Palestine, HIAS would be adding a Zionist stamp to its activity on behalf of Jewish immigrants, thus giving American Jewry a connection to Zionism. “This procedure will result in the creation of a personal relationship between the lender and the loans and will arouse the American brother’s interest in the fate of the person he is helping, as well as in the general work of renewal and rebuilding in Palestine. . . . HIAS currently has an opportunity to carry out the great mission, a truly Jewish mission.”46

This collaborative project never came to pass. HIAS concentrated the bulk of its efforts on sending Jewish immigrants to South America and focused less on immigration to Palestine. But the very idea shows that there was dialogue between the Jewish migration societies and the aliya department and Palestine Offices and that they relied on one another.

Emigration resumed immediately after World War I and soon reached its prewar dimensions. The push factors in the countries of origin had grown worse; the hardship and poverty were more extreme. Tens of thousands of refugees were wandering through Europe. The United States, fearing inundation by Europeans, closed its gates. Other immigration countries followed suit, starting to pose difficulties for prospective immigrants. Westward emigration from Europe was no longer unrestricted; various travel papers and visas were required. Whereas before World War I the admission procedure to the destination country had taken place at the end of the journey, in the 1920s it started in the country of origin, in a form resembling that familiar to us today: one visited an embassy or consulate, was interviewed by an immigration official, signed various forms, and finally received the entry visa or rejection.

The emigrants had a hard time understanding and coping with the new situation. They needed middlemen to help them cross the bureaucratic minefield created by tough postwar immigration policies. The result was the emergence of Jewish aid organizations, which worked hard on behalf of the Jewish emigrants. At first these were HIAS and the ICA, founded before World War I. Later several migration committees were set up, followed by new migration societies: Emigdirect and HICEM. These societies served as the emigrants’ representatives. They negotiated with consuls for visas and with shipping companies for lower fares and better conditions; they provided reliable, up-to-date information in various languages and helped the emigrants obtain the necessary travel papers. This was a multifaceted, multidimensional, philanthropic, humanitarian project conducted by organized world Jewry and led by American Jewry.

The activity of the Aliya Department of the Zionist Executive should be viewed in this historical context, as part of a continuum of events and organizations, and not in isolation. In practice, the assistance provided by the Aliya Department to prospective immigrants to Palestine was no different from the aid offered by the non-Zionist Jewish migration societies, but despite the similarities, and although there was some collaboration, there was one fundamental difference that prevented greater collaboration. The Zionist movement only helped Jews who wanted to immigrate to Palestine, whereas the migration societies helped all Jewish emigrants, irrespective of their destination. Emigdirect and later HICEM had the welfare of the entire Jewish people in mind. They offered financial and legal assistance to all emigrants until they arrived in the destination country. In contrast, the Zionist movement in the 1920s focused on the welfare of Palestine and regarded candidates for immigration as means of achieving its national objectives. Therefore the Zionist movement adopted a selective immigration policy and preferred to assist those who could contribute to building up the land. For the Jewish migration societies, aiding Jewish emigrants was the goal for which they had been founded. They were not trying to further a particular national idea or ideology, but rather to find ways of resolving the migration difficulties of the Jewish people in view of the harsh conditions that prevailed at the time and in view of the Jews’ desire to go to any country that would let them in.