The internal framework of organized Jewish migration from Yugoslavia to Israel (1948-1952)

Abstract

In the process of taking necessary preparations for mass Jewish emigration to Israel, during which almost 8,000 people left Yugoslavia, executives of the Federation of Jewish religious communities of Yugoslavia decided on defining a specific structure within the community to deal with two basic tasks – communicating information relevant to the migration to all of the participating sides and dealing with problems potentially arising from the process. This was to be achieved through a network of Emigration Commissions. The Central Emigration Commission, established in Belgrade and consisting of Federation Executive Board Members, was in charge of coordinating the migration process on a grand scale. Regional Emigration Commissions were formed with larger Jewish communities, each of them responsible for organizing the migration in a number of communities under their jurisdiction. Finally, local Emigration Commissions were founded with each community taking part in the migration. In theory, the interaction of these Commissions was limited by a very strict hierarchy. While top to bottom communication honoured the proposed model for the most part, passing information in the opposite direction proved to be much more of a challenge. Traditional dynamics within the Jewish community proved a much more significant influence than the proposed internal hierarchy. It was due to this what interpersonal relations ended up playing a far more significant role than did the network of Emigration Commissions. This paper examines how the organized emigration process was influenced by the proposed hierarchy, how the proposed distribution of different duties amongst the various levels of Emigration Commissions functioned when applied to real problems and what led to this internal framework finally failing. Relevant documents, used in writing this paper are held at the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade.

Keywords

• migration
• structure
• Jews
• Yugoslavia
• Israel