FOR MANY OF THE JEWS who remained in eastern Europe after the Second World War, the question of the establishment of a Jewish national home was more than mere speculation. The tragic loss of family and property and the willing collaboration of their fellow citizens in the implementation of the Final Solution had destroyed not only the desire to return to their homelands but also any wish to remain in Europe at all. Why settle in a new country on a blood-soaked continent, they reasoned, where they would again suffer discrimination and physical attack? Largely prevented from entering the United States in the years immediately following the war, Polish and Romanian refugees increasingly looked to Palestine as a place of refuge and hope for the future. Whether ideologically committed to a Jewish homeland, drawn to Jewish nationalism by its promise of a new beginning, or simply convinced that there was no other alternative, tens of thousands Jews from central and eastern Europe accepted the challenge of settling in the Land of Israel.

The impact of mass migration to Palestine upon east European Jewish communities was incontestable. Between May 1945 and June 1948, between 200,000 and 250,000 Jews left the DP camps and areas further east. Four-fifths of them made it to Palestine illegally under the auspices of the Jewish Agency. In eastern Europe, migration reduced the post-war Jewish population by over half, from approximately 915,000 in 1946 to 400,000 in 1952. In some countries, the massive departure of Jews led to the disappearance of entire communities. In Romania alone, where Jews not only experienced antisemitic attacks after the war but also suffered through three consecutive years of drought and famine, three-quarters of the 400,000 surviving Jews eventually migrated to Palestine.

The situation was dramatically different in western Europe. While Zionist movements were extremely active in all three communities, there was no mass exodus to Palestine from France, Belgium, or the Netherlands in the immediate post-war period. Only a few thousand Jews chose to make the long and arduous sea voyage. Among them were committed Jewish nationalists eager to achieve their life-long dream, foreign-born immigrants and refugees who were desperately searching for a place of refuge, and returning survivors frustrated by their inability to regain their former jobs and homes.