Bricha

Brichah (also: Beriha, Brichah etc.; Hebrew בריחה "escape" ) was the name given to an organized underground movement, the 1944-1948 Jews from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union escape aid and illegal immigration to Palestine enabled, immediately before the establishment of Israel.

History

As early as 1939 tried Zionist, Bundist and orthodox organizations to bring some order to the mass exodus of the Jews who continue to Lithuania or in the south fled to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland Romania into and from there to the German attack on Poland. The influx continued during the course of the war years continued as 1942 Jews from Slovakia fled to Hungary, and in 1944 from Hungary back in Slovakia and Romania.

In February 1944, the Red Army Rivne it Wilna reconquered in Volhynia and in April, were there independent clandestine groups of former Jewish partisans with the aim of bringing the Jewish population, which had survived the Holocaust, the British Mandate of Palestine. Together with Zionists who returned from the Asian part of the Soviet Union, these groups gathered in Lublin in December 1945 under the leadership of Abba Kovner. In January 1945, the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising joined them under Yitzhak Zuckerman and founded the organization Brichah headed by Abba Kovner. In mid-January 1945, the first groups were sent to Romania. With the rescue train (English " Train Rescue " ) was under the supervision of the ICRC 5000 Jews, including many children who had been deported by the Germans arrive from Poland to Romania, and wanted to reach Palestine from there. Yet the borders of Europe were always opaque, and this route had to be abandoned eventually. Instead organized Kovner border crossings in Hungary and Yugoslavia and gave his staff to Italy, where he arrived in July 1945. Polish Jews now drove through Slovakia to Budapest and from there to Graz, in the hope of being able to cross the border from there to Italy. But in August, the border was closed by the British occupation forces stationed there. 12,000 people were forced to stay in the Graz area and could only cross in the winter of 1945-46, the Austro - Italian border in small groups. A special role is played also the refugee camp in Saalfelden, Salzburg, since the American occupation forces, the flight of the Jews tolerated, while both the British and the French occupation forces tried to prevent the Jews from further flight. So we took advantage of the short piece of common boundary of the American occupation zone in Austria with Italy, where about 5,000 refugees were allowed to pass over the Krimml Tauern pass the border.

Based in Europe Jewish soldiers, both from the Jewish Brigade and from other army units, built a diaspora center (Hebrew " Merkas laGola " ) to smuggle out of the liberated concentration camps in Germany and Austria Jews to Italy. Funding was initially funded by the Jewish Agency; since the winter of 1945-46 arrived also funds from the American Joint Distribution Committee.

From March 1946 onwards led Levi Kopelewitsch ( Argov ), a " schaliach " ( Messenger ) from Palestine, the transit of Jews who fled across the DP camp in Czechoslovakia in the U.S. zone of occupation in Austria and Bavaria. As of October 1946, there was an alternative escape route via Stettin to Berlin and from there via the British and American zones to southern Germany. At this time, control of the Brichah was handed over to the center for illegal immigration, its director, Shaul Avigur his office in 1946 moved to Paris.

The organization of Brichah was mainly in the hands of Zionist youth groups that were mostly affected by the kibbutz idea and therefore also called kibbutzim. The refugee groups were led to places near the border, where they were temporarily housed and received by the Brichah groups papers with a code ( "parole "). Then they came to the actual border crossing ( " Point" ), where the local Brichah team smuggled across the border. Until 1946, the refugees were issued with the help of forged documents of the Red Cross as a Greek refugees. In Czechoslovakia, an informal agreement was concluded to put the fleeing Jews are no obstructions in the way, and UNRRA and the Czech government paid the train from the Polish border to Bratislava or Asch on the Czech- German border. On the route Szczecin - Berlin Soviet or Polish truck drivers were bribed to smuggle refugees continue, and the transition from Berlin in the British zone was carried out either with the help of UNRRA officials or with false documents. As of October 1945, the operations in Austria by Asher Ben Natan, and in Germany were led by Ephraim Frank, who were both " shlichim " ( Messenger ) from Palestine. In Vienna, the refugees arrived on the way from Bratislava on the Austrian U.S. zone in transit camps which were built in the vicinity of the Rothschild Hospital, and from there to Italy ( until around May 1946) or in the German U.S. zone.

The pogrom in Kielce, on July 4, 1946 in which 41 Jews were killed, resulted in the Polish Jews into a mass panic. The Polish government was unable to prevent the outbreak of violence against the Jews, and permitted in negotiations with Itzhak Cukierman in July 1946, the exodus of Jews from Poland on the Silesian border into Czechoslovakia. From July to September 1946 70,000 Jews escaped via this route to Czechoslovakia, which opened mainly through the agency of the Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk their limits. The movement of refugees from Poland came from winter 1946-47 to a slow halt. In the course of 1947 less than 10,000 Jews of Poland were able to rely on Brichah routes; the route via Stettin was used from November 1946 any more.

After some hesitation, and the intervention of the American Rabbi Philip Bernstein, the American army in the summer of 1946 allowed many refugees transition into the American zones in Germany and Austria. In the second half of 1946, but the onward journey from Germany to Italy has been hampered until the beginning of 1947 the route via Ahrntal was reopened.

The end of 1946, a meeting of Brichah commanders on the occasion of 22nd Zionist Congress in Basel took place, in which Ephraim Dekel, former head of the intelligence service of the Haganah in Palestine, was appointed head of the European Brichah. At this time the tensions between the Haganah and the dissident underground organizations the Etzel and Lehi reinforced. In September 1947, a Brichah man was killed at a border crossing near Innsbruck Etzel members.

In 1948 Meir Sapir of Ephraim Dekel directing the Brichah, and the movement slowly came to a close, although at some border crossings in Eastern Europe, the activities of Brichah was continued until 1949. It is estimated that 1944-1948 approximately 250,000 people left Eastern Europe, of which at least 80 % were able to continue with the help of organized Brichah their escape. The Brichah was used by U.S. President Truman as a powerful argument when he called for the admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine in August 1945 and these claims in May 1946 submitted to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry ( " Anglo - American Committee of Inquiry " ). From 1945 to 1948, the Jewish refugee movement from Europe proved to be a major factor in the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel.