The picture above is modern day Jerusalem, this picture looked very different for a period of time. For twelve years, starting in 1933, instead of an Israel flag, a Nazi flag huge high above the city of Jerusalem. Many of the survivors from the Holocaust believe in Zionist ideology. Zionism was a political organization that sought out the right for the Jewish community to have its own nation, which is now Israel.
According to Tom Segev in the article, The Streets Are Paved With Money, “Zionist activists, members of the right-wing Betar your movement, managed on occasion to steal the offending flag” (Pg 15). It would make no difference, as one came down the Germans would see to it that another swastika flag was raised. The rise of the Nazis was a historical prognosis of Zionist ideology (pg 18). Zionism directly appealed to the Jewish community of displaced persons because after the war it gave Jewish people a group to identify with and a larger since of nationalism. After the Holocaust, the Jewish displaced person were in need of a nation to call their own, a nation that could be defended.
I thought that the article was informative and interesting. I found it intriguing the way that Zionism was able to create a since of Nationalist pride without having a nation-state at the time and was was a major reason of why so many European Jews found their way to Palestine after the war.
Your focus on Zionist pride as a beacon for Holocaust survivor really helped get to the heart of the matter. I personally saw a lot of the ideology as a reactionary ideal that was strengthened by the role of the Holocaust in singling out Jews. We should continue to look at how the nationalistic pride affected post-war Jews prompted them to go to Palestine.
I think you do a very good job with this by getting straight to the point. Zionism was able to create a Nationalist identity for people who had never maybe even had one before. It is easy to see how this was an influence, as Ethan said before, to get the Jewish out of Germany into Palestine
I like how you chose a picture of Jerusalem. I give that “city built on a hill” feeling, shining as a beacon to all the Jews around the world and allowing them to find their way be to Zion. This pride was a main part of Zionism and a good point you stressed in your blogpost.
I think the article was very informative in terms of seeing this transition. It can be noted that throughout history the Jewish people had a decently cohesive belief in who they were. After the Holocaust , there was a new birth of identity -something the Jews always cling to.
I thought it was interesting that you mentioned how Zionism in the postwar era, regardless of whether or not the vast majority of Jews agreed with its ideology, was actually capable of creating a sense of nationalism in a group of people with no nation of their own. I have never thought of this before and it is quite a unique phenomenon. I think that, for the most part, Jews before the war identified as both Jewish and proud citizens of the nation they lived in. Therefore, the war marks a drastic shift in the Jewish identity from these small groups of people who lived very different lives from one another to a large group of people who came together because of this trauma that they had collectively experienced in some form or another.