The Pittsburgh Press (February 18, 1946)
Simms: Jewish exodus
By William Philip Simms
WASHINGTON – The greatest Jewish exodus since the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea on dry land is now under way in Europe. But now, as then, Canaan would seem to be a long way off and the road strewn with difficulties and danger.
Of Europe’s 11 million Jews, only a few million remain. The rest have been killed or starved or driven into exile. And those still in Europe are struggling to leave. At least they are striving with might and main to get out of Eastern and Central Europe where, especially in recent years, they have been so wantonly kicked around.
Before the war approximately nine million Jews lived in Eastern Europe. Germany had only about 500,000. Poland alone had some 3,500,000 – seven times as many as Germany. They constituted 10 percent of the population.
Now and for months past, according to reports official and unofficial, Jews are leaving Eastern Europe in a steady stream. They bring stories of being dispossessed, of brutal treatment and even of wholesale murder. It is clear that none of them – even those from areas where fair treatment has been officially promised – any longer has any faith in such pledges. All want to go some place – to Palestine or some other country – where they can be reasonably certain of the future.
Oddly enough – or perhaps it is not so odd – the direction of this vast new exodus is westward. Soviet Russia is nearer than any other “promised land” but Russia is not inviting the Jews to come in. Moreover, Russia dominates all Eastern Europe from which the Jews are fleeing – including Poland. And Russia has the greatest land mass – nine million square miles – of any country, with only 21 inhabitants per square mile as compared with 46 per square mile in the United States.
Some 15 years ago the world was told a good deal about establishment of a Jewish homeland in Russia. It was at Birobidjan, in Siberia, about 150 miles west of Kharbarovsk. Today, however, inquiries reveal that only 30 to 40 thousand Jews live there.
Jews, it is reported, have all but disappeared from Kremlin leadership. The fate of Trotsky is well known. Before the purges of 1936-37, out of 28 sections of the Soviet foreign office, 23 were headed by Jews. After the purge only five remained. Maxim Litvinov and Ivan Maisky, two of the USSR’s most brilliant diplomats and exponents of collective security, to all intents have been shelved. And so on.
Anti-Semitism, however, is not confined to any one area. In greater or lesser degree, it is on the upsurge throughout the European continent. Just as the emancipation of old world Jewry coincided with the awakening of middle-class liberalism in the 19th century, the present recrudescence of anti-Semitism would seem to indicate a definite relapse towards barbarism on the part of European civilization.
An Anglo-American committee is now investigating the Jewish problem in Europe. It is encountering obstacles. A week-end report from Vienna stated that the Hungarian government had refused it entry because Moscow “did not view it with favor.” It will be interesting to watch its progress, if any, throughout Soviet-controlled territory.
There can be no blinking the fact that this is a major world problem. Millions of Jews are on the move with no place to go. The exodus of 1400 or 1500 B.C. was followed by 40 years of wandering.