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Ptge 23-THE NEWS-May, 1988
Shores of Refuge: A Hundred
Years of Jewish Emigration.
Ronald Sanders. Henry Holt &
Company, 115 West 18th
Street, New York, NY 10011.
648 pages. $27.95.
Reviewed by Arnold Ages
One hundred years ago 80
percent of the Jewish popula
tion of the world lived in Ger
many, Austria-Hungary and
Russia. A century later only
Russia contains a significant
number of Jewish residents
while the United States and
Israel are now the two great
est Jewish population centers.
The demographic change
which produced this shift was
occasioned by two factors—
the Holocaust, and the more
than two million Jews who
emigrated from Eastern
Europe to these shores be
tween 1881 and approximately
1924 when exclusionary im
migration statutes arrested
the flow.
Ronald Sanders has, in his
new and thoughtful book, ex
cavated the story of this huge
wave of Jewish emigration to
a depth that has hitherto not
been reached.
He has accomplished this by
dint of prodigious research
into contemporary archival
records from Europe, personal
journals and diaries belonging
to inmiigrants, Yiddish novels
and newspapers and belletris-
tic works, including poetry-
all of which mirrored the
travail of European Jewry
during its several emigration
waves.
Accordingly, Sander’s essay
is much more than an inquiry
into population movements; it
is a study of an age-old pre
judice against Jews, how that
prejudice activated their flight
from countries of long domi
cile, and how various agencies
in Europe and America sought
to aUeviate the plight of those
on the run.
The author points out with
some irony that on the eve of
the assassination of Czar
Alexander II on March 1,
1881, the Jews of Russia be
lieved that they had reached
the highest point in their con
dominium with the Russian
people and its rulers. Alas that
idea turned out to be a delu
sion as anti-Semitic agitation
exploded in paroxysms of po-
gromist hatred against Jews
in Odessa and Yelizavetgrad.
Within months a tricUe of
Jews seeking respite from
government-sponsored vio
lence against them sweUed
into a flood tide as they ar
rived in the Galician city of
Brody, a transit point from
which they went to German
ports—to America. Sanders
chronicles the chaos that
characterized the first at
tempts to organize these re-
fugees and provides poignant
eye-witness testimony to
those turbulent days.
It is the integration of those
personal memoirs that adds a
special dimension to Sander’s
reconstruction of what was in
many ways a mundane pheno
menon. The recollections of
Abraham Cahan (later to be
come editor of the Forwartz),
Enuna Goldman (the radical
activist) and Enuna Lazarus
(the poet of the inunigrant) in
addition to the more humble
testimonies of scores of other
people enhances inuneasur-
ably the human aspect of the
drama.
Sander’s book is a powerful
corrective to the idea that
there was but one Jewish emi
gration; in fact, there were
several. Between 1881 and
1902 anti-Semitic elements
forced the flight of hundreds
of thousands of Jews from
Russia, the Ukraine and
Rumania. After 1902 events
such as the Kishinev massa
cres, the Bolshevik Revolution
and the Ukrainian Holocaust
(Sander’s word) precipitated
new Jewish emigration.
In his survey of these frene
tic population movements the
author explores in detail,
which is occasionally ex
cessive, the activities of the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Soci
ety (HIAS) and counterparts
in France and Germany. The
first of these groups ably bore
the brunt of the emigrant
wave as it washed up against
Castle Garden, New York’s
port of entry before EUis
Island.
There is little in the Sanders
volume which is controversial
—except for the latter section
in which he deals with Jewish
refugee problems before and
during World War II. Unlike
many of the researchers who
have studied the question,
Sanders rejects the argument
that the R(K>sevelt administra
tion was callous in its atti
tudes toward Jewish emigra
tion during the grim years of
1933-1945.
He argues that while there
was some indifference, Roose
velt himself took positive
steps to alleviate the travail of
European Jewry (the creation
of the War Refugee Board, for
example) but in the final anal
ysis the president was forced
to heed the advice of people
like Anthony Eden, the
British minister, who forbade
intemipi^ing the war effort on
behalf of specific rescue at
tempts of Jews.
Sanders’ overview of a hun
dred years of Jewish emigra
tion deserves a special place in
every Jewish and general
library.
Arnold Ages is a professor at
the University of Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada.
Jewish Books
in Review
T^T
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