The Internal Framework of Organized Jewish Migration from Yugoslavia to Israel (1948–1952)
The Internal Framework of Organized Jewish Migration from Yugoslavia to Israel (1948–1952)

Summary/Abstract: In preparing for mass Jewish emigration to Israel, executives of the Federation of Jewish religious communities of Yugoslavia decided on defining a specific structure within the community to deal with two basic tasks – communicating information relevant to the migration to all of the participating sides and dealing with problems potentially arising from the process. While top to bottom communication followed this model for the most part, passing information in the opposite direction proved to be much more of a challenge. Traditional dynamics of the Jewish community in Yugoslavia proved much more significant than the proposed internal hierarchy. This paper examines how the organized emigration process was influenced by the internal hierarchy, how the proposed distribution of duties amongst various levels of participants functioned when applied to real problems and what led to this framework finally failing. Documents used in writing this paper are held at the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade.

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