Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia

Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946.

How did the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia become the ideal citizenry of a Jewish state in the Middle East? Usually, the creation of the State of Israel is cast a story that begins with Herzl and is brought to fulfillment by the Holocaust. My book, Uprooting the Diaspora, considers the resolution of questions concerning Jewish belonging in east central Europe and the acceptance of population transfers for “minority” populations during the Second World War as the contingent result of transnational debates, diplomatic maneuverings, demographic pressures and border policies across multiple registers during one consequential decade.  With an exploration of conversations amongst both Jewish and non-Jewish actors as well as the political, legal and migration polices which ensued, I show that the overall disentangling of populations in post-WWII east central Europe demanded the simultaneous intellectual and logistical embrace of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a territorial nationalist project.

Commentary will be provided by Dr Joanna Beata Michlic from the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

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