Nadene Goldfoot
Usually most Jews of the USA's Ashkenazi ancestors came from the Pale of Settlement, that area that Catherine II of Russia controlled. She kept Jews in the Pale, transferring Jews from Russia to live there as her country was supposed to be free of Jews.
The UN had refugee centers for non Jews in the Balkans during WWII, which contrasts the refugee centers for today's Muslims escaping wars from Muslim terrorists such as ISIS and al Qaeda against other Muslims of different Islamic persuasions. All this has been causing countries to step in such as Russia and Iran, the USA and a world coalition. So far, Iraq has fallen and Syria is holding on by a thread with everyone's intervention against his horrific hold on his people.
Now nice the UN was and acted to help refugees. How Jews were rounded up to meet their deaths was beyond belief, instead.
Bulgaria also had a history of Jews living there since the days of the Romans when they destroyed Jerusalem and their Temple in 70 CE. By the Middle Ages, they were Christianized, probably the advent of the SPANISH INQUISITION when Jews were forced to submit to Christianity or leave or be killed. They continued to show a marked influence of Judaism in their new Christian practices.
Many Jews fleeing from central Europe with their anti-Semitic acts of slaughter found refuge in Bulgaria in that Middle Age period. This was the center of Byzantium and their Empire.
The queen of Ivan Alexander, Czar of Bulgaria from 1331 to 1355 was the former Jewish lady, THEODORA. She was the Queen of Constantinople.
It's a repeat of Queen Esther's experience, being a Jewish queen.
After Spain's 1492 expulsion of Jews from their country unless they converted to Christianity, Jews moved to Bulgaria and established new Sephardic communities. Most had moved from Salonica. Communities from Sofia, Nicopolis and Pievna became the most important centers.For centuries, the Jews were typical Turkish communities.
In 1878, the CONGRESS OF BERLIN created a stand of religious equality as a condition. This was generally observed, not withstanding the persistence of some prejudices, in Bulgaria. Even during WWII when they were allied with Nazi Germany, the Bulgarian government refused to carry out the German anti-Semitic policies except in what they considered to be minor matters, and the Bulgarian community was the only one in occupied Europe besides Finland, which escaped mass-deportations of Jews to gas chambers and death.
Also, it should be noted, that the Zionist movement was strong in this country.
During WWII, some Bulgarian Jews reached safety in 1940. The Nazi "Final Solution" slaughtered Jews. Jews were deported from Macedonia and Thrace in 1943. The King of Bulgaria intervened to protect Jews in 1943. Negotiations had begun with the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Denmark at the time when the Jews of Poland were boxed in, with the object of starting the evacuation of Jews of these countries by the Nazi, Ribbentrop. It was in Poland and western Russia that Jews were trapped and had no way to escape. So were the Jews of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia by Nazi rule. The Jews of Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary were untouched up to that date.
After 1948, almost the entire community of Jews transferred itself, with the approval of Bulgaria's government, to Israel. The Jewish population in 1990 was 5,000 remaining Jews out of a former 48,000.
Then why, if things were so good for Jews, were "Bulgarians" part of the WWII refugee program rescued by Middle Eastern countries of Syria, , Egypt, Palestine, numbered in the 10s of thousands reported by the Middle East Relief and Refugees Administration (MERRA)? Were Jews among these refugees? Were any taken into Palestine?
At the time, it was a Palestinian by the name of Haj Amin al Husseini, the so called Sherif of Jerusalem AKA the Grand Mufti, who made a special trip to Germany to converse with HITLER about us accursed Jews. He wanted us out of Palestine, and we had always been there. After 70 CE, things had changed and many were taken by the Romans into Rome, etc, while others had sought refuge in Spain, fleeing such horrible lives of slavery, or being used in coliseums in animal shows where people were eaten, etc. However, Jews had been able to remain. Jews had always lived there; Mizrachi Jews. We had Jews returning from the Russian areas by 1880 and moving into Palestine to join those whose ancestors had stayed. Islam has been an aggressive culture since Mohammad had died in 632, and so many admired Hitler, also an aggressive conqueror. This is seen in their interest in Nazi literature since then, and their refusal to make peace with Jews of Israel.
Hitler was plotting his 3rd Reich!. "It was April 1941. Hitler and Stalin had already divvied up Poland (containing a large Jewish population), and the Germans had swallowed most of Western Europe. On April 6, 1941, Hitler ordered his Wehrmacht to invade Yugoslavia and Greece, an effort to secure Germany’s flank for the Fuhrer’s upcoming attack on the Soviet Union. (Note, both countries took by force, Poland, and then Germany turned on Russia.)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Axis-Powers
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#Fj95TtITKqKAzOWu.99
https://thinkprogress.org/america-turned-away-jewish-refugees-because-some-were-feared-to-be-nazi-agents-b3f3524b182d/
https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution-beginning/baltic-states.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)
and Romania: http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/
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| Haj Amin al Husseini Muslim Sherif of Jerusalem-appointed by a British Jew When Britain Held the 30 year Mandate Rule over Palestine, ending in 1948. He wanted all Jews out of Palestine. |
Usually most Jews of the USA's Ashkenazi ancestors came from the Pale of Settlement, that area that Catherine II of Russia controlled. She kept Jews in the Pale, transferring Jews from Russia to live there as her country was supposed to be free of Jews.
The UN had refugee centers for non Jews in the Balkans during WWII, which contrasts the refugee centers for today's Muslims escaping wars from Muslim terrorists such as ISIS and al Qaeda against other Muslims of different Islamic persuasions. All this has been causing countries to step in such as Russia and Iran, the USA and a world coalition. So far, Iraq has fallen and Syria is holding on by a thread with everyone's intervention against his horrific hold on his people.
Now nice the UN was and acted to help refugees. How Jews were rounded up to meet their deaths was beyond belief, instead.
Bulgaria also had a history of Jews living there since the days of the Romans when they destroyed Jerusalem and their Temple in 70 CE. By the Middle Ages, they were Christianized, probably the advent of the SPANISH INQUISITION when Jews were forced to submit to Christianity or leave or be killed. They continued to show a marked influence of Judaism in their new Christian practices.
Many Jews fleeing from central Europe with their anti-Semitic acts of slaughter found refuge in Bulgaria in that Middle Age period. This was the center of Byzantium and their Empire.
The queen of Ivan Alexander, Czar of Bulgaria from 1331 to 1355 was the former Jewish lady, THEODORA. She was the Queen of Constantinople.
It's a repeat of Queen Esther's experience, being a Jewish queen.
After Spain's 1492 expulsion of Jews from their country unless they converted to Christianity, Jews moved to Bulgaria and established new Sephardic communities. Most had moved from Salonica. Communities from Sofia, Nicopolis and Pievna became the most important centers.For centuries, the Jews were typical Turkish communities.
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| Tradition Bulgarian costume |
In 1878, the CONGRESS OF BERLIN created a stand of religious equality as a condition. This was generally observed, not withstanding the persistence of some prejudices, in Bulgaria. Even during WWII when they were allied with Nazi Germany, the Bulgarian government refused to carry out the German anti-Semitic policies except in what they considered to be minor matters, and the Bulgarian community was the only one in occupied Europe besides Finland, which escaped mass-deportations of Jews to gas chambers and death.
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| Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Nazi |
Also, it should be noted, that the Zionist movement was strong in this country.
During WWII, some Bulgarian Jews reached safety in 1940. The Nazi "Final Solution" slaughtered Jews. Jews were deported from Macedonia and Thrace in 1943. The King of Bulgaria intervened to protect Jews in 1943. Negotiations had begun with the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary and Denmark at the time when the Jews of Poland were boxed in, with the object of starting the evacuation of Jews of these countries by the Nazi, Ribbentrop. It was in Poland and western Russia that Jews were trapped and had no way to escape. So were the Jews of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia by Nazi rule. The Jews of Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary were untouched up to that date.
After 1948, almost the entire community of Jews transferred itself, with the approval of Bulgaria's government, to Israel. The Jewish population in 1990 was 5,000 remaining Jews out of a former 48,000.
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| The plot to get rid of Jews in WWII with Nazis. |
Then why, if things were so good for Jews, were "Bulgarians" part of the WWII refugee program rescued by Middle Eastern countries of Syria, , Egypt, Palestine, numbered in the 10s of thousands reported by the Middle East Relief and Refugees Administration (MERRA)? Were Jews among these refugees? Were any taken into Palestine?
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| 1941 The Grand Mufti and Hitler in Germany |
At the time, it was a Palestinian by the name of Haj Amin al Husseini, the so called Sherif of Jerusalem AKA the Grand Mufti, who made a special trip to Germany to converse with HITLER about us accursed Jews. He wanted us out of Palestine, and we had always been there. After 70 CE, things had changed and many were taken by the Romans into Rome, etc, while others had sought refuge in Spain, fleeing such horrible lives of slavery, or being used in coliseums in animal shows where people were eaten, etc. However, Jews had been able to remain. Jews had always lived there; Mizrachi Jews. We had Jews returning from the Russian areas by 1880 and moving into Palestine to join those whose ancestors had stayed. Islam has been an aggressive culture since Mohammad had died in 632, and so many admired Hitler, also an aggressive conqueror. This is seen in their interest in Nazi literature since then, and their refusal to make peace with Jews of Israel.
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| Blue lands are the Axis. Look at Europe. |
Hitler was plotting his 3rd Reich!. "It was April 1941. Hitler and Stalin had already divvied up Poland (containing a large Jewish population), and the Germans had swallowed most of Western Europe. On April 6, 1941, Hitler ordered his Wehrmacht to invade Yugoslavia and Greece, an effort to secure Germany’s flank for the Fuhrer’s upcoming attack on the Soviet Union. (Note, both countries took by force, Poland, and then Germany turned on Russia.)
Europeans—largely women and children from Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia—fled the onslaught. Where would they go?" Did the group include Jews?
The new United Nations (UN) since 1942 had established MERRA (MIDDLE EAST RELIEF & REFUGEES ADMINISTRATION, camps in Syria, Egypt and Palestine. You can bet your bottom dollar that no Jews were allowed into them. They were being taken away by the Nazis for extermination. Middle Easterners were being brain-washed already to rid themselves of Jews.
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| Franklin Delano Roosevelt declaring War against Germany |
"The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt was first used in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers.." The Axis were those siding with Germany: Italy, Ottoman Empire (Turkey and their Middle East Holdings) and Japan.
Croatia used to be Yugoslavia. Jews also lived here since the Roman Times. Jewish refugees had settled here from the 1492 Spanish Inquisition. Belgrade and Sarajevo were important Jewish centers where the Sephardi traditions were preserved. Serbia re-established her independence in the 19th century and treated Jews badly. They turned around and followed the 1878 dictum towards Jews and their Jewish Problem disappeared. Then there was a Balkan War before WWI in 1912-13 and former Austrian territories taken after WWI added an Ashkenazi group of Jews to their lands. In WWII the Germans supported by Bosnian Moslems and led by Haj Amin al Husseini, carried out deportations and massacres big-time. After the war, only 10,500 Jews out of 72,000 Jews were left alive in Yugoslavia. 8,000 of them had immigrated to Israel after 1948. The remaining Jewish population in 1990 was 4,800. I see most countries with remaining Jews would have been an older population, feeling unable to handle newer conditions of language and work and homes. The Italian General in Croatia refused to hand over Jews in his zone to the German army. 4 days later, some Mussolini's subordinates had been influenced by by opposition in the Vatican to the German-style anti-Semitism. No Jews were deported from Italy to the death camps until after the fall of Mussolini and the German occupation of Northern Italy in 1943. Deportations to Birkenau continued. There they gassed in the last week of September 1942 several hundred from Slovakia.
Greece had been in contact with Jews since Biblical times and some Jews had lived there since by 2nd century BCE. Synagogues were built there were found by Paul, the apostle of the New Testament. Jews in the Byzantine Empire suffered terribly with attempts at enforcing wholesale conversion on them from the 7th century onward. The Spanish Inquisition of 1492 and refugees from Spain overwhelmed the local communities and became entirely Sephardi in culture. Only in CORFU was an original Greek rite of prayer preserved. Salonica attracted more Jewish settlers, and other seaports was also selected for new Jewish communities. Athens was a city with anti-Semitic attacks happening. Salonica in 1912 was captured and under Greek rule and held one of the largest Jewish communities. Populations between Greece and Turkey was exchanged. Wholesale deportations of Jews occurred in 1941. Many towns lost 90% of their Jewish population. Taken away were 60,332 out of 76,420 Jews. Salonica was left with 1,100 Jews. Over 2,000 Greek Jews immigrated to Israel after 1948. The Jewish population of Greece in 1990 was 4,875. My neighbor in Haifa was a Greek Jewess who looked just like Sofia Loren only smaller. Beautiful lady that she was, she and her young husband who was in the IDF had offered to board my German shepherd for me while I studied Hebrew in the Ulpan. In 1944 on September 25th, the Chief Rabbi of Athens escaped from the capital disguised as a peasant and reached Thessaly and relative security. There, Rabbi Barzilai encourage Greek Jews to join the partisans ar go into hiding. He worked with the Greek partisans to arrange for more than 600 Greek Jews to be smuggled by boat across the Aegean Sea to safety of neutral Turkey. In return, the Jews smuggled boots and money by sea to the Greek resistance.
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| Jew of Ottoman Empire |
Turkey, home of the Ottoman Empire, is part of Asia Minor. A synagogue was built there in 1326 in the MIddle Ages. Later, from their conquest, many other Jewish communities were part of this Empire as Salonica was captured in 1430 and Constantinople in 1453. The Spanish Inquitision of 1942 caused the Ottoman Empire to open their doors to the Jews of Spain and later for the Jewish Portugal and other land. Jews became favored people! They had become the valuable trading and artisan element and were a counterpoint to the potentially disloyal Christian minorities. Istanbul (now Constantinople), Adrianople, Smyrna (Izmir) and Salonica became the intellectual centers of Sephardi Jewry.
Palestine was part of the Turkish Empire from 1517 till the end of WWI in 1917. So was Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, etc. Sultans applied their normal Moslem code against the Jews but were not really strict about it in every country. That was that Jews were 2nd class citizens and had to pay a tax to really stay alive. When WWI ended the Ottoman Empire in 1917was over, and before that when Jews were entering Palestine from 1880 onward, the attitude of the empire had started to change for the worse. The book, THE SETTLERS, by Meyer Levin, describes the Jews return to Palestine in 1880 and onward in an exciting novel of 832 pages detailing it so well you'll feel you were there.
It's good that the UN helped out the Christian European refugees, but what did they do for the Jews who lost their 6 million lives? Not a thing. The USA turned away thousands of Jewish refugees. The excuse used was that we could threaten National Security. They said we might be Nazi spies. If anyone ever knew what was happening in German from the middle 30s onward, they would NOT say such dumb things.
My uncle escaped Germany in May 1939, one of the last Jews to get out alive. The attacks on Jews had become horrific. He had spent time in a center later to be one of the gas chambers as a 21 year old walking his cow to his father's slaughter house to become sausage. As a Jews, we aren't cruel to animals, just the opposite. Our kosher laws include how to kill the animals without any pain involved, or even without the cow's knowledge of what will happen to them. It was an idiodic excuse used to put a Jew in a horrible prison and torture him, which is what happened. "“I think the fear was genuine, but misplaced,” Friedman said. “That is, none of the Jewish refugees who arrived in the United States has ever been found to have done anything in the interest of the Nazis. They fled them. They didn’t want to help them.”
My uncle escaped Germany in May 1939, one of the last Jews to get out alive. The attacks on Jews had become horrific. He had spent time in a center later to be one of the gas chambers as a 21 year old walking his cow to his father's slaughter house to become sausage. As a Jews, we aren't cruel to animals, just the opposite. Our kosher laws include how to kill the animals without any pain involved, or even without the cow's knowledge of what will happen to them. It was an idiodic excuse used to put a Jew in a horrible prison and torture him, which is what happened. "“I think the fear was genuine, but misplaced,” Friedman said. “That is, none of the Jewish refugees who arrived in the United States has ever been found to have done anything in the interest of the Nazis. They fled them. They didn’t want to help them.”
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| Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust. My uncle missed boarding this fatal ship by one month, fleeingin the SS Washington, instead in May 1939. |
Jews were turned back on the ship, St. Louis and not allowed to land. They were forced to return to Europe and them most died in the gas chambers.
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| Patria with Jewish refugees that made it to Haifa, was blown up on November 25, 1940 |
As I read, the UN never helped the Jews. It was the Jews who had to help themselves, as no one else did. 400,000 Jews of Warsaw and 2 million and more under German rule in November 1940 had no means of escaping death. Jewish refugees from central Europe had reached Slovakia earlier and went by ship down the Danube River to the Black Sea and got to Palestine. Warsaw's Jews in late November faced the perils of the ghetto, and 1,771 of them, arrivals from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, had reached Haifa (Palestine) on 2 tramp steamers, the MILOS and the PACIFIC. About 3 days later, the Atlantic appeard. There refugess did not have valid certificates for Palestine. The Brits were the law there. The Brits ordered them to transfer to another 4th boat, the PATRIA for deportation to go to the Indian Island of Mauritius. On November 25th, during the transferring from ship to ship, a few Jews who were determined to stay, tried to keep the ship there by disabling the Patria to prevent it from sailing. They misjudged their work, and the ship sunk with 250 refugees drowned in their efforts. In the meantime, German propaganda was growing by leaps and bounds. Remember, the Brits were told by the League of Nations to assist the Jews in creating the Jewish Homeland. They held the 30 year mandate for Palestine. Instead, they were known to be assisting Arabs to enter and kept Jews out at a time of their greatest peril.
We've always had to depend on ourselves. The same has happened with Israel. It's a little country that has done the fighting themselves. How great it's been when there have been people who have helped with arms, etc.
We've always had to depend on ourselves. The same has happened with Israel. It's a little country that has done the fighting themselves. How great it's been when there have been people who have helped with arms, etc.
This is why Israel is the Jewish Homeland. "The Land of Israel was always regarded by Jews as the Jewish homeland. After its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel adopted the 1950 Law of Return restoring Israel as the Jewish homeland and making it the place of refuge for Jewish refugees at the time and into the future. This law was intended to encourage Jews to return to their homeland in Israel." It took from the time of WWI of 1914- 1917 till 1948 to get this to happen.
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
THE HOLOCAUST-A HISTORY OF THE JEWS OF EUROPE DURING THE 2ND WORLD WAR, BY MARTIN GILBERT
https://anonhq.com/rare-photos-european-refugee-camps-syria-height-world-war-ii/?fbclid=IwAR1mTdKFXIA7BB8ahvyWRLZwjMj-74jbvGg_5F2EWyDJ4XDzvMrZyRJQXtk
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/how-middle-easterners-treated-european-refugees-during-wwii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#Fj95TtITKqKAzOWu.99
https://thinkprogress.org/america-turned-away-jewish-refugees-because-some-were-feared-to-be-nazi-agents-b3f3524b182d/
https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution-beginning/baltic-states.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_for_Palestine_(legal_instrument)
and Romania: http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/
