The Jewish People Fifty Years After in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXV

The Jewish People Fifty Years After the Holocaust

During the first half of the twentieth century, the Jewish people underwent perdition in Europe on the one hand and redemption in Israel and the USA on the other hand. Jewish leaders in the US during World War II are criticized for not publicly pressuring the American President to save Jews from the Holocaust. After the war, mass immigration to Israel from many lands led to social and cultural conflicts. Arab countries and the Stalinist regime, respectively, sought to destroy Israel and Russian Jews. The Six Day War strengthened unity, Zionist belief, economic development, and directed the country to a more normal existence in the Middle East. The factors involved in normalization: i) collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe; ii) improved relations with neighboring Arab countries; iii) better relations with other world nations; iv) post-Zionism — has Zionism fulfilled its role? v) recognition in the Diaspora that Israel is the center of the Jewish people; and vi) increased assimilation and growing distance from Jewish identity.