Golda (13 page)

Neither the refugees in question nor their envoys had been given a seat at the horseshoe conference table. Weizmann had fought for a dele- gate from the Jewish Agency, the
yishuv
’s official representatives under the League of Nations Mandate. But the British had objected. Golda, then, was relegated to the status of observer.

She had not yet given in to despair. When Menachem and Sarah com- plained that she was leaving again she’d promised them, “This will not be just another conference. It may turn out to be one of the most impor- tant conferences in all of Jewish history.”

So she listened intently to the opening speeches, momentarily heart- ened by all the sympathetic words about the “millions of people . . . actu- ally or potentially without a country.” Then the sessions deteriorated into two days of polite arguments between the United States and France over who would chair the sessions, dashing any hope she’d had that the con- gress would offer her people any relief. Never taking a break during the nine days of sessions, she sat “disciplined and polite,” in her own words, caught between rage, frustration and horror.

The Swiss delegate bragged about his country’s tradition of helping political refugees, never mentioning that Switzerland had already de- cided to block the immigration of Austrian Jews. With 200,000 refugees already on French soil, France’s spokesman lamented that his country had “reached, if not already passed, the extreme point of saturation.” The Netherlands advised that the climate in its colonies was “unsuitable,” and

the Canadians, Peruvians, Paraguayans, and Brazilians offered to wel- come refugees who were farmers, a suspect invitation since virtually all the refugees in question were urban. Colonel T. W. White, the Australian minister for trade, remarked with striking candor, “It will no doubt be ap- preciated that, as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.”

The United States announced that it had raised its immigration quota from greater Germany to 27,370 people a year, but the quota was already filled until 1940. Lord Winterton, head of the British delegation, noted that England was already “fully populated and is still faced with the prob- lem of unemployment.” The government would, he promised, consider admitting some refugees to British colonies and territories. Those territo- ries, however, did not include Palestine. Winterton was speaking of Ke- nya and Northern Rhodesia.

The gathering, reported the
New York Times,
had the air of “a poker game” and the stakes could not have been higher. More than half a mil- lion Jews were already living under Hitler’s command, and experts esti- mated that their evacuation would take four years. No one dared mention Poland, with four million Jews. Excluding Russia, a total of six million Jews lived east, north, and west of Switzerland. Where would they go?

Golda haunted the grounds of the hotel asking that question of every delegate she could find, grabbing them as they entered the theater or waited to ride on the funicular. “I wanted to yell, ‘Don’t you know that these numbers are human beings,’ ” she said. But, by then, she knew no one was listening.

When the delegates finished their work, Golda appeared before a press conference in an ornate private dining room at the hotel. It was her first contact with the world of international diplomacy, and she was angry and scared. “We have very little bread,” she told the reporters. “However, we will share the crumbs of that bread with [the refugees].” The journal- ists peppered her with questions, but it was clear that they felt sorry for Golda, one woman standing against the tide of the history and the indif- ference of the world, one Jew safe from the pending Holocaust.

Their sympathy grated at her. “There is one thing I want to see before I die,” she said, “that my people should not need expressions of pity any more.”

* * *

Arm in arm, they filed through the streets of Tel Aviv, Golda and Remez, Ben-Gurion and Katznelson, behind them hardened kibbutzniks, the denizens of the city’s café scene, and Orthodox Jews who normally flinched at contact with the nonreligious. In Jerusalem, Haifa, and doz- ens of small settlements, they marched as well, 175,000 members of the
yishuv
denouncing the British in one voice.

It was May 1939, and the government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was about to issue its latest White Paper, its final solution to two decades of strife in Palestine. Jewish immigration would be capped at 75,000, spaced out over five years, and Jews would be barred from pur- chasing property outside a narrow strip. After that period, no Jew would be permitted to immigrate without Arab permission. Within ten years, Britain would allow the creation an independent state of Palestine. “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State,” it con- cluded.

The new policy openly violated the conditions of the mandate given Britain by the League of Nations, but the League was dying, so Britain traded in the mantle of trustee for that of colonial power. “Another vic- tory for Hitler and Mussolini,” the British Labour Party dubbed the White Paper. What is the watchword now? opposition members asked, providing their own answer. “The watchword is, ‘Appease the Arabs, appease the Mufti.’ ”

The strike was a first step, a steam vent for public anger and an attempt to hold the revisionists, the radical right, at bay. Their retort to London had been the storming of the district commissioner’s office and the smashing of the windows of a British-owned shop. By the time they were done, a British constable lay dead and more than 100 Jews were wounded.

For the nascent
yishuv
government, the strike was only the first step. They were already organizing the community for a bold display of passive resistance. Rather than shrinking into the Jewish enclave the British had carved out for them, they planned to build settlements all across the coun- try and flood the shores with illegal refugees to claim all of Palestine as their own.

For nine months, Golda had been buffeted from depression to terror. But the dejection that had haunted her since the Evian meeting had given way to anger. “It is in the darkest hour of Jewish history that the British propose to deprive the Jews of their last hope and close the road back to their homeland,” read the official
yishuv
response that Golda helped draft. They would not allow it.

“It is inconceivable that we shall not succeed in our work here, in our toiling to defend every single settlement, even the smallest, if we have before us the picture of thousands of Jews in the various concentration camps,” she wrote in
D’var HaPoalot,
the magazine of the Women Work- ers’ Council. “Therein lies our strength.”

Inflamed with anger and steely purpose, Ben-Gurion began building a secret arms industry, reorganizing the Haganah, and mobilizing the entire adult
yishuv.
Don’t sneak refugees in at remote landing points, he urged. Escort them off their boats in the middle of Tel Aviv, defended by armed guards.

He’s going too far, some whispered. Jews are a peaceful people. How can so few fight the mighty power of the British Empire and still defend themselves from the wrath of the Arabs?

Not Golda.
“Ein brera,”
she declaimed, a phrase that became the com- munity watchword. “We have no alternative.”

* * *

The final plan for the
Ma’avak,
the struggle the
yishuv
planned to wage against both the British and the Arabs, was scheduled to be hammered out at the Zionist Congress in Geneva in August. Normally, when Golda was preparing to go overseas, Sarah and Menachem begged her

not to leave. “This time, we asked nothing,” said Menachem. “We knew for ourselves that if she was needed in Geneva, that was where she had to be.”

Ben-Gurion was at his finest, the tenacious prophet boldly proclaim- ing, “The Jews should act as though we were the state in Palestine and should so act until there will be a legal Jewish state.” The overseas Zion- ists who footed the bills applauded wildly although they thought it lunacy to believe that the tiny
yishuv
could challenge the combined might of the British Empire and the Arabs. Yes, we’ve been betrayed, they counseled. But we must be prudent.

“Prudence” was a word Golda could no longer abide. Millions of Jews were in danger. Consequences be damned.

In the midst of the arguments, conducted during hours of general de- bate, in the hallways and over tea at Lenin’s Café, Stalin and Hitler agreed to a nonaggression pact, and the murmur of war swelled to a rumble. “If war breaks out, don’t worry, I’ll come home at once,” she wrote Menachem and Sarah. One week later, Germany invaded Poland. Still Golda lingered in Europe while world Zionists devised ways to stay in touch during the pending war and Labor Zionists debated the gut- wrenching choices confronting them: Should they cease their struggle against the White Paper and throw their support to England in the hope that the British military could save the Jews that diplomats in London were refusing to shelter from harm? Or should they continue battling the

British to bring European Jews to safety in Palestine?

It was an impossible dilemma, so they settled on an impossible strat- egy: “We shall fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and the White Paper as if there were no war,” Ben-Gurion vowed.

“It was a very nice slogan, but not so simple to implement,” Golda later quipped. They had to rouse the Jews of Palestine to enlist in the British army to help defeat Hitler and simultaneously organize them to defy the British army locally by sneaking in illegal immigrants.

The first priority was to flood the British army with Jews. Who better to free Jews in danger than their brethren from Palestine? Golda submitted

to the British, suggesting the formation of a Jewish army, equivalent to the Free Poles. Golda was not without guile: every Jew who fought in the world war would return more experienced, more combat-hardened to wage the battle for a Jewish state.

Community leaders established a draft, or as much of a draft as a non- government could institute. During the first five days of their recruitment drive, more than 135,000 men and women signed up to save the Euro- pean Diaspora from annihilation and to defend Palestine from a feared German assault on the Suez Canal.

Distrustful of the Jews and fearful of the Arabs, the British refused most of them and established a system of parity, one Jewish volunteer for every Arab. Theirs was a naive pipe dream, a colonial master expecting the colo- nized to remain loyal. The Grand Mufti had already cemented ties to the Nazis, who were sending him both money and supplies. And even without that alliance, few Arabs would have stepped up to help the British, who they hated as much as the Jews did. The White Paper, which they called the Black Paper, hadn’t mollified them. It offered them too little, too late.

* * *

Less than a week after the publication of the White Paper, the steamer
Atrato
sailed out of Constanta, Romania, hanging low in the water, 410 men, women, and children penned up on the narrow deck in the hope of reaching Palestine. Near Cyprus, they ran into a storm and were forced to drop anchor in a bay. While waiting for the winds to calm, they received a warning by wireless: APPROACH TEL AVIV. STOP AT A DISTANCE OF 2 MILES AND LOWER THEM IN BOATS. WARN THEM TO BE READY FOR ANYTHING.

The tension was thick the next night when the
Atrato
made its way toward Tel Aviv. Just as the coast seemed to creep over the horizon, the glaring searchlights of a British cruiser blazed through the darkness. “Proceed to Haifa and your passengers will be disembarked unharmed,” a voice from the loudspeaker of the HMS
Sutton
announced, breaking the stillness. “Then they shall be detained.”

That was the final voyage of the
Atrato,
which had already successfully smuggled 2,414 Jews into Palestine under the noses of the British.

The
yishuv
was already in an uproar about the detention of refugees. In April, the mandatory authorities had seized the Greek cattle boat
As- simi,
carrying 263 passengers. Twelve days later, when they tried to force the ship back out to sea, without food or medicine, the passengers had vowed to die rather than return to Europe. As hundreds of Jews on board prayed, the residents of Haifa called a sympathy strike, marching with signs reading, “Open the gates to Jewish illegals.” Unfazed, the British pushed the rickety vessel out of Haifa harbor, forcing the passengers back to Europe.

Publicly, the British wouldn’t admit that they were trying to mollify the Arabs and flailed around looking for more noble motives: Maybe Nazi spies will sneak in among the Jewish refugees, they told Golda. The ships you’re using aren’t safe and all the seaworthy ones are needed for the war. The
yishuv
scoffed and redoubled its efforts.

Every week, the leaders of the smuggling network plotted new strate- gies for evading the British, telegraphing coded instructions across a far- flung radio network. One center directing the illegal traffic was set up in the apartment of a Haganah fighter they knew was immune to British searches. Code-named Pazit, it was Golda.

“There is no Zionism save the rescue of Jews,” she proclaimed at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Mapai.

The illegal immigration occupied a tiny part of Golda’s growing port- folio. As one of the five or six most important
yishuv
leaders, she had a hand in almost everything. Appointed to membership in the British War Economic Advisory Council, she sold new austerity and rationing mea- sures to the Jewish population. As the new head of the Political Depart- ment of the Histadrut, she dealt with routine labor disputes, kept Kupat Holim going, and trekked through factories, railways, and ports to rally support for a new tax to fund the Haganah.

Maintaining a working relationship with the British was her greatest challenge. But charming and cajoling the authorities into flexibility was

an impossible task, especially when Golda was simultaneously stumping the country to inflame the population against them. “For twenty years we were led to trust the British government,” she remarked in a typical speech. “But we have been betrayed.”