Aunt Olga recalls....
Hi,
Y'all may be interested in an Aunt Olga video I just posted on Youtue:
During a recent visit (August 13, 2015) with Aunt Olga Tabak we discussed the question: How could WWII-era Zionists claim that Palestine was 'a land without people for a people without land' when there were people already living there?
Aunt Olga answered with vivid recollections of the emigration of Jews out ofNazi-dominated Europe during WWII and their 'illegal' immigration into Mandatory Palestine, the so-called 'Aliya Bee
Background:
Aunt Olga, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday (kenna hors :-), is my mother's (v'sholem) slightly older sister, and her best & life-long friend. The family left Vienna shortly after Austria was annexed into "Greater Germany" in 1938. Their parents (my grandparents) were separated from their children (Olga, Sammy, and my mother Greta) due to US State Dept. 'paper wall' regulations aimed at preventing Jews fleeing from Nazism from immigrating to the US. They expected their children would follow shortly, though WWII-related complications kept the siblings in Nazi-dominated Europe until late May, 1940. They escaped to America from Genoa, Italy. Their passage began under desperate circumstances, while German was winning the Battle of France, and the British began their evacuation from Dunkirk before Olga and her sibs arrived in New York.
If they had not been able to get to the States and the situation became desperate, they had an 'alternate' backup plan: attempt an 'illegal' escape to the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine.
Olga says she recalls 'everything' about her European experiences, even though she may sometimes have memory-formation problems about recent events.