First Steps

Summer 1944–Summer 1945

In 1944, in the areas liberated by Red Army forces (Rowne in February 1944, Kovno and Vilna in summer 1944), partisans and members of the resistance, affiliated with Zionist youth movements, began as soon as they returned to their homes to organize and seek routes that would allow passage to Eretz Israel. Given that the area was under Soviet control and leaving it was considered an act of treason, the Bricha (“escape”) was planned out and implemented on an underground basis. In Lublin, the provisional capital of Poland that was liberated in July 1944, survivors from Eastern Europe gathered along with the first Jewish refugees who returned from the Soviet Union. Lublin served as a staging ground for the Bricha activists who, as stated, were seeking a way to leave Poland in the direction of coastal destinations from which they hoped to reach Eretz Israel. The first group set out for Romania in the early going of January 1945, marking (illegal) crossing points on the Polish-Romanian border. However, the route was discovered and the markings were set afire, forcing the Bricha activists to begin organizing new escape routes for groups of young people who formed “Kibbutzim” and moved mainly via Czechoslovakia and Hungary to Romania. When hopes of sailing from Romania to Eretz Israel were dashed, it was decided to steer the groups toward ports in Italy. By the summer of 1945, some 15,000 survivors from Poland and Romania reached Italy.