Polish-Jewish Refugees from Nazism in East Africa

• In Event: Transnational Refugee Experiences and Networks

Abstract

In the burgeoning scholarship on refugees from Nazism, sub-Saharan Africa occupies a tiny space. Partly this is because only small numbers of Jews found refuge there: generous estimates suggest perhaps 10,000 souls. Even these numbers are not insubstantial, however, and the 6,000 who settled in South Africa constitute a significant group for study in their own right.

This paper focuses on the Jews among more than 19,200 Poles, mostly women and children, who were housed in over 20 refugee camps in the British colonies of East and Central Africa between 1942 and 1950. Having initially been deported from eastern Poland by the Soviet secret police in 1940-41, the refugees lived under harsh conditions until the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement of 30 July 1941, brokered after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Those not fit for service in the newly-formed Anders Army were subsequently evacuated to places of refuge, primarily in Africa. The camps in which they were housed were permanent structures with facilities for education, worship and social life. The British authorities, with the assistance of aid organisations, shouldered the costs. Here the refugees encountered colonized Blacks and negotiated their own ambivalent ‘whiteness’ and in-betweenness in colonial hierarchies. Colonial discourse, in turn, oscillated between paternalistic efforts to accommodate ‘white’ Europeans and barely disguised suspicion of their ‘assimilability’.

Very little is known about the numbers and experiences of Jews among these Poles. Existing scholarship is extremely uneven and, crucially, has overlooked the extensive archives of the South African Council for Refugee Settlement, which worked avidly to support Jews among the Polish evacuees. Their histories amplify our understanding of the encounters between antisemitism, racism, and colonialism at this time. In addition, following the archival traces of their forced migration to, and transit through, Africa reveals significant networks of (mostly Jewish) individuals and organisations working in locations across sub-Saharan Africa to mobilize support. These networks were integrally connected to larger transnational efforts to aid Jewish refugees based in Britain and the United States. Although the refugees who ended up in Africa are largely absent from scholarship, then, their stories offer significant fresh perspectives from which to understand the global dimensions of the Holocaust.

Author

• Shirli Gilbert, University College London