August 5, 2002: Israel
I was doing a little Google research on current Mideast news, when I came across a list of signatories to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. On it, I found a name that seemed familiar: "Eliyahu Dobkin (1898-1976) - labor Zionist leader. He headed the Jewish Agency's Immigration Department during World War II, dealing with the rescue of Jews from Europe and illegal immigration, was a member of the Jewish Agency Executive (1946-48), head of the Jewish Agency's Youth and Hehalutz Department (1951-68), and chairman of Keren Hayesod (1951-62)." Perhaps a distant relative- one who died the year I was born. I wish I could find out who he was.
Amended: I did a little research and turned up this story on Eliyahu Dobkin from the Holocaust Chronicle.
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I think we could be related- he has those stocky Dobkin good looks.
"The Committee of Four (Also known as the Committee for the Jews of Occupied Europe), a committee within the Jewish Agency established by the institutions of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine, to find ways of helping the Jews of Europe during the war.
When World War II broke out, a four-man committee was set up by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, made up of members ofthe Executive - Itzhak Gruenbaum, Moshe Shapira, Eliyahu Dobkin, and Dr. Emil Schmorak. Known as the "Committee of Four" or the "Committee for Polish Jewry, " its task was to gather the reports that were coming in from the Jews in the Polish ghettos and to extend aid to these Jews, by obtaining immigration certificates to Palestine for them, sending them food parcels, and maintaining contact with them.
Before 1942 the aid provided by the committee (which operated together with a body representing Polish Jewry) was modest and was extended primarily to veteran Zionists and to relatives of Jews living in Palestine. At the end of 1942, when it became clear that systematic physical extermination of Jews was being carried out in Europe, the Jewish public in Palestine demanded that a body be set up that would represent the entire Yishuv, with the authority and means to serve as the central agency for the rescue efforts."
A telegram to ED after the Warsaw uprising was crushed:
To (Eliyahu) Dobkin - (Yitzhak) Tabenkin - (Meir) Ya'ari "The battles in the ghetto have ended; hundreds of our comrades have died. Tens more have committed suicide. "He-Halutz" and the "Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair" were the backbone of the war waged by the Jewish Fighting Organization.
The commander of the Jewish organization, Anilevitz, fell in battle. In Bendin, Jews were exterminated. Fromke is in Bendin. Mordechai (Tamruf Tannenbaum) is in Bialystok. (Abbe) Kovner is in Vilna. Will you help to save the youth?
Try and obtain possibilities for exit. Send money. Warn the Jews of Belgium, Holland and France that they are going to their deaths if they come to Poland."
Zivia Lubetkin
It's funny- I just read Rich Cohen's "The Avengers"- it's all about Abba Kovner (who is mentioned in the telegram above). He was one of the leaders of the Jewish partisans in Poland during the war- killing Nazis, blowing up supply trains, killing German-sympathizers. After the war he tried to poison a whole bunch of German SS officers who were being held by the Allies by covering the daily bread delivery to the POW camp with arsenic.
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