Old Refugees and New Refugees

Abstract

The first stop for the Holocaust survivors on their arrival in Israel was either an immigrants’ hostel or a transit camp. The Jewish Agency Immigration Department supplied temporary housing for the new immigrants and made sure that the camps were always erected in the vicinity of large towns — Haifa in the north and near Kfar Azar and Rehovot in the south. The first camps had been erected in Atlit, Pardes Hanna, Ra’anana, Beit Lid, Binyamina, Hedera and Rosh Ha’ayin, and were followed shortly by camps at Be’er Ya’akov, Kiryat Eliyahu, Kiryat Motzkin, Rehovot and Jerusalem. It was only in April 1949 that the Sha’ar Ha’aliya (literally: gate to immigration) camp in Haifa became the central clearing camp for placing new immigrants, by which time the last of this large wave of Holocaust survivors were arriving in Israel.