Re-defining Bricha: A Case Study of Czechoslovakia
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F25%3A10505903" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/25:10505903 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=1N83B53doC" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=1N83B53doC</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00220094251396897" target="_blank" >10.1177/00220094251396897</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Re-defining Bricha: A Case Study of Czechoslovakia
Original language description
his article examines Czechoslovakia as a key transit country for Jewish refugees from Poland in the immediate postwar years. It challenges the prevailing historiography of the Bricha, which has portrayed Zionist emissaries as the principal organizers of the migration of Jewish survivors to Mandatory Palestine. Instead, it highlights the role of nongovernmental actors: local Jewish communities and non-Jewish humanitarian organizations such as Catholic Caritas, which provided essential assistance to refugees regardless of their religion or nationality. By tracing these interwoven networks of support, the study demonstrates that postwar Jewish migration was sustained by a wide range of actors and motivations, rather than by an ideologically driven initiative. Czechoslovak refugee policy, often presented as sympathetic, appears in a more pragmatic light, closely connected to domestic considerations and to the simultaneous expulsions of national minorities. The article argues that the term Bricha should therefore be used only when analyzing an ideologically charged concept, not as a general designation for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland and other countries in East-Central Europe then. It offers a new framework for understanding Jewish migration after 1945 by placing the Czechoslovak case within the broader context of Europe's entangled displacements and forced migrations.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60500 - Other Humanities and the Arts
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Journal of Contemporary History
ISSN
0022-0094
e-ISSN
1461-7250
Volume of the periodical
2025
Issue of the periodical within the volume
December 1
Country of publishing house
GB - UNITED KINGDOM
Number of pages
22
Pages from-to
1-22
UT code for WoS article
001628379400001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
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