Building A Chol's Nest: Zionist Politics, Palestinian Parachutists, And The Heroes Of A Nascent Nation

Abstract

Between 1943-1945, thirty-two volunteer Jewish parachutists from Palestine took flight over Nazi-occupied territory in Europe. Initially planned in 1943, the parachutists' mission represented the response by the Yishuv—the Jewish community in Palestine—to accounts of the Holocaust that reached Palestine a few months earlier. From the Yishuv's perspective, the parachutists' mission demonstrated its desperate attempt to help Jews still living in Europe— primarily those located in the Balkans region.