Stephen Miller - The Migration Journey: The Ethiopian Jewish Exodus

The
Migration
Journey

Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors
Kim Lacy Rogers and Selma Leydesdorff, editors
(with Graham Dawson)

Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory
Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper,
editors

Environmental Consciousness:
The Roots of a New Political Agenda
Stephen Hussey and Paul Thompson, editors

Memory and Memorials:
From the French Revolution to World War One
Mathew Campbell, Jacqueline M. Labbe,
and Sally Shuttleworth, editors

The Stasi Files Unveiled:
Guilt and Compliance in a Unified Germany
Barbara Miller

The Uses of Narrative:
Explorations in Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies
Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, Corinne Squire, and
Amal Treacher, editors

Narrative and Genre: Contests and Types of Communication
Mary Chamberlain and Paul Thompson, editors

The Clash of Economic Cultures:
Japanese Bankers in the City of London
Junko Sakai

Narratives of Exile and Return
Mary Chamberlain

The Ethiopian
Jewish Exodus

First published 2002 by Transaction Publishers

First paperback edition published in 2006 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, by arrangement with Routledge.

Published 2017 by Routledge
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0486-8 (pbk)

First and foremost I wish to thank my interviewees. I am grateful for their trust in me and their willingness to let me escort them along the complex and often painful trails of their journey memories. I often admired their courage in recounting their experiences.

I am also delighted to have this opportunity to thank all interviewees of non-governmental organisations and government agencies, non-Ethiopians as well as Ethiopians, who have played a part in Operation Moses or have worked in the refugee camps in Sudan. I have interviewed them in Canada, Switzerland, England, the USA, Ethiopia and Israel. They were willing to share their observations with me and to shed light on various aspects of the journey. This has helped me in putting the journey narratives in context.

I am deeply indebted to Paul Thompson for his patient guidance throughout the various stages of the PhD study upon which this book is based. In our meetings in Little Greece and Little Italy, two Oxford institutions, Paul played an important role in making this research project into an enriching and enjoyable process.

Many people have helped at different phases of the work. I would not be able to mention every one of them here but I am grateful to all of them. I would like to thank in particular Ian Craib, Richard Wilson and Ken Plummer as well as Brenda Corti at the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. Terry Ranger and Jonathan Webber of the University of Oxford were willing to read and comment on parts of my work. Ideas within the study were also discussed with Roger Zetter, David Turton, Andrew Shaknow and Mary Chamberlain at the University of Oxford and at Oxford Brooks University. I am obliged to Mary also for pushing the project forward as an editor of the Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative series of books. Robin Cohen from Warwick University contributed valuable sources to my review of the literature, as well as Vaughan Robinson at Swansea University. Deborah Dwork at Yale University encouraged me at the beginning of the project. At its initial phases I have discussed the work and worked on ways of analysis of the material with Gabriele Rosenthal, Nitza Yanai, Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal, Dan Bar-On, Paul A. Hare, Joseph Sandler, Amia Lieblich and Yoram Bilu. I am indebted to all of them. When I chose the way to analyse the material it was Nitza in particular who made time in a very busy schedule to help me master it. I thank her wholeheartedly. My ideas included in the psycho-social chapter, including the effects of trauma, were discussed with Maurice Eisenbruch, John Berry, Edna Lomsky-Feder, Jim Garbarino, Niel Boothby Lena Punamaki-Gitai, Michael Korzinski, Danny Brom, Derek Summerfield, Elizabeth Colson, Michael Argyle, Marita Eastmond and Taddesse Tamrat. While they have helped me in crystallising and sharpening my ideas, all responsibility for the final result is, of course, mine. The thoughts concerning the chapter on the encounter with Israeli society were aired in particular with Moshe Lissak, Shmuel Ben-Dor, Rina Shapira, Rene Hirschon, Abner Cohen, Tarik Modood, Roger Mumby-Croft, Nick Van Hear, Ken Wilson, Diana Cammak, Oz Almog and Alex Weingrod. Shulamit Hareven and Nurit Zarchi have helped me on the form of the narrative. I am delighted to thank Elie Wiesel, who has read the manuscript and was willing to endorse it.

This study was supported in its various stages by grants from foundations and individuals, some of which preferred to remain anonymous. Albert Solnit, Sterling Professor Emeritus at the Yale University Child Study Center, and Donald Cohen, director of that Center, believed in the importance of this study from its initial phase. I thank them wholeheartedly for their moral and practical support. I am also indebted to Sidney Furst, Joseph Sandler, Isaiah Berlin, David Kessler, Edgar Siskin, Amichai Zilberman, Sidney Corob and Gail Cohen-Schorsh who were instrumental in raising the funds for this study.

Funds for the interviewing and data collection phase, as well as for the first stage of analysis, were provided by The Jerusalem Fund for Anthropological Studies, Israel, and The Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Charitable Trust, England. AVI Scholarships in Switzerland, The New-Land Foundation in the USA, the Anglo-Jewish Association in England and the British Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESSRC) provided part of the funds for the second and third phase of the study. The last trip to Oxford in order to prepare the book for press was supported by the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the College of Management, where I have been teaching for the last six years. I am obliged to Natasha Burchardt for discussions of the work as well as hosting me in Oxford during that trip.