Palestine Holocaust holocaust museum

Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germanyand its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this “the final solution to the Jewish question.”

After taking control of Mandate Palestine, Great Britain saw itself confronted with mounting Arab and Jewish tensions. Zionist settlers had been moving to the region since the 1890s and after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Zionist movement accelerated. 

What If Israel Was Somewhere Else? (Historic Proposals for a Jewish State)

Zionism targeted several continents and countries to form a state of their own. 

The Uganda Schemewas a proposal by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlainto create a Jewish homeland in a portion of British East Africa. It was presented at the Sixth World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903 by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. He presented it as a temporary refuge for Jews to escape rising antisemitism in Europe. The proposal faced opposition from both the Zionist movementand the British Colony. 

  The Madagascar Plan was the Nazis initial solution to the so-called Jewish problem, adopted in early 1940 and abandoned in late 1940. The plan involved deporting Jews in all Nazi-occupied lands to Madagascar. Similar ideas had been floated around Europe since the First World War.

Newly translated secret documents of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and interviews with former high Tokyo officials disclose that a plan existed, in the years before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, to enlist skills and financial resources of persecuted Jews in Europe, to rescue them from the Nazis and to establish an “Israel” in Japan's conquered territory of Manchuria, in northern China.

Japanese military leaders and industrialists devised in 1934 what came to be known as the “Fugu Plan.” Its initial goal was to invite 50,000 German Jews to settle in Manchukuo, as the Japanese called Manchuria. The 50,000 Jews were to serve as a vanguard for as many as a million.

If someone who is rich and powerful comes to you for a favor, you don't persecute him - you help him. Having such a person indebted to you is a great insurance policy. There was one nation that did treat the Jews as if they were powerful and rich. The Japanese never had much exposure to Jews, and knew very little about them. In 1919 Japan fought alongside the anti-Semitic White Russians against the Communists. At that time the White Russians introduced the Japanese to the book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Japanese studied the book and, according to all accounts, naively believed its propaganda. Their reaction was immediate and forceful - they formulated a plan to encourage Jewish settlement and investment into Manchuria.

Major Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851) was a noted American journalist, playwright, diplomat, New York politician, and Jewish advocate. In 1825 this utopian proto-Zionist proposed and planned a gathering of the world's "Israelites" to western New York state in order to establish a great city and a powerful theocracy -- for the protection and advancement of God's " chosen people." Although the goals of Noah's 1825 project was never realized, many elements of his "City of Refuge" plan for the restoration of Israel were revived, Christianized, and implemented by the early Mormons in their own attempts to build a North American "Zion."

Patagonia is one of the remotest regions in the world. It is situated in the southernmost point of South America and is shared by Argentina and Chile. Patagonia is not only a region of breath-taking beauty and vast natural resources, but also the region where, some people believe, a new Jewish state could be created. Those who believe that the writings of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, have been distorted reject this theory. In his book The Jewish State, published in 1897 Herzl talks about the need to create a nation for Jews, and talked about two possible sites: Argentina and Palestine. This fascinating documentary visits Patagonia and speaks to important representatives of the Jewish community as well as critics of Zionism in Argentina and Chile