Joseph Schechtman

Early life and education

Schechtman was born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine). While participating in the Zionist youth movement, he met Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Schechtman studied in Novorossiysk University. There he established contacts with members of the Ukrainian national movement. In 1910 he published an article in the journal "Еврейский мир" (Jewish World) in St. Petersburg, calling for Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue. In 1917, back in Odessa, he published pamphlets «Евреи и украинцы» (Jews and Ukrainians) and «Национальные движения в свободной России» (National Movements in the Free Russia).

Political activism

In May 1917, Schechtman was elected a delegate to the Seventh All-Russian Conference of Zionists that took place in Petrograd and to the All-Russian Jewish Congress that took place in Moscow during June–July 1918. In 1918 he was elected a member of the Jewish National Council of Ukraine. In 1918-1919 he worked in its executive agency, Jewish National Secretariat.

In 1920 Schechtman emigrated from Bolshevik Russia. He entered Berlin University, and actively participated in the Federation of Russian-Ukrainian Zionists (in emigration). From September 1922 he co-edited weekly Russian-language "Рассвет" (The Dawn) with Jabotinsky.

Schechtman was one of the founders of the World Union of Zionists-revisionists (Paris, 1925). In 1929-1931 he was the editor of Yiddish weekly "Der Noyer Veg" (The New Way) in Paris. From 1931 to 1935 Schechtman was a member of the executive committee of the Zionist Organization(WZO), when both he and Jabotinsky left the ZO to co-found the New Zionist Organization.

Emigration to the U.S.

Schechtman emigrated to the United States in the summer of 1941, and soon became part of the 'inner circle' of the New Zionist Organization of America (NZOA). In 1941-1943 he worked at YIVO. In 1943-1944 he was the director of Bureau for Study of Population Migration which he co-founded earlier. In 1944-1945 he worked as a consultant on questions of the migration of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Schechtman was the chairman of the Association of American Zionists-Revisionists. In 1946, New Zionist Organization self-liquidated to rejoin the WZO. Schechtman served as a member of the executive committee of the WZO until 1970. In 1963-1965 and 1966-1968 he was a member of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Writing

Joseph Schechtman became a close associate and secretary to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and would later write the two-volume biography of his life. Schectman wrote numerous books and articles dedicated to Jewish and world history, human migrations, population transfer and refugee issues. In later years he also wrote a biography of the late Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.

Schechtman early established his reputation as a pioneer and authority on changing population movements in the world and population transfers.

Schechtman was the "first to establish basic guidelines for successful transfers and to argue persuasively that transfers should be treated as preventative measures not punative."

Palestinian "evacuation order"

His work on the Palestinian refugee problem was heavily criticised by Erskine Childers and Steven Glazer for misquoting, carefully selecting words, and taking statements out of context to fit his narrative.

Walid Khalidi attributes to Schechtman the position, which Khalidi regards as groundless, that the Palestinian people fled their towns and villages in 1948 in response to Arab broadcasts advising them to do so. Schechtman was the anonymous author of two smaller works published in 1949 for which he takes credit in the introduction to his 1952 book, The Arab Refugee Problem and where, according to Khalidi, the reference to the evacuation order first appeared.

Publications