Bricha (Hebrew for “Escape”) was the name of an underground organization active from 1944 to 1948, whose goal was to smuggle Holocaust survivors from Eastern European countries to the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, from where they could be transported to Mandatory Palestine. The initiative was launched by members of Zionist youth movements, partisans, and participants in Jewish resistance in the ghettos.
From 1945 to 1948, Bricha operated in nearly every European country, organizing the illegal migration of Jews from Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union through Germany, Yugoslavia, Austria, Italy, and France to ports where ships bound for Israel would depart. In 1944, after the liberation of Vilnius, Baranovichi, and Rovno, groups of Jewish partisans—former Zionist youth members—united to find a way to reach Israel. The shortest route led through Romanian ports. Jewish refugees arrived in border towns and waited for the right moment to cross. They did so with fake documents, by bribing local authorities, or through agreements with officials.
Refugees from Poland were smuggled through Slovakia to Austria and then to Italy. In December 1944, partisans Avraham Lidovsky (from Rovno) and Ruzhka Korczak-Marla (from Vilnius) reached Bucharest, where they met Israeli representatives including Moshe Agami from Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, and parachutists Shaike Dan, Itzhak Ben-Efraim, and others.
The organization was formally established in January 1945 in the liberated Polish city of Lublin, where former members of Zionist youth movements, partisans, and ghetto fighters gathered. They understood that individual emigration needed to become a national exodus. Among the participants of the founding meeting were Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, Abba Kovner, Zivia Lubetkin, and others.
Initially, the illegal aliyah (immigration to Israel) passed through Romania. In March 1945, Lubetkin and Kovner traveled there and soon connected with the “Diaspora Center” underground organization (Merkaz Le-Golah), founded in 1945 in Italy, and with Jewish units in the British army, especially the Jewish Brigade, already active among Holocaust survivors and Jewish partisans.
From mid-1945, representatives of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), led by Mossad LeAliyah Bet, began to take a direct and active role in organizing immigration. Bricha planned routes, gathered refugee groups, bribed border guards, and identified crossing points. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) provided financial support, food, clothing, and shelter along the way. The Joint’s transport vehicles were used to move refugees.
Bricha activists also searched for Jewish children who had survived the war in monasteries or Christian families and organized their emigration. The scale of Bricha's activities grew rapidly; routes multiplied and changed. Jews from Romania and Poland began traveling through Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Austria to Italy, where Mossad LeAliyah Bet staff met them. Others went directly to Israel from Romania or via Bulgaria.
The postwar instability in Europe facilitated the creation of a vast Mossad LeAliyah Bet network across Italy, France, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and other countries. This network acquired ships, maintained them, and organized the boarding and transport of refugees to Palestine. Ships sailed under the supervision of Mossad LeAliyah Bet personnel. Eventually, Bricha became a department within Mossad LeAliyah Bet.
The first commander of Bricha was Mordechai Surkis, a member of the Jewish Brigade and Merkaz La-Golah. Before him, operations were led by fellow Brigade member Pinhas Rashish. The commander reported to Shaul Avigur (born in Dvinsk, Latvia, in 1899), head of the Haganah and Mossad LeAliyah Bet in Europe and responsible for arms procurement. Avigur’s headquarters was in Paris.
Bricha infiltrated Jewish displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria, where about a million people were eligible for repatriation. Jews made up roughly a quarter of the DP population.
In Bricha’s first phase (until December 1945), during broader European refugee migrations—mainly Greeks returning home from German and Polish camps—Jewish movements were disguised as part of this flow. Jews carried forged IDs and spoke Hebrew, which guards mistook for Greek.
In the second phase, border crossings became illegal and more organized, with base points near borders. In spring 1946, an agreement between the USSR and the new Polish government allowed the repatriation of former Polish citizens—about 100,000 Jews among them. Bricha activists used this opportunity and helped thousands from Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, and Ukraine enter Poland with forged documents.
The third phase began after the Kielce pogrom in June 1946, when up to 1,000 Jews were leaving Poland daily. Following negotiations between Yitzhak Zuckerman and Polish ministers, an informal agreement with authorities was reached, allowing Bricha operations.
Many former Polish citizens, who became Soviet citizens in 1939–40, left the USSR between 1944 and 1949 using old documents. Hundreds of Jews in the Red Army escaped Soviet-occupied Germany into Western zones and immigrated to Israel.
According to Polish scholar Albert Stankowski, 119,000 people left Poland illegally via Zionist organizations in 1945–46, compared to 15,000 legal emigrants documented by the JDC in 1946. Emigration from Poland was the largest among Eastern European countries, with around 250,000 Jews leaving the region from 1944 to 1948—90% through Bricha—most immigrated to Israel.
British authorities in Palestine tried to block Bricha’s efforts. When attempts to halt Jewish sailings at European ports failed, the British navy blockaded Palestine’s coast. One ship was seized and taken to Haifa, and its passengers were interned at the Atlit detention camp until they could immigrate under the British quota. In fall 1946, Britain began deporting illegal immigrants to camps in Cyprus, where 55,000 of 70,000 illegal immigrants were held.
One of the largest ships was the Theodor Herzl, carrying about 2,650 refugees. It was intercepted; a clash broke out, and three passengers were killed, fifteen wounded. The survivors were sent to Cyprus. These actions strengthened the Yishuv’s resolve to resist British policy. On the night of November 2, 1945, railroads were bombed and patrol boats sunk.
Despite British opposition, Bricha ships continued arriving. The survivors’ unyielding will to reach Israel and the Yishuv’s determination significantly contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Soviet Union Operations
Bricha had two active hubs in the USSR: Riga–Vilna (Vilnius) and Lviv. The 1944 Lublin Agreement between the Polish Committee of National Liberation and the Ukrainian SSR enabled the resettlement of Jews with pre-1939 Polish citizenship. Officials often accepted bribes to add unauthorized names to evacuation lists. Bricha used this opportunity; Lviv’s synagogue became a hub for legal and illegal repatriation.
In Latvia, Bricha was organized by Shmuel (Mulka) Ioffe (b. 1918, Riga), a leader in the Zionist-socialist youth movement Netzach. In July 1945, he crossed illegally into Poland and linked up with Bricha, reaching Milan by September. He convinced Bricha to help Jews in Latvia. He returned despite warnings, proposing himself as the operation's head.
Ioffe reached Lodz in November, then Vilnius, reconnecting with Yaakov Yannai (b. 1919, Riga), who became part of Riga’s Bricha leadership. Together with Michael Bahat, Yekutiel Shur, Eliahu Zaidin, Eliahu (Ilka) Goldberg, and Aryeh (Levka) Mindel, they established the “Polish route” to smuggle Jews from the USSR.
Despite risks, Ioffe and Yannai stayed behind as others fled. In May 1946, Ioffe was detained by the NKVD but escaped. Later that year, the Soviets cracked down; Zaidin was arrested and sentenced, later retried and sentenced again. He was released in 1957. Another, Yakov Perlov, was sentenced to ten years, freed in 1956, and immigrated in 1971.
On September 27, 1946, Ioffe and Yannai were arrested in Baranovichi and sent to Moscow’s Lubyanka, sentenced to 25 years. Ioffe died in prison in 1955. Yannai was released early in 1957 and immigrated to Israel in 1962. He worked for Nativ, which fought for Soviet Jews’ right to immigrate. He died in Tel Aviv in 1988 during the launch of his book.
Sources:
Itai A., Neishtat M., “The History of the Netzach Movement in Latvia”, Tel Aviv, 1972
Yannai Y., “Mulka: The Story of the Escape from the USSR”, Tel Aviv, 1988
Bricha, in The Concise Jewish Encyclopedia, Jerusalem, 1976–2005
berkovich-zametki.com article