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republic of Israel were routed, massacred, and driven into the sea”
(29). Dismayed by the “grim revelations of the slaughter of two
million Jews in Europe, by the barbarity of the rout of Zionism, by
the plight of the refugees of Palestine and Europe” (29), the US
Congress passed the Sitka Settlement Act in 1948 and “granted the
Sitka Settlement ‘interim status’ as a federal district,” adding an
additional clause that said “In sixty years that status would revert,
and the Sitka Jews would be left once again to shift for themselves”
(29). The Sitka Settlement Act is the second action taken by the US
to solve the so-called Jewish problem. Neither the Alaskan
Settlement Act nor the Sitka Settlement Act comes without
conditions. Neither, moreover, can fill the void felt by Alaskan Jews
concerning their perpetual homelessness and statelessness.
For some years, the economy in Alaska, with the arrival of the
first wave of Jews after the implementation of the Alaskan
Settlement Act, was “booming,” and the Alaskan Jews made efforts
to settle and make themselves feel at home in Alaska. Circumstances
changed drastically afterwards. When the first wave of immigrants
arrived, they were hopeful of their eventual return to their “home,”
even though it is not Israel to which they want to return. The first
wave of Jewish immigrants came from Eastern Europe, and it is their
homes in Eastern Europe for which they pine. The arrival of the
second wave of immigrants from the newly eradicated Israel in 1948
did not renew the hope of the first wave of Jewish immigrants for a
homecoming, but shattered their dream of an eventual Return. Their
temporary stay drags on, a prolonged sixty-year “waiting for Godot.”
Throughout all these years, Jews suppress their knowledge of the
eventual end of their tenure in Alaska, with occasional efforts made
by different individuals either toying with the Jewish belief in the
redemption offered by the coming of the Messiah, or fighting with
Russian gangsters in ethnic ghettos, or scheming to establish a
Zionist state, not in Palestine, but in Alaska, for Diasporic Jews.
The second wave of Jewish immigrants comes to Alaska after
their territorial-bound dream for founding a Zionist state in