A generally accepted definition of Zionism is ‘the nationalist movement calling for the establishment and support of an independent state for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland’. But what did Zionism mean for a small Jewish community at the ‘uttermost ends of the earth’, in the early twentieth century?

While the Jewish community shared the general concern to fight the threat a Nazi-led Germany posed for the free world, they carried the added burden of worry for fellow Jews targeted by Hitler’s antisemitic regime.