As Europe celebrates its victory over Nazism, nearly a third of the world’s Jewish population has been exterminated. The few camp survivors are gradually returning to their countries of origin. Many Jewish survivors refuse to return to Central and Eastern Europe because of the virulent anti-Semitism that often rages there, as in Poland, but also because their original community has been annihilated. In Germany and Austria mainly, they join the camps of "displaced persons" organized by the British and the Americans. It is from these camps that the clandestine exodus of Jews to Palestine flows: from 1945 to 1948, 70,000 emigrants manage to enter despite the British blockade.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel (14 May 1948), the exhibition Alyah Beth organized by the Shoah Memorial from 6 May to 5 October 2008 evokes the clandestine departures of Jews from France towards Eretz Israel (Hebrew name of Palestine) between 1945 and 1948. Alyah is a Hebrew term for Jewish emigration to the Holy Land.