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When
Ken Livingstone declared
that Hitler supported Zionism the Zionist movement gave us an orchestrated
display of faux outrage. To even mention,
let alone discuss, Zionism’s record during the Third Reich, was called ‘anti-Semitism’.
This in itself suggests that Zionism has something to hide.
The
immediate reaction of for example The
Independent to Livingstone’s remarks was to commission an article Why the Haavara Agreement
does not mean the Nazis were Zionists by Rainer Schulze, who
described Ha’avara, the trading agreement between the Nazis and the Zionists as ‘a way to save Jews from the claws of an
increasingly hostile regime and attract them to Palestine.’
Yet just a little research
would show that Ha’avara was not only bitterly condemned by the vast majority
of Jews, including the Jewish Chronicle, for undermining the Jewish Boycott of
Nazi Germany, but it was only ever intended to apply to the richest German
Jews.
Schulze wrote that ‘Zionism was a movement based on the right
of self-determination. It originated as a national liberation movement’.
Schulze is an Emeritus
Professor of History at Essex University so there is no excuse for fabricating
history.
The Zionist movement described itself as a colonising
movement and referred to its settlements in Palestine as colonies. In his
famous essay ‘The Iron Wall’ Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist
Zionism (now Likud) wrote:
My readers have a general idea of the history of
colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the
precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one
solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the
native population. There is no such precedent.
The native populations, civilised or
uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of
whether they were civilised or savage.[i]
When Theodor Herzl wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the White settler leader, after whom Rhodesia was named, on January 11th 1902, he asked:
“How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial… I want you ... to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan…’
Zionism and Anti-Semitism
The IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism, which anti-Semites like
Viktor Orban and Donald Trump love so much defines anti-Semitism as ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli
policy to that of the Nazis’. So if you compare the Nazis’ barring of Jews
from certain residential areas of towns to Israel’s policy of barring Arabs
from areas of Israel such as Mitzpe Aviv then you are
anti-Semitic.
It used to be the case
that if something was true it couldn’t be anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism by its
very nature was based on falsehoods. Now
however something can be both true
and ‘anti-Semitic’.
Zionism
and Anti-Semitism are like Siamese twins. They feed off each other and share a common
belief that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together in the same society. This is
why, from the beginning of the Zionist movement in the late 19th
century, anti-Semites have consistently
supported the Zionist movement.
Theodor
Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism understood this well:
‘the anti-Semites
will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.’[ii]
There are many examples of
this mutual affection. William Stanley Shaw, President of the British Brothers
League, the precursor of the British Union of Fascists, which campaigned
against the immigration of Jewish refugees, expressed his admiration for
Zionism:
I am a firm believer in the Zionist movement, which the British Brothers League will do much incidentally to foster. The return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the most striking signs of the times…. All students of prophecy are watching the manifold signs of the times with almost breathless interest…[iii]
Christian Zionism combines anti-Semitism, Zionism and Messianism. John Hagee, President of the million strong Christians United for Israel, described Hitler as an agent of god.
The
Zionist approach to the Nazis was no different to their attitude historically to
anti-Semitism. It sought not to oppose or fight the Nazis but to work with them.
Zionism saw anti-Semitism as a force that would drive the Jews to Palestine. In
Herzl’s analogy it was the steam that drove the engine.
This
mutual affection was recognised very early on by the principal theoretician of
the Nazi Party, Alfred Rosenberg who argued that:
‘Zionism must be
vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews
to leave for Palestine or other destinations.’[iv]
Rosenberg:
‘intended to use Zionism as a legal
justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and
‘eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’[v]
Rosenberg
was hanged at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity. Heinrich Class, the leader
of the 100,000 Pan German League, who became a Nazi member of the Reichstag in
1933 wrote that:[vi]
“... among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents ... They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible... the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews... have always asserted...” [If I Were the Kaiser, Daniel Frymman]
Donald
Niewyk asked if German Zionism
‘reinforced the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews as materialists, exploiters, and traitors?... Did their assertions of racial and national otherness… hasten the day when the Nazis might seek to make Germany judenrein?’[vii]
JB Agus asked if
‘the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute(d) decisively to the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularizing the notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe?’[viii]
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Ha’avara
and the Jewish Boycott - What was the Zionist attitude to the rise of the
Nazis?
When Hitler became Chancellor
of Germany on 30 January 1933, world Jewry spontaneously organised a Boycott of
Nazi Germany. This caused the Nazis to panic. Only a tiny minority of Jews, the Zionists and the
Jewish bourgeoisie opposed the Boycott.
‘faced with
the consequences of an economic boycott by the Jews of the whole world the
Nazis of Germany are denying stories of the atrocious treatment which has been
meted out to those of Jewish nationality.[ix]
The
Boycott reigned in the Nazi terror but the Zionists were wholly indifferent to
the plight of Germany’s Jews.
On
9 June 1933 the German Zionist Federation, (ZVfD) the Jewish Agency and the
Palestine Land Development Company began negotiations with the Nazi government
to secure a trade agreement. Agreement was reached by August 7th.
The Zionist leaders of the
Palestine Jewish community (Yishuv) opposed the Boycott of Nazi Germany because
‘Zionist
priorities... awarded precedence to the realization of Zionist goals and the
building of Palestine over the struggle to preserve Jewish civil rights in the
Diaspora.’ [x]
Dov
Hoz observed that “In these negotiations,
we are reaping the fruit of the boycott we oppose.” [xi] But
for the Boycott the Nazis would not have agreed to Ha'avara. The Zionist
movement was parasitic on the Boycott movement. As Yf’aat Weiss noted
The Zionist movement found itself in a profound
conflict between transfer and boycott and, in the broad sense, between the
needs of the Yishuv and the sentiments of the Jewish people.[xii]
Marek Edelman - the Bundist Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance
Far from doing
their best to maximize the number of German Jews who could enter Palestine (no
one believed then that the Nazis would kill Germany’s Jews) the Zionists sought
to restrict the numbers. Werner Senator, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive
[JAE] warned that if German Zionists ‘did
not improve the quality of the “human material” they were sending the
number of certificates would be cut.[xiv]
If
the Zionists sought to rescue the maximum number of German Jews then it made no
sense that nearly 5,000 American Jews and 20,000 from countries where Jews were
not under threat were given certificates to enter Palestine between 1933 and
1939. Even as dedicated a Zionist as Elie Wiesel, wrote that
‘Surely, Jewish Palestine... needed money to
finance its development, but this brazen pragmatism went against the political
philosophy of a majority of world Jewry. There developed a growing perception
that instead of supporting and strengthening the boycott, Palestine was, in
fact, sabotaging it.’ [Elie Wiesel] [xv]
The behaviour of
the Zionists infuriated Jewish workers and trade unionists. In a debate between Berl Locker of the Zionist
Executive and Baruch Vladeck, the Bundist editor of the Yiddish Forward and Chairman of the Jewish Labor
Committee, Vladeck described how
‘The whole organized labor movement and the progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the boycott. The Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’
Vladeck contended that
The main purpose of the Transfer is not to rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in Palestine. Vladeck termed Palestine ‘the official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’.[xvi]
The Zionist
leaders welcomed the Nazis
The Zionist leadership actually welcomed the
rise to power of Hitler. In their eyes the triumph of the Nazis had vindicated
them. They had been right when they said that there was no future for the diaspora.
I’m not suggesting that the Zionists welcomed
the holocaust. In 1933 very few people thought the Nazis would exterminate the
Jews. However most Jews realised that the Nazis represented a new form of
racial anti-Semitism and that they represented a dire threat to the safety of
German Jews.
The Zionist attitude to Nazi anti-Semitism was
that of Herzl. Anti-Semitism ‘will not harm the Jews…. It represents the
education of a group by the masses... Education is accomplished by hard knocks.’[xvii]
There can be no doubt that the Zionist willingly and voluntarily proposed
collaborating with the Nazis. On 21 June 1933, the ZVfD sent a memo to Hitler
which was never answered. It read:
On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities…. because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group… The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.’[xviii] (my emphasis)
 |
Chaim
Weizmann, Israel’s first President warned his personal secretary, Lewis Namier,
a Jewish anti-Semite, who was writing the Introduction to Arthur Ruppin’s Jews
in the Modern World
‘not
to be so open in expressing their common
toleration of Nazism’ because ‘the louts will say, the Jews themselves
think that it will be all for the good, etc.’ (my emphasis)[xix]
Bloom commented that ‘Ruppin’s attitude towards the Nazis, then, reflects the general
reaction of many Zionists, including “liberals” like Weizmann.’ [xx] Ruppin
was subscribed to the racial sciences.
The
Zionist national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik volunteered that ‘Hitler has perhaps saved German Jewry, which
was being assimilated into annihilation.’[xxi]
Emil
Ludwig, the world famous biographer, ‘expressed
the general attitude of the Zionist movement:’ when he wrote that:
‘Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine. You know, the coming of the Nazis was rather a welcome thing. … Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.’ [xxii]
Francis Nicosia described how ‘so positive’ was its assessment of the situation that the ZVfD
announced its determination to take advantage of the crisis to win over German
Jewry to Zionism.[xxiii]
 |
David Ben Gurion, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency
and Israel’s first Prime Minister is quoted as saying that
‘Disaster is strength if channeled to a productive
course. The whole trick of Zionism is that it knows how to channel our
disaster, not into despondency or degradation, as is the case in the Diaspora,
but into a source of creativity and exploitation.’ [xxiv]
Ben
Gurion’s view was widely shared. The Zionist movement was determined to take
advantage of the rise of the Nazis in order to build their ‘Jewish’ state.
Rabbi Prinz,
the President of the ZVfD and later deputy President of the World Jewish
Congress described the Nazi assumption of power as the ‘beginning of the Jew’s return to his Judaism.’ The main Jewish
German body, the Centralverein talked about German Zionism having inflicted ‘a stab in the back’ to the struggle
against Hitler.[xxv]
Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai, and Ben Gurion’s
effective deputy, saw the rise of Hitler as “an
opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”
[xxvi]
Ben
Gurion was even more optimistic. ‘The
Nazis victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.”[xxvii]
Exploiting the Holocaust for a Jewish Palestine
Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian, wrote about
how, as the European holocaust erupted,
Ben Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for
Zionism... In conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world
Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to
the advantage of Zionism. ... By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish
state became the primary concern of the movement.’[xxviii]
The desire to rescue Europe's Jews “was conveniently structured by the Zionist
programme in a way that involved only helping Jews to reach Palestine.”[xxix]
Dina Porat, Yad Vashem’s chief historian agreed.
Most of the discussion in the Yishuv focused
on immigration to Palestine as a solution,… Little attention was given to the
actual plight of the Jews of Europe. [xxx]
Christopher Sykes observed that ‘from the very beginning of the Nazi disaster, the Zionist leadership
determined to wrest political advantage from the tragedy.’[xxxi] Lucas, reached similar
conclusions:
‘While hopes and efforts for
the rescue of Europe's Jews continued, the struggle for a Jewish state became
the primary concern of the (Zionist) movement.’[xxxii]
Ben-Gurion’s biographer, Shabtai Teveth, described how Ben-Gurion
‘concentrated all his efforts on the
[Zionist] program, not to the tragedy of European Jewry. He maintained a
puzzling silence about what was going on in Europe and Riegner’s telegram.’ [xxxiii]
Teveth
described how
‘In
spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not
deviate appreciably from its routine.’ [xxxiv]
Dina
Porat admitted in respect of Ben Gurion’s attitude that ‘these questions are hard to answer’ because ‘Ben-Gurion’s concentration on post-war goals shifted attention away
from the present plight of Europe’s Jews.’ [xxxv]
To Ben Gurion the war was 'a rare opportunity to achieve the “Zionist solution... to the problem
of the Jewish people.’[xxxvi]
‘all the significant steps in the progress of
Zionism were always related to the intensification of Jewish distress.’ [xxxvii]
Shabtai Teveth concluded that
‘if there was a
line in Ben Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying
catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’ [xxxviii]
In October 1941 Ben Gurion saw the catastrophe, ‘in its pre-holocaust sense, as a source of
strength and momentum’ [xxxix]
He wrote that
‘to the disaster of German Jewry we must offer a
Zionist response, namely we must convert the disaster into a source for the
upbuilding of Palestine’ [xl]
Refugeeism
In the wake
of Kristallnacht, the state organised pogrom against Germany’s Jews, there was
a wave of sympathy for the plight of Germany’s Jews. In Britain the government agreed
to the kindertransport, admitting
10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany.
The Zionists were extremely hostile to this offer.
They wanted to use the children as a battering ram to open the gates of Palestine
to Jewish immigration. Ben Gurion expressed his hostility to the proposal in a shocking
speech to Mapai’s Central Committee on 9 December 1938:
‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the
children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by
transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second
alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also
the history of the People of Israel.’ [xli]
Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, recalled:
‘I remember at the time that Weizmann’s attitude shocked me. He insisted on the children going to Palestine. As far as he was concerned it was Palestine or nowhere.’ [xlii]
The Zionist
leadership’s great fear was that
the future and destiny of Palestine and the plight of European Jewry would be considered as two separate problems. As a result, efforts would be made to solve the problem of European Jewry without using Palestine as a refuge.[xliii]
The Zionists were determined to use the plight of
Europe’s Jews to build their state. They vehemently opposed ‘refugeeism’ – the
rescue of Jews to anywhere that would have them. If the Jews were to be saved
it had to be to Palestine. Ben Gurion explained that:
‘Zionism… is not primarily engaged in saving
individuals. If along the way it saves a few thousand, tens of thousands or
hundreds of thousands of individuals, so much the better.’ But in the event of
a conflict of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist
enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.’[xliv]
Ben Gurion was also clear that the task of rescuing Jews
from the Nazi hell was not one for Zionism. Zionism turned its back on the Jews
trapped in Nazi occupied Europe. Ben Gurion insisted that:
The tasks of
assistance, of saving one more Jew , of doing all to prevent deportations, are
very important… and must be assumed by another organisation, to be set up and
funded from other sources.’ JAE funds could only be used for rescue to
Palestine [xlv]
For
Ben-Gurion ‘It is the job of Zionism not
to save the remnant of Israel in Europe but rather to save the land of Israel
for the Jewish people.’[xlvi] Zionism was at no time concerned with
Jews as individuals but as a collective, a people/race.
Saul
Friedlander, himself a holocaust survivor, concluded that
‘rescue of the Jews in Europe was not at the top of the Yishuv leaders’
list of priorities. For them, the most important thing was the effort to
establish the state’.[xlvii]
Friedlander described the Zionist attitude as ‘perplexing’: ‘no concrete assistance or rescue plans
emerged from the Yishuv throughout most of 1941’. The Jewish Agency [xlviii]
‘hardly paid attention to the situation
in Europe...’ [xlix]
Abba
Hillel-Silver, the President of the Zionist Organisation of America, worried that:
It is possible for the Diaspora to undermine the
Jewish state, because the urgency of the rescue issue could lead the world to
accept a temporary solution. We should place increased emphasis on fundamental
Zionist ideology.[l]
Evian
The Evian Conference (July
6-15, 1938) was a face-saving exercise. It was called by Roosevelt on the basis
that countries were not expected to change their existing refugee policies.
Roosevelt was only prepared to admit refugees outside of America’s quotas at
the end of 1941 when 2,000 statesmen, artists and scientists, who had been
trapped in Vichy France were allowed entry. Only in the years 1938-1940 did the
USA admit more than half the miserly quotas allotted to Germany and Austria.[li]
The JAE first discussed Evian
on 26 June 1938. Yitzhak Gruenbaum feared
‘immense
dangers loom from the Evian conference. It could mark the end of Palestine as a
land of immigration.... they will find some new territory to which they will
want to direct Jewish emigration. We must defend our principle – that Jewish
settlement can succeed only in Eretz-Israel, and therefore no other [place of]
settlement can be considered.’[lii]:
It seemed to Ben-Gurion that the
Zionists’ main task was
‘to reduce
the damage, the danger and the disaster that can be expected from the Evian
Conference...It could remove Palestine from the international agenda as a factor
in the solution of the Jewish question. Because at this time Palestine is not serving
as a haven for masses of immigrants. The haverim who propose to highlight
at Evian the question of the Jewish people are making a mistake. That question
needs no more “highlighting.” the
more we highlight the terrible distress of the Jewish masses in Germany, Poland
and Romania, the more damage we will do at this time to the negotiations [with
Britain].’ [liii]
What
Ben Gurion feared was that since Palestine was unable to solve the refugee
question, it would inevitably mean looking for other places of refuge. Zionism
would be redundant. A meeting of the JAE on June 26, 1938 decided to:
‘belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible
and to cause it to decide nothing…. We are particularly worried that it would
move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish
refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts’ [liv]
The
Zionists Sabotage Other Places of Refuge
The only positive outcome from Evian was the offer
from Gen. Trujillo of San Domingo to accept 100,000 Jewish refugees. Brazil’s
representative, Helio Lobo, indicated that Brazil could accept 40,000 emigrants
a year, though nothing like this number were admitted.[lv] It is estimated that more German Jewish
refugees found refuge in Latin America than Palestine during the 1930s.[lvi]
The JA was unremitting in their hostility to
Trujillo’s offer and did its best to destroy it. Trujillo was a maverick
dictator as well as a racist. He supported the Republicans in Spain, giving
shelter to thousands following Franco’s victory. This and the offer to accept
100,000 Jews stemmed from his desire to “whiten” Dominican society.[lvii]
The Zionist Yiddisher Kempfer attacked the project
in a fit of hypocritical anti-racist rhetoric. The settlement originated ‘in the curse and disgrace of his racist
hatred for the Negroes of Haiti.’ Only the support of Roosevelt caused the
America’s Zionist leaders to restrain their opposition.[lviii]
When US Interior Secretary Harold Ickes raised the
idea of admitting 10,000 Jewish refugees a year to Alaska, which was not subject to America’s strict immigration quotas, Stephen Wise, the American Zionist leader,
rejected the idea. His pretext was that the territory was “too
cold” for Europeans. Auschwitz was no doubt warmer.
Wise’s real reasons
were spelt out in a private letter to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
(19.10.39). It would ‘make(s) a wrong and
hurtful impression to have it appear that Jews are taking over some part of the
country for settlement.’ [lix] Unlike Palestine of
course!
Other areas of settlement that were
proposed included Kimberley and the Northern Territories in Australia, British
Guiana and Mindanao (in the Philippines). When Neville Chamberlain suggested
the former German colony of Tanganyika, Wise exploded:
‘I would rather have my fellow Jews die in
Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in the lands which bear the imprint of
yesterday’s occupation by Germany’.
Pressurising the Gestapo
Not only did the Zionist leaders oppose
“refugeeism” but they lobbied the Gestapo to ensure that German refugees could
only go to Palestine. The Gestapo ‘did
everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine.’[lx]
 |
Haganah agent Feivel Polkes spearheaded these
efforts. SS files show that in return for information from Polkes on attempts
to kill Hitler, the Gestapo agreed that pressure
‘will be exerted on the Reichsvertretung der
Juden in Deutschland [the Jewish representative body] to oblige Jews who emigrate from Germany to go exclusively to
Palestine, and not to other countries.’[lxi]
Tom Segev says that it is hard to ascertain
what position Polkes had within Haganah.[lxii]
Israel has refused to release its files on Polkes.
Zionist
Indifference to the Holocaust at the time
It almost seems counter intuitive when Israel
takes thousands of students to Auschwitz each year and the holocaust forms such
a major component of Zionist propaganda, to learn that during the holocaust
itself, the Zionist movement went to great lengths to ignore the subject
altogether, even denying that there was a holocaust.
For
example Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva received
confirmation at the end of July 1942 that Europe’s Jews were being
exterminated. On 8th August he sent cables to the US and British
consulates confirming the Final Solution. Stephen Wise received this on 28th
August and agreed, at the State Department’s request, to keep quiet. It was not
until November 23rd that the Jewish Agency finally issued a
statement to the world confirming that the extermination of the Jews was taking
place.
In a letter to Roosevelt of
2nd December 1942 Wise admitted that:
‘… it is indisputable that as many as two million civilian Jews have been slain. I have had cables and underground advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeeded, together with the heads of other Jewish organizations, in keeping these out of the press.’[lxiii] (my emphasis)
Yet even after issuing their statement the
Jewish Agency continued to play down or even deny that the holocaust was taking
place.
On 27 December 1942 the Agency issued a statement
informing the Yishuv that the holocaust had come to an end in Poland. This was
based on the Official Gazette of the Nazi General Government in Poland which
stated that 53 Jewish ghettos had been set up.[lxiv]
On
23 March 1943 Davar, the Histadrut newspaper, was reprimanded by Yosef
Gravitzky, of the Jewish Agency’s Palcor news agency, for copying from a Nazi
paper, Ostland, a “report” that 2m Jews remained in Poland, after the paper had
reported one day earlier that no more than 200,000 Jews were still alive.[lxv]
In fact by this time Polish Jewry had been almost completely decimated.
Numerous
“reports” and false information
concocted by the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin found an echo in the Palestine
press.[lxvi]
When Bernard Joseph. the director of
the JA political department, was told that the Journalists' Union had requested
its colleagues abroad to give widespread prominence to the reports from Europe,
Dov Joseph urged caution in ‘exaggerating
the number of Jewish victims’.
‘if we announce that millions of Jews have been slaughtered by the Nazis, we will justifiably be asked where the millions of Jews are, for whom we claim that we shall need to provide a home in Eretz Israel after the war ends.’[lxvii]
Beit-Zvi observed that
‘Probably not
even Goebbels in his wildest plans could have elicited the kind of treatment
the Hebrew press accorded to information about the holocaust.’[lxviii]
In the Kasztner trial it was reported by HaBoker that Moshe Sharett, when head of the Political Department of the JA had ‘deliberately concealed information about the annihilation’. Menachem Begin of Herut, the future Prime Minister of Israel, alleged that ‘the Jewish Agency covered up the news of the mass annihilation.’ [lxix]
 |
Rudolf Kasztner
and Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf Kasztner was the leader of Hungarian Zionism during
the war. In 1953 a libel case was brought against Malchiel Gruenwald, a
69-year-old Hungarian Jew who alleged that Kasztner had collaborated with the
Nazis in the deportation of Hungary’s Jews. He depicted the JA as ‘the Judenrat of Palestine’[lxx]
and accused them of complicity in the murder of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
The trial began on 1 January 1954. Kasztner was a Mapai
candidate in the forthcoming Knesset elections.[lxxi] Attorney General Haim
Cohen had insisted that Kasztner sue Gruenwald and the state would finance the
action. Cohen unwittingly opened up a can of worms.
 |
Hungarian
holocaust survivors testified that if they had known the truth then they would
have tried to escape.[lxxii]
Wiesel told how
‘We were taken just two weeks
before D-Day, and we did not know that Auschwitz existed… everyone knew except
the victims.’[lxxiii]
When he arrived at Auschwitz a Sonderkommando
berated them: ‘Didn’t you know what was
in store for you here in Auschwitz?’ Wiesel admitted ‘True. We didn’t know. Nobody had told us. He couldn’t believe his
ears…’ [lxxiv]
Yehuda Bauer and the Zionist stable of holocaust historians maintain that Hungary’s
Jews knew.
Rudolf Vrba
Wiesel
accused Kasztner of failing to warn Jews of the danger, concentrating instead
on secret negotiations with the SS.
‘Many of us could have, would
have found hiding places with Christian friends or in the surrounding
mountains.’ [lxxv]
If the Jews had been warned what deportation
meant then thousands could have escaped across the border to Romania, which was
now a place of refuge for Jews, or hidden in Hungary.[lxxvi]
It is estimated that 4,000-4,500 Jews escaped across the Romanian border in any
event and many more escaped to Slovakia and neighbouring countries.[lxxvii]
Kasztner and Vaada dissuaded the Jews of
Kolosvar and elsewhere from escaping over the border.[lxxviii]
Joseph Katz, a lawyer from Nodvarod, four miles from the Romanian border,
testified that its 20,000 Jews knew nothing of Auschwitz.
Rudolf
Vrba was one of 2 Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on 10 April 1944. Vrba and
Alfred Wetzler reached Slovakia after a perilous journey, on 24 April. The next
day they wrote the Auschwitz Report or Protocols, which revealed to the world the
secrets of Auschwitz and its gas chambers. This testimony was the first eye
witness evidence that Auschwitz was an extermination not a labour camp. The
Report was given to Kasztner on or around the 27th April. However Kasztner
decided to suppress the Report. Vrba later wrote:
‘I am a Jew. In spite of that – indeed because of that “I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler's gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kasztner.” … I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers… Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’ [lxxix]
When
Israeli Professor Jacob Talman criticised Hannah Arendt, for mentioning Zionist
collaboration with the Nazis, Vrba asked:
‘Did the Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders – for example Dr R Kasztner – bartered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other ‘prominent’ Jews directly from Eichmann.’[lxxx]
‘If there was a line in Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’ Shabtai Teveth, official biographer of David Ben Gurion [lxxxi]
Guilty
consciences
The Zionists knew what they were doing in giving
preference to building a Jewish state even to the extent of blocking rescue.
Unsurprisingly they had a guilty conscience. Chaim Weizmann wrote:
‘unless some radical measures are taken fairly soon, we Zionists may stand charged, when history come to be written, with criminal indifference in the face of the greatest trial to which Jewry has been subjected in modern times.’ [lxxxii]
“It was morally disturbing to seem to be considered as the favoured children of the Nazi Government, particularly when it dissolved the anti-Zionist youth groups, and seemed in other ways to prefer the Zionists. The Nazis asked for a 'more Zionist behaviour.” [lxxxiii]
Noah Lucas wrote of
‘… a gnawing sense of guilt’ among Israel’s leaders,
asking: ‘Did the Jewish Agency and other organisations do all that had been
possible to save the Jews of Europe from extermination. Were the various
wartime negotiations with the Nazi executives of death morally impeccable? …
Did the concentration on attaining statehood itself impede rescue? Did Zionist
statecraft contribute to the toll of Jewish life? These and other questions…
were submerged in the unconscious mind of the nation… From time to time they
came to the surface demanding precise elucidation in the courts of law, as in
the Kasztner case.’
Even as devoted a Zionist historian as Walter Lacquer spoke
of how, after the war ‘the question was
asked whether enough had been done to help them’, the Jews living in Nazi
occupied Europe. Lacquer referred to ‘an uneasy conscience.’ [lxxxiv]
This is just a snapshot of a much larger topic. If you are interested tune in tomorrow night to my talk on ‘Zionism During the Holocaust’ at 6.00 p.m.
You
can register here https://tinyurl.com/vjvw9kr9
[i] Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Iron Wall”, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotisnky (November 4, 1923), Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
[ii]
Complete Diaries, pp. 83/84.
[iii]
JC, 8.11.01.
[iv]
Nicosia, TRPQ, p.25 citing Die Spur 1920 p.153.
[v]
Nicosia, TRPQ, pp. 25-26. See also
Black p. 173.
[vi]
Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany
and the Jews, p.72, Vol. 1 ‘The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939’ Harper
Collins. New York, 1997
[vii]
Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar
Germany’, p. 139, Manchester University Press, 1980.
[viii]
J B Agus 'Meaning of Jewish
History', New York, 1963 Vol 2 p.447.
[ix] The Observer, Quoted in the Jewish Chronicle 31.3.33.
[x]
Hava Eshkoli-Wagman, Yishuv
Zionism, p.25
[xi]
Yf’aat Weiss, p.24. The Transfer
Agreement and the Boycott Movement.
[xii] The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement, p.20. Yf’aat Weiss.
[xiii]
Edwin Black, pp. 257-258.
[xiv]
Segev p.44 citing Werner Senator
to the Palestine office in Berlin, 30.1.35, CZA S/ 7 142.
[xv]
Review, The Land That Broke Its
Promise : THE SEVENTH MILLION: The Israelis and the holocaust, http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-23/books/bk-38582_1_tom-segev/2
[xvi]
Lenni Brenner, pp. 92-93, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the
Nazis’, Barricade Books, 1972.
[xvii]
Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl,
p. 10.
[xviii]
Lucy Dawidowicz, A holocaust Reader, p.150-153.
[xix]
Etan Bloom, Ph.D. thesis p. 416
citing Weizmann
to Lewis Namier, 1.10.33. in: The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol.
XVI, p. 54). 1968-1980, Weisgal and Litvinoff (eds.).
[xx]
Bloom, Arthur Ruppin and the Production
of the Modern Hebrew Culture, p. 416.
[xxi]
Etan Bloom, Arthur Ruppin and the Production of the Modern
Hebrew Culture, pp.
415, 417.
[xxii] Etan Bloom, Arthur Ruppin and Modern Hebrew Culture, p.417 see also https://tinyurl.com/y4bqt3wf
[xxiii]
Nicosia, ZANG p.146.
[xxiv]
Shabtai Teveth, The Burning Ground
1886-1948, p. 853.
[xxv]
Klaus Polkehn, The Secret
Contacts, p. 57.
[xxvi]
Nicosia, ZANG, p.91. Segev, p.18
attributes this quote to a report by Moshe Beilinson, a cofounder of Davar, to
Katznelson.
[xxvii]
Segev, The Seventh Million, p.18.
[xxviii]
Lucas. pp.187/8.
[xxix]
Lucas p.189.
[xxx]
Dina Porat, p.9.
[xxxi]
Sykes p.137.
[xxxii]
Lucas p.188, 'A Modern History of
Israel 'pp.326-327, Weidenfield ' & Nicholson, 1975.
[xxxiii]
Teveth p.842.
[xxxiv] Teveth, p.848.
[xxxv]
Porat, pp. 10-11, 18.
[xxxvi]
Yechiam Weitz, Jewish Refugees and
Zionist Policy during the holocaust, p.355.
[xxxvii] Shabtai Beit Zvi -Ugandan Zionism on Trial, p.115
[xxxviii] Shabtai Teveth, The Burning Ground 1886-1948, p. 851.
[xxxix] Shabtai Teveth, The Burning Ground 1886-1948, p. 853
[xl] Shabtai Teveth, The Burning Ground 1886-1948, p. 854.
[xli]
Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy and
the Fate of European Jewry, Yad Vashem Studies (1939-42) p.199, see also Segev,
p.28, Teveth, p.855, Piterberg, p.99.
[xlii]
The Palestine Triangle, p. 52.
Nicholas Bethell, Andre Deutsch, London, 1979.
[xliii] Yechiam Weitz, Jewish Refugees and Zionist Policy, p.352.
[xliv]
Teveth, p. 855, speech to the
Mapai Council 1933.
[xlv] Teveth, p. 858, speech to the Mapai Council 1933.
[xlvi]
Segev, 129.
[xlvii]
Tom Segev, p. 467.
[xlviii]
The JA was responsible for the
internal administration of Palestinian Jewry. Albert Hyamson, Palestine Under
the Mandate, p.96..
[xlix]
Saul Friedlander, p. 275.
[l]
Peter Novick, p. 43.
[li]
S Beit Zvi, p.178.
[lii]
S Beit Zvi, pp.155-156.
[liii] S Beit Zvi, p. 156.
[liv] Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
[lv]
S Beit Zvi, p.170. 3,000 Jews
were admitted to Brazil in 1940 after an appeal by Anglican Bishops, Herbert
Strauss, p. 374.
[lvi]
Herbert A Strauss, Jewish
Emigration from Germany, p. 363.
[lvii]
Leveraging American Security Policy in the
Caribbean: Rafael Trujillo, the Axis Threat, and Jewish Refugees from Europe in
the 1930’s, Morris Mottale, https://tinyurl.com/y3bbnbnm
S Beit Zvi, p.214.
[lviii]
S Beit Zvi, p.219.
[lix] Medoff, p. 445, Conflicts between American Jewish leaders and dissidents.
[lx]
Nicosia, TRPQ, p.57.
[lxi]
Nicosia, TFPQ pp. 62-63, 245 fn
65. Polkes’s file in the Haganah Archives in Tel Aviv remains closed to
researchers.
[lxii]
Segev, The Seventh Million, fn.
p.31. Segev calls him ‘Folkes’.
[lxiii] Lacquer, The Terrible Secret, p.160, 2.12.42. Stephen Wise Papers, Brandeis University.
[lxiv] S Beit Zvi, p.79. Other reports suggest that it was in January 1943 that Gruenbaum told his colleagues that the final solution had ended and that the Jews of Poland had been concentrated in 55 ghettos. Hatzofeh, December 28, 1942. Porat, p.42.
[lxv] S. Beit-Zvi, p. 78.
[lxvi] S. Beit Zvi, pp. 48-49
[lxvii] Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42) p.195.
[lxviii] S Beit Zvi, p. 45.
[lxix] Yechiam Weitz, The Herut Movement, pp.359, 368. See for example ‘A Resounding Response to Moshe Sharett – the Jewish Agency Knowingly Silenced Information Regarding the holocaust’ Herut, 15.7.1955.
[lxx]
Segev. 271.
[lxxi]
Noah Lucas, The Modern History of
Israel, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1975, p. 327.
[lxxii] Porter pp. 420-1.
[lxxiii] The Nazis' Last Victims: The holocaust in
Hungary, Eds. Braham, Miller, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2002, https://tinyurl.com/rku4etz.
Braham accused Bauer of using ‘questionable
psychological arguments’ when suggesting that Hungary’s Jews had been
informed about the holocaust without having internalized it. Bauer ‘cites selectively the recollections of
survivors, including some young Zionist couriers and local community leaders
who were allegedly involved in "rescue and warning activities."
The problem was that the survivors were not only ‘left in the dark about the secrets of Auschwitz, but in fact were
misinformed while most of the leaders escaped…’ ‘Braham, Rescue Operations
in Hungary, p.27.
[lxxiv]
Elie Wiesel, Night, p. 30, Penguin
Books, London, 1985.
[lxxv]
Istvan Deak, Review of the
holocaust in Hungary, Sixty Years Later, Braham and Brewster.
[lxxvi]
Lob p.80.
[lxxvii]
Bauer, p. 160. According to a report of Bertrand Jacobson,
Bucharest representative of the welfare organisation HIAS-HICEM, some 1,500
Jews crossed the border. Braham, ‘Rescue Operations in Hungary p.57.
Kasztner also estimated that 1,500 escaped to Romania. Kasztner Report, p.110.
[lxxviii]
Bogdanor, pp. 50-56. Kasztner was
sent by Wisliceny to Kolosvar, near the border with Romania, to warn the Jews
that the guard had been increased and that it was too risky to cross.
[lxxix]
B. Hecht, Perfidy, p.261, fn 68. citing the Daily Herald
February 1961 https://tinyurl.com/yyr5teys
[lxxx] Observer, 22.9.63., strictly speaking
Kasztner was not a member of the Judenrat.
[lxxxi]
Shabtai Teveth, Ben Gurion – The
Burning Ground, p.851.
[lxxxii]
David Silberklang, Jewish Politics
and Rescue: p.337. Letter to Simon Marks 15.12.35.
[lxxxiii]
Joachim Prinz, Zionism under the Nazi
Government, Young Zionist (London, November 1937), p.18 cited in Lenni Brenner,
51 Documents, p. 101.
[lxxxiv]
Lacquer, A History of Zionism, p.561.
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