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Way to go, Tom.

Comment by David Suissa on 9/14/09 at 12:38 am

Thank you Mr. Barad - for standing up for truth and fairness.  Your letter expresses what so many of us feel.

Fonda, Glover, Belafonte and the others evidently believe that re-writing history with an Anti-Semitic pen did not end with Richard Wagner.

We all need to continue to fight these distortions with the truth about Israel, Jews and the Western World’s attempt to preserve democracy and human dignity.

Comment by Michael Waterman on 9/14/09 at 1:36 pm

It’s just old fashioned antisemitism.  Unfortunately for many people, Hitler wasn’t efficient enough - he didn’t kill all of us.  We were, are and always will be the world’s scapegoat.  When was young I didn’t think this way but now that I am 67 I see the world as it really is.

Comment by Myra V. Drickman, M.D. on 9/14/09 at 2:24 pm

Quentin Tarantino is rumored to be making a new movie called GODLESS BASTARDS, based on Rabbi Menashe& his fellow Orthodox rabbis.

Rabbi Menashe Klein On Child Sexual Abuse: Doctors And Other Mandated Reporters Who Call Police Should Be Killed

  Rav Menashe Klein (Mishneh Halachos 16:58):
    …
Shulchan Aruch (C.M. 388:9) writes that it is prohibited to cause a Jew to be handed over to the secular government whether physically or his money - even if he is a wicked person and even if he irritates and causes someone distress. It would seem from this statement of the Shulchan Aruch that it is prohibited to report a person to the police. Nevertheless in Nishmas Avraham (C.M. part 4 page 207) he cites in the name of Prof Avraham Sofer that Rav Eliashiv, the Tzitz Eliezer, R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach classify a molester as a rodef (pursuer) and that they rule that it is permitted to report the molester to the police. However I don’t have this book to see what they actually said…
  Rabbi Menashe Klein
  .
  Concerning the issue of whether it is permitted to give him over to the secular courts (see Shulchan Aruch 388:9). But this that you want to say that he is a rodef (pursuer); I don’t know what you mean. In the case of the rodef we have an established principle that if we can stop him by damaging one of his limbs then he should be stopped that way. Therefore in our case we can say that after the matter has been clarified that he in fact committed the crime, nevertheless he can be stopped by firing him from the school and therefore he will not have the opportunity to do the crime again. Since the administration can stop him in this manner they have no right to punish him by given him to the secular government since he is no longer a rodef. Furthermore if he is now pursued after he has been fired then the victim becomes the rodef and the rodef becomes the victim. If it has been clarified before proper witnesses that there is an alternative way of dealing with him by firing him – it is prohibited to hand him over to the government. And surely in the case where the facts have not been clarified by proper witness as I said before – but only by means of circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless he does not have the status of a wicked person except by means of proper witnesses. So surely it is prohibited to hand him over to the police and to have him imprisoned. (Also because in the case of imprisonment when he is freed he will be like he was before.) Nevertheless after he has committed a transgression we have no ability give him a punishment of flogging because we don’t have a beis din with proper semicha. We do have the ability to make various decrees but what ever is done must be done according to the Torah and with a proper beis din. Nevertheless in a situation where all the clarifications of facts have not been done according to the Torah as we have written, even though it is possible to fire him from the school – but G‑d forbid to hand him over to the police and have him imprisoned.

  Therefore I am extremely upset that there are rabbis that have decided to give permission in all cases to go to the civil courts. There are cases of people who have come to me where a child who learns in the school and has various problems with the teacher and has accused the teacher of pursing him in a disgusting manner. Even though there is no previous history of such a thing and he has acted like any other religious teacher. Nevertheless they go to a rav who tells them immediately to call the police. That is in my humble opinion a very serious prohibition. Concerning this the Shulchan Aruch (C.M. 26) says that a person who goes to the secular courts is a wicked person and is like one who blasphemes and raises his hand against the Torah of Moshe. The Rema adds to the Shulchan Aruch and says to punish anyone who assists in this endeavor. Thus one who rules that one should go to the secular courts is included in one who assists in this endeavor. In addition he is giving permission to be a moser and to go to the secular courts which is included in cherem – G‑d forbid.

This isn’t the first sick, ill informed ruling from Rabbi Klein on this issue. Here is how he deals with the issue of kosher witnesses for the crime of child sexual abuse.

In other words, Rabbi Menashe Klein rules that an 8-year-old girl who has been raped and who identifies her father as her rapist to a trained medical professional is not to be believed. That medical professional is also forbidden to call police or social workers or child protection or do anything else that could get the father arrested.

If the medical professional is about to call police and cannot be stopped any other way, he can and should be killed.

And the father?

The father remains just as he was before, free.

Rabbi Menashe Klein is a haredi “Gadol.”

All of the above quoted material (and the PDF linked below) from Rabbi Klein’s writings comes from Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn’s blog, Daas Torah.

Update 11:15 am CDT – I think this comment from ah-pee-chorus is extremely important:

  In rational society lawmakers and law-interpereters are presumed to have the foresight to analyze what the ramifications of their rulings will be. and in a community of rational people, this, most basic concept would not only be expected, but demanded. the torah even requires that its devotees adhere to this principle. it lays out this universal qualifier very clearly. vo’chai bahem, and lo bashamayim . you must be able to live with the laws as interpereted, as they are not given in the vaccuum setting of heaven, but rather here on earth, with many variables to consider.
  So let’s consider what affect this amoral and thought-free ruling will have.

  1. children- much more likely to be victims of sexual abuse,molestation and rape, since a pedophile would correctly reason that there is no danger of being caught and going to prison.

  2.parents- much more likely to have their children be victims of sexual abuse.

  3.society- huge negative impact in having to deal with the many families whose lives will be marred by these heinous acts.

  4.the torah- will be seen as a vehicle which is not only powerless to prevent sex abuse, but as an enabler.

  5.pedophiles- should jump for joy. This is an open invitation to rape as many children as they can, knowing that if this ruling is followed, there is no risk to them.

  Having considered all this, Klein, the enabler, has determined that this is still proper. If it were just Klein, he could be dismissed as a complete fool. But what can be said for the many thousands who will revere this ruling, quote this psak, and follow it to a tee? It is almost too sad for words.

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/14/09 at 3:01 pm

This whole mess saddens me beyond belief. 

Have any of you seen “Lemon Tree” ?

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and the obsession with both sides in proving “righteousness” makes any sort of meaningful dialogue impossible.

What instead happens is a situation where there is no room to acknowledge complicity, offer honest introspective discussion or contrition.

Israel (like the United States) was founded by genocide survivors who had a lot of struggle and resolve to create a safe space for themselves after watching millions of fellows being slaughtered. 

That may explain brutalities against anyone who is not “us”, but it does not justify them. 

It would do us well to actually listen to people like Jimmy Carter, Fonda, Glover, Cynthia McKinney, and others who are simply trying to deliver a message that survival of the nation of Israel should not include wholesale destruction of Arabs, particularly civilians, children and the vast majority who simply want to live and be left alone (as do the Israelis).

Does anyone consider the provocations of Ariel Sharon by insulting Muslims around the world and Arabs by desecrating holy ground, forcing his way onto the Temple Mount above the Wailing Wall?  Does anyone remember that it was extremist factions of Israelis who murdered a man of peace, (Yitzhak Rabin)?

Sharon was simply the Reagan/Bush of Israel, who opened up legitimacy to the most literal interpretations of self righteousness in Israeli society, handing vast amounts of institutional support to the most repressive and backward aspects of the country. 

His provocation of the Palestinians is no less insulting than our quietly blockading oil shipments to north Korea and then blaming them for starting their nuclear program again, simply so they could be treated with respect.

Bush and Sharon helped fuel the current conflict, as much as Hamas.

It takes two to create a holy war, and I am sad to say that for the last decade, Israel has not had “clean hands” in this ongoing disagreement. 

I am white and from the south.  I grew up in the Civil Rights era.  I can assure you that most white people did not like to consider our own racism, and the laws we created to keep black people “in their place.”  We beat our breasts about the “yankees” forcing their way of life on us again, saw it as an ongoing extension of the civil war, a return to reconstruction, and supremely insulting. 

But ultimately, most of us realized we were wrong, and with regard to equality, the “yankees” were right.  How many of us are willing to consider that maybe we are wrong on this one, and that maybe we need to listen to what is being said and at least consider someone else’s perspective for a change.  Are we alone perfect in wisdom?

Until Israel looks at it’s own systematic provocation of it’s Arab neighbors, the insults it perpetrates that fuel the most extremist reactions and stops insisting on being “right” all the time, not much will change. 

One can be “right” or one can have forgiveness and peace, but one cannot have both.  Anyone in a successful marriage knows that, and for better or worse, Israel and it’s Arab neighbors are “married” to the same patch of earth, and both have to learn to live peacefully on it.

That is what these protesters are trying to say, and it’s sad that it takes a boycott to get this dialogue started. 

Please resist the temptation to label attempts to create this dialogue “Anti-Semitic.”  To do so just make any resolution more difficult.

Until the full humanity of the Arab people is acknowledged and respected, the war will continue, and that is heart breaking.

Comment by Ed Garren on 9/14/09 at 3:44 pm

As the tidal wave of criticism, mostly blind and mob-driven, rears its head once again, Tom Barad presents the reality of the day concerning Israel and its ability to reflect upon its own faults—while building for a stronger and more viable future.

It is a sad to note that I now have to begin to filter/screen the films that I choose to see based upon the criteria of the virulent anti-Israel position of its stars ... sad indeed!

Comment by Ben Zion Kogen on 9/14/09 at 4:43 pm

Thank you Mr. Barad for a measured and thoughtful response to a well-meaning but terrifyingly misguided group of artists.  If those that condemn Israel would take the time to visit the country, they may very well find themselves with a new, more positive perspective.

Comment by Cynthia Baseman on 9/14/09 at 5:16 pm

Mr. Garren’s eloquence and perspective on the changing racial attitudes in the South indicates his heart is in the right place, but his allegation that Israel engages in “systematic provocation of it’s [sic] Arab neighbors” is simply not true. Educate yourself on the history of the area from 1948 to now and you will find factual evidence, time and again, that just the opposite is the truth: the Arab agenda has always been the systematic provocation of Israel—indeed, the systematic quest for the destruction of the Jewish state itself, whereas Israel’s agenda has never been the destruction of Arabs or any of their states. Superb PR and outright propaganda in support of the Palestinians has blocked facts, engendered spin, and consequently resonated with many a person who considers himself compassionate and supportive of human rights. But this powerful effect on the world view is a distortion of the truth. Palestinian terrorists have been their people’s own worst enemies when it comes to peace. They have launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, engineered terrorist bombings (a despicable action in which Israel has never engaged), and murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians. When Palestinian civilians are injured and killed, it is no less tragic—but it occurs after Palestinian terror groups shoot rockets from Palestinian civilian locations so that Israeli reprisals will inevitably propogate blame on Israel. Come now—who is provoking whom here? Peace needs to be achieved through negotiation, not through boycotts of art and ideas. Many like Mr. Garren have their hearts in the right place; now please allow your minds to follow them there. Finding the truth for yourself. Don’t accept its distortion because it’s been crafted to sound righteous. And remember that artists do not silence other artists.

Comment by David Bruskin on 9/14/09 at 5:19 pm

THE SECULAR ZIONIST AGENDA FOR A JEWISH STATE

Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

August 2007

© Copyright. 2007. Chaim Simons

INTRODUCTION

In an article in the English edition of “Mishpacha” in January 2005 appeared the following:
“The Left is still loyal to the State of Israel in varying levels of faithfulness, but it hates Eretz Yisrael. The difference between these two is clear: Eretz Yisrael is a reminder of the Left’s Jewish past, which it wishes to forget. … The Left’s disconnection from the Jewish nation has reached the point where they are prepared for settlers to be killed during the evacuation effort [Gaza area and North Shomron]. Spokesmen of the Left have already announced that this will not be a war of brother against brother since ‘the settlers are not our brothers’.” (1)

Unfortunately this is not a new phenomenon. It has always been an integral part of the secular Zionist agenda. They wanted a Jewish State (according to some of them, even if it were to be in Uganda or Argentina) but it had to be administered according to their programme and perception for the “New Jew.”

***********************************************

NOTE

Although much of the material appearing in this paper can be found in other books or articles, the material is often brought down as secondary or even tertiary sources. In addition, the primary sources are on a number of occasions incorrectly quoted and there are even cases where the quotations given do not occur in the sources given. Therefore the only quotations of statements made by secular Zionists brought in this paper are those which the author of this paper has a photocopy from in the original in his possession. Due to limitations in the disc space, facsimiles of these documents cannot appear in this online copy. In many cases the original documents are no longer extant or could not be located, despite extensive searching. In such cases the information alleged to be contained in them has been completely omitted from this paper.

In the English quotes, Palestine usually appears when referring to Eretz Yisrael and it has of course be left as it appears in the original.
The following words appearing in the Hebrew quotes have not been translated:
Aliyah – Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael
Hachshara – Training given to people in preparation for Aliyah
Shlichim - Jewish emissaries sent abroad to Jewish communities
Yishuv - Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael

*************************************************

SELECTIVITY – THE SECULAR ZIONIST WAY

Eretz Yisrael was Divinely given to the Jewish people(2) and every Jew has an equal right to live there. However as we shall see, the secular Zionists thought otherwise.

At the eighteenth Zionist Congress held in Prague in August 1933, Ben-Gurion said
“Eretz Yisrael today needs not ordinary immigrants, but pioneers. The difference between them is simple – an immigrant comes to take from the land, whereas a pioneer comes to give to the land. Therefore we demand priority for Aliyah to pioneers.”(3) (emphasis in original)

The question here is how would Ben-Gurion define an “ordinary immigrant” and how a “pioneer”? From his speech, it is obvious that a person working the land on a kibbutz is a pioneer. However, it would almost certainly appear that an old person coming to spend his last years in the Holy Land or even a Yeshiva student would be classed as a mere “ordinary immigrant”!(4)

A few months later in mid-October 1933 a meeting took place between, amongst others, the High Commissioner for Palestine, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok (Sharett). The Minutes of the meeting were written up by Shertok.

During the course of this meeting Ben-Gurion spoke about the three million Jews then living in Poland and stated that
“Palestine offered no solution for all Polish Jews. Immigration into Palestine was necessarily limited, therefore it had to and could be a selected immigration. Zionism was not a philanthropic enterprise, they really wanted here the best type of Jew to develop the Jewish National Home, but they had to be given sufficient scope to bring over people of whom the country was in need.”(5)

The question which remains is who would decide who was “the best type of Jew”? As will soon be seen, such a Jew was someone who was a secular Zionist!

It was a few years later at the 20th Zionist Congress held in Zurich in August 1937, that Weizmann spelled out more specifically what was meant by “selective Aliyah.”
“I told the members of the Royal [Peel] Commission that six million Jews want to go on Aliyah. One of the members asked me ‘ Do you think you could bring all of them to Eretz Yisrael?’ On this I answered … that two million young people… we want to save. The old people will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They have already become like dust, economic and moral dust in this cruel world.”(6)

A similar rejection of elderly Jews to go on Aliyah was made by Henry Montor, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees towards the beginning of 1940. A ship full of refugees not certified by the Zionist organisations, were on the high seas. Many of the passengers were elderly. The captain of the ship required money to bring them to Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz of Maryland took the matter in hand and tried to get the necessary money from Montor to pay the captain. In his long rambling letter of reply, Montor wrote about the Jewish Agency’s policy of “selectivity” – “the choice of young men and women who are trained in Europe for productive purposes either in agriculture or industry.” With regard to the elderly Jews on board this ship, Montor wrote:

“There could be no more deadly ammunition provided to the enemies of Zionism, whether they be in the ranks of the British Government or the Arabs, or even in the ranks of the Jewish people, if Palestine were to be flooded with very old people or with undesirables who would make impossible the conditions of life in Palestine and destroy the prospect of creating such economic circumstances as would insure a continuity of immigration.”(7)

Maybe it would have been appropriate for him to have renamed his organisation “United Jewish Appeal for Selected Refugees”! At least the donors would then have had a better idea of what they were giving money for.

The secular Zionists were not even ashamed to put out a memorandum in which they quite openly had a section “Who to save”. This memorandum (of April/May 1943) was headed that its distribution was “intended for Zionist functionaries only” and it included instructions “not to pass it on to non-Zionist groups who participate in the Working Committee.”(8) Although it came out under the name of A. [Apolinary] Hartglas, it has been suggested that in fact it was Yitzchak Gruenbaum who actually wrote it.(9) Under this section, he wrote

“…. to my sorrow we have to say that if we are able to save only ten thousand people and we need to save fifty thousand [those chosen] should be of use in building up the land and the revival of the nation.… First and foremost one must rescue children since they are the best material for the Yishuv. One must rescue the pioneering youth, especially those who have had training and are idealistically qualified for Zionist work. One should rescue the Zionist functionaries since they deserve something from the Zionist movement for their work…. Pure philanthropic rescue, for example, saving the Jews of Germany, if carried out in an indiscriminate manner, could from a Zionist prospective only cause harm.”(10)

As can be seen, just as with both Weizmann and Montor, Hartglas was not interested in old people coming to Eretz Yisrael. Even amongst the younger generation, he was only interested in those who would work the land - Yeshivah students were of no use to him.

Further exclusions to Aliyah by the secular Zionists were people who were not members of the Zionist camp. Some Jews who succeeded in arriving in Eretz Yisrael in the second half of 1944 gave evidence on this question.

Pinchas Gross who had been one of the public workers of Agudat Yisrael in Rumania stated

“The first principle of the Zionist Aliyah Committee in Bucharest was not to allow members of Agudat Yisrael to go on Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. This was despite the agreement which had been made before the war between Agudat Yisrael and the Jewish Agency on the Aliyah quotas for members of Agudat Yisrael… Shlichim from the [Aliyah] Committee in Bucharest arrived in Transylvania with large sums of money in order to transfer hundreds of pioneers to Bucharest for the purpose of Aliyah. We also asked for our members the possibility of Aliyah but we were rudely rejected.”(11)

One might think that this money was “Zionist money” and therefore it was proper to reject such a request. However, this was shown not to be the case just a few weeks later when Weissberg who was a member of the Aliyah Committee in Bucharest, gave evidence before the Rescue Committee in Jerusalem. During this evidence he stated

“It is true that the Agudah was not granted equal rights with regards to receiving money for assistance in Rumania. We did not know that the money which arrived from Eretz Yisrael was money from the Rescue Committee in which all the Yishuv participated. We thought that the money was Jewish Agency money.… I must inform you that help was not given to the pioneers and youth of Agudat Yisrael. We did not know that Agudah is a partner in matters of rescue and in particular in matters of Aliyah. Also regarding the Aliyah of the pioneers of Agudah, we did not know that they were entitled to go on Aliyah, until we arrived in Eretz Yisrael.”(12)

We can thus see that the secular Zionists did nothing to even inform the Agudah what they were entitled to, let alone implement such an entitlement.

There were also others who had been misled in believing that the money was “Zionist money”. For example, the Vishnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Eliezer Hager, testified that when he asked why the ultra-Orthodox were not receiving any money, received the answer, “This money is Zionist and it is set aside solely for Zionists.”(13) (emphasis in original)

Pinchas Gross further stated

“The ultra-Orthodox youth were not at all considered for this [financial] assistance either in their home town or for the possibility of Aliyah. We applied… for assistance for our youth who before the war did a period of Hachshara and were no less fit for Aliyah than other pioneers – but we did not even receive an answer. The excuse was that the money was Zionist money and was solely for them.”(14)

This attitude of the secular Zionists in their use of public money for their kith and kin and of their “priorities” did not pass without comment, even from non-Orthodox sources.

Dr. Judah Leon Magnes in addressing a meeting of the Rescue Committee in July 1944 was very critical of those who wanted

“first of all to save the Zionists, and afterwards, if possible – also the others, but above all the Zionists. I spoke to somebody…. The man said… we will save our men…. I said to him … the others are also Jews. He said: It is so, they are Jews, but this is a universal argument, a perpetual argument and we will not give in on this.”(15)

Magnes’ comments on the necessity for non-selectivity when doing rescue work are illustrated by the work performed during the Second World War by Recha Sternbuch, who succeeded in rescuing thousands of Jews from the Nazis. Recha was associated with the strictly Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. However, unlike the secular Zionists, she rescued Jews (and even some non-Jews) regardless of their level of religious observance or Zionist party affiliation.(16)

ZIONISM – AND ONLY THEN JEWISH LIVES

A few months after the beginning of the Second World War the Zionists received entry visas to Eretz Yisrael for 2,900 German Jews. It was necessary to have a meeting with the British Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, in connection with these visas and in November 1939, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok met to discuss this question. Ben-Gurion strongly opposed such a meeting with MacDonald and he told Shertok that

“our political future is more important than saving 2,900 Jews.” Shertok, who completely disagreed with Ben-Gurion, commented in his diary, “he [Ben-Gurion] was prepared to forgo them [the 2,900 Jews].”(17)

Even in July 1944, which was towards the end of this war, when the Holocaust was still in full progress and its implementation was already well known, Ben-Gurion still had the same attitude. A meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency was held in Jerusalem at the beginning of July 1944. On its agenda was the subject of the rescue of Jews.

Rabbi Baruch Yehoshua Yerachmiel Rabinowicz, the Munkaczer Rebbe in Hungary, was involved in this rescue effort and the question of a meeting with him was mentioned at this Jewish Agency meeting. In answer Ben-Gurion stated that he did not oppose such a meeting, “We must do everything in this matter [of rescue] including things which seem fantastic.” Had Ben-Gurion said no more, it would have been praiseworthy, but he then continued, “But there is one condition: the work will not cause damage to Zionism.”(18)

In a letter to the Israeli daily newspaper “Ha’aretz” in 1983, the historian Professor Yigal Eilam confirmed that this was the attitude of the Zionist leaders during the period of the Holocaust. He wrote
“The policy of the Zionists during the long period of the Holocaust gave priority to the building up of the land and the establishment of a State, over the saving of Jews…. One already needs to tell these things in a open and direct manner. The Zionists did very little in the saving of Jews, not because they were unable to do more, but because they were concentrating on the Zionist enterprise.”(19)

In a similar vein, in an article by the historian Dina Porat which appeared in “Ha’aretz” in 1991, she wrote

“From the moment that the State became the primary objective, the life of a Jew became secondary in accordance with the principal ‘the State of Israel is above everything’”.(20)

The shortsightedness of the secular Zionist leaders in this matter was written about in 1984 by Rabbi Morris Sherer, the President of Agudat Yisrael, in his comments on the report by Professor Seymour Maxwell Finger entitled “American Jewry during the Holocaust.” Rabbi Sherer commented

“Alas, they [the secular Zionist leaders] did not perceive how utterly ridiculous and heartless it was for Jewish leaders to concentrate on a postwar homeland, when the people for whom they were seeking this home were being slaughtered like sheep!” (21)

Unlike Ben-Gurion who put Zionism first, and Jewish lives just in second place, the Rabbis of the period immediately put “Pikuach Nefesh” (the saving of lives) first. Sabbath observance is one of the fundamentals of Jewish observance, with the most stringent of punishments for their non-observance, yet despite this, Pikuach Nefesh overrides the Sabbath.(22) In order to save lives during the Holocaust, two leading British Rabbis, Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld and Rabbi Isadore Grunfeld, who were occupied in forging passports to save Jews, continued their work on the Sabbath.(23) Rabbis Boruch Kaplan and Rabbi Alexander Linchner rode around Brooklyn in New York in a car on the Sabbath from house to house collecting money to save Jews.(24) (These actions are normally forbidden on the Sabbath.)

IF NOT ALIYAH, LET THEM PERISH

In 1933, Hitler rose to power and during the subsequent years, more and more draconian measures, such as the Nuremberg laws were enacted against the Jews. In 1938 Hitler marched into Austria to the cheers of the non-Jewish population.

The situation for the Jews under Hitler’s domination became unbearable and places of refuge became a grave necessity. It was thus at this period that President Franklin Roosevelt convened a conference of thirty-two nations at the French resort town of Evian to try and find places of refuge for Jews wanting to flee from Hitler.

One would naturally have thought that the Zionist leaders of the time would make the most of this opportunity and devote all their time and energy to ensure that successful results would emerge from this Conference. But sadly this was not to be.

Already in mid-June 1938, before the opening of the Conference, Dr. Georg Landauer wrote to Dr. Stephen Wise, who was head of the Zionist Organization of America. In it he wrote:

“I am writing this letter to you at the request of Dr. Weizmann, as we are very much concerned in case the issue is presented at the [Evian] Conference in a manner which may harm the work for Palestine. Even if the Conference will not place countries other than Palestine in the front for Jewish immigration, there will certainly be public appeals which will tend to overshadow the importance of Palestine…. We feel all the more concern as it may bind Jewish organisations to collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to interfere with our own campaigns.”(25)

Two weeks later the Jewish Agency Executive met in Jerusalem and opposition to the planned Evian Conference was openly stated.

Yitzchak Gruenbaum said

“The Evian Conference can be expected to cause us grave damage - Eretz Yisrael could be eliminated as a country for Jewish immigration … [we are] very apprehensive that in this Conference, it could be relegated to the end of the line. We have to prevent this damage… There is the danger that whilst searching for a destination country, some new territory will be found to which Jewish immigration will be directed. We must defend our principle that Jewish settlement can only succeed in Eretz Yisrael and that no other settlement can come into the calculation.”(26)

Menachem Ussishkin then addressed the meeting in a similar vein. The Evian Conference very much worried him and he supported the words of Gruenbaum. “Mr. Gruenbaum is right when he says that there is the danger that Eretz Yisrael will be removed from the agenda even by the Jews and one should see this as a tremendous blow to us.”(27)

Of course the ideal solution was for Jews to go to Eretz Yisrael. However in view of the then political situation, immigration there was not a feasible proposition. Surely the only question then should have been how to save and help as many Jews as possible. It was this fact that should have been the only concern of the speakers at that Jewish Agency Executive meeting – but it wasn’t!

A few weeks later, Weizmann wrote to Stephen Wise. Towards the beginning of his letter he wrote: “I made arrangements, before leaving for my holiday, to put in a few days at Evian.”(28) If one thinks for a moment about this sentence, one can see that it is horrific. Surely, if there was even the slightest opportunity of saving even one Jew, Weizmann who was the President of the Zionist Organization should have immediately cancelled his personal holiday arrangements and spent all his time at Evian trying to lobby the various delegates to accept Jews in their countries. But what do we see? – he will just before going on holiday “put in a few days at Evian.”

In fact he was later persuaded by his friends not to even “put in a few days” there, to which advice he followed.(29) The reason was stated by Dr. Arthur Ruppin at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on 21 August. Ruppin stated “we then decided that it would not be to our prestige for Dr. Weizmann to appear in Evian”(30) – the reason being that he would only have been allowed to speak in a sub-committee! Jewish lives were at stake and to worry about prestige!!

One can immediately contrast this attitude with that of the Jewish religious leaders of the time. Rabbi Aharon Kotler had come under some criticism for meeting in the course of his rescue work with Stephen Wise, a leader of the Reform movement. He shrugged such reprobation saying, “I would prostrate myself before the Pope if I knew it would help to save even the fingernail of one Jewish child.”(31)

Unfortunately nothing concrete came out of the Evian Conference. The situation of the Jews in Germany got even worse and on 9 November 1938 there was the infamous Kristallnacht.

A few days later, Weizmann heard that there was a scheme to resettle German Jews in a country other than Eretz Yisrael. This he did not like and he immediately sent off a telegram to stop any financial backing for such a scheme. This telegram was sent to Samuel Vandenbergh in Wassemar

“Understand you are embarking large financial effort for settlement German Jews. Beg of you to be careful not disperse and dissipate energies which can nowhere be applied with greater effectiveness both immediately and lasting than in Palestine.”(32)

Since at that period emigration to Eretz Yisrael was unfortunately not a practical proposition, Weizmann is effectively saying that rather than immigrate to another country, the Jews must remain in Nazi Germany.

We can see that also Ben-Gurion thought on these same lines as the other secular Zionist leaders. It was at this period that Ben-Gurion addressed the Mapai Central Committee. He realised the seriousness of the situation and said

“On these awesome days at the start of the threatened destruction of European Jewry…. If I would know that it would be possible to save all the German [Jewish] children by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, I would choose the second option – since before us is not just these children but the history of the Jewish people.”(33)

At this period, the Germans had already established concentration camps and were sending Jews to them. In order to pre-empt this, it was necessary to find the means of arranging their emigration from Germany. Ben-Gurion, however, felt this could cause a diversion of resources and endanger Zionism. A few days after his above quoted speech to the Mapai Central Committee, he addressed the Executive of the Jewish Agency:
“Zionism now stands in danger.… If the Jews will have to choose on the one hand the refugee question,[namely] saving Jews from concentration camps and on the other hand assisting a national museum in Eretz Yisrael, mercy would decide the matter and all the energy of the [Jewish] people would be diverted to saving Jews in the various countries. Zionism would be struck off the agenda, not only in world opinion in England and America, but also in Jewish public opinion. The existence of Zionism would be at risk if we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Eretz Yisrael problem.”(34) (emphasis in original)

NOT ONE PENNY, NOT ONE CENT

The mass extermination of the Jews of Europe was already well known by the end of 1942. Saving Jews could and should have been top priority. But in order to save large numbers of people from extermination costs money – whether normal expenses or money for bribery. Needless to say, the money has to come from somewhere. All the time money was donated by world Jewry to funds such as the Keren Hayesod, the JNF, and so on. It is true that this money had been specifically donated for Eretz Yisrael, but here was a case of Pikuach Nefesh and it would have been quite legitimate, indeed mandatory, to have utilised this money for the saving of Jewish lives. The Jews then living in Eretz Yisrael were even saying so.

However Yitzchak Gruenbaum, who was head of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency thought otherwise. In a speech to the Zionist Smaller Actions Committee in January 1943 he expressed his views:

“Meanwhile a mood has begun to sweep over Eretz Yisrael which I think is very dangerous to Zionism…. How is it possible that such a thing can occur in Eretz Yisrael, that in a meeting they will call out to me, ‘If you don’t have any money [for rescuing European Jewry] take the money of the Keren Hayesod, take the money from the bank – there, there is money, in the Keren Hayedod there is money.’ … These days in Eretz Yisrael it is being said, ‘don’t put Eretz Yisrael at the top of your priorities at this difficult time, at the period of a Holocaust and destruction of European Jewry,’ …. I don’t accept such a thing. And when they asked me to give money of the Keren Hayesod to save Diaspora Jewry, I said no and I again said no…. I am not going to defend myself, in the same way that I will not justify or defend myself if they accuse me of murdering my mother …. But I think it is necessary to say here: Zionism is above everything.”(35)

The only consolation from reading Gruenbaum’s speech, is that the Jews living in Eretz Yisrael were demanding the diverting of Keren Hayesod money to rescue efforts, even though this meant that less money would arrive in Eretz Yisrael and could accordingly affect their living standards. In contrast Gruenbaum commented “Zionism is above everything” even though this meant not rescuing European Jewry from the Holocaust.

In his book “Perfidy”, Ben Hecht quoted how Gruenbaum said “No” to the giving of money for rescue activities.(36) In a critical “Analysis” of this book by the American Section of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, they write that this quoted sentence by Ben Hecht “has been most viciously torn out of context. The writer of this Analysis then tries to prove, quoting other parts of Gruenbaum’s speech that he wanted to do everything to save European Jewry.(37) However he conveniently omitted one crucial part of the speech: “Zionism is above everything” – namely we will certainly do everything to save European Jewry provided that it is not at the expense of Zionism!

One might add that in 1961, Gruenbaum gave an interview to the paper “Etgar” from the comfort of his house in Gan Shmuel, in which he repeated these statements he made during the war, without even hinting he had been wrong.

“Interviewer: Was there then no money in the kitty of the Jewish Agency, the JNF, the Keren Hayesod?
Gruenbaum: Yes. Even then the argument went: Isn’t there any money? Take it from the JNF. I said: No! They did not want to forgive me for this and until this day, there are murmurings about this. The money was needed for Zionism.
Interviewer: What is the meaning of “for Zionism” when the saving of lives is at stake? Does Zionism want Jews alive or dead?
Gruenbaum: The saving of life does not override Zion. For Jews, the State is essential. Therefore, in accordance with my manner I said the truth – that is No!”(38)

Gruenbaum went on to say that he then went to South Africa to raise money for rescue purposes. However we all know that the raising of money, especially when one has to travel to another continent takes time and every day taken meant more Jews were being sent to the gas chambers. Surely the correct thing was to immediately take money from these Zionist kitties and if at a later date one succeeded in raising money, one could return it to the Zionist funds.

Even before the war, when Jews were already being persecuted in Germany and Austria, it was widely accepted that money to save Jewish lives came before money for Zionism. In was in late October 1938 that the treasurer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) said

“The upbuilding of Palestine was all very well, but Jews in Europe were starving and persecuted – and they, JDC felt, had first claim on whatever funds were available.”(39)

ALSO THE BRITISH SECULAR ZIONISTS

Placing Zionism above the saving the lives of Jews was also a phenomenon of the British secular Zionists. Towards the end of 1942, when the Nazi extermination plans became known, British Jewry decided to make representations to the British Government. At a meeting of the British section of the Jewish Agency held in December 1942, the “Nazi Extermination Policy” was on the agenda. Here is an extract from the official minutes of this meeting when discussing this item:

“Dr. Brodetsky … made it quite clear that if Palestine was not properly mentioned then he would not be a member of the Delegation to Mr. Eden….
Lord Melchett said it would be disastrous for any body of Jews to go to Mr. Eden and not put Palestine in the forefront of their plans. Such a body would not represent the views of the Jews either here or elsewhere…..
Mr. Marks said he fully agreed, and if this condition was not satisfied, then he would not be a member of the delegation. Unless Palestine was properly dealt with, they should criticise the delegation up and down the country and cause a revolution inside the Board of Deputies…. The dignity of the Jewish people was at stake and it was only in Palestine that the Jews could get their dignity back.”(40)

As we well see, the above British secular Zionists would only attend a meeting with British Government officials to save Jews from the “Nazi Extermination Policy” if Eretz Yisrael was to be given a prominent place at these meetings. Furthermore it was Jewish liveswhich were “at stake” and it was no time to worry about “dignity” being “at stake”.

It was at the same period that the British secular Zionists sabotaged negotiations that Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld was making with the British Government for the rescue of the endangered Jews in Nazi Europe. Such rescue of Jews was not a new thing with Rabbi Schonfeld. Just before the Second World War, he had organised Kindertransports and brought over to England from Germany and Austria thousands of children.(41) To accommodate some of them he even utilized his own house with him sleeping in the attic.(42)

Towards the end of 1942, Rabbi Schonfeld organised steps to rescue Jews from Nazi Europe. To this end he worked exceptionally hard to organise wide support for a Motion to be tabled in the British Parliament for the British Government to be prepared to find temporary refuge in its territories or territories under its control for those endangered by the Nazis. Within two weeks he amassed a total of 277 Parliamentary signatures of all parties for this Motion.(43)

One would have thought that the British secular Zionists would have welcomed and co-operated in such an initiative. Sadly this was not the case. In a letter to the “Jewish Chronicle” at that period, Rabbi Schonfeld wrote
“This effort was met by a persistent attempt on the part of Professor Brodetsky [President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews] and some of his colleagues to sabotage the entire move. Without even full knowledge of the details, he and his collaborators asked Members of the House [of Parliament] to desist from supporting the new effort.”(44)

Rabbi Schonfeld further elaborated on this in a letter to “The Times” of London at the time of the Eichmann trial in 1961.

“Already while the Parliamentary motion was gathering momentum voices of dissent were heard from Zionist quarters: ‘Why not Palestine?’ The obvious answers that the most urgent concern was humanitarian and not political, that the Mufti-Nazi alliance ruled out Palestine for the immediate saving of lives….When the next steps were being energetically pursued by over 100 M.Ps [Members of Parliament] and Lords, a spokesman for the Zionists announced that the Jews would oppose the motion on the grounds of its omitting to refer to Palestine …. and thereafter the motion was dead.”(45)

Rabbi Schonfeld’s initiative came up at a meeting of the British Executive of the Jewish Agency in January 1943. At this meeting, Berl Locker said that he and two of his colleagues

“had asked him [Rabbi Schonfeld] to postpone the meeting in the House of Commons and not to continue working off his own bat. They had also pointed out that the resolution which he had proposed did not mention Palestine…. Mr. Locker wondered whether it would be a good thing for him or Dr. Brodetsky to write a letter to the Chief Rabbi, who might be able to do something to stop this mischief.”(46)

What was this “mischief” of Rabbi Dr. Schonfeld’s that these British secular Zionists wanted “stopped”? This “mischief” was his trying to save the lives of Jews who were in Nazi Europe!!

EPILOGUE

In an interview given by someone who worked with the late Klausenberger Rebbe for half a century, he said in answer to a question on the Holocaust,
“When the Sabra and Shatila affair rocked the nation, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, demanding a commission of inquiry into the government’s lack of response to the massacre of Palestinians by Phalangist militants in Lebanon, the Rebbe couldn’t restrain himself. During a Shiur he delivered in Bnei Brak, he asked pointedly why there was no call for a commission of inquiry into the lack of response of the Zionist leaders in Eretz Yisrael during the murder of millions of Jews in the Nazi-occupied lands. They had ignored the matter completely.”(47)

REFERENCES

1) Rabbi Moshe Grylak, “How do they “know” it all?” Mishpacha (English edition), (Monsey, NY: Tikshoret VeChinuch Dati-Yehudi), 12 January 2005, pp.6-7.
2) e.g. Genesis chap.12 verse 7.
3) Stenographisches Protokoll XVIII Zionistenkongresses, [Official Minutes of the 18th Zionist Congress], (London: Zentralbureau der Zionistischen Organisation), p.219.
4) David Kranzler, Thy Brother’s Blood, (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1987), pp.61-62, 241, 244.
5) Minutes of Interview with His Excellency the High Commissioner, 17 October 1933, pp.4-5 (Labour Archives – Lavon Institute IV-104-49-2-64. There is also a copy in Ben-Gurion Archives). At a later date Ben-Gurion wrote up these minutes (in Hebrew) in his memoirs without any suggestion that they were not what he had said at this meeting, (David Ben-Gurion, Memoirs, vol.1, (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1971), p.672).
6) Official Minutes of the 20th Zionist Congress, (Jerusalem: Executive of the Zionist Organisation and the Jewish Agency), pp.32-33.
7) Montor to Rabinowitz, 1 February 1940, pp.2, 4, (Jabotinsky Archives, HT-10/16).
8) A. Hartglas, Comments concerning assistance and rescue, (April/May 1943 – possibly 24 April 1943), p.1, (CZA S26/1306 [previous no. S26/1232]).
9) Aryeh Morgenstern, “Vaad hahatzalah hameuchad .…,” Yalkut Moreshet, (Tel Aviv: Moreshet), vol.13, June 1971, p.95 fn.67.
10) Hartglas, op. cit., p.3.
11) Evidence of Pinchas Gross, a public worker of Agudat Yisrael of Rumania, given in Tel Aviv on 27 July 1944, p.2, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no. S26/1079]).
12) Minutes, Presidium of the Rescue Committee, Jerusalem, 25 August 1944, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no. S26/1079]).
13) Evidence of Vishnitzer Rebbe taken in Tel Aviv in April 1944, p.1, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no, S26/1079]).
14) Pinchas Gross, op. cit.
15) Minutes, Rescue Committee, Jerusalem, 14 July 1944, p.7, (CZA S26/1327 [previous no. S26/1238aleph]).
16) Kranzler, op. cit., pp194-95.
17) Moshe Shertok Handwritten diary, 13 November 1939, p.66, (CZA S25/198/3. [Shertok also made a handwritten copy of his own diary CZA A245/14]
18) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive. Jerusalem, 2 July 1944. p.8, (CZA).
19) Yigal Eilam, Letters to the Editor, Haaretz, (Tel Aviv), 15 April 1983, p.24.
20) Dina Porat, “Manipulatzit Haadmorim,” Haaretz, (Tel Aviv), 12 April 1991, p.3b.
21) Seymour Maxwell Finger, American Jewry during the Holocaust, (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, second printing May 1984), Comment by Rabbi Morris Sherer, p.16.
22) Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, chap.328, para.2.
23) S. Fordsham, Inbox, Mishpacha (English edition), op. cit., 9 May 2007, p.10
24) Kranzler, op. cit., p.6.
25) Landauer to Wise, 13 June 1938, p.1, (CZA S53/1552aleph).
26) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 26 June 1938, p.6, (CZA)
27) Ibid., p.7.
28) Weizmann to Wise. 14 July 1938, p.1, (CZA Z4/17198).
29) Ibid., p.2.
30) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 21 August 1938, p.7. (CZA).
31) Kranzler, op. cit., p.146.
32) Telegram, Weizmann to Vandenburgh, 16 November 1938, (CZA Z4/17335).
33) Minutes, Mapai Central Committee, 7 December 1938, p.41, (Labour Party Archives – Bet Berl 2-23-1938-21 bet).
34) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 11 December 1938, p.4, (CZA)
35) Minutes, Zionist Smaller Actions Committee, 18 January 1943, pp.12-13, (CZA).
36) Ben Hecht, Perfidy, (New York: Julian Messner, 1962), p.50.
37) The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. Ben Hecht’s ‘Perfidy’ - An analysis of his rewriting of history, (New York: [s.n.], 1962), p.9.
38) “Mi asham b’hafkara,” conversation with Yitzchak Gruenbaum, Etgar, (Tel Aviv: Mercaz Hapeula Hashemit), no.8, 29 June 1961, p.5.
39) Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974), p.255.
40) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, London, 21 December 1942, pp.2-3. (CZA Z4/302/26).
41) e.g. David Kranzler. Holocaust Hero, (New Jersey: Ktav, 2004).
42) Ibid., pp.38-39.
43) Solomon Schonfeld, Letters to the Editor, The Times, (London), 6 June 1961, p.13.
44) Solomon Schonfeld, Letters to the Editor, The Jewish Chronicle, (London), 29 January 1943, p.5.
45) Schonfeld, The Times, op. cit.
46) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, London, 21 January 1943, (CZA Z4/302/26).

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/14/09 at 6:18 pm

Have any of you noticed that Gerald Goldberg is a moron? I thought so.

Comment by Sy Greenberg on 9/14/09 at 6:34 pm

Has anyone noticed that Sy Greenberg is a schizophrenic? He hears voices in his head & answers them. Ha, ha, ha.

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/14/09 at 6:42 pm

Maybe… it’s an opportunity for really thinking about to come back to the 1967 borders, in change of total recognition, security and Peace. An opened window?

Comment by Hagá on 9/14/09 at 6:52 pm

It is impossible to return to the re 1967 borders.  This is what happens when people are naive (although often well meaning).  We forget the history (or just “buy into” the re-invested history of the Palestinian and Arab press).
Before 1967, Jews who went to the Wailing Wall were shot by the Jordanians and the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus was also in Arab lands.  The Arabs absolutely forbid Jews from visiting any places where Jews had freely lived for 3,000 years.  Overnight (in 1948) the Arabs sealed off Jewish property and now, in 2009, have rewritten history as though Jews never lived “in the West Bank or Eastern Jerusalem”.  Were not it taken seriously by Jane Fonda and other gullible people, it would be a bad joke.
In the words of an e-mail that one of my friends just sent me: 
This coming Friday evening Jews worldwide will begin their 5770th year on this earth! Who would have believed this possible? If anyone had told Abraham that his people would be around this long he probably would have been astounded.

Imagine, we did this without beheading anyone on TV, without a single suicide bomber , without kidnapping and murdering school children, without slaughtering Olympic athletes, and without flying airplanes into skyscrapers. We lasted this long despite 400 years as slaves in Egypt, 40 years of wandering in the desert, the mighty Roman army who nailed us to ten thousand crosses; despite the best efforts of fervent Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, Hitler’s third Reich, Stalin’s gulags, Arab wars of annihilation and 100 years of hateful terrorism, hundreds of hate-filled UN resolutions.

How did Jews do it? We survived by concentrating our efforts on education, love of family, faith, hard work, helping one another and a passionate dedication to life no matter what evil befell us. We hung in there in hope the rest of the world would one day overcome it’s hatreds, jealousies, violence and join us in a life of cooperation and mutual respect.

Comment by Michael Waterman on 9/14/09 at 7:28 pm

Clarification on “systematic provocation.”

The provocations have been endorsed by “the system”, the government.  That includes “the wall”, which was not built by individual citizens, but by the state, the “system.”

The frequency, resolve or premeditation of these events is less important than it continues to be two cultures, seemingly inflexible, determined to prove to the other that one is right and one is wrong. 

As long as this is the only paradigm, a constant barage of debate and arguments, then not much will change.  While not a detailed student of the regions history, I know enough about it to know that decades of British rule left the Arabs very angry about anyone who is not an Arab things.  Israel is perceived by the Arabs as an extension of American Imperialism.  Part of “the system”, the Bush/Cheney war machine and it’s invasion of Iraq, furthered that ongoing insult.  And on it goes. 

In the Coconut Grove area of Miami there is a “wall” between the white grove (very affluent) and the black grove (very poor).  Who built the wall?  Not black people.  The Wall in Israel just further demonstrates the dehumanization of the Palestinians, most of whom remain impoverished, and without hope for a better life. 

That is the “systematic” provocations to which I was referring, the continued messages that are insulting, dehumanizing, and a constant reminder that the Arabs are excess baggage that Israel will never respect or welcome into full participation, either as citizens, or an equally respected separate state.

One can argue this to death, and it has been argued to death. 

Mr. Waterman calls for “a life of cooperation and mutual respect.”  How can any Arab feel respected by the actions of Sharon, and the wall?  Mutual means just that, mutual.

I realize this taps into a lot of history and a lot of pain attached to that history, but at some point, one has to ask, “When will it end?”

The United States made allies of Germany and Japan because after we flattened both countries, we returned to offer aid and assistance to rebuild both nations. 

Will we see the same thing in Gaza?  Not with this attitude of justification and breast beating.  Which is one more “systematic provocation.”  Neglect is the most insidious form of abuse.

Comment by Ed Garren on 9/14/09 at 10:56 pm

Why is it that our responses are consistent in omitting the plight and expulsion of thousands of Jews from the various middle eastern countries?
The tendency to reduce this discussion into simple “good guy/bad guy” formulas - as demonstrated by those protesting Israeli film showings, etc does not do justice to the complexity of issues in which many sides (including Jewish sides) have suffered. In fact, it may help exacerbate recalcitrant responses adding more fuel to an already too hot fire.
Perhaps - those signing this letter - were seeking the attention they have received
via this format rather in their own respective fields.
Perhaps our “defense” needs to level the injustices experienced field, by mentioning and honoring the pain experienced by Middle Eastern Jews forced to leave their homes?

Comment by Nomi Waksberg on 9/14/09 at 10:57 pm

Fonda ,will not be happy til the whole world is communist and she the head and all us jews are dead Praide to the G-d of Israel

Comment by Rev Dale Shellenberger on 9/14/09 at 11:39 pm

The wall of which Mr. Garren speaks was built to protect Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab alike, from being killed in terrorist attacks, and it has been effective. The creation of such a barrier results in certain sad circumstances: the divisions of families, friends, and even individual property. But the prevention of innocent civilians being murdered is a benefit that cannot be argued away. The psychological effect of such walls—whether in Warsaw, Berlin, or the West Bank—is sad, too, but the difference here is that the wall was erected for protection. The Nazis had nothing to fear from the Jews of Warsaw, but the Israelis had much to fear from Palestinian terrorists.

Between the far left and the far right, there are many of us who understand there is right and wrong on both sides, and that Palestinians should have a state, but only if Israel’s protection is guaranteed. This has yet to be argued to death—or more hopefully, to peace. Fractiousness among Palestinian political and social forces have kept the region and the world waiting for a unified Palestinian voice possessing the power and sense to sit down, negotiate, and erect a foundation for lasting peace that, maybe in five or ten generations, will eradicate the teaching of one’s children to hate, kill, and blow up themselves and others.

As for “the continued messages that are insulting, dehumanizing, and a constant reminder that the Arabs are excess baggage that Israel will never respect or welcome into full participation, either as citizens, or an equally respected separate state,” I think terrorist bombs and attacks, and the declarations of war and words from 1948 to this day by Arabs who vowed to push Israel into the sea, have been much more than insulting, dehumanizing, or disrespectful. Arab citizens of Israel vote in elections; Israeli Arabs are members of the Knesset. That smacks of participation and citizenship to me.

Finally, when peace comes to this region one day, God willing, it will be in the parties’ mutual interest to be good and helpful neighbors. Israelis and Arabs “on the ground” in Israel today, living daily side by side, can get along without killing each other. When the governments can figure out what the people already know—even if it’s based almost solely on pragmatism, it’s worth having – then the region and the world will be a better place. (You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one….)

Comment by David Bruskin on 9/15/09 at 2:23 am

THE GOD OF ISRAEL SAID:

Ezekiel 16
EZEK 16:1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

EZEK 16:2 Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations,

EZEK 16:3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.

EZEK 16:4 And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.

EZEK 16:5 None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.

EZEK 16:6 And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

EZEK 16:7 I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.

EZEK 16:8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

EZEK 16:9 Then washed I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.

EZEK 16:10 I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers’ skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.

EZEK 16:11 I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck.

EZEK 16:12 And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head.

EZEK 16:13 Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver; and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.

EZEK 16:14 And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.

EZEK 16:15 But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

EZEK 16:16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so.

EZEK 16:17 Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them,

EZEK 16:18 And tookest thy broidered garments, and coveredst them: and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them.

EZEK 16:19 My meat also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set it before them for a sweet savour: and thus it was, saith the Lord GOD.

EZEK 16:20 Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter,

EZEK 16:21 That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?

EZEK 16:22 And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.

EZEK 16:23 And it came to pass after all thy wickedness, (woe, woe unto thee! saith the LORD GOD;)

EZEK 16:24 That thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place in every street.

EZEK 16:25 Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms.

EZEK 16:26 Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.

EZEK 16:27 Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.

EZEK 16:28 Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied.

EZEK 16:29 Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied therewith.

EZEK 16:30 How weak is thine heart, saith the LORD GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;

EZEK 16:31 In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire;

EZEK 16:32 But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!

EZEK 16:33 They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.

EZEK 16:34 And the contrary is in thee from other women in thy whoredoms, whereas none followeth thee to commit whoredoms: and in that thou givest a reward, and no reward is given unto thee, therefore thou art contrary.

EZEK 16:35 Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD:

EZEK 16:36 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them;

EZEK 16:37 Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness.

EZEK 16:38 And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.

EZEK 16:39 And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare.

EZEK 16:40 They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.

EZEK 16:41 And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

EZEK 16:42 So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and will be no more angry.

EZEK 16:43 Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast fretted me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will recompense thy way upon thine head, saith the Lord GOD: and thou shalt not commit this lewdness above all thine abominations.

EZEK 16:44 Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

EZEK 16:45 Thou art thy mother’s daughter, that loathed her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

EZEK 16:46 And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.

EZEK 16:47 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

EZEK 16:48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

EZEK 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

EZEK 16:50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

EZEK 16:51 Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

EZEK 16:52 Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

EZEK 16:53 When I shall bring again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will I bring again the captivity of thy captives in the midst of them:

EZEK 16:54 That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be confounded in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto them.

EZEK 16:55 When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former estate.

EZEK 16:56 For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride,

EZEK 16:57 Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the time of thy reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise thee round about.

EZEK 16:58 Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the LORD.

EZEK 16:59 For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant.

EZEK 16:60 Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.

EZEK 16:61 Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant.

EZEK 16:62 And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD:

EZEK 16:63 That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord GOD.

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/15/09 at 4:36 am

Support for Survivors of the Holocaust in Israel

Written by:

Mila Svitelman & Ilana Sahnovsky

Teacher: Nellie Deutsch

Date: April 2009
Research Question
Why do Holocaust survivors in Israel need financial support from the government ?
Names
Mila Svitelman & Ilana Sahnovsky
Introduction
Holocaust- almost every Israeli kid at kindergarten can tell us what it was and why it happened. Every year in April, Israel mentions the Holocaust Memorial Day, Martyrs’ Remembrance Day. At this day, Israeli television shows documentary movies about the Holocaust, short movies about the victims and etc. At 20:00 pm, a memorial siren is being played and all the Jewish people in Israel have to stand silent for one minute (as a sign of remembrance). After the siren, Memorial Day comes to an end and people can return to their routine. It seems that Israel puts a full attention on the Holocaust issue. But if it’s really so, why there are still a lot of problems with the financial support which the country must give to the survivors who live in Israel? Why do we find that huge numbers of Jewish survivors who live under the poverty line in a country calling itself a Zionist and a Jewish country ?
The main question we are going to try and answer is- Why do Holocaust survivors in Israel need financial support from the government? We can find many answers to that question, and each and every one of them is enough to emphasize the importance of the government’s financial support.
This project is probably one of the most important projects that we have ever done. We think that our research question never got enough attention, despite its huge importance. People, who suffered such a horrible thing as the Holocaust, are now living in poverty and keep suffering only because the minimal financial support that they are receiving. We found that issue shocking as well as unacceptable, and that’s why we chose to write about this topic. We hope, that our project will change people’s point of view and would draw their attention towards this issue.
Body
Facts, Figures and Statistics
The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events of the 20th century. The Jewish nation was haunted by the Nazis and paid a very valuable price - 6,000,000 Jewish lives. The holocaust ended in 1945 but the suffering is still fresh. 80,000 of the 260,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel are living under the poverty line, according to the Holocaust Survivors’ Welfare Fund, Ynetnews reported. That is almost a third of all Holocaust survivors in Israel. One-third of the Israel’s holocaust survivors live in poverty, with little or no help and support. It seems that Israel remembers the Holocaust, but tends to forget its survivors. According to 2007 publications, some survivors in Israel get a monthly payment of about $600 from the German government. Others receive from the government an amount of $300 to 1000$ a month. And some of the survivors, who immigrated to Israel after 1953, receive nothing more than the national retirement allowance. Another important point is that the amount of money given to the survivors is decided by the authorities and it depends on the economic situation, family status and etc; and it sometimes added other benefits (such as returning money for medical expenses). Sometimes the money given by the government isn’t enough to pay for basic necessities – not enough for an appropriate and stable living. It is important to mention that Israel officially sets the poverty line at an income of $500 a month which makes the holocaust survivors to continue struggling with life. One of the survivors’ main difficulties stems from their poor access to information regarding their rights. At 2007, the law called for the establishment of an umbrella organization that would handle the assistance to survivors, but due to the delay in the transfer of funds, this plan remained on paper and the poverty issue again was left behind. It seems that still there isn’t enough intent and maybe even preparedness to the situation in which the Holocaust survivors are in for more than 60 years! As long as Israel will not take the survivor’s poverty issue as one of the most important problems at the country, nothing would be changed and these people, which suffered enough at the Holocaust, will continue suffering and will die humiliated.
•  (1$ = about 4 shekels)
Why do they need financial support ?
They survived the holocaust and arrived to Israel ready for new and better life. As it was already mentioned, many of them live under the poverty line, hoping to get that financial support they desperately need. Why do holocaust survivors need financial support from the government- is the main question which can explain us how important is this support for the survivors.
The first and the most important reason is the Holocaust. We all have to take into consideration, that all those people, which survived this tragedy, came to Israel without anything. People who before the Second World War had money, homes and property- remained without anything after the war. For any immigrant it is difficult to start a new life in a new country, but for the Holocaust survivors it was even harder. Most of them came to Israel alone- without families (because a huge number of people were killed and a lot of families were separated at the war). These survivors had not only to overcome over their trauma, but also try to live somehow without any property. Financial support from the government is the minimal help that the country can give these people, who without any normal reason, had lost everything- home, money and of course family. This support can help not only to these people, who are now very old and can’t work to finance themselves, but also show them that people remember and know that they have to receive a special treatment more than anybody else. The duty of Israel’s government is to provide holocaust survivors the most convenient and optimal conditions in the everyday life (especially after what they had to go through). A unique emphasis needs to be put on the poverty issue among the holocaust survivors – the government shouldn’t save up on them. “They have earned the right to get the minimum, to live a normal life and end their lives in an honorable way.” .
The relatives are the main source of support. One of the manifestations of old age is the loss of close relatives, and principally widowhood. Over 40% of the survivors are single and most are widowed. There is a great difference in the family status of men and women: about a fifth (21%) of the men are single, as opposed to over half the women (56%). Furthermore, about a quarter of all the survivors live alone. The percentage of women living alone (32%) is 2.5 times greater than that of men (13%). Most of the Holocaust survivors have children. However, a considerable number of the survivors (19%) have no children, or children whom they see less than once a month. We must remember that some ot the Holocaust survivors came to Israel without families and not many of them could build a new family (many women who had survived, couldn’t have kids, because of the deep damages they suffered at the Holocaust). Because of that, they don’t have at present anybody who can support them financially. It can be said that a considerable percentage of the survivors cannot rely on assistance from relatives when required, and that is why the governments support is so important.
Another reason the survivors need the financial support is because of medical necessities. Statistics show that 70 percent of the holocaust survivors are older than 76, and 20 percent of them are older than 86. At those ages health isn’t stabilized and health problems are constantly attacking people. Some of them are disabled; others have chronic problems, dental issues, hearing or visual problems, trouble with sleeping and so on. Many of them suffer from severe mental and medical problems due to the hardships and torture they experienced during the Second World War. The older they get the more medical problems and medical expenses they would have. Using medical treatments is supposed to support the human body, to fix the defects it has and to insure the person a healthier and sometimes even a longer life. All kinds of medications together with treatments and doctors’ visits cost money. Those expenses can cost the person up to hundreds of shekels a month, which equals a great percentage of the total month expenses. It’s important to remember that together with the medical costs, holocaust survivors also need to have money to pay for bills, food, clothes and other important stuff. In addition, 50,000 to 60,000 survivors are in need of nursing care-something which either costs the survivors money or the government. So if they don’t get the government’s financial support they would have to give up on one of the basic things they need to have. If the holocaust survivors don’t get the medicine and medical devices necessary for them, they might have to go through a lot of pain and suffer and maybe even death would be the one to defeat them. “Israel has always been busy remembering the dead but forgetting the living,” said Zeev Feiner, a spokesman for the welfare fund.  The Holocaust Survivors’ Welfare Fund assists only about 30,000 survivors due to budget issues, although twice that number need care and financial support.
Conclusions
80,000 holocaust survivors in Israel live under the poverty line. A financial support from the government is desperately needed by all those 80,000. So why do Holocaust survivors in Israel need financial support from the government? After researching that question, we came to some conclusions:
First of all, the fact that so many survivors in Israel (80,000) are defined as poor and required a financial support may be caused by two things. It seems that the government does act for the survivors in Israel, gives away money for that cause and tries to support them financially, but if so- why are the numbers of poor among the survivors in Israel are that big? Maybe the government isn’t doing enough; maybe its financial support isn’t enough to keep all the holocaust survivors in Israel on their feet. But it is also possible that the problem may come from the survivors. It is possible that many of them aren’t aware of their rights, and the financial support they can get from the government. So if they don’t know about it, nothing can be claimed by them, and definitely nothing can be gotten.

There is no doubt that Holocaust survivors in Israel must receive a regular financial support, which will promise their existence in honor, and that is for three main reasons:
1.  The deep suffering and the total loss of life, family and property in the Holocaust, which happened without any justified reason.
2.  Those Holocaust survivors, who are still alive, are very old and most of them are sick people (because their advanced age and the trauma that hit them mentally and physically in the Second World War).
3.  Medical expenses cost a lot of money; and who else, if not the government, will give them that financial support. And that is in addition to the payment for other basic needs such as: food, clothes, bills etc.
4.  Some of the survivors don’t have even one family member in life, they are left all alone in this world, without any support.
And here should enter the government’s role- it must take these problems into professional hands and help those Holocaust survivors, who are still alive.
Each year different figures are being published about the number of the Holocaust survivors, which are living under the poverty line. This fact can show us that as long as these survivors don’t receive a regular financial support, they wouldn’t be able to live normal lives, and they would continue suffering and maybe will even die because of these horrible conditions.
All the above mentioned are reasons to justify the survivors’ right to get the financial support from the government. But we can conclude our words and say that as a Jewish country, Israel should see the financial support to the holocaust survivors as a must. After all our nation has been through, it is legitimate that the Israeli government should offer the maximum help and support to the survivors living in it. As the head authority, the government should provide the survivors in Israel a proper way of living- when the money won’t be a deadly issue for them.
Reflections
The holocaust was a huge event in the history of the Jewish nation, it ended in 1945, but it seems to still be haunting its survivors. Writing about the holocaust and about issues connected to it was very significant for us. It didn’t take us long to decide about our research question, because we knew that nobody would think about the issue of poverty among the holocaust survivors in Israel, and here was the problem which guided us towards our research question- why isn’t this issue getting enough attention from the Jewish citizens and Israeli government?
Each year, on the Holocaust memorial day we see on TV or read in the newspapers that many of the holocaust survivors in Israel live under the poverty line. That information is something we can’t ignore, and it sometimes makes us wonder in which country we live in. So we have finally decided to research things ourselves and understand better what is really going on. It was difficult to write about the topic we chose. We weren’t only presenting and discussing fact and figures, we were actually talking about people, live human beings who are deep in trouble.
(Ilana Sahnovsky)
A poem

Can they survive it?
They lived in Europe
and they had typical lives.
Then comes Hitler
and horror arrives.
Millions of souls,
millions of lives
all were damaged
and stabbed with deadly knives.

Some survivors came to Israel
hoping to start a new page.
But they didn’t expect the problems at an advanced age.
The government isn’t paying them enough,
and their lives are really tough.
They really need the money
and they desperately need the support,
but nobody seems to care a lot.

Some of these survivors are all alone
others feel they won’t live for that long.
Health is an issue
and age is as well,
but with no money they live in hell.
80,000 survivors in Israel live under the poverty line-
and we should see it as a warning sign.
We can’t let them die because they can’t pay for stuff!
That situation has lasted long enough!

(Mila Svitelman)
A Letter
A year ago, when I was 16 years old, two friends and I volunteered at a house of a Holocaust survivor, as a part of a project called: “Flower for the survivor”. We visited our survivor for a year and we learned a lot from her; the most important thing that we’ve learned is how important life is and that we have to bless our lives, because there were a lot of innocent people, who lost their lives without any reason.
At the end of the year, we drove to Haifa in order to participate in a ceremony of ending the project. At this ceremony, Holocaust survivor- Aharon Rozner read in front of all the audience a letter, which wrote some Holocaust survivors for all the volunteers and for all those who will continue to live in this world after the survivors and will tell their stories. I choose to translate this letter as a part of the category, of creative work:
“Our kids, our grandsons as beans of light, are illuminating our ways with the joy of life, which is filling our hearts with soul energy, are adding years to our lives and lives to years. But, as long as we are climbing on the ladder of years, the number of the survivors is decreasing. In some not many more years, there will be not even one parson on the universe, who would indicate: “I was at the valley of death, my eyes saw these terrible selections, how our families persecuted to the gas chambers. At my ears are reverberating heart- rending shouts of persecutes”. This memorialization can’t be stopped. Their death ordered us “tell your children, continue our story”. Their testament is a candle to our lags- witness after our death.
Grandson is an asset
We are proud and happy that we won and were blessed to live in a positive generation, intellectual, wise and reasonable generation, supervised, that knows how to success in every field of life; generation which knows how to make our country, Israel, beautiful. You are lucky to born as free citizens with full rights as proud Israelis and not as humiliated Jews, as persecuted “G’idim” (derogatory name of Jews in Europe). Our grandsons, you are completing the most important ethical obligation with your supreme deeds.
Human being must be humanity to another human.
We, the survivors, are passing the memorial torch to your trustworthy hands, to continue remember and not forget never.
Thank you sincerely for your help and volunteering, but we are entitled to demand from our grandsons to continue volunteering in order to make the mankind better.
We can’t stop this volunteering
With honor and blessing
Aharon Rozner “
Interview
An Interview with David, from the “Aviv” organization (which acts for the rights of the holocaust survivors in Israel).

Hello. We are students from the 11th grade, Ort Gutman, Netanya. As part of our bagrut project, we are studying about the holocaust, and the topic we chose to research was the holocaust survivors in Israel who live under the poverty line. To be more specific, our research question is- Why do Holocaust survivors in Israel need financial support from the government? We would be glad if you answer the following questions.
Q: Who deserves to get financial support? Do only the holocaust survivors get it (the ones who were in concentration or other kinds of camps, etc.), or does this support also includes the people who had to run away and leave everything behind?
A: Basically, most of the people who get the financial support are the ones who had survived the ghettos, the concentration camps and etc. But there also cases when the ones who had to escape under special circumstances (for example: Teheran children) get that money.

Q: How much money does the country give the Holocaust survivors?
A: The amount of money given is between 1000 shekels and 4107 shekels. I have to add some more benefits, some of them are difficult to quantify, like the returning of medical expenses.

Q: Is the money support equal for all survivors, or is it decided by the health stage or family status of the survivor?
A: There is a decided amount of money (it’s a law from about one and a half years ago) and there is also a certain amount of money which is decided by the disability percentage and economic situation (something which is most common, about 40,000 survivors).

Q: What are the main reasons the Holocaust survivors need financial support?
A: Because of the deep suffering at the war, the Holocaust survivors became handicapped people and this is why they couldn’t work and earn as normal people, who didn’t go throw the Holocaust tragedy.

Q: What is the number, as it as know to you, of the holocaust survivors in Israel who live under the poverty line?
A: Each year different figures are being publicized. But I can say that about one third of the holocaust survivors, living in Israel, live under the poverty line- that mean 80,000 survivors. And we meet a lot of them.

Q: Why, in your opinion, there are still a lot of complaints of Holocaust survivors, who live under the poverty line, even thought that we are 60 years after the war?
A: It’s normal that a handicapped parson can exist when he or she is young and able to work, but when this parson gets older he or she is less capable. At the age of pension there are no insertions, because all these years that person got less money than someone who wasn’t a survivor, and he couldn’t economize. I’m not sure that you right about the big present of complaints, maybe you think like this because today we talk and hear more about this. In the past, Holocaust survivors were an issue that people didn’t talk about. Many people didn’t know what the Holocaust survivors went throw till the trial of Adolf Eichmann; they simply didn’t hear about those who went straightforwardly the death, without resistance.

Q: What are the actions done by the country in order to promise the financial support to the holocaust survivors in Israel?
A: There are many plans which try to assist the holocaust survivors. Maybe it’s not enough for a single survivor, but in total – a lot of money is given in that purpose (at least 100 million shekels) every month. There is a problem that the holocaust survivors aren’t aware of what they deserve, from who and how they are supposed to get it. This is the part we deal with- utilization of the rights they deserve by the law. A lot of explaining and guidance is done; especially for volunteers, families and social workers. And except from the government’s support, there are survivors who get a pension directly from Germany and other countries (for example: Holland).

Comment by Harry Wood on 9/15/09 at 4:36 pm

What Ever Happened to the PROMISE & the DREAM?

THE DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
May 14, 1948

On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired, the Jewish People’s Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved the following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night by the United States and three days later by the USSR.

ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma’pilim [(Hebrew) - immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country’s inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People’s Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People’s Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called “Israel”.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel.

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE “ROCK OF ISRAEL”, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).

David Ben-Gurion

Daniel Auster
Mordekhai Bentov
Yitzchak Ben Zvi
Eliyahu Berligne
Fritz Bernstein
Rabbi Wolf Gold
Meir Grabovsky
Yitzchak Gruenbaum
Dr. Abraham Granovsky
Eliyahu Dobkin
Meir Wilner-Kovner
Zerach Wahrhaftig
Herzl Vardi   Rachel Cohen
Rabbi Kalman Kahana
Saadia Kobashi
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin
Meir David Loewenstein
Zvi Luria
Golda Myerson
Nachum Nir
Zvi Segal
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman
  David Zvi Pinkas
Aharon Zisling
Moshe Kolodny
Eliezer Kaplan
Abraham Katznelson
Felix Rosenblueth
David Remez
Berl Repetur
Mordekhai Shattner
Ben Zion Sternberg
Bekhor Shitreet
Moshe Shapira
Moshe Shertok

THE SECULAR ZIONIST AGENDA FOR A JEWISH STATE
Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
August 2007
© Copyright. 2007. Chaim Simons
INTRODUCTION
In an article in the English edition of “Mishpacha” in January 2005 appeared the following:
“The Left is still loyal to the State of Israel in varying levels of faithfulness, but it hates Eretz Yisrael. The difference between these two is clear: Eretz Yisrael is a reminder of the Left’s Jewish past, which it wishes to forget. … The Left’s disconnection from the Jewish nation has reached the point where they are prepared for settlers to be killed during the evacuation effort [Gaza area and North Shomron]. Spokesmen of the Left have already announced that this will not be a war of brother against brother since ‘the settlers are not our brothers’.” (1)
Unfortunately this is not a new phenomenon. It has always been an integral part of the secular Zionist agenda. They wanted a Jewish State (according to some of them, even if it were to be in Uganda or Argentina) but it had to be administered according to their programme and perception for the “New Jew.”
***********************************************
NOTE
Although much of the material appearing in this paper can be found in other books or articles, the material is often brought down as secondary or even tertiary sources. In addition, the primary sources are on a number of occasions incorrectly quoted and there are even cases where the quotations given do not occur in the sources given. Therefore the only quotations of statements made by secular Zionists brought in this paper are those which the author of this paper has a photocopy from in the original in his possession. Due to limitations in the disc space, facsimiles of these documents cannot appear in this online copy. In many cases the original documents are no longer extant or could not be located, despite extensive searching. In such cases the information alleged to be contained in them has been completely omitted from this paper.
In the English quotes, Palestine usually appears when referring to Eretz Yisrael and it has of course be left as it appears in the original.
The following words appearing in the Hebrew quotes have not been translated:
Aliyah – Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael
Hachshara – Training given to people in preparation for Aliyah
Shlichim - Jewish emissaries sent abroad to Jewish communities
Yishuv - Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael
*************************************************
SELECTIVITY – THE SECULAR ZIONIST WAY
Eretz Yisrael was Divinely given to the Jewish people (2) and every Jew has an equal right to live there. However as we shall see, the secular Zionists thought otherwise.
At the eighteenth Zionist Congress held in Prague in August 1933, Ben-Gurion said:

“Eretz Yisrael today needs not ordinary immigrants, but pioneers. The difference between them is simple – an immigrant comes to take from the land, whereas a pioneer comes to give to the land. Therefore we demand priority for Aliyah to pioneers.”(3)
The question here is how would Ben-Gurion define an “ordinary immigrant” and how a “pioneer”? From his speech, it is obvious that a person working the land on a kibbutz is a pioneer. However, it would almost certainly appear that an old person coming to spend his last years in the Holy Land or even a Yeshiva student would be classed as a mere “ordinary immigrant”!(4)
A few months later in mid-October 1933 a meeting took place between, amongst others, the High Commissioner for Palestine, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok (Sharett). The Minutes of the meeting were written up by Shertok.
During the course of this meeting Ben-Gurion spoke about the three million Jews then living in Poland and stated that

“Palestine offered no solution for all Polish Jews. Immigration into Palestine was necessarily limited; therefore it had to and could be a selected immigration. Zionism was not a philanthropic enterprise, they really wanted here the best type of Jew to develop the Jewish National Home, but they had to be given sufficient scope to bring over people of whom the country was in need.”(5)
The question which remains is who would decide who was “the best type of Jew”? As will soon be seen, such a Jew was someone who was a secular Zionist!
It was a few years later at the 20th Zionist Congress held in Zurich in August 1937, that Weizmann spelled out more specifically what was meant by “selective Aliyah.”

“I told the members of the Royal [Peel] Commission that six million Jews want to go on Aliyah. One of the members asked me ‘Do you think you could bring all of them to Eretz Yisrael?’ On this I answered … that two million young people… we want to save. The old people will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They have already become like dust, economic and moral dust in this cruel world.”(6)
A similar rejection of elderly Jews to go on Aliyah was made by Henry Montor, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees towards the beginning of 1940. A ship full of refugees not certified by the Zionist organisations, were on the high seas. Many of the passengers were elderly. The captain of the ship required money to bring them to Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz of Maryland took the matter in hand and tried to get the necessary money from Montor to pay the captain. In his long rambling letter of reply, Montor wrote about the Jewish Agency’s policy of “selectivity” – “the choice of young men and women who are trained in Europe for productive purposes either in agriculture or industry.” With regard to the elderly Jews on board this ship, Montor wrote:
“There could be no more deadly ammunition provided to the enemies of Zionism, whether they be in the ranks of the British Government or the Arabs, or even in the ranks of the Jewish people, if Palestine were to be flooded with very old people or with undesirables who would make impossible the conditions of life in Palestine and destroy the prospect of creating such economic circumstances as would insure a continuity of immigration.”(7)
Maybe it would have been appropriate for him to have renamed his organisation “United Jewish Appeal for Selected Refugees”! At least the donors would then have had a better idea of what they were giving money for.
The secular Zionists were not even ashamed to put out a memorandum in which they quite openly had a section “Who to save”. This memorandum (of April/May 1943) was headed that its distribution was “intended for Zionist functionaries only” and it included instructions “not to pass it on to non-Zionist groups who participate in the Working Committee.”(8) Although it came out under the name of A. [Apolinary] Hartglas, it has been suggested that in fact it was Yitzchak Gruenbaum who actually wrote it. (9) Under this section, he wrote
“…. to my sorrow we have to say that if we are able to save only ten thousand people and we need to save fifty thousand [those chosen] should be of use in building up the land and the revival of the nation.… First and foremost one must rescue children since they are the best material for the Yishuv. One must rescue the pioneering youth, especially those who have had training and are idealistically qualified for Zionist work. One should rescue the Zionist functionaries since they deserve something from the Zionist movement for their work…. Pure philanthropic rescue, for example, saving the Jews of Germany, if carried out in an indiscriminate manner, could from a Zionist prospective only cause harm.”(10)
As can be seen, just as with both Weizmann and Montor, Hartglas was not interested in old people coming to Eretz Yisrael. Even amongst the younger generation, he was only interested in those who would work the land - Yeshivah students were of no use to him.
Further exclusions to Aliyah by the secular Zionists were people who were not members of the Zionist camp. Some Jews who succeeded in arriving in Eretz Yisrael in the second half of 1944 gave evidence on this question. Pinchas Gross who had been one of the public workers of Agudat Yisrael in Rumania stated:
“The first principle of the Zionist Aliyah Committee in Bucharest was not to allow members of Agudat Yisrael to go on Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. This was despite the agreement which had been made before the war between Agudat Yisrael and the Jewish Agency on the Aliyah quotas for members of Agudat Yisrael… Shlichim from the [Aliyah] Committee in Bucharest arrived in Transylvania with large sums of money in order to transfer hundreds of pioneers to Bucharest for the purpose of Aliyah. We also asked for our members the possibility of Aliyah but we were rudely rejected.”(11)
One might think that this money was “Zionist money” and therefore it was proper to reject such a request. However, this was shown not to be the case just a few weeks later when Weissberg who was a member of the Aliyah Committee in Bucharest, gave evidence before the Rescue Committee in Jerusalem. During this evidence he stated:
“It is true that the Agudah was not granted equal rights with regards to receiving money for assistance in Rumania. We did not know that the money which arrived from Eretz Yisrael was money from the Rescue Committee in which all the Yishuv participated. We thought that the money was Jewish Agency money.… I must inform you that help was not given to the pioneers and youth of Agudat Yisrael. We did not know that Agudah is a partner in matters of rescue and in particular in matters of Aliyah. Also regarding the Aliyah of the pioneers of Agudah, we did not know that they were entitled to go on Aliyah, until we arrived in Eretz Yisrael.”(12)
We can thus see that the secular Zionists did nothing to even inform the Agudah what they were entitled to, let alone implement such an entitlement.
There were also others who had been misled in believing that the money was “Zionist money”. For example, the Vishnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Eliezer Hager, testified that when he asked why the ultra-Orthodox were not receiving any money, received the answer, “This money is Zionist and it is set aside solely for Zionists.”(13)
Pinchas Gross further stated:
“The ultra-Orthodox youth were not at all considered for this [financial] assistance either in their home town or for the possibility of Aliyah. We applied… for assistance for our youth who before the war did a period of Hachshara and were no less fit for Aliyah than other pioneers – but we did not even receive an answer. The excuse was that the money was Zionist money and was solely for them.”(14)
This attitude of the secular Zionists in their use of public money for their kith and kin and of their “priorities” did not pass without comment, even from non-Orthodox sources.
Dr. Judah Leon Magnes in addressing a meeting of the Rescue Committee in July 1944 was very critical of those who wanted:
“first of all to save the Zionists, and afterwards, if possible – also the others, but above all the Zionists. I spoke to somebody…. The man said… we will save our men…. I said to him … the others are also Jews. He said: It is so, they are Jews, but this is a universal argument, a perpetual argument and we will not give in on this.”(15)
Magnes’ comments on the necessity for non-selectivity when doing rescue work are illustrated by the work performed during the Second World War by Recha Sternbuch, who succeeded in rescuing thousands of Jews from the Nazis. Recha was associated with the strictly Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. However, unlike the secular Zionists, she rescued Jews (and even some non-Jews) regardless of their level of religious observance or Zionist party affiliation.(16)
ZIONISM – AND ONLY THEN JEWISH LIVES
A few months after the beginning of the Second World War the Zionists received entry visas to Eretz Yisrael for 2,900 German Jews. It was necessary to have a meeting with the British Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, in connection with these visas and in November 1939, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok met to discuss this question. Ben-Gurion strongly opposed such a meeting with MacDonald and he told Shertok that
“our political future is more important than saving 2,900 Jews.” Shertok, who completely disagreed with Ben-Gurion, commented in his diary, “he [Ben-Gurion] was prepared to forgo them [the 2,900 Jews].”(17)
Even in July 1944, which was towards the end of this war, when the Holocaust was still in full progress and its implementation was already well known, Ben-Gurion still had the same attitude. A meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency was held in Jerusalem at the beginning of July 1944. On its agenda was the subject of the rescue of Jews.
Rabbi Baruch Yehoshua Yerachmiel Rabinowicz, the Munkaczer Rebbe in Hungary, was involved in this rescue effort and the question of a meeting with him was mentioned at this Jewish Agency meeting. In answer Ben-Gurion stated that he did not oppose such a meeting, “We must do everything in this matter [of rescue] including things which seem fantastic.” Had Ben-Gurion said no more, it would have been praiseworthy, but he then continued, “But there is one condition: the work will not cause damage to Zionism.”(18)
In a letter to the Israeli daily newspaper “Ha’aretz” in 1983, the historian Professor Yigal Eilam confirmed that this was the attitude of the Zionist leaders during the period of the Holocaust. He wrote:

“The policy of the Zionists during the long period of the Holocaust gave priority to the building up of the land and the establishment of a State, over the saving of Jews…. One already needs to tell these things in a open and direct manner. The Zionists did very little in the saving of Jews, not because they were unable to do more, but because they were concentrating on the Zionist enterprise.”(19)
In a similar vein, in an article by the historian Dina Porat which appeared in “Ha’aretz” in 1991, she wrote
“From the moment that the State became the primary objective, the life of a Jew became secondary in accordance with the principal ‘the State of Israel is above everything’”.(20)
The shortsightedness of the secular Zionist leaders in this matter was written about in 1984 by Rabbi Morris Sherer, the President of Agudat Yisrael, in his comments on the report by Professor Seymour Maxwell Finger entitled “American Jewry during the Holocaust.” Rabbi Sherer commented:
“Alas, they [the secular Zionist leaders] did not perceive how utterly ridiculous and heartless it was for Jewish leaders to concentrate on a postwar homeland, when the people for whom they were seeking this home were being slaughtered like sheep!” (21)
Unlike Ben-Gurion who put Zionism first, and Jewish lives just in second place, the Rabbis of the period immediately put “Pikuach Nefesh” (the saving of lives) first. Sabbath observance is one of the fundamentals of Jewish observance, with the most stringent of punishments for their non-observance, yet despite this, Pikuach Nefesh overrides the Sabbath.(22) In order to save lives during the Holocaust, two leading British Rabbis, Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld and Rabbi Isadore Grunfeld, who were occupied in forging passports to save Jews, continued their work on the Sabbath.(23) Rabbis Boruch Kaplan and Rabbi Alexander Linchner rode around Brooklyn in New York in a car on the Sabbath from house to house collecting money to save Jews.(24) (These actions are normally forbidden on the Sabbath.)
IF NOT ALIYAH, LET THEM PERISH
In 1933, Hitler rose to power and during the subsequent years, more and more draconian measures, such as the Nuremberg laws were enacted against the Jews. In 1938 Hitler marched into Austria to the cheers of the non-Jewish population. The situation for the Jews under Hitler’s domination became unbearable and places of refuge became a grave necessity. It was thus at this period that President Franklin Roosevelt convened a conference of thirty-two nations at the French resort town of Evian to try and find places of refuge for Jews wanting to flee from Hitler. One would naturally have thought that the Zionist leaders of the time would make the most of this opportunity and devote all their time and energy to ensure that successful results would emerge from this Conference. But sadly this was not to be. Already in mid-June 1938, before the opening of the Conference, Dr. Georg Landauer wrote to Dr. Stephen Wise, who was head of the Zionist Organization of America. In it he wrote:
“I am writing this letter to you at the request of Dr. Weizmann, as we are very much concerned in case the issue is presented at the [Evian] Conference in a manner which may harm the work for Palestine. Even if the Conference will not place countries other than Palestine in the front for Jewish immigration, there will certainly be public appeals which will tend to overshadow the importance of Palestine…. We feel all the more concern as it may bind Jewish organisations to collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to interfere with our own campaigns.”(25)
Two weeks later the Jewish Agency Executive met in Jerusalem and opposition to the planned Evian Conference was openly stated.
Yitzchak Gruenbaum said:
“The Evian Conference can be expected to cause us grave damage - Eretz Yisrael could be eliminated as a country for Jewish immigration … [we are] very apprehensive that in this Conference, it could be relegated to the end of the line. We have to prevent this damage… There is the danger that whilst searching for a destination country, some new territory will be found to which Jewish immigration will be directed. We must defend our principle that Jewish settlement can only succeed in Eretz Yisrael and that no other settlement can come into the calculation.”(26)
Menachem Ussishkin then addressed the meeting in a similar vein. The Evian Conference very much worried him and he supported the words of Gruenbaum.
“Mr. Gruenbaum is right when he says that there is the danger that Eretz Yisrael will be removed from the agenda even by the Jews and one should see this as a tremendous blow to us.”(27)
Of course the ideal solution was for Jews to go to Eretz Yisrael. However in view of the then political situation, immigration there was not a feasible proposition. Surely the only question then should have been how to save and help as many Jews as possible. It was this fact that should have been the only concern of the speakers at that Jewish Agency Executive meeting – but it wasn’t!
A few weeks later, Weizmann wrote to Stephen Wise. Towards the beginning of his letter he wrote: “I made arrangements, before leaving for my holiday, to put in a few days at Evian.”(28) If one thinks for a moment about this sentence, one can see that it is horrific. Surely, if there was even the slightest opportunity of saving even one Jew, Weizmann who was the President of the Zionist Organization should have immediately cancelled his personal holiday arrangements and spent all his time at Evian trying to lobby the various delegates to accept Jews in their countries. But what do we see? – he will just before going on holiday “put in a few days at Evian.”
In fact he was later persuaded by his friends not to even “put in a few days” there, to which advice he followed.(29) The reason was stated by Dr. Arthur Ruppin at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive on 21 August. Ruppin stated “we then decided that it would not be to our prestige for Dr. Weizmann to appear in Evian” (30) – the reason being that he would only have been allowed to speak in a sub-committee! Jewish lives were at stake and to worry about prestige!!
One can immediately contrast this attitude with that of the Jewish religious leaders of the time. Rabbi Aharon Kotler had come under some criticism for meeting in the course of his rescue work with Stephen Wise, a leader of the Reform movement. He shrugged such reprobation saying, “I would prostrate myself before the Pope if I knew it would help to save even the fingernail of one Jewish child.”(31)
Unfortunately nothing concrete came out of the Evian Conference. The situation of the Jews in Germany got even worse and on 9 November 1938 there was the infamous Kristallnacht.
A few days later, Weizmann heard that there was a scheme to resettle German Jews in a country other than Eretz Yisrael. This he did not like and he immediately sent off a telegram to stop any financial backing for such a scheme. This telegram was sent to Samuel Vandenbergh in Wassemar:
“Understand you are embarking large financial effort for settlement German Jews. Beg of you to be careful not disperse and dissipate energies which can nowhere be applied with greater effectiveness both immediately and lasting than in Palestine.”(32)
Since at that period emigration to Eretz Yisrael was unfortunately not a practical proposition, Weizmann is effectively saying that rather than immigrate to another country, the Jews must remain in Nazi Germany. We can see that also Ben-Gurion thought on these same lines as the other secular Zionist leaders. It was at this period that Ben-Gurion addressed the Mapai Central Committee. He realised the seriousness of the situation and said
“On these awesome days at the start of the threatened destruction of European Jewry…. If I would know that it would be possible to save all the German [Jewish] children by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, I would choose the second option – since before us is not just these children but the history of the Jewish people.”(33)
At this period, the Germans had already established concentration camps and were sending Jews to them. In order to pre-empt this, it was necessary to find the means of arranging their emigration from Germany. Ben-Gurion, however, felt this could cause a diversion of resources and endanger Zionism. A few days after his above quoted speech to the Mapai Central Committee, he addressed the Executive of the Jewish Agency:

“Zionism now stands in danger.… If the Jews will have to choose on the one hand the refugee question,[namely] saving Jews from concentration camps and on the other hand assisting a national museum in Eretz Yisrael, mercy would decide the matter and all the energy of the [Jewish] people would be diverted to saving Jews in the various countries. Zionism would be struck off the agenda, not only in world opinion in England and America, but also in Jewish public opinion. The existence of Zionism would be at risk if we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Eretz Yisrael problem.”(34)
NOT ONE PENNY, NOT ONE CENT
The mass extermination of the Jews of Europe was already well known by the end of 1942. Saving Jews could and should have been top priority. But in order to save large numbers of people from extermination costs money – whether normal expenses or money for bribery. Needless to say, the money has to come from somewhere. All the time money was donated by world Jewry to funds such as the Keren Hayesod, the JNF, and so on. It is true that this money had been specifically donated for Eretz Yisrael, but here was a case of Pikuach Nefesh and it would have been quite legitimate, indeed mandatory, to have utilised this money for the saving of Jewish lives. The Jews then living in Eretz Yisrael were even saying so. However Yitzchak Gruenbaum, who was head of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency thought otherwise. In a speech to the Zionist Smaller Actions Committee in January 1943 he expressed his views:
“Meanwhile a mood has begun to sweep over Eretz Yisrael which I think is very dangerous to Zionism…. How is it possible that such a thing can occur in Eretz Yisrael, that in a meeting they will call out to me, ‘If you don’t have any money [for rescuing European Jewry] take the money of the Keren Hayesod, take the money from the bank – there, there is money, in the Keren Hayedod there is money.’ … These days in Eretz Yisrael it is being said, ‘don’t put Eretz Yisrael at the top of your priorities at this difficult time, at the period of a Holocaust and destruction of European Jewry,’ …. I don’t accept such a thing. And when they asked me to give money of the Keren Hayesod to save Diaspora Jewry, I said no and I again said no…. I am not going to defend myself, in the same way that I will not justify or defend myself if they accuse me of murdering my mother …. But I think it is necessary to say here: Zionism is above everything.”(35)
The only consolation from reading Gruenbaum’s speech, is that the Jews living in Eretz Yisrael were demanding the diverting of Keren Hayesod money to rescue efforts, even though this meant that less money would arrive in Eretz Yisrael and could accordingly affect their living standards. In contrast Gruenbaum commented “Zionism is above everything” even though this meant not rescuing European Jewry from the Holocaust.
In his book “Perfidy”, Ben Hecht quoted how Gruenbaum said “No” to the giving of money for rescue activities.(36) In a critical “Analysis” of this book by the American Section of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, they write that this quoted sentence by Ben Hecht “has been most viciously torn out of context. The writer of this Analysis then tries to prove, quoting other parts of Gruenbaum’s speech that he wanted to do everything to save European Jewry. (37) However he conveniently omitted one crucial part of the speech: “Zionism is above everything” – namely we will certainly do everything to save European Jewry provided that it is not at the expense of Zionism!
One might add that in 1961, Gruenbaum gave an interview to the paper “Etgar” from the comfort of his house in Gan Shmuel, in which he repeated these statements he made during the war, without even hinting he had been wrong.
“Interviewer: Was there then no money in the kitty of the Jewish Agency, the JNF, the Keren Hayesod?

Gruenbaum: Yes. Even then the argument went: Isn’t there any money? Take it from the JNF. I said: No! They did not want to forgive me for this and until this day, there are murmurings about this. The money was needed for Zionism.

Interviewer: What is the meaning of “for Zionism” when the saving of lives is at stake? Does Zionism want Jews alive or dead?

Gruenbaum: The saving of life does not override Zion. For Jews, the State is essential. Therefore, in accordance with my manner I said the truth – that is No!”(38)
Gruenbaum went on to say that he then went to South Africa to raise money for rescue purposes. However we all know that the raising of money, especially when one has to travel to another continent takes time and every day taken meant more Jews were being sent to the gas chambers. Surely the correct thing was to immediately take money from these Zionist kitties and if at a later date one succeeded in raising money, one could return it to the Zionist funds.
Even before the war, when Jews were already being persecuted in Germany and Austria, it was widely accepted that money to save Jewish lives came before money for Zionism. In was in late October 1938 that the treasurer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) said
“The upbuilding of Palestine was all very well, but Jews in Europe were starving and persecuted – and they, JDC felt, had first claim on whatever funds were available.”(39)
ALSO THE BRITISH SECULAR ZIONISTS
Placing Zionism above the saving the lives of Jews was also a phenomenon of the British secular Zionists. Towards the end of 1942, when the Nazi extermination plans became known, British Jewry decided to make representations to the British Government. At a meeting of the British section of the Jewish Agency held in December 1942, the “Nazi Extermination Policy” was on the agenda. Here is an extract from the official minutes of this meeting when discussing this item:
“Dr. Brodetsky … made it quite clear that if Palestine was not properly mentioned then he would not be a member of the Delegation to Mr. Eden….
Lord Melchett said it would be disastrous for any body of Jews to go to Mr. Eden and not put Palestine in the forefront of their plans. Such a body would not represent the views of the Jews either here or elsewhere…..
Mr. Marks said he fully agreed, and if this condition was not satisfied, then he would not be a member of the delegation. Unless Palestine was properly dealt with, they should criticise the delegation up and down the country and cause a revolution inside the Board of Deputies…. The dignity of the Jewish people was at stake and it was only in Palestine that the Jews could get their dignity back.”(40)
As we well see, the above British secular Zionists would only attend a meeting with British Government officials to save Jews from the “Nazi Extermination Policy” if Eretz Yisrael was to be given a prominent place at these meetings. Furthermore it was Jewish lives which were “at stake” and it was no time to worry about “dignity” being “at stake”.
It was at the same period that the British secular Zionists sabotaged negotiations that Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld was making with the British Government for the rescue of the endangered Jews in Nazi Europe. Such rescue of Jews was not a new thing with Rabbi Schonfeld. Just before the Second World War, he had organised Kindertransports and brought over to England from Germany and Austria thousands of children.(41) To accommodate some of them he even utilized his own house with him sleeping in the attic.(42)
Towards the end of 1942, Rabbi Schonfeld organised steps to rescue Jews from Nazi Europe. To this end he worked exceptionally hard to organise wide support for a Motion to be tabled in the British Parliament for the British Government to be prepared to find temporary refuge in its territories or territories under its control for those endangered by the Nazis. Within two weeks he amassed a total of 277 Parliamentary signatures of all parties for this Motion. (43)
One would have thought that the British secular Zionists would have welcomed and co-operated in such an initiative. Sadly this was not the case. In a letter to the “Jewish Chronicle” at that period, Rabbi Schonfeld wrote

“This effort was met by a persistent attempt on the part of Professor Brodetsky [President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews] and some of his colleagues to sabotage the entire move. Without even full knowledge of the details, he and his collaborators asked Members of the House [of Parliament] to desist from supporting the new effort.”(44)
Rabbi Schonfeld further elaborated on this in a letter to “The Times” of London at the time of the Eichmann trial in 1961.
“Already while the Parliamentary motion was gathering momentum voices of dissent were heard from Zionist quarters: ‘Why not Palestine?’ The obvious answers that the most urgent concern was humanitarian and not political, that the Mufti-Nazi alliance ruled out Palestine for the immediate saving of lives….When the next steps were being energetically pursued by over 100 M.Ps [Members of Parliament] and Lords, a spokesman for the Zionists announced that the Jews would oppose the motion on the grounds of its omitting to refer to Palestine …. and thereafter the motion was dead.”(45)
Rabbi Schonfeld’s initiative came up at a meeting of the British Executive of the Jewish Agency in January 1943. At this meeting, Berl Locker said that he and two of his colleagues
“had asked him [Rabbi Schonfeld] to postpone the meeting in the House of Commons and not to continue working off his own bat. They had also pointed out that the resolution which he had proposed did not mention Palestine…. Mr. Locker wondered whether it would be a good thing for him or Dr. Brodetsky to write a letter to the Chief Rabbi, who might be able to do something to stop this mischief.”(46)
What was this “mischief” of Rabbi Dr. Schonfeld’s that these British secular Zionists wanted “stopped”? This “mischief” was his trying to save the lives of Jews who were in Nazi Europe!!
EPILOGUE
In an interview given by someone who worked with the late Klausenberger Rebbe for half a century, he said in answer to a question on the Holocaust,

“When the Sabra and Shatila affair rocked the nation, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, demanding a commission of inquiry into the government’s lack of response to the massacre of Palestinians by Phalangist militants in Lebanon, the Rebbe couldn’t restrain himself. During a Shiur he delivered in Bnei Brak, he asked pointedly why there was no call for a commission of inquiry into the lack of response of the Zionist leaders in Eretz Yisrael during the murder of millions of Jews in the Nazi-occupied lands. They had ignored the matter completely.”(47)
REFERENCES
1) Rabbi Moshe Grylak, “How do they “know” it all?” Mishpacha (English edition), (Monsey, NY: Tikshoret VeChinuch Dati-Yehudi), 12 January 2005, pp.6-7.
2) e.g. Genesis chap.12 verse 7.
3) Stenographisches Protokoll XVIII Zionistenkongresses, [Official Minutes of the 18th Zionist Congress], (London: Zentralbureau der Zionistischen Organisation), p.219.
4) David Kranzler, Thy Brother’s Blood, (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1987), pp.61-62, 241, 244.
5) Minutes of Interview with His Excellency the High Commissioner, 17 October 1933, pp.4-5 (Labour Archives – Lavon Institute IV-104-49-2-64. There is also a copy in Ben-Gurion Archives). At a later date Ben-Gurion wrote up these minutes (in Hebrew) in his memoirs without any suggestion that they were not what he had said at this meeting, (David Ben-Gurion, Memoirs, vol.1, (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1971), p.672).
6) Official Minutes of the 20th Zionist Congress, (Jerusalem: Executive of the Zionist Organisation and the Jewish Agency), pp.32-33.
7) Montor to Rabinowitz, 1 February 1940, pp.2, 4, (Jabotinsky Archives, HT-10/16).
8) A. Hartglas, Comments concerning assistance and rescue, (April/May 1943 – possibly 24 April 1943), p.1, (CZA S26/1306 [previous no. S26/1232]).
9) Aryeh Morgenstern, “Vaad hahatzalah hameuchad .…,” Yalkut Moreshet, (Tel Aviv: Moreshet), vol.13, June 1971, p.95 fn.67.
10) Hartglas, op. cit., p.3.
11) Evidence of Pinchas Gross, a public worker of Agudat Yisrael of Rumania, given in Tel Aviv on 27 July 1944, p.2, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no. S26/1079]).
12) Minutes, Presidium of the Rescue Committee, Jerusalem, 25 August 1944, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no. S26/1079]).
13) Evidence of Vishnitzer Rebbe taken in Tel Aviv in April 1944, p.1, (CZA S26/1189 [previous no, S26/1079]).
14) Pinchas Gross, op. cit.
15) Minutes, Rescue Committee, Jerusalem, 14 July 1944, p.7, (CZA S26/1327 [previous no. S26/1238aleph]).
16) Kranzler, op. cit., pp194-95.
17) Moshe Shertok Handwritten diary, 13 November 1939, p.66, (CZA S25/198/3. [Shertok also made a handwritten copy of his own diary CZA A245/14]
18) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive. Jerusalem, 2 July 1944. p.8, (CZA).
19) Yigal Eilam, Letters to the Editor, Haaretz, (Tel Aviv), 15 April 1983, p.24.
20) Dina Porat, “Manipulatzit Haadmorim,” Haaretz, (Tel Aviv), 12 April 1991, p.3b.
21) Seymour Maxwell Finger, American Jewry during the Holocaust, (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, second printing May 1984), Comment by Rabbi Morris Sherer, p.16.
22) Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, chap.328, para.2.
23) S. Fordsham, Inbox, Mishpacha (English edition), op. cit., 9 May 2007, p.10
24) Kranzler, op. cit., p.6.
25) Landauer to Wise, 13 June 1938, p.1, (CZA S53/1552aleph).
26) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 26 June 1938, p.6, (CZA)
27) Ibid., p.7.
28) Weizmann to Wise. 14 July 1938, p.1, (CZA Z4/17198).
29) Ibid., p.2.
30) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 21 August 1938, p.7. (CZA).
31) Kranzler, op. cit., p.146.
32) Telegram, Weizmann to Vandenburgh, 16 November 1938, (CZA Z4/17335).
33) Minutes, Mapai Central Committee, 7 December 1938, p.41, (Labour Party Archives – Bet Berl 2-23-1938-21 bet).
34) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, 11 December 1938, p.4, (CZA)
35) Minutes, Zionist Smaller Actions Committee, 18 January 1943, pp.12-13, (CZA).
36) Ben Hecht, Perfidy, (New York: Julian Messner, 1962), p.50.
37) The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. Ben Hecht’s ‘Perfidy’ - An analysis of his rewriting of history, (New York: [s.n.], 1962), p.9.
38) “Mi asham b’hafkara,” conversation with Yitzchak Gruenbaum, Etgar, (Tel Aviv: Mercaz Hapeula Hashemit), no.8, 29 June 1961, p.5.
39) Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974), p.255.
40) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, London, 21 December 1942, pp.2-3. (CZA Z4/302/26).
41) e.g. David Kranzler. Holocaust Hero, (New Jersey: Ktav, 2004).
42) Ibid., pp.38-39.
43) Solomon Schonfeld, Letters to the Editor, The Times, (London), 6 June 1961, p.13.
44) Solomon Schonfeld, Letters to the Editor, The Jewish Chronicle, (London), 29 January 1943, p.5.
45) Schonfeld, The Times, op. cit.
46) Minutes, Jewish Agency Executive, London, 21 January 1943, (CZA Z4/302/26).

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/16/09 at 7:11 am

Danielle,

Its the same Message that Israel REJECTED in TORAH/TANACH that Israelis/Jews REJECT today: YOU NEED TO REPENT OF YOUR SINS & REJECTION OF GOD IN YOUR DAILY/BUSINESS/LEISURE LIVES.

But there is hope for ISRAEL/JUDAH:

THE GEODE AND THE HEART OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL
My story of a miracle of His love!

“With all My heart and with all My soul”

I want to share with you what the Father revealed to me so preciously one day recently, as I walked by the “Sea of Galilee” near Tiberias, Israel.  It reveals the passion of the heart of a Father for His children.  The Bible is a love story.  It is about a wedding.  It is about how much our Father-Elohim loves us.
Ezekiel 3 and 33 tell us about the heart of the house of Israel—the ten northern tribes from the sons of Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel).  The “house of Israel” is also called in Scripture the “house of Ephraim”.  Ephraim was the son of Joseph who holds the birthright for all the tribes (Genesis 48).  These ten are also called the “house of Joseph”.  How beautiful that four times a day the Chasidic Orthodox Jews turn to the north, south, east and west to call for Ephraim to “come home”.  They know the end-time prophecies that the return of a remnant of the ancient ten tribes means that the Messiah of Israel is coming.
These ten northern tribes became so idolatrous after Solomon’s death that finally Yahuewh had to scatter them out of the Land of their inheritance (the greatest punishment of all) into all nations, and mix them in with “gentiles”—pagans, heathen, barbarians, foreigners, aliens and strangers.  They lost their identity. (Hosea 1:10, chapters 2 and 3)  It broke the heart of the Father to have to separate these tribes from Himself.  In Jeremiah He refers to them as “the beloved of My soul”.  Jeremiah chapters 2:1-3:22 tell the story of His broken heart.  It is in these chapters that we get a picture of the great heart of compassion and love that our Father has towards His people.  It is hard to read this without weeping.  This great love-story of Elohim for His people is seen also in Hosea 11.
Yahuweh pleads for His people to return to Him, and re-enter the covenant that He made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—a covenant of peace, joy, love and contentment.  As we see from Jeremiah 3, a remnant did repent out of all the tribes, and returned under King Josiah to celebrate the feast of Passover (II Chronicles 35).  This is an amazing picture of what is soon to happen at the return of the Passover Lamb—the Lamb of Elohim—Yahushua Messiah.  When He comes, He will unite the whole house of Jacob (all 13 tribes) back together in Himself—“the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” for His people.
But, the house of Israel, whom Yahuweh had to finally divorce for their going after other gods (whoredom, idolatry), rejected His pleading and became hardened, “stiff-necked”, rebellious, proud and arrogant—rejecting His good Torah over them (the teachings and instructions of the Kingdom of heaven—His rule over mankind).  They created their own gods in their own image—gods of materialism, and gods of religion who would bless their efforts to gain wealth and power.  They became comfortable with the Phoenician world trading empire, comfortable also with the Phoenician gods, and later became comfortable with the Greek and Roman cultures that also had gods in their image.  They heartily accepted a religion whereby they might be saved from eternal hell, but a religion by which everyone could make up their own rules of lifestyle—a lawless religion that from its beginning did away with Yahuweh and his Torah as a rule, a covenant, of life.
The house of Israel remained idolatrous.  They became wealthy, powerful and controlling, over the whole earth.  They settled in the most beautiful nations, acquired great wealth and power, rising above the “gentiles” of those nations—becoming the most militarily powerful of all people, skilled in education, in science, in medicine, and in all earthly wisdom (as was Solomon).  They also extended education opportunities to women, built hospitals for the sick, organized charities for the poor, shelters for the homeless, and opportunities for advancement for all people.  They became masters at “law”, which is surprising—creating the highest legal systems on earth, the greatest trading empires, and the greatest religious system.  They led the nations in mercy and tolerance for all people.  They blessed every nation that they entered—Genesis 13:14-17—fulfilling Yahuweh’s covenant to Abraham.  Today, the main groupings of the house of Israel are the most powerful people on earth—seeking to fulfill the dream of Nimrod (Genesis 11).  Because they are still idolatrous, they have also dedicated themselves to eliminate man’s need for Yahuweh, by their theories of evolution and humanism.  They are today the leaders of a world government bent on returning to Genesis 11, and the tower of Nimrod in defiance of Yahuweh and His right to rule over the earth.

Today by archeology, history, language, names, and other ways, the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” are no longer lost.  The majority of them scattered themselves before 722BCE, when the Assyrians took the rest captive.  Then the Assyrians scattered the remaining ones.  (II Kings 17)

In Isaiah 9:1-2 it talks about what Messiah would do to restore these “lost sheep” in the very land from which they were last totally scattered—the lands of the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulum—around the Sea of Galilee, in the Galilee.  Matthew 4:13-15 shows how Messiah fulfilled Isaiah 9:1-2.  Did you ever wonder why Messiah, being Jewish and Levite, would grow up in Nazareth—a town in the Galilee?  Did you ever ask why most of His ministry was in the Galilee?  Did you ever ask why all but two of His disciples were Galileans?  It is because He came to shed His light once again on the inheritance of the “lost sheep”—to re-gather them, with the house of Judah (the three southern tribes of the sons of Jacob) into one sheep fold under one Shepherd—John 10:14-16.

Under Solomon the ten northern tribes were in league with the Phoenicians.  Together they sailed around the world every three years to bring back goods for the Temple, for Solomon’s house, and for Solomon’s “collections”.  They even entered the rivers of Texas and brought out many things back to Solomon.  They went through the Straits of Gibraltar and into Great Britain (“Brit” in Hebrew is “covenant”, “ish” is man, “am” is people).  Therefore “Great Britain” means:  “The great covenant people”.  They sailed to Spain (ancient Tarshish), into many now western European nations and Ireland, even to the east coast of what is now America.  Archeological evidence has been found in the palio (ancient) Hebrew language used at the time of King David and King Solomon.  Solomon made ships at Ezion Geber—now the Red Sea ports of Eilat, Israel and Aqaba, Jordan.  He sailed them into ports of Africa, ports of what is now Saudi Arabia, into ports of South and Central America and Mexico.  Colonies of Israelites stayed different countries where they went—for example “Brazil” is a Hebrew word for “iron”.  The colonies of Columbia, the Mayans, and other great civilizations were Israelite colonies.  In Columbia surgical instruments have been found that surgeons today say are very advanced—examples found of heart surgery, brain surgery, C-section births.  Wherever the house of Israel went, they brought the wisdom of Solomon—which was the wisdom of Yahuweh.  Ezekiel was sent by Yahuweh north—into the empire of Parthia—a great empire that rivaled Rome, to give them the message of repentance and return.  The empire of Parthia was ruled over by members of the royal family of David.  The empire of Carthage was an Israelite empire.  They gave Rome the “stake”—the pole of execution on which our Savior died.

After Solomon died and the United Kingdom split into a northern Kingdom (Israel) and a southern Kingdom (Judah),  (I Kings 11-12) because of their alliances with the pagans—they quickly turned to paganism, and the worship of golden calves.  Thus, for example, human sacrifice was part of Mayan worship—as well as the building of pyramids.  Yet, their mathematical system astounds intellectuals today—their great calendar ends in CE 2012.  Solomon’s great wisdom in science, medicine, astronomy, map-making, botany, zoology, biology has been inherited by the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Under the Kings of Israel, the northern ten tribes became so wicked that Yahuweh had to let them go—“put them away and write a bill of divorcement”.  Today most of the house of Israel does not know who they are.  (See Hosea 1:10, and chapters 2 and 3)  But, our loving Father is revealing to His set-apart ones, who are seeking Him with all their heart, who they really are.  HalleluYah!

In Messiah’s death and resurrection, He redeemed these lost people.

Do you notice that the Father never told the High Priest to take ten jewels off of his breastplate?  He never had any intention of losing these ten tribes.  Read Hosea chapter 11—for the whole book of Hosea is written to the ten tribes.  How beautiful!
In these last days, a remnant of these ten tribes will “come trembling—fluttering like birds trying to find a place of rest—FROM THE WEST”.  He will shake everything that can be shaken, so that those things that cannot be shaken may remain.  In this great shaking, He will bring these trembling ones. (Hebrews 13:25-29)

The greatest concentration of the house of Israel today is in Western Europe and America.  Like I said, there is historical, archeological, etymological, and other proof of where these tribes went.  For starters on this great study, I recommend your reading the first two books of the series:  The Lost Tribes of Israel entitled: 1) Origins and Empire of Ancient Israel and 2) Israel’s Lost Empires by Steven M. Collins.  Mr. Collins works with several Orthodox Jews and Messianic Jews in Israel who have searched out and found the “lost sheep”, as well as drawing from such great teachers on the ancient world as the late Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University. 

Yahuweh is redeeming and restoring the whole house of Jacob now, back to the Land.  The hard hearts of the house of Israel are softening.  Some are even desiring to “go home”—back to the land of their inheritance—Israel.  They want to rejoin the house of Judah, and live in their ancient homeland again.

This great phenomenon of THE RETURN is happening, and will continue to happen.  There are hundreds of Bible verses about this return.  The greatest return will happen at Messiah’s coming.

Jeremiah 31:5-6: “Again you shall plant vines on the mountains of Samaria…For there shall be a day when the watchmen cry on Mt. Ephraim, `Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to Yahuweh our Elohim”.  The word “watchman” is “natsar”.  The Orthodox Jews say that these “watchmen” are the returning House of Ephraim—returning as “Christians”.  Indeed there are Christians planting vines on the mountains of Samaria!

This is the story of the “prodigal son”.  (Luke 15) The “elder brother”—house of Judah (in which the three tribes of Judah, Levi and Benjamin are represented)—never left Yahuweh, the Father, and His Torah.  With all of their dabbling into the occult, and rabbinical superstitions, supposedly to reach Yahuweh—still Judah guard the basics of His Torah.  They have held intact His Shabbat, His festivals, His dietary laws, and His right-rulings.  Without them we would not have the Torah.

In Romans 3:1-2 Paul says: “What then is the advantage of the Jews, or what is the value of circumcision?  Much in every way!  Because firstly indeed, that they were entrusted with the Words of Elohim”.  In intercession for them Paul writes in Romans 9:3-5: “For I myself could have wished to be banished from Messiah for the sake of my brothers, my relatives according o the flesh, who are Israelites, from whom is the adoption, and the esteem, and the covenants, and the giving of the Torah, and the worship and the promises, who are the fathers, from whom is the Messiah according to the flesh, who is over all—Elohim –blessed forever. Amen”.  Does the house of Israel have any reason to boast over the house of Judah? —Absolutely NOT!

At the coming of Messiah, a remnant of the “elder brother” of the story, will receive Messiah Yahushua at His coming (Zechariah 12), and join the house of Israel—the pig-eating prodigal who doesn’t eat pig anymore—and become “one stick” in His hand.  THIS IS the coming together of the “one new man”.  (Ezekiel 37:15-28)  Meanwhile, now, a trickle of the “prodigal son” is returning to the Father, Yahuweh, and to His covenant, to obey Him in His good Torah.

NOW HERE IS MY BEAUTIFUL STORY:

One day in December 2006, I was walking along Lake Kinneret (The Sea of Galilee).  I was pondering all the volcanic rocks that are in the area of Samaria and the Galilee.  There are some that are huge.  There are some medium-sized, and many small ones of different sizes and shapes.  So many rocks!  The Father’s Spirit began to speak to my spirit that these rocks—most of them dull looking, not pretty, just plain—represent the house of Israel (the 10 northern tribes).  (Ezekiel 3:2:1-3:11)  Like these rocks, most of the house of Israel are still hard, cold, indifferent to Father’s covenant, steeped in a lawless (Torah-less) defiled, pig-allowing religion, that has relegated Father to antiquity.

In Luke 15, the prodigal falls at the Father’s feet in repentance.  We must repent when we return to the Father’s covenant relationship.  Then we must go humbly learn His ways and His nature, learning what He expects of us, so that we are no longer lawless.

As I looked at the rocks, since I’m an amateur geologist, I saw some that could possibly be geodes.  A “geode” is formed from volcanic “hail” that spews out of a volcano.  The rocks are usually rounded—not pretty on the outside—but once broken open contain beautiful crystals inside formed from mineral deposits.
The Father showed me that this is how He sees the house of Israel.

Matthew 15:24 with Matthew 10:5-6 give us an unusual picture of why Messiah came: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.  He only told His disciples to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel—which they did after His ascension.
He primarily came to redeem back those from the ten tribes who had abandoned Him for idolatry and sin—transgressing His Torah and relegating Him to the past, in order to pick up a new religion with new festivals, a new priesthood, new doctrines, and a free-wheeling lifestyle that arrogantly said, “You don’t have to go to Jerusalem”—a lifestyle of rebellion against Yahuweh.  (I Kings 11-12)  Therefore, the greatest move of the Spirit of Yahuweh today is His orchestrating the return of these ten tribes of Israel, to join them once again with their brother Judah!
From a Jewish commentary on Ezekiel 37:15-28, I read recently that the return of the house of Israel is bringing great comfort to the house of Judah.  It says that when the Jews see that Elohim is bringing back the lost Israelites, it gives them comfort to know that He has not forgotten Judah either, and that the promises of Messiah to the whole house of Jacob will soon be fulfilled.  Awesome!

Zechariah 8:10-23 speaking of the time of the return of Israel’s Messiah: “Thus says Yahuweh of hosts, `Peoples shall yet come, inhabitants of many cities, and the inhabitants of the one go to another saying, “Let us earnestly go and pray before Yahuweh, and see Yahuweh of hosts.  I myself am going”.  `And many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek Yahuweh of hosts in Jerusalem, and pray before Yahuweh’.  Thus says Yahuweh of hosts, `In those days TEN MEN FROM ALL LANGUAGES OF THE NATIONS take hold, yes, they shall take hold of the edge of the garment of a man, a Jew, saying `Let us go with you, for we have heard that Elohim is with you.’”  The “ten men” represent the house of Israel who were scattered into all nations by 722BCE.  In these days, this is already beginning—a forerunning remnant is returning—some “trembling” from the West.

Yahushua Messiah renewed the covenant with both houses in His own blood.  (Jeremiah 31:31)  Then He arose to confirm the covenant with both houses, and with anyone else who wanted to participate in it—the covenant established with His people on Sinai—when the terms of the marriage covenant was established.

As He began showing me, that morning on my walk, how He looks at the “house of Israel—stubborn, rebellious, lawless, proud—I thought to myself that there were those of the house of Israel NOW who are humbly returning to the covenant of Yahuweh, through Messiah Yahushua, and guarding His Shabbat, His Festivals, His dietary laws.  They’ve given up the unclean in His eyes (represented by the pig—whom He created not for eating, but as a “vacuum cleaner” that eats garbage) and are adapting to His requirements for good citizens in the Kingdom of Heaven.  (Philippians 3:20-21)

These repentant returnees are not hard, cold, rebellious and proud.  They are born-again by faith in Messiah, and now see that to love Him means to obey His commandments (John 14:15).  They have left their religion of lawlessness, created by Greece and Rome and are submitting to His covenant with joy.

So, on my walk I remembered the geodes and their crystals.  The crystals cannot be seen until the geode is broken in half.  Father confirmed to me that those who were “broken” and contrite, those who were “laid open” before Him, so that He could remove the heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:24-34)) indeed had a heart of like a geode—with shining beautiful crystals.  (See: Isaiah 57:15 and Isaiah 66:1-2)

I have been in Israel over 20 times, and never seen a broken geode—never once.  Usually the geode has to be cut open, because they are so hard, by an electric saw, designed to cut through rock.  I’m one of these people that often will walk with my head down—looking for rocks and archeological artifacts—so to find a broken geode would be almost a miracle.  Father showed me that He was doing the cutting, the surgery on the hearts of the His people, so that they would be opened up to reveal the glory He put within.

But, as soon as He gave me revelation about the heart of the broken ones being like the center of a geode, within about 30 seconds I looked over and saw something shining in the sun.  I went over and there was a broken geode, with crystals glistening in the sun.

I thanked Him so much for this object lesson—especially since my calling is the house of Israel (as was Ezekiel’s).  I took the geode back to where I was staying and put it on my nightstand.  I sat back and looked at it.  I was shocked—I just stared at the geode.  In the center of the geode, among the crystals, was a well-formed “Y”.  It is the beginning initial of the name He gave me.  He spoke quietly to my spirit:  This is how I see you.  The geode was me.  I am not pretty on the outside, but on the inside He sees me as His shining “beloved”.  (“Yedidah” in Biblical Hebrew means “Beloved”).

This is how He sees those of the house of Israel who are turning in humility and submission and yielding to His covenant.  He pleads in Ezekiel 18 for the house of Israel to return to Him through repentance.  Now, a small remnant is returning.  They are broken geodes—and He sees their heart as beautiful!

How passionate is He to return His people to His Land—their Land?

I close with Jeremiah 32:37-42:

“See, I am gathering them (verse 32—the house of Israel AND the house of Judah) out of all the lands where I have driven them in My displeasure, and in My wrath, and in great rage.  And I shall bring them back to this place (Israel) and shall let them dwell in safety.  And they shall be My people, and I shall be their Elohim.  And I shall give them one heart and one way, to fear Me all the days, for the good of them and of their children after them.  And I shall make an everlasting covenant with them, that I do not turn back from doing good to them.  And I shall put My fear in their hearts so they will not turn aside from Me.  And I shall rejoice over them to do good to them, and shall plant them in this Land in truth, WITH ALL MY HEART AND WITH ALL MY SOUL”.  For thus says Yahuweh, `As I have brought all this great evil on this people, so I am bringing on them all the good that I am speaking to them’”.  (Italics mine)

What a wonderful Father we have!
Nowhere else in all of His Word does He so passionately say that He is going to do anything “with all My heart and with all My soul” as He promises to restore a remnant of the whole house of Jacob back into covenant relationship with Him, through Messiah Yahushua, whose name means: I AM Salvation.

Love, blessings, joy and peace,

Yedidah

January 16, 2007

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/18/09 at 2:43 pm

Wow - those must be great drugs that you have… remember, when you go to class, bring enough to share with the other patients.

We were discussing the film festival and Israel.  Let’s not try to proselytize…. either stick to the topic or do not participate.

Comment by Mike Waterman on 9/18/09 at 2:53 pm

Yo Mike,

Whether its a Film Festival, or Organ removals, Robbing people’s land & homes, the problem is still the same. The Jew is godless & uses Talmud & Kabbalah to justify his SINFUL behaviour. He HATES the TRUTH. He HATES TORAH. He HATES non-Jews. And unless he REPENTS, he is heading for DISASTER. The Jew was supposed to have been a LIGHT UNTO THE GENTILE, but his LIGHT was DARKNESS, & as the God of Israel says:

EZEK 16:47 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

EZEK 16:48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

EZEK 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

EZEK 16:50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

EZEK 16:51 Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

EZEK 16:52 Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

The Jew OUT-SODOM’S SODOM. All his disasters were approved by the God of Israel, to bring him to repentance, but he is still a STIFF-NECKED FOOL & refuses to OBEY the God who chose him for a mighty work. And that is why God is going to bring the nations of the world against him & it will bring him to his knees. Then he will CRY OUT IN REPENTANCE & God will hear him.

Its one FILM you don’t want to see!!!

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/18/09 at 3:39 pm

This is my last comment; I do not wish to further engage with you - we have nothing in common.

Let all of the other readers know that I am Jewish and very proud of who I am.  I am very proud of my people and the country of Israel as well.

You have a right to pray to whomever or whatever you want or believe.  Go write on seomone else’s website where they share your thoughts and hallucinations.

I hope that you have a year of peace and find that God wants you to help others - go volunteer at a food bank or help the homeless…...  Shana Tovah and goodbye

Comment by Mike Wateman on 9/18/09 at 4:12 pm

Yo Mike, wait a second!

ARE YOU PROUD OF THIS TEACHING OF THE RABBIS:

Dear .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Could you help me understand Sanhedrin 54b?
I have heard Jews & non-Jews argue over quotes taken from Sanhedrin 54b.

Could this be the reason there are so many cases of child sex abuse against Orthodox Jewish rabbis?

Gerald Goldberg

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin
Sanhedrin 54b

This teaches the punishment: whence do we derive the formal prohibition? — From the verse, Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.1 From this we learn the formal prohibition for him who lies [with a male]: whence do we know a formal prohibition for the person who permits himself thus to be abused? — Scripture saith: There shall be no sodomite of the sons of Israel:2 and it is further said, And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to the abominations of the nations which the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel:3 this is R. Ishmael’s view. R. Akiba said: This is unnecessary, the Writ saith, thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: read, ‘thou shalt not be lain with.‘4 Whence do we learn a formal prohibition against bestiality? — Our Rabbis taught: [and if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast].5 A man excludes a minor; [that] lieth with a beast — whether it be young or old; he shall surely be put to death — by stoning. You, by stoning; but perhaps one of the other deaths decreed in the Torah is meant? — It is here said, [and] ye shall kill [the beast]; and it is stated elsewhere, But thou shalt surely kill him. [… And thou shalt stone in him with stones]:6 just as there, stoning is meant, so here too.
We have learnt from this the punishment for him who commits bestiality; whence do we derive punishment for him who allows himself to be thus abused? — The Writ saith: Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.7 Since this is redundant in respect of the person committing bestiality,8 you must regard it as applying to the person permitting himself to be thus abused.9 From the Writ we know that there is punishment both for him who commits bestiality and for him who permits himself to be thus abused; whence do we know the formal prohibition? — Scripture saith, neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith.10 From this verse we learn the formal prohibition for him who commits bestiality, whence do we derive the formal prohibition for him who allows himself to be thus abused? Scripture saith: There shall be no Sodomite of the sons of Israel; and it is elsewhere said, And there were also sodomites in the land, etc.11 R. Akiba said: This is unnecessary. The Writ saith, Thou shalt not lie [with any beast], which means, thou shalt not permit thy lying [with any beast, whether actively or passively].
   
  Now, he who [actively] commits pederasty, and also [passively] permits himself to be thus abused — R. Abbahu said: On R. Ishmael’s view, he is liable to two penalties, one [for the injunction] derived from thou shalt not lie with mankind, and the other for [violating the prohibition,] There shall not be a Sodomite of the sons of Israel. But on R. Akiba’s view, he incurs only one penalty, since thou shalt not lie and thou shalt not be lain with is but one statement.12
He who commits bestiality, and also causes himself to be thus abused — R. Abbahu said: On R. Ishmael’s view, he incurs two penalties, one for the injunction, thou shalt not lie with any beast, and one for the prohibition, there shall be no sodomite of the sons of Israel. But on R. Akiba’s view, he incurs but one penalty, since thy lying [actively] and thy lying [passively] is but one injunction. Abaye said: Even on R. Ishmael’s view he incurs one penalty only, for there shall be no Sodomite applies to sodomy with mankind.13 If so, whence does R. Ishmael derive a formal prohibition against permitting oneself to be bestially abused? — From the verse, Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.14 Now, this being redundant in respect of him who [actively] lies with a beast,15 apply it to him who [passively] permits himself to be abused this; and the Divine Law designates the passive offender as the active offender:16 this teaches that the punishment for, and the formal prohibition against, active bestiality17 apply to passive submission too.18
He who submits both to pederasty and to bestiality — R. Abbahu said: On R. Akiba’s view, he incurs two penalties; one for thou shalt not lie [with mankind], and the other for thou shalt not lie [with any beast]. But on R. Ishmael’s view, he incurs only one punishment, both offences being derived from the single verse, There shall be no Sodomite.19 Abaye said: Even on R. Ishmael’s view, he incurs two penalties, because it is written, Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.20 This being redundant in respect of active bestiality, it must be applied to passive submission, and the Divine Law thus designated passive submission as an active offence: just as for the active offence there is punishment and prohibitions so for the passive offence too.21 But he who commits pederasty and causes himself to be abused thus; and also commits bestiality and causes himself to be abused too — both R. Abbahu and Abaye maintain that on R. Ishmael’s view he is trebly guilty, and on R. Akiba’s view he is doubly guilty.22
Our Rabbis taught: In the case of a male child, a young one is not regarded as on a par with an old one; but a young beast is treated as an old one.23 What is meant by this? — Rab said: Pederasty with a child below nine years of age is not deemed as pederasty with a child above that. Samuel said: Pederasty with a child below three years is not treated as with a child above that.24 What is the basis of their dispute? — Rab maintains that only he who is able to engage in sexual intercourse, may, as the passive subject of pederasty throw guilt [upon the active offender]; whilst he who is unable to engage in sexual intercourse cannot be a passive subject of pederasty [in that respect].25 But Samuel maintains: Scripture writes, [And thou shalt not lie with mankind] as with the lyings of a woman.26
It has been taught in accordance with Rab: Pederasty at the age of nine years and a day;
1.  Ibid. XVIII, 22.
2.  Deut. XXIII, 18.
3.  I Kings XIV, 24. Just as abomination applies to sodomy in the latter verse, so it applies to it in the former too: thus it is as though the former verse read, There shall be no Sodomite of the sons of Israel: it is an abomination. And just as the abomination implicit here applies to both parties, so the abomination explicitly stated in Lev. XIII, 22 refers to both.
4.  I. e., the niph’al, the letters being the same, [H], and [H].
5.  Ibid. XX, 15.
6.  Deut. XIII, 10, referring to a mesith, one who incites to idolatry.
7.  Ex. XXII, 18.
8.  As it is taught elsewhere, viz., in Lev. XX, 15.
9.  One of the methods of Talmudic hermenueutics is to apply a Biblical statement, superfluous in respect of its own law, to some other subject.
10.  Lev. XVIII, 23.
11.  Ibid. v. p. 368. n. 1: the same reasoning applying to bestiality as to pederasty.
12.  I.e., though differently vocalized in order to deduce two injunctions, it is nevertheless one statement only, so that a person transgressing these two injunctions violates one Biblical prohibition only.
13.  Not to bestiality at all, in spite of the fact that this was cited above in this connection.
14.  Ex. XXII, 18.
15.  Since it is stated in Lev. XVIII.
16.  I.e., though as shewn, this verse applies to a passive offender, yet its grammatical construction speaks of active bestiality.
17.  The reference having been given above.
18.  So that all is deduced from one verse, involving only one penalty.
19.  Since R. Akiba maintains that the prohibition of passive sodomy is included in active sodomy, it follows that passive pederasty and bestiality are two distinct offences, for there are two distinct injunctions. But as R. Ishmael maintains that the injunction against active sodomy does not include passive submission, and that the latter, whether in pederasty or bestiality, is derived from the single injunction, There shall be no sodomite, the double offence incurs one penalty only.
20.  Ex. XXII, 18.
21.  Thus, this applies to passive bestiality, whilst there shall be no sodomite applies to passive pederasty. Hence, there being two separate injunctions for the two offences, a double punishment is incurred.
22.  Thus: R. Abbahu maintains that on R. Ishmael’s view: (i) active pederasty is forbidden by Thou shalt not lie with mankind; (ii) active bestiality by Thou shalt not lie with any beast; (iii) passive pederasty and bestiality by There shall be no sodomite. Whilst Abaye maintains that on R. Ishmael’s view, (i) active pederasty is derived from Thou shalt not lie with mankind; (ii) submission thereto from There shall be no sodomite; and (iii) active and passive bestiality from Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith. (Lev. XVIII, 23) Hence, according to R. Abbabu and Abaye there are three injunctions for the four offences. Further, R. Abbahu and Abaye both teach R. Akiba’s view to be that (i) active and passive bestiality are derived from Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; and (ii) active and passive bestiality from Neither shalt thou lie with any beast. Hence there are two injunctions for the four offences.
23.  The reference is to the passive subject of sodomy. As stated supra 54a, guilt is incurred by the active participant even if the former be a minor, i.e., less than thirteen years old. Now, however, it is stated that within this age a distinction is drawn.
24.  I.e., Rab makes nine years the minimum; but if one committed sodomy with a child of lesser age, no guilt is incurred. Samuel makes three the minimum.

25.  At nine years a male attains sexual matureness.

26.  Lev. XVIII, 22. Thus the point of comparison is the sexual matureness of woman, which is reached at the age of three.

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/20/09 at 8:57 am

Tony Greenstein

Unholy Alliance
(June 2006)

What is the link between Zionism and anti-Semitism? Tony Greenstein explains that there is a closer connection than many modern Zionists would care to admit
If you are an anti-Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinian struggle, then you will inevitably be accused of ‘anti-Semitism’. If you are Jewish, then you will likely be accused of being a ‘self-hater’ – the label the Nazis attached to anti-fascist Germans.
The accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ has become so widespread that it is regularly hurled by Zionists at each other. Even Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated Israeli prime minister, was depicted in posters by opponents of the 1993 Oslo accords wearing an SS uniform. [1] So ludicrous has this become that when the Marks and Spencers board rejected a takeover bid from Philip Green, the latter accused the M&S chairman, Paul Myners, of anti-Semitism! [2] For the last 30 years, there has been a continuous redefinition of anti-Semitism. No longer is it about racism or discrimination, instead it is about hostility to a political movement. In 2004 the US Congress passed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, which instructs the state department to start rating governments throughout the world on their treatment of Jewish citizens. [3]
It is strange that anti-Semitism, which today is a marginal prejudice, should warrant such concern by the US ruling class, when racism against Arab, Muslim, black and Hispanic people barely raises an eyebrow. ‘Anti-Semitism’ has become a powerful ideological tool in the hands of the United States ruling class. It is an ‘anti-Semitism’ which even the most anti-Semitic sections of US society – the white Christian evangelists with their passions of Christ – can subscribe to. The US establishment has redefined opposition to American imperialism and its strategic asset, the Israeli state, as a form of racism. Anti-Semitism has become the respectable anti-racism of the right. Zionism has taken the Jews full circle. In its strategic alliance with the USA, the Jews are once again offered ‘protection’ by the ruling class, just as in feudal times they were protected by royalty and the nobility.

The eternal Jew
As mercantile capitalism gave birth to industrial capitalism, so religious anti-Semitism gradually gave way to racial anti-Semitism, from the 17th century onwards. [4] Whereas Christian anti-Semites sought the conversion of the Jews, the racial anti-Semites argued it was all a question of race, not religion. The issue of the baptised Jews was to cause the Nazis all sorts of difficulties as they began to implement the final solution. [5]
In place of the eternal Jew, the Zionists posit the eternal anti-Semite. For 2,000 years, according to Zionist myth, the Jews have wandered the earth, the victims of unrelenting anti-Semitism, having been expelled from Palestine after the destruction of the first temple. In fact the majority of Palestinian Jewry had already dispersed to the cities of the Greek and later Roman empires, centuries before the fall of the second temple, to become a largely trading people. At the fall of the second temple in 70AD, some three-quarters of Palestinian Jews were already dispersed. [6]
And what was Zionism’s explanation of anti-Semitism? That it was inherent in the non-Jew, a product of the non-Jew’s ‘natural’ antagonism. As Leo Pinsker, founder of the Lovers of Zionism, explained, “Judaephobia is, then, a mental disease, and as a mental disease it is hereditary and, having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is incurable.” [7] Abram Leon noted in relation to this: “Zionism transposes modern anti-Semitism to all of history; it saves itself the trouble of studying the various forms of anti-Semitism and their evolution.” [8]
During what Israel Shahak terms the classical period – approximately 800-1200AD in western Europe – and later in eastern Europe, the Jews become a ‘people-class’. They performed specific socio-economic functions as usurers and moneylenders, tax stewards, publicans, as well as certain professions allied to trade such as goldsmiths and diamond merchants. The Jews were the agents of money in a society based on use-values. As Marx observed, “We will not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but we will look for the secret of his religion in the Jews.” [9] Without their distinctive social and economic role, Judaism would have died out. The cause of anti-Semitism in this period was “the antagonism toward the merchant in every society based principally on the production of use-values.” [10] The Jews “formed an integral part of the privileged classes”. [11] Shahak notes: “… in all the worst anti-Jewish persecutions … the ruling elite … were always on the side of the Jews … all the massacres of Jews during the classical period were part of a peasant rebellion or other popular movement.” [12]
As capitalism developed in Western Europe, the Jews increasingly came into conflict with the growing merchant class and were usually expelled – in England in 1290 – seeking refuge in Eastern Europe. It was when capitalism began to develop in Eastern Europe and Russia in the late 19th century that the Jews once again fled or were expelled to Western Europe and the United States. Some three million Jews emigrating to the latter by 1914. It was the emigration of the Ost Juden that recreated the Jewish question in the west. As Leon remarked, “The Jewish masses find themselves wedged between the anvil of decaying feudalism and the hammer of rotting capitalism.” [13]

Zionism and anti-Semitism
It is not surprising that the main supporters of political Zionism, which began towards the end of the 19th century, were in fact the anti-Semites. And the most vociferous and bitter of Zionism’s opponents were, and remain, Jewish. When Theodore Herzl wanted to hold the first Zionist Congress in Munich in 1897, he was forced to move it from Germany to Basle in Switzerland because of the opposition of the local Jewish community. [14]
Zionism arose as a reaction to anti-Semitism – not least the Russian pogroms of 1881 in the wake of the assassination of tsar Alexander II. Hundreds were killed in nearly three years of pogroms. [15] In the Black Sea port of Odessa, centre of the Hebrew enlightenment (Haskallah), the pogroms spelt the end of the dream of the petty bourgeois Jewish intellectuals that the Jews could live on equal terms with the non-Jew. As Moshe Lillienblum wrote in The way of return (1881), “When I became convinced that it was not a lack of high culture that was the cause of our tragedy – for aliens we are and aliens we shall remain even if we become full to the brim with culture … all the old ideals left me.” [16] For the Zionists, as Pinsker noted above, anti-Semitism was an incurable disease. And if it was incurable it could not be fought. In this way Zionism was different from all other political currents among the Jews in its reaction to anti-Semitism: it accepted the main premise of the anti-Semites – viz. that the Jewish presence among non-Jews was unnatural and that they were strangers and aliens.

Isaac Deutscher observed:
“It should be remembered that the great majority of east European Jews were, up to the outbreak of World War II, opposed to Zionism ... the most fanatical enemies of Zionism were precisely the workers ... they were the most determined opponents of the idea of an emigration from east Europe to Palestine ... of an exodus from the countries in which they had their homes and in which their ancestors had lived for centuries, the anti-Zionists saw an abdication of their rights, a surrender to anti-Semitism. To them anti-Semitism seemed to triumph in Zionism, which recognised the legitimacy and the validity of the old cry, ‘Jews, get out!’ The Zionists were agreeing to get out.” [17] Herzl recognised both an identity of interest and a common ideology between Zionism and anti-Semitism. When he brought out his pamphlet Der Judenstaat in 1895, the warmest welcome was from anti-Semites: “Was at the printing office and talked with the managers ... both are presumably anti-Semites. They greeted me with genuine cordiality. They liked my pamphlet.” [18]
Desmond Stewart’s perceptive biography notes: “… already in 1896 Austrian anti-Semites were finding ammunition in Herzl’s arguments, as would the followers of Drumont …” [19] Eduard Drumont was one of the most important anti-Semitic ideologues of the 19th century. He wrote an influential book, La France juive (1886) and edited a daily paper, La Libre Parole, and was one of the leaders of the anti-Dreyfusards. Herzl was full of admiration for Drumont: “But I owe to Drumont a great deal of the present freedom of my concepts, because he is an artist.” [20] Herzl lobbied for Drumont to review his pamphlet in La Libre Parole, which he did on January 15 1897, and he was delighted with the result. Drumont “praises the Zionists of Herzl’s persuasion for not seeing in us fanatics … but citizens who exercise the right of self-defence.” [21] Likewise Herzl’s deputy, Max Nordau, in an interview with Raphael Marchant, correspondent for La Libre Parole, observed that Zionism “is not a question of religion, but exclusively of race, and there is no one with whom I am in greater agreement on this position than M. Drumont.” [22] On this there was unanimous agreement amongst Zionist writers. The first Zionist theoretician was Moses Hess, an early acquaintance of Marx. In his pamphlet, Rome and Jerusalem, Hess wrote that “Race struggle is primary and class secondary”, [23] before going on to explain:
“The Germans hate the religion of the Jews less than they hate their race – they hate the peculiar faith of the Jews less than their peculiar noses ... reform, conversion, education and emancipation – none of these open the gates of society to the German Jew, hence his desire to deny his racial origin.” [24]
Zionism and anti-Semitism shared the same political outlook and territory. Herzl soon realised that “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” [25] The touchstone both for Zionism and the anti-Semites (and later the Nazis) was their loathing of the French Revolution, which had liberated the Jews from the ghettos and granted political equality. The Zionists, like the orthodox rabbis, saw emancipation as the cause of all their ills. Zionism was the secular equivalent of Jewish orthodoxy. As Zionist historian Noah Lucas observed, “Zionism was the antagonist above all of the individual assimilation associated with emancipation.” [26] Max Nordau’s speech to the first Zionist Congress in 1897 derided the French Revolution and emancipation as a mere “geometric mode of thought of French rationalism”. Nordau’s only doubts regarding Zionism were that the Jews might not be “anthropologically fit for nationhood.” [27] Likewise Nahman Syrkin, the first ‘socialist’ Zionist, held that “Emancipation of the Jews was, from the beginning, a result of logical conformity to the implications of a principle rather than a real need.” [28]
It is often claimed that Herzl became a Zionist because of the 1894 Dreyfus affair – Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was falsely accused of espionage, stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil Island. This is unlikely. The Dreyfus affair became a cause célèbre and was proof that anti-Semitism could be successfully fought. It was this hostility to anti-Semitism which was to result in less than 25% of French Jews being exterminated in the holocaust. [29]
Desmond Stewart confirms that it is unlikely that Herzl’s Zionism derived from Dreyfus. [30] Likewise rabbi Elmer Berger:
“Where in all the world a century before would more than half a nation have come to the defence of a Jew? Had Herzl possessed a knowledge of history, he would have seen in the Dreyfus case a brilliant, heartening proof of the success of emancipation.” [31]
Herzl himself wrote:
“In Paris ... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” [32]

Antidote to socialism
Herzl’s strategy, which he was not to live to see fulfilled, was to appeal to the statesmen and rulers of Europe for an imperial alliance with the fledgling Zionist movement. In the course of his travels, he met with the German emperor, tsarist ministers counts Witte and von Plehve, the Ottoman sultan, Lord Cromer, Joseph Chamberlain, King Victor Emmanuel and even the pope! His message was always the same – help the Zionist movement and you are helping the Jewish opponents of socialism and revolution.
Leonard Stein notes:
“The events of 1917 made it natural to turn to Zionism as a stabilising force in the Jewish world, and to value it for its power … to provide an antidote to the destructive mania of Jews in rebellion against their lot …” [33]
To the German Kaiser Herzl wrote:
“Our movement, which is already widespread, has everywhere to fight an embittered battle with the revolutionary parties which rightly sense an adversary in it. We are in need of encouragement even though it has to be a carefully kept secret.” [34]
And when he reiterated this theme to the grand duke of Baden, the latter replied, regarding the need to keep the Zionist societies legal in Russia: “Pobedonostev ought to hear that. You should tell it to him.” [35] The grand duke had just one worry, according to Herzl:
“He took my project for building a state with the utmost earnestness. His chief misgiving was that if he supported the cause, people might accuse him of anti-Semitism.” [36]
When Herzl met German foreign minister von Bulow, “The anti-socialist aspect of Zionism was gone into in the greatest detail.” [37] And when he finally got to see the Kaiser, he lost no time in explaining: “We were taking the Jews away from the revolutionary parties.” [38] The climax of Herzl’s search for anti-Semitic allies came with his visit in August 1903 to the tsar’s interior minister, von Plehve, who had organised the pogroms at Kishinev barely four months previously. As Herzl was explaining Zionism, Plehve interrupted him: “You don’t have to justify the movement to me. Vous prêchez un converti” (You are preaching to a convert). [39]
This meeting was crucial to Herzl’s plans. Alone amongst political movements, Zionism in Russia was to remain legal. Plehve wrote a letter pledging “moral and material assistance”, a letter which became “Herzl’s most cherished asset.” [40] (It is difficult to overestimate the loathing with which the tsarist ministers were held in by Jews. The name of Plehve “had a resonance of evil later echoed later by that of Adolf Eichmann.” [41]) As a result of Herzl’s lobbying “there was no prohibition on Zionist activities and an official permit was even given for the holding of the second conference of Russian Zionists at Minsk (September 1902).” [42]
On February 17 1904, Plehve visited London, where he was interviewed by Lucien Wolfe for The Times. Plehve all but admitted that he had organised the pogroms “because Jewish youth were wholly giving themselves over to the revolutionary movements”. However, he “would not oppose the encouragement of Zionist ideas in Russia so far as they were calculated to favour emigration” and “he also thought that for non-emigrants they might be useful as an antidote to socialist doctrines.” [43] Years later Jabotinsky, leader of the revisionist Zionists, was to hold similar talks with the Ukrainian leader, Petlyura, whose fascist gangs murdered some 100,000 Jews between 1918 and 1921. As Lacquer admits, “The main culprit regarding the pogroms were the nationalist forces under Petliura.” [44]
It is often claimed that Zionism is a progressive, even socialist, movement. Yet the phenomenon of ‘socialist’ Zionism occurred only because Jewish workers in Eastern Europe gave their backing to the revolutionary and socialist parties, since they fought anti-Semitism. The Bund’s leaders claimed that the socialism of the left Zionists was a deliberate sham, that they wore a red mask to hide their real intentions and to adjust themselves to the radical Zeitgeist. [45] Of ‘left’ Zionism, Lucas notes: “Zionism came into direct conflict with the Jewish proletariat’s perceived interest. It was in this context that the ideas of socialist Zionism were formulated.” [46] In practice whenever the needs of Zionism and socialism conflicted, it was the latter which gave way. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second president, put it succinctly in 1921:
“Whenever we come across a contradiction between national and socialist principles, the contradiction should be resolved by relinquishing the socialist principle in favour of the national activity. We shall not accept the contrary attempt to solve the contradiction by dispensing with the national interest in favour of the socialist idea.” [47]

Justifiable reaction
It was a commonplace among the Zionist leaders that anti-Semitism was an understandable, if not justified, reaction to an alien Jewish presence. Jacob Klatzkin, an important Zionist intellectual and editor of its official paper, Die Welt, and co-editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, argued: “We are in a word naturally foreigners. We are an alien nation in your midst and we want to remain one.” [48] Klatzkin was inevitably drawn into justifying anti-Semitism:
“The contribution of our enemies is in the continuance of Jewry in eastern Europe. One ought to appreciate the national service which the Pale of Settlement performed for us ... we ought to be thankful to our oppressors that they closed the gates of assimilation to us and took care that our people were concentrated and not dispersed.” [49]
This theme, that anti-Semitism contains a force for good, is a constant one in Zionism, as was Klatzkin’s hatred of the Jewish diaspora (Galut):
“Galut can only drag out the disgrace of our people and sustain the existence of a people disfigured in both body and soul – in a word, of a horror. At the very worst it can maintain us in a state of national impurity and breed some sort of outlandish creature … The result will be something neither Jewish nor gentile – in any case, not a pure national type ...” [50]
The logic was clear: “Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends who desire to defend our rights.” [51] Nor was this merely rhetorical. At one meeting against anti-Semitism, called by the German Jewish communal body Centralverein, “Zionist and anti-Semitic hecklers took the same ground.” [52] As Niewyk asks, “Did the Zionists’ view of deformed Jewish lives outside of Palestine reinforce the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews as materialists, exploiters and traitors?” [53]

Herzl’s later successor and first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, negotiated the Balfour declaration. As home secretary in 1905, Arthur J Balfour had introduced the Aliens Act to keep out Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms. In 1902 Herzl had given evidence to the Royal Commission on Aliens’ Immigration, advocating restrictions on Jewish immigration: “Herzl’s appearance before the commission could have only two effects. The anti-Semites would be able to say that Dr Herzl, the expert, maintained that a Jew could never become an Englishman.” [54] When requested by Lord Rothschild not to support those advocating restrictions on Jewish immigration, he replied:
“I would be a mean creature if I said only things that could lead to a restriction of immigration. But I would be one of those mean creatures to whom the English Jews ought to erect a monument out of gratitude, because I saved them from an influx of east European Jews and thus perhaps anti-Semitism.” [55]
Besides being an anti-Semite, Balfour was also an ardent Zionist. Even today the Zionist headquarters in Finchley are called Balfour House. The main anti-immigration group of the early 20th century was led by Tory MP William Evans-Gordon. In his autobiography Weizmann wrote:
“The Aliens Bill in England and the movement which grew up around it were natural phenomena which might have been foreseen ... Whenever the quantity of Jews in any country reaches saturation point, that country reacts against them … England had reached the point when she could or would absorb so many Jews and no more … The reaction against this cannot be looked upon as anti-Semitism in the ordinary or vulgar sense of that word ... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudice ... he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British empire, but he failed to see why the ghettos of London or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch of the ghettos of Warsaw and Pinsk.” [56]
Perhaps this sentiment is best summed up by Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua: “Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.” [57]
In the next article we will see how the traditional Zionist attitude to anti-Semitism did not change in the era of the Nazi holocaust. On the contrary, if anything, it became firmer, sealing the fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the process.
Notes
1. B. Kimmerling, Politicide, London 2006, p.123.
2. Jewish Chronicle, August 6 2004.
3. D. Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, October 13 2004.
4. See R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jewry, New York 1985, p.19.
5. See, for example, G. Reitlinger, The final solution, London 1953, p.388. The Slovakian catholic fascists, who had no compunction in deporting ‘full’ Jews, refused to allow baptised Jews to be deported. The same was true throughout Europe, including Hungary and Romania.
6. See A. Ruppin, The Jews in the modern world, London 1934, p.22; cited in A. Leon, The Jewish question – a Marxist interpretation, New York 1980, p.68.
7. L. Pinsker, Autoemanzipation, ein Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen, von einem russischen Juden, Berlin 1882, p.5.
8. A. Leon, op. cit., p.247.
9. On the Jewish question, Selected essays by Karl Marx, New York 1926, p.88.
10. A. Leon, op. cit., p.71.
11. I. Shahak, Jewish history, Jewish religion, London 1994, p.52.
12. Ibid., pp.66-67.
13. A. Leon, op. cit., p.226.
14. N. Weinstock, Zionism, a false messiah, 1969, p.39.
15. D. Vital, The origins of Zionism, Oxford 1980, pp.51-55.
16. Quoted in A. Hertzberg, The Zionist idea – a historical analysis and reader, New York 1981, pp.169-170.
17. I. Deutscher, The Russian Revolution and the Jewish question, The Non-Jewish Jew and other essays, pp.66-67.
18. M. Lowenthall, The diaries of T Herzl, New York 1962, p.91.
19. D. Stewart, Theodor Herzl, New York 1974, p.25.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p.251 fn.
22. Ibid., p.322.
23. M. Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, Foreword, New York 1958.
24. Ibid., p.49. See also p.71.
25. R. Patai (ed.), The complete diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol.1, London 1960: entry for June 11 1895.
26. N. Lucas, The modern history of Israel, New York 1975, p.18.
27. Complete diaries, pp.275-76.
28. N. Syrkin, The Jewish problem and the socialist-Jewish state; cited in A. Hertzberg op. cit., p.337.
29. Reitlinger estimates that 60-65,000 French Jews died in the extermination camps, Hilberg puts the figure at 75,000 out of some 300,000.
30. D. Stewart, Theodore Herzl – artist and politician, London 1974, p.164.
31. Ibid., p.167.
32. Ibid., p.6.
33. L. Stein, The Balfour declaration, London 1961, p.162.
34. R. Patai (ed.), op. cit., p.596.
35. Ibid., p.657.
36. M. Lowenthall, op. cit., p.118.
37. Ibid., p.666.
38. Ibid., p.729.
39. R. Patai (ed.), op. cit., p.1,525.
40. M. Menhuin, Decadence of Judaism in our time, New York 1969, p.46.
41. D. Stewart, op. cit., p.316.
42. C. Weizmann, Letters and papers, Vol 2, Oxford 1971, p.284.
43. Ibid., Vol.3, p.216 fn.
44. W. Lacqueur, A history of Zionism, New York 1975, p.441.
45. B. Ehud, Zionismus oder Sozialismus, Warsaw l899, p.30; and L. Monst Origins of the Russian-Jewish, Melbourne 1947, p.136; cited in W. Lacqueur, op. cit., p.273.
46. N. Lucas, op. cit., p.35.
47. Achduth, No.16, Tel Aviv 1921; cited in Machover and Offenburg, Zionism and its scarecrows, pp.49-50.
48. J. Klatzkin, Krisis und Entscheidung in Judentum, Berlin 1921, p.118; cited in K. Hermann, Zionism and racism, Guildford 1976, p.204.
49. Ibid., p.205.
50. Ibid., p.322-23.
51. J. Klatzkin in B. Matovu, The Zionist wish and the Nazi deed; cited in U. Davies, Zionism – utopia incorporated, p.17.
52. D.L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, Louisiana, p.139, fn.68; citing Israelitisches Familienblatt, June 3 1920.
53. Ibid.
54. W. Lacqueur, op. cit., p.119.
55. R. Patai (ed.), op. cit., pp.1,292-93.
56. C. Weizmann, Trial and error, New York 1966, pp.90-91.
57. Jewish Chronicle, January 22 1982.

Part 2

Tony Greenstein continues his examination of the unholy alliance between anti-Semitism and Zionism. With the coming to power of the Nazis the collaboration reached new depths
In his address to the 20th Zionist congress in August 1937, Chaim Weizmann recalled being asked whether he was saying that Palestine could accommodate all six million of Europe’s Jews. He replied:
“The old ones will pass, they will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust, in a cruel world … Two millions, and perhaps less. She’erit Hapletah. We have to accept it.” [1]
Six years later, Ben-Gurion, chair of the Jewish Agency (JA) in 1943, warned that “Hitler’s regime puts the entire Jewish people in danger.” [2] The Nazis had made their intentions very clear. On January 30 1939 Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag, declared:
“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race throughout Europe.” [3]
The Zionist record in relation to the holocaust was the logical outcome of a movement which, throughout the war, and in the face of the Nazi exterminations, prioritised above everything the building of a Jewish state.

Racial definitions of Jewry
German anti-Semites had long given their seal of approval to Zionism. Heinrich Class, president of the Pan German League, was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler’s assumption of power. “German anti-Semites regarded Class’s book as ‘trailblazing’ and his influence on the National Socialists was decisive ...” [4]
In his book If I was the Kaiser he wrote:
“Those who regard the Jews as a foreign race … must honour the fact that 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 according to the natural laws of race ... the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews, the adherents of the racial theory, have always asserted ...” [5]
Kurt Blumenfeld of the Union of German Zionists wrote to Walter Rathenau, a government minister: “Under no circumstance does a Jew have the right to represent the affairs of another people.” [6]
At no time did the Zionist movement join any campaign against the Nazis. [7] Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who later became chairman of the American Jewish Congress (AJC), wrote:
“[The Jews] have been drawn out of the last recesses of christening and mixed marriages. We are not unhappy about it … We want to replace assimilation by something new. The declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built according to the principles of purity of the nation and race can only be honoured and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind.” [8]
On June 21 1933, the German Zionist Federation wrote a memorandum to the Nazi government:
“On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit in our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible … Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews.” [9]
On January 28 1935, Reinhard Heydrich, the “real engineer of the final solution” [10], issued a directive stating:
“The activity of the Zionist-orientated youth organisations … lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership … [these organisations] are not to be treated with the strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German Jewish organisations (assimilationists).” [11]
In April 1935 Heydrich issued another directive advocating the harassment of the non-Zionist German Jewish organisations. The result was that “Zionist groups were the only ones of a political nature that were allowed to continue functioning.” [12]
In October 1941 the Gestapo demanded that the renamed Reichsvereinigung hand over several thousand names to them and questionnaires. They acceded to the demand “in order to be able to do as much good as possible in the interests of the victims.” [13]
On May 15 1935, Schwarze Korps argued that
“The Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine are helping to build their own Jewish state ... The assimilation-minded Jews deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany ... in order to subvert National Socialist principles.” [14]
As Hanna Arendt pointed out, “It is indisputable that during the first stages of their Jewish policy, the National Socialists thought it proper to adopt a pro-Zionist attitude.” [15] Arendt’s book caused outrage in the Zionist movement. Her crime was to shine a light on events that the Eichmann trial had been designed to bury. A campaign of smears and disinformation against Arendt began.
“Even before its publication, this book became both the centre of a controversy and the object of an organised campaign ... The clamour centred on the ‘image’ of a book which was never written … I allegedly had claimed that the Jews had murdered themselves. And why had I told such a monstrously implausible lie? Out of ‘self-hatred’, of course.” [16]
One of the most infamous of the Nazi measures was the requirement for Jews to wear the yellow star. Robert Weltsch, editor of the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau, coined the slogan “Wear it with pride, the yellow star.” [17]
On September 15 1935, the Nuremburg laws, “the most murderous legislative instrument known to European history” [18] , were enacted, depriving German Jews of their citizenship and forbidding sexual relations between Jews and Aryans. The introduction to the Nuremburg laws stated:
“The least amount of opposition to the underlying ideas of the Nuremburg laws has been raised by the Zionists, because they know at once that these laws represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people as well.” [19]
Arendt noted in the Eichmann trial that
“... there certainly was something breathtaking in the naivety with which the prosecution denounced the infamous Nuremberg laws of 1935, which had prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans, [since] Israeli citizens … seem agreed upon the desirability of having a law which prohibits intermarriage.” [20]

Transfer agreement
At a time when Jews, trade unionists and anti-fascists were launching a worldwide economic boycott of Nazi Germany, the World Zionist Organisation was secretly negotiating an economic agreement which allowed richer German Jews to liquidate their property in Germany and redeem part of the money in Palestine. This agreement was announced by the Nazis shortly before the 18th Zionist congress in Prague, in September 1933.
The Jewish Chronicle reported:
“The spectacle is puzzling to the world, whose sympathy we bespeak, and disheartening to Jews for whom the boycott is one of the few weapons to their hand and who now see themselves deserted by the movement which they most have a right to claim as an ally in their fight.” [21]
Some 60% of all capital invested in the settler economy in Palestine between 1933 and 1939 came from Nazi Germany! [22] By June 1937, the largest exporter to Palestine was Germany. [23] As Baruch Vladeck, chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee in the USA described it, Palestine had become “the official scab-agent against the boycott in the Near East”. [24]
There were some boycotts that the Zionists did support. In 1941 Agudat Yisrael began sending food packages to the inhabitants of the ghettos in Poland. In July the AJC and the Zionist Organisation of America began picketing their offices. It is estimated that 25% of the Warsaw ghetto and 18% of the Lódz ghetto died from hunger and disease even before the deportations had begun. [25] Hans Frank spoke of a “sentence of hunger death” against 1.2 million Jews. [26]

The Judenräte
Everywhere the Nazis conquered, “the most important concentration measure prior to the formation of the ghettos was the establishment of Jewish councils (Judenräte).” [27] As Eichmann commented, “The assimilated Jew was, of course, very unhappy about being moved to a ghetto. But the orthodox were pleased with the arrangement, as were the Zionists.” [28] Some two-thirds of the Judenräte consisted of Zionist supporters. [29] There were three stages to the final solution – concentration in ghettos, deportation to the east and extermination. Everywhere there were functioning Judenräte, the Nazis were successful in their plans. The Prague Community Council was to provide the model for the Judenräte, which in the towns of Poland and Russia in 1941-43 registered the names of their flock, brought them to the assembly place, and eventually followed them to the execution pits and death camps. [30] The Judenräte were reviled by the Jewish population and with good reason. The Nazis insisted that “the authority of the Jewish council be upheld and strengthened under all circumstances”. [31]
Unable to fulfil their welfare function, “they made themselves felt all the more in their implementation of Nazi decrees. With the growth of the destructive function of the Judenräte, many Jewish leaders felt an almost irresistible urge to look like their German masters.” A Nazi observer in Kraków in March 1940 “was struck by the contrast between poverty and filth in the Jewish quarter and the businesslike luxury of the Jewish community headquarters.” In Warsaw, “the Jewish oligarchy took to wearing boots”. [32] In Lódz, Rumkowski had his portrait put on ghetto stamps and currency.
Arendt’s conclusion provoked outrage among the Zionists:
“The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganised and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people.” [33]
As Steinberg observed, “This argument provoked a general outcry among the Jewish historians of the catastrophe, but could not be refuted.” After all “The Jewish Councils had been created by the Germans for the sole purpose of destroying the Jews …” [34]
SS captain Dieter Wisliceny explained:
“Our system is to exterminate the Jews through the Jews. We concentrate the Jews in the ghettos – through Jews; we deport the Jews – by the Jews; and we gas the Jews – by the Jews.” [35]

Selectivity
The Zionists negotiated with the SS to secure facilities to train their pioneers in Europe and then bring them to Palestine. Ehud Avriel noted that “… there is keen competition for patronage of our work among the Nazis.” [36]
“… these Jews from Palestine spoke a language not totally different from that of Eichmann. They had been sent to Europe by the communal settlements in Palestine and they were not interested in rescue operations. That was not their job ... They wanted to select ‘suitable material’...” [37]
The ‘rescue activities’ of the Zionist movement were concentrated on saving the elite of their own organisations in Europe. Henry Montor, executive vice-president of the United Jewish Appeal explained:
“By ‘selectivity’ is meant the choice of young men and women who are trained in Europe for productive purposes either in agriculture or industry and who are in other ways trained for life in Palestine ... There could be no more deadly ammunition provided to the enemies of Zionism ... if Palestine were to be flooded with very old people or with undesirables … Until the resources of Palestine are adequately developed, immigration of 30,000 to 60,000 a year may be possible.” [38]
Selectivity was the explicit policy of the Zionist movement, as Chaim Cohen, attorney general confirmed, when conducting the appeal of Rudolph Kastner:
“If in Kastner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions ... It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine ... Are we to be called traitors?” [39]
Lucy Dawidowicz explained:
“The Zionist movement itself set up rigid standards for prospective immigrants, … which to begin with excluded anti-Zionists as applicants for certificates. Young people in good health, with some training for agricultural work or manual trades, and persons with capital were the preferred candidates for Aliyah in a process where the needs and interests of Palestine took precedence over a strategy of rescue.” [40]

Refugeeism and territorialism
Why did all wings of the Zionist movement play down reports of annihilation and obstruct the rescue efforts of others? Nathan Schwalb, Hehalutz representative in Switzerland, provided one explanation, in a letter to Rabbi Michael Weissmandel in late 1942:
“After the victory [of the Allies], they will once again divide up the world between the nations, as they did at the end of the first war … we must be aware that all the nations of the Allies are spilling much blood and if we do not bring sacrifices, with what will we achieve the right to sit at the table when they make the distribution of nations’ territories after the war? ... Because only through blood will the land be ours.” [41]
There was no more determined opponent of ‘refugeeism’, as it was termed, than Ben-Gurion:
“… are we again, in moments of desperation, going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism ... Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe ... Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.” [42]
In a letter December 17 1938 to the Zionist Executive, Ben-Gurion explained:
“…if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people’s entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and … also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.” [43]
Zionist historian Noah Lucas commented:
“As the European holocaust erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism. Just as Weizmann in the first world war had realised the opportunities presented by the fluid political situation, so now Ben-Gurion above all others sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe.” [44]
Describing a press conference he gave on his return from the USA,

“Ben-Gurion dwelt at length and replied to questions on the following topics: America in general and American Jewry in particular, anti-Semitism in America, the Biltmore Plan … As for the holocaust – not a word. Nothing was said, nothing was asked; the subject was simply not on the agenda.” [45]
The Evian conference, which met from July 6-15 1938, was called by president Roosevelt to try and find a solution to the problem of Jewish refugees. It was a face-saving exercise and very few offers to take in refugees were made.
Christopher Sykes wrote:

“The Zionists, who played no part in the conference, were not worried by its failure ... From the start they regarded the whole enterprise with hostile indifference ... If the 31 nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need, then the pressure on the National Home and the heightened enthusiasm of Jews with Palestine would both have been relaxed. This was the last thing the Zionist leaders wished for ...” [46]
Lucas reached exactly the same conclusion:
“The Zionists were not displeased by the failure of the Evian conference, since the opening up of the barriers to immigration elsewhere would have eased the pressure in Palestine.” [47]
Apart from the Dominican Republic, which offered to admit 100,000 Jews, virtually no other state was willing to accept Jewish refugees. Beit Zvi describes in detail how the Zionist movement set out to prevent the offer of the Dominican Republic being implemented. [48] Richard Crossman, a vehemently pro-Zionist Labour cabinet minister, wrote: “The Zionists’ ... main preoccupation is not to save Jews alive out of Europe, but to get Jews into Palestine.” [49]
The chairman of the ‘Rescue Committee’ of the JA in Palestine was Yitzhak Greenbaum. Not only did the committee lack an organisational base, budget and administration, but for a long time it even lacked a permanent name! [50] Greenbaum’s explained his policy:
“And when I was asked, ‘But could you donate from the resources of the United Jewish Appeal (Foundation Fund) for the rescue of Jews in Europe,’ I said no. And I say again no … In my opinion one should resist this wave which relegates the Zionist activities to secondary importance. And because of that I was called anti-Semitic and was judged to be responsible for the fact that we do not absorb ourselves completely in the rescue activity.” [51]
Greenbaum was consistent in his views that the needs of Zionism took precedence over the need to save European Jewry. He faced criticism, in particular from Melech Neustadt of Poalei Zion-Hitahdut, yet even Neustadt sought only to save the activists of the Zionist movement, not Jewry as a whole. [52] Greenbaum related in Haboker of December 7 1942 how his comrades from Poland “would always ask me to sound the alarm and I would throw cold water on their ideas and cool their enthusiasm.” [53]
By 1936 there was an extensive system of Zionist agricultural training centres throughout north Germany. Throughout 1935-36 the JA was permitted to send training instructors from Palestine to Germany. [54] Hagannah agent Feivel Polkes “declared himself ready to gather information for Germany that did not conflict with his own political ends. Among other things, he would vigorously support German foreign policy interests in the Middle East and use his influence to secure sources of oil for the German Reich … if German foreign currency regulations for Jews emigrating to Palestine would be relaxed.” [55]
Polkes wanted the Nazis to use their powers of persuasion to ensure that German refugees only went to Palestine. The Gestapo was happy to do “everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine.” [56] SS files show that in return for information from Polkes on Jewish attempts to kill Hitler, “pressure will be exerted on the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to oblige Jews who emigrate from Germany to go exclusively to Palestine, and not to other countries.” [57] Not only were the Zionists trying to close the doors of Britain and the USA to Jewish refugees: they were pressing the Nazis not to allow anyone to leave unless it was for Palestine, and passing information to the Gestapo.

Suppressing the holocaust story
Davar, the official JA newspaper, stated in an editorial in 1944 that “The Nazi denial of extermination has a good foundation.” [58] On April 11 of that year the concentration of Hungary’s Jews begins. No mention is made in the Zionist press. On May 11 1944 another speech of Ben Gurion and again no mention of Hungary. On May 15 the deportations begin. Moshe Sharrett makes a speech – again no mention of the danger to the Hungary’s Jews. On May 21, after some 60,000 Jews have been deported, Ben Gurion delivers a speech – again no mention of Hungary’s Jews. On May 23, Ehud Avriel sends a cable from the Zionist information office in Istanbul concerning the murder of Hungary’s Jews in Auschwitz. It has had this information since the end of April. On July 10 Davar publishes a small item of news about the deportations from dissident Zionist Moshe Krauss in Budapest. One day earlier, Horthy had ordered a halt to the deportations. For six weeks, until July 16, the JA utters not a single word about the deportations from Hungary.
Kastner, leader of Hungarian Zionism, testified that:
“I learned that the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee representatives in Switzerland, Moshe Schwalb and Saly Mayer, did not give out information to the press about the mass killings: they failed to give the press the news I sent from Budapest. I sent cables also to Istanbul Rescue Committee (of the Jewish Agency). They were also kept secret from the press. I informed them almost daily by cable about the pace of extermination. My cables were never published anywhere.” [59]
When confronted at the annual meeting of the WJC by Jewish survivors from Poland as to why they had refused to publicise the exterminations, the executive stated candidly: “The opinion of the executive board was that it was inadvisable because of our diplomatic ties with these governments.” [60]
In a Histadrut Council meeting in early December 1942, Anshel Reis, from the Association of Polish Immigrants, mentioned the pamphlet Stop them now of Zygelbolm and Wedgewood containing details of the exterminations. “Where were we? Why did our news agencies not report this? What did we do to stop the slaughter?” And Moshe Aram replied “Reis is right. For months, we – the Yishuv and the Histadrut and the haverim and the functionaries – have been unwitting accomplices to murder.” [61]
As early as 1940, Beit Zvi notes that the first direct reports of the killings in Poland had reached the JA from Zionist activists Bartglass and Koerner, and again in 1941 when Jewish refugees had reached Palestine from Vilna via the USSR. [62] There were two reports published in Palestine concerning the exterminations citing Hungarian soldiers returning home, who stated that nearly a quarter a million Ukrainian Jews had been massacred. The second report, emanating from Molotov, cited the murder of 100,000 Ukrainian Jews. Alongside these reports was an editorial comment:
“There is no doubt that the Nazi murderers spilled blood like water in the areas of occupation. However, all the large numbers cited from ‘soldiers returning from the front’ must naturally be taken with considerable restraint.” [63]
The following day there was a longer piece by one of the paper’s editors, Dan Pines, which spoke of
“... various irresponsible informants (who) are continuing to kill Jews with their own hands. They scoop up every rumour … and submit it to the papers … Do the disseminators of the reports … not realise that many people are not inclined to become overly excited about the facts and figures in these reports because their exaggerated character renders them untrustworthy?” [64]
Coming from the official paper of the JA, Pines’s comments carried significant weight with the other Zionist papers. For example, Hamashkif reduced the number of Jews murdered to “thousands”. Beit Zvi comments that Göbbels “in his wildest dreams” could not have dreamt of the kind of treatment that the Zionist press accorded the holocaust. On March 23 1943, Davar was reprimanded by Yosef Gravitzky of Palcor for copying a ‘report’ from the Nazi paper Ostland, that two million Jews remained in Poland.
Numerous ‘reports’ and false information were concocted by the ministry of propaganda in Berlin. Unfortunately they found an echo in the Palestine press. The religious Zionist paper, Hatzofeh, printed an editorial The high price of blood, four days before the Zygelboim report. It declared that “if authentication should prove impossible, it is better not to carry the report”. As Beit Zvi remarked, “Before a report concerning the annihilation of Jews could be absorbed in the country … it required confirmation by the information apparatus of the Third Reich.” [65]
On August 10 1942 in an editorial Davar argued: “Some of the numbers concerning the slaughter of tens of thousands which were published recently seemed to be exaggerated … From this point of view, the Nazi denial may be trustworthy.” [66] On November 8 it reported that its information on Poland was being supplied “according to German statistics, which are faithful in these instances”. [67]
Finally on November 12 1942 a JA communiqué admitted that the final solution was underway. This was because of reports from a group of Jews from Europe, including Poland, coming to Palestine in exchange for German citizens interned by the British. [68]
On December 7 of that year Haboker ran an item, ‘Sensational announcement by Y. Greenbaum, chairman of the Rescue Committee: We knew about the massacres in August but didn’t make them public’ [69]
A further report arrived in Geneva concerning the Vatican’s apostolic mission, Monsignore Martilotti, of Slovakia. It detailed the deportation of Slovakia’s Jews. For two weeks, until August 30, Richard Lichteim of the JA delayed sending it to Palestine. [70]
Notes
1. A. Hertzberg, The Zionist idea – a historical analysis and reader, New York 1981, p.588.
2. S. Teveth, Ben-Gurion – the burning ground 1886-1948, Boston 1987, p.445.
3. G. Reitlinger, The final solution, London 1953, p.22.
4. L. Dawidowicz, The war against the Jews 1933-45, London 1975, p.88.
5. P. Massing, Rehearsal for destruction, New York 1949, p.247.
6. N. Weinstock, Zionism – a false messiah, London 1979, p.135.
7. D.L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, Louisiana, p.372.
8. Wir Juden, Berlin 1934, p.154.
9. L. Dawidowicz, op. cit., pp.231-2; F. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine question, London 1985, p.42; L. Brenner Zionism in the age of the dictators, Croom-Helm, 1983, pp.48-49.
10. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.13.
11. Ibid., pp.118, 240.
12. F. Nicosia, op. cit., p.57.
13. Ibid., p.179.
14. L. Dawidowicz, op. cit., p.118, citing Schleunes, The twisted road to Auschwitz.
15. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem – the banality of evil, London 1994, p.58.
16. Ibid., pp.282-84.
17. Ibid., p.59.
18. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.7.
19. F. Nicosia, op. cit., p.51.
20. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.7.
21. L. Brenner, Zionism in the age of the dictators, Westport 1983, p.73.
22. Ibid., p.65.
23. F. Nicosia, op. cit., p.49.
24. L. Brenner, 51 documents, New Jersey 2002, p.93.
25. L. Steinberg, Jews Against Hitler, New York 1978, p.182.
26. Ibid., p.216.
27. R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.75.
28. L. Brenner, 51 documents, New Jersey 2002, p.274.
29. I. Trunk, Judenrat: the Jewish councils in eastern Europe under Nazi occupation, New York 1972.
30. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.24.
31. Ibid., p.299.
32. R. Hilberg, op. cit., pp.76-77.
33. Ibid., p.125.
34. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.109.
35. B. Hecht, Perfidy, New York 1961, fn 68, p.261. Hecht’s book shook the Zionist movement to its foundations. The Zionists attacked Hecht for not being a good Zionist (i.e., not keeping quiet!).
36. E. Avriel, Open the gates, London 1975, p.72.
37. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.61.
38. B. Hecht, op. cit., fn 7, p.255.
39. Ibid., p.195.
40. Report to the 19th Zionist congress and 4th council of the JA, July 1935; cited in L. Dawidowicz, op. cit., pp.238-39.
41. R. Moshe Shonfield, Documents and testimony on Jewish war criminals, 1977, p.27-28. When this quote was used in the play Perdition, Uri Davies was sued by Schwalb for libel. Schwalb subsequently withdrew his action. See also S. Beit Zvi, Post-Ugandan Zionism on trial, Tel Aviv 1991, pp.295-96.
42. 49th annual convention of Zionist Organisation of America, New York Times, October 27 1946. Eliezer Livneh declared during a symposium organised by Maariv in 1966 that “For the Zionist leadership, the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means” (Communist Party of Israel, Information Bulletin, 1969, p.l97).
43. Y. Elam, Introduction to Zionist history, Tel Aviv 1972, pp125-26. See also Ot, paper of youth cadre of Mapai, No.2, winter 1967.
44. N. Lucas, The modern history of Israel, 1975.
45. Ibid., p.89, citing Ha’aretz, October 9 1942.
46. C. Sykes, Crossroads to Israel 1917-1948, London 1973, p.188-91.
47. N. Lucas, op. cit., fn 2, p.458.
48. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., pp.315-64.
49. R.H. Crossman, Washington Diary, 1946.
50. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., p.99.
51. Statement to Zionist executive council on the holocaust and on the reaction, February 18 1943.
52. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., p.107.
53. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., p.45.
54. F. Nicosia, op. cit., pp.58-60.
55. Ibid., p.62.
56. Ibid., p.57.
57. Ibid., p.63. Polkes’s file in the Hagannah Archives in Tel Aviv remains closed to researchers for reasons which are self-evident (see F. Nicosia, op. cit., fn.65, p.245). Polkes arranged in his contacts with Eichmann and other Jewish ‘experts’ for arms supplies, Mauser pistols in particular, to be smuggled to Palestine in barrels of cement.
58. B. Hecht, op. cit., p.145.
59. Ibid., p.91.
60. Davar, January 12 1945.
61. Davar, December 4 1942.
62. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., p.34, citing Etgar, June 29 1961.
63. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., p.39.
64. Davar, March 17 1942.
65. Ibid., p.51.
66. Ibid., p.52.
67. Ibid., p.54.
68. S. Beit Zvi, op. cit., pp.59-60.
69. Ibid., p.64.
70. Ibid., p.69.

In his third article on Zionism, Tony Greenstein continues his examination of collaboration and denial

Part 3

Because the Nazis did not occupy Hungary till March 1944, “the country became an island of safety in an ocean of destruction” for about a third of a million Jews from neighbouring countries. [1] On April 17 1944 the Hungarian regent, Miklós Horthy, visited Hitler to discuss Hungary’s role in the war. Hitler was not best pleased with Hungary’s Jewish policy.
According to Dr Paul Schmidt,
“If the Jews there [Poland] did not want to work, they were shot. If they could not work, they had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, with which a healthy body may become infected ... Why should the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism be spared more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished.” [2]
Schmidt felt that this practice should be implemented everywhere, but by 1944 the one country in German-occupied Europe with a major Jewish community left untouched by the holocaust was Hungary. It was the only Axis country to send Jewish troops to the eastern front. [3] That might account for reports that the Hungarian army had stopped an action by local police against the Jews and that Einsatzgruppe paramilitaries had cleared an area of Jews “except for a small area occupied by Hungarian forces.” [4]
Some three-quarter million Jews were living in Hungary when Adolph Eichmann and 300 Gestapo men arrived on March 15 1944. The same evening Eichmann summoned the Jewish leaders to a conference to persuade them to form a Judenrat (Jewish council). This was a time when, according to the papal nuncio, “the whole world knew what deportation meant in practice.” [5]
The Nazis also formed a ‘rescue committee’ whose de facto leader was Rudolph Kasztner of the minority Mapai (Labour Party) faction amongst the Zionists. When they met the Zionists, Eichmann did not try to lie or deceive as to the fate of the deportees. However, the Zionists were allowed greater privileges than those normally accorded members of a Judenrat: they were “free to come and go practically as they pleased”. They were exempt from wearing the yellow star and received permits to visit concentration camps in Hungary. Kasztner “could even travel about Nazi Germany without any identification papers showing he was a Jew”. [6]
The bargain that Kasztner and Eichmann struck resulted in a train carrying 1,684 members of the Zionist elite going to Switzerland. Eichmann also offered to send 15,000-18,000 Jews to Vienna to be kept on ice (auf Eis gelegt) pending negotiations with the Allies. These Jews were actually sent to the Vienna-Strasshof concentration camp. It was only the Nazis’ military collapse that prevented the women and children being subject to ‘special treatment’. [7]
Rudolph Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz five weeks before the deportation of Hungary’s Jews (see below), wrote in the Daily Herald in February 1961:

“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.’ Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.” [8]

Even Hungary’s Zionist chief rabbi Freudiger admitted that half the Jews could have been saved if they had ignored the instructions of the Jewish councils. [9] He also admitted that he received the Vrba report about Auschwitz on May 10-11 and immediately arranged his own escape. Unfortunately the rest of Hungarian Jewry was not let in on the secret. [10] Eichmann described his relationship with the Zionists in an interview he gave to a Dutch Nazi journalist, Willem Sassens, in 1955:
“This Dr Kasztner … agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation – and even keep order in the collection camps – if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 or 20,000 Jews … was not too high for me ... With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.

“Dr Kasztner’s main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel ... As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders …
“I believe that Kasztner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood – that is, human material that was capable of reproduction and hard work. ‘You can have the others,’ he would say, ‘but let me have this group here.’ And because Kasztner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape.” [11]

In 1953 Malchiel Greenwald, produced a news sheet in Israel accusing Kasztner, by then a senior functionary of the ruling Mapai party, of being a collaborator. The government sued for libel on Kasztner’s behalf in the Jerusalem district court. Judge Benjamin Halevi found against Kasztner on all but one point. By three to two the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s judgment, but it upheld the finding of facts by the lower court. It was an explicitly political judgment.
Kasztner went to Nuremberg after the war in an attempt to exonerate Nazi leaders, including SS colonel Kurt Becher and SS general Hans Juttner. In all Kasztner tried to save seven of Eichmann’s Gestapo colleagues. In his trial, Kasztner even stated that Himmler had helped him save Jews. [12]

Kasztner was described by Robert Kempner, a senior official at the Nuremberg trial, as “running around at Nuremberg looking for Nazis he could save”. [13] Kasztner’s testimony was given on behalf of the Jewish Agency.

The Eichmann trial in 1961 was a response to the Kasztner trials. Thus began the Zionist attempt to mould the history of the holocaust into a Zionist pattern. Missing from history would be the anti-Zionist Bund and the communists, the two largest parties of the resistance. The Bund had led the resistance in Warsaw but Marek Edelman, deputy commander of ZOB, the Jewish Fighting Organisation, was deliberately not called to give evidence at the trial. [14] As Linn notes, Edelman “remained alive and kicking and refusing and, therefore, extremely inconvenient for the creation of a heroic Zionist condensing and compensating myth”. [15] Neither was Rudolph Vrba called. He was not a Zionist.

The strange case of Rudolph Vrba
On April 7 1944 two Slovakian Jews, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz, having learnt of the preparations being made to receive Hungary’s Jews. Two weeks later they began dictating what became known as the Auschwitz protocols (AP) to the Slovakian Jewish Council. By April 28 the AP was in the hands of Rudolph Kasztner. Yet there is no disputing that those few who returned alive from the deportations were wholly ignorant about what ‘resettlement’ meant. [16] News of the death camps was deliberately kept from all but the ‘rescue committee’ and Jews on the privileged train. [17]

Kasztner even travelled to his home town of Kluj to reassure the Jews living there that they would be safe where they were going, even though Kluj was but a few kilometres from the border with Romania, which actually was a refuge for Jews. However, it was not the case of the weakness of one man. Kasztner was the official representative of the Jewish Agency. It is little wonder that on October 15 1945 all the survivors who trickled back to Kluj, whatever their political complexion tried Kasztner in absentia in a people’s court and pronounced him a war criminal. [18]

On May 15 1945 the deportation of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz began (there was one train of a thousand Budapest Jews on April 28). [19] Some 440,000 of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews were exterminated.
The AP had not only been given to Kasztner and the Hungarian Zionists but to the papal nuncio in Slovakia, who forwarded them to the Vatican, and also to rabbi Weissmandel, as well as having been translated into several languages. Kasztner also sent the AP to the Zionist representatives in Istanbul and in Switzerland, Nathan Schwalb. Schwalb’s primary interest was to prevent the Vrba-Wetzler report from being published so as not to disrupt Kasztner’s negotiation with Eichmann. [20] However, the report had been through too many hands for the Zionists to silence. A copy reached the representative of the Czech government in exile, Dr Kopecky, on June 10, as did the ‘Polish major’s report’ from a Polish medical student who had escaped from Auschwitz on March 24 1943. Kopecky acted at once, realising that the Czech ‘family camp’ in Auschwitz was in danger of liquidation. By June 18, the contents of the Vrba report were broadcast on the BBC.

Weissmandel ran a one-man rescue campaign. He was a man of many contradictions. An orthodox rabbi, he had been a philosophy student at Oxford and did everything he possibly could to prevent the holocaust, but politically he was naive, working closely with Zionists like Gizi Fleischmann on the Slovak Jewish Council. On May 15 1942 a constitutional law had been passed which exempted categories of Jews from deportation, including all those baptised before 1939. [21] By June 1942 the deportation of Slovakia’s Jews had stopped after all but 35,000 of the 88,000 had been deported.
The Bratislava Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee, including Weissmandel, believed they had stopped the deportations by bribing Wisliceny with $50,000. However, the Jews left belonged to the exempted categories. Weissmandel drew up a scheme, the Europa Plan, to save all Jews outside Poland with a $2 million bribe.

T

Comment by Gerald Goldberg on 9/22/09 at 5:50 pm

The strange case of Rudolph Vrba

On April 7 1944 two Slovakian Jews, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz, having learnt of the preparations being made to receive Hungary’s Jews. Two weeks later they began dictating what became known as the Auschwitz protocols (AP) to the Slovakian Jewish Council. By April 28 the AP was in the hands of Rudolph Kasztner. Yet there is no disputing that those few who returned alive from the deportations were wholly ignorant about what ‘resettlement’ meant. [16] News of the death camps was deliberately kept from all but the ‘rescue committee’ and Jews on the privileged train. [17]
Kasztner even travelled to his home town of Kluj to reassure the Jews living there that they would be safe where they were going, even though Kluj was but a few kilometres from the border with Romania, which actually was a refuge for Jews. However, it was not the case of the weakness of one man. Kasztner was the official representative of the Jewish Agency. It is little wonder that on October 15 1945 all the survivors who trickled back to Kluj, whatever their political complexion tried Kasztner in absentia in a people’s court and pronounced him a war criminal. [18]
On May 15 1945 the deportation of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz began (there was one train of a thousand Budapest Jews on April 28). [19] Some 440,000 of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews were exterminated.
The AP had not only been given to Kasztner and the Hungarian Zionists but to the papal nuncio in Slovakia, who forwarded them to the Vatican, and also to rabbi Weissmandel, as well as having been translated into several languages. Kasztner also sent the AP to the Zionist representatives in Istanbul and in Switzerland, Nathan Schwalb. Schwalb’s primary interest was to prevent the Vrba-Wetzler report from being published so as not to disrupt Kasztner’s negotiation with Eichmann. [20] However, the report had been through too many hands for the Zionists to silence. A copy reached the representative of the Czech government in exile, Dr Kopecky, on June 10, as did the ‘Polish major’s report’ from a Polish medical student who had escaped from Auschwitz on March 24 1943. Kopecky acted at once, realising that the Czech ‘family camp’ in Auschwitz was in danger of liquidation. By June 18, the contents of the Vrba report were broadcast on the BBC.
Weissmandel ran a one-man rescue campaign. He was a man of many contradictions. An orthodox rabbi, he had been a philosophy student at Oxford and did everything he possibly could to prevent the holocaust, but politically he was naive, working closely with Zionists like Gizi Fleischmann on the Slovak Jewish Council. On May 15 1942 a constitutional law had been passed which exempted categories of Jews from deportation, including all those baptised before 1939. [21] By June 1942 the deportation of Slovakia’s Jews had stopped after all but 35,000 of the 88,000 had been deported.
The Bratislava Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee, including Weissmandel, believed they had stopped the deportations by bribing Wisliceny with $50,000. However, the Jews left belonged to the exempted categories. Weissmandel drew up a scheme, the Europa Plan, to save all Jews outside Poland with a $2 million bribe.
The deportations in Slovakia had been stopped, but primarily due to the intervention of the Vatican. Vrba is undoubtedly right when he says that the Nazis were “amused by these unrealistic, ridiculous, and truly childish ideas” but that, as long as Auschwitz continued to function and the deportations continued, then no harm would be done. [22]
At the end of July, the papal nuncio informed the ruler of Slovakia, a catholic priest, Father Tiso, that the Jews in Lublin were being murdered. The German ambassador, Hans Elard Ludin, reported that the deportations had become very unpopular. By September 1942 the deportations had ceased. [23] When in June 1944 the Nazis demanded the remaining Slovakian Jewish community be included in the Hungarian deportations, Tiso refused. [24]
Weissmandel’s strategy was that of the Jewish leadership through the centuries. Bribe your enemies. Unfortunately the Nazis’ Jewish policy was not susceptible to monetary payment. The ideology of Lebensraum permeated all Nazi operations in the east. Himmler’s response to those who counterposed extermination to the war effort was withering: “The argument of war production, which nowadays in Germany is the favourite reason for opposing anything at all, I do not recognise in the first place.” [25]
The reasons why the Nazis persisted until the end in perpetrating the annihilation of the Untermenschen will long be debated. Undoubtedly the extermination of the Jews had its own momentum. But it is a profound mistake to suppose that the extermination of European Jewry was wholly or mainly ideological, regardless of material factors. It is not just that the colonisation of the east was itself based on material factors. The amount of money obtained from the dead of the ‘Action Reinhard’ death camps – Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec – amounted to nearly 200 million marks. In Auschwitz, “the profits were far more extensive”. [26] The existence of these large concentrations of inmates were ideal for industries such as IG Farben which built factories at Auschwitz 3 (Monowitz). Labour costs were minimal.
And there was the wealth left behind by the deportees. The property confiscated from the Jewish deportees provided the incentive for a whole class of quislings and collaborators, which freed up the Germany army for the war in the east. The extermination of European Jewry was in no sense purely ideological. [27]
During the latter part of June 1944 a dissident Zionist, Moshe Krauss, obtained a copy of the Vrba-Wetzler report and disseminated it to the embassies of neutral countries in Budapest. As a result some 33,000 Jews in Budapest were able to live in special Red Cross houses under the protection of the neutral countries. [28] Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva also sent the report to London and Washington and the Swiss papers now publicised them. On July 5 Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, threatened Horthy with reprisals if the deportations were not stopped, as did Roosevelt’s War Refugee Board. On the night of July 2 1944 there was an especially heavy air raid on Budapest [29] as a warning and on July 9 Horthy stopped any further expulsions (though Eichmann managed to deport a further 1,500 Jews in mid-July). As even Yehuda Bauer observed, “Clearly, if Horthy stopped the deportations in early July, he could have stopped them earlier as well.” [30]
At the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem there is no mention of Vrba or his fellow escapee, Wetzler, by name. When I visited the Washington Holocaust museum in 1992, it too had no reference to Vrba and his book (it had also removed reference to communists from Pastor Niemöller’s famous saying). [31] Yad Vashem and its historians play a key role in the Zionisation of the holocaust. They produce kitsch holocaust memorabilia. At one point they even sold key rings bearing the yellow Star of David. [32] Israel Shahak, the Israeli human rights activist and survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and Belsen camp, condemned it as a worthless propaganda outfit after the museum welcomed apartheid prime minister John Vorster, who was interned during the war for Nazi sympathies, and Franz-Joseph Strauss, a rightwing German leader and Nazi Party activist in the 1930s. Just as the purpose of the Eichmann trial was to show that “whatever resistance there had been had come from Zionists” [33], so the role of the Yad Vashem ‘historians’ is to produce a sanitised version of the holocaust, in which non-Zionists and anti-Zionists are erased from memory. In the words of Gila Fatran, “because Vrba is a non-Zionist, his testimony can never be as credible as Neumann’s.” [34] Eric Kulka even tried to claim that the escape from Auschwitz was a Zionist enterprise (!) [35] and that Vrba’s criticism of the Slovak Judenrat could not be justified, “since they were, after all, good Zionists who lived and worked for more than 30 years in Israel.” [36]
Lucy Dawidowicz has explained that “strategic remembering is a matter of group pride rather than historical truth”. [37] The question asked by Gideon Hausner of the survivors at the Eichmann trial – “Why did you not rebel?” – was a smokescreen for another question: “Why did the Jewish leadership in the ghettos collaborate?” [38]
Vrba and Wetzler were erased from the Zionist history of the holocaust and their post-war memoirs not translated into Hebrew, [39] nor did their escape feature in any Hebrew holocaust textbooks. [40] “We were reminded of the case of Hannah. Arendt”, whose Eichmann in Jerusalem remained unpublished in Israel for nearly 40 years. [41]
The obliteration of Vrba’s and Wetzler’s names took two forms. Either limited technical references to anonymous escapees or no reference at all. [42] For example, Livia Rothkirchen quotes Vrba by name in a 1961 book [43], but by 1974 he has become one of “two young men”. The Hebrew inscription on the walls of Yad Vashem refers to “two young Slovak Jews”. [44] Similarly, in the 1990 edition of the Israeli Encyclopaedia of the holocaust, the escapees are mentioned by name. By 2001, however, they had become “two Jewish prisoners”. [45]
The holocaust deniers also noticed what was happening. If Vrba’s affidavit was rejected by the Eichmann trial and they are absent from Zionist history books, their conclusion was that this was ‘proof’ that the Auschwitz protocols were an American forgery and the gas chambers did not exist. Butz noticed that Oskar Neumann’s 1956 autobiography Im Schatten des Todes neither mentions the names of the escapees nor the report itself. David Irving likewise seized on the treatment of Vrba and Wetzler. [46]
Bauer and the others found it “regretful” that Vrba was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1998 by Haifa University. Linn describes how
“... some Israeli scholars, even within my own university, made a desperate last-minute attempt to belittle the hero and his memoirs. This included letters of defamation to the press … bizarre phone calls to my home.”
Bauer worried as to what might have happened if Israeli high school students had read Vrba’s memoirs. But when the controversy blew up, Bauer “truly regret[ted] that Yad Vashem did not publish the book in Hebrew …” [47]
Vrba was first given academic recognition by a German magazine in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. In his reply to Vrba, Bauer agreed that Hungarian Jews were ignorant of their fate and admits that “the protocols were an important factor in stopping the deportations”. When Arendt’s reports of the Eichmann trial were published in The Observer on September 15 1963, Jacob Talmon, a professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem attacked her for raising the issue of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. In reply Vrba recalled how in April 1944 Oskar Neumann of the Zionist movement was handed his report into the extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.
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, Kasztner – bartered their own lives and the lives of 1,684 other “prominent” Jews directly from Eichmann. [48]
This exchange of letters is not to be found in Israeli Hebrew holocaust textbooks. [49] Nor is the fact that the first escapee from Auschwitz, Ziegfried Lederer, passed information to the leader of German Jewry and Zionism, rabbi Leo Baeck, who blocked that information because “living in the expectation of death by gassing would only be harder”. [50]
Yad Vashem’s understudy in London, David Cesarani, described Vrba’s allegations as a “calumny [that] can now be finally laid to rest”. [51] However, after the publication of Vrba’s memoirs and the AP in Hebrew in 1998, Yisrael Guttman acknowledged that “Kasztner was given a copy of the report on April 29 1944 … together with other Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.” [52] This was defended by Kasztner’s deputy, Andre Biss. Because of the need to safeguard the elite train, “It was therefore necessary that the object of the deportations should remain unknown.” [53]
A year after his dialogue with Vrba, Bauer too accepted that the AP had been kept from the Jews of Hungary to protect the train.
“The month of September [1944], the last period of the working group, casts a dark shadow over all of them, and on Gizi as their leader. They could have no illusions by then – but they acted just like many of the Jewish councils in Poland.” [54]
Raul Hilberg faced the same problems. Yad Vashem refused to publish Destruction of European Jewry, even though Bauer accepted it was a “monumental, brilliant, unsurpassed analysis of the Nazi bureaucracy.” [55]
Notes
1. H. Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem, London 1994, p.195.
2. G. Reitlinger The final solution, London 1953, pp.416-17.
3. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.195.
4. R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.116.
5. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.420.
6. H. Arendt, op. cit., pp.198-99.
7. L. Steinberg, Jews against Hitler (not as a lamb), London 1970, pp.328-30.
8. B. Hecht, Perfidy, New York 1961, p.261, fn 68.
9. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.203.
10. R. Linn, Escaping Auschwitz, New York 2004, p.38. At the Eichmann trial a survivor disrupted the trial and was thrown out for accusing Freudiger of having saved himself at the expense of the rest of his community.
11. L. Brenner, 51 Documents, New Jersey 2002, pp.280-81, citing Adolf Eichmann in Life, December 5 1960. Eichmann talks of “human material” whose purpose is to serve the state. This was exactly how the Zionists themselves talked. Weizmann in 1925 observed that “a certain part of the human material which gathered in the country during the Fourth Aliyah is not suited to the country nor is the country suited to them” (Carpi and Yogev [eds.], Studies in the history of the Zionist movement and of the Jewish community in Palestine, Vol.1, Tel Aviv 1975, p.169.
12. B. Hecht, op. cit., p.152.
13. R. Linn, op. cit., p.51.
14. See The ghetto fights, Bookmarks, September 1990.
15. R. Linn, op. cit., p.87, citing I Zertal, Death and the nation, Tel Aviv 2002, pp.56-57.
16. R. Linn, op. cit., p.4, citing Y. Bauer, Jews for sale?, Yale 1994.
17. Unlike the rest of Kluj’s 20,000 Jews, the 388 selected Jews received specific information about Auschwitz. When the train of the privileged stopped at Auschwitz this caused panic and when they arrived in Linz in Austria, the passengers refused to take showers (R. Linn, op cit, p.46).
18. B. Hecht, op. cit., p.173.
19. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.423.
20. R. Linn, op. cit., p.28.
21. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.389.
22. R. Vrba, I escaped from Auschwitz, appendix 5, p.421, London 2006. Steinberg reaches the same conclusion about the reason why the deportations were stopped (L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.325).
23. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.390.
24. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.204-05.
25. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.273.
26. R. Linn, op. cit., p.436.
27. R. Vrba, op. cit., pp.425-40.
28. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., pp.441-42.
29. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.201.
30. R. Linn, op. cit., p.34.
31. Ibid., p.108, citing R. Braham, S. Miller (eds.), The Nazis’ last victims, Detroit 2002, p.91.
32. A. Elon, The Israelis, New York 1981, p.208.
33. Ibid., p.122.
34. R. Linn, op. cit., p.89.
35. Ibid., p.12, citing E Kulka, Five escapes from Auschwitz, Columbia 1986, p.206.
36. Ibid., p.67.
37. Ibid., p.91.
38. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.124.
39. R. Linn, op. cit., p.4.
40. Ibid., p.5.
41. Ibid., p.7.
42. Ibid., p.53.
43. Ibid., p.58.
44. Ibid., pp.64, 59.
45. Ibid., p.60.
46. Ibid., p.71.
47. Ibid., pp.110-11. Bauer claims elsewhere that he, not Linn, was responsible for the honorary doctorate from Haifa.
48. Ibid., p.12.
49. Ibid., p.13.
50. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.304; see also R. Linn, op. cit., p.16. “This, however, does not prevent the authorities from widely commemorating his life’s work in Israel …” p.131, fn.5.
51. Ibid., citing D. Cesarani, Genocide and rescue , Oxford 1997, p.15.
52. R. Linn, op. cit., p.72, citing S. Guttman, Vezikaron, Jerusalem 2002.
53. Ibid., p.80, citing J. Robinson, And the crooked shall be made straight, New York 1965, p.61.
54. R. Linn, op. cit., p.123.
55. R. Linn, op. cit., p.91, citing Y. Bauer, Rethinking the holocaust, New Haven 2001, p.55.
Popular opposition to anti-semitism saved thousands of Jews under Nazi occupation, writes Tony Greenstein in this concluding article – despite rather than because of Zionism
Part 4
It is an article of faith among Zionist ideologues [1] that anti-Semitism was something that affected all Germans and all classes, conveniently forgetting that in November 1932 the socialists (SPD) and communists (KPD) together outpolled the Nazis. Yet even in Nazi Germany itself, of the 265,000 deported or eligible to be deported by January 1942, some 20,000 were hidden by the populace and half of these survived. [2] Gerald Reitlinger estimates that 19,000 pure German Jews survived the war and perhaps 33,000 in the greater Reich and protectorate. [3] The deportation of Jews from Germany was never popular. On February 27 1943 the Wehrmacht munitions factories were surrounded and their Jewish workers arrested and taken for deportation. But Göbbels complained on March 2 that the round-up had not been that successful, as “our better circles, especially intellectuals”, had warned the Jews. And four days later “after a crowd had demonstrated against the evacuation of a home for aged Jews, Göbbels had to suspend the whole action”. [4]
When, between October 16 and November 13 1941, the SS deported over 19,000 Jews to Lódz, the population was so disgusted that the Nazis distributed leaflets blaming the Jews for all ills and accusing those who sympathised with them of being traitors. A few even wore yellow stars in sympathy. [5]
On March 9 1942 Hitler complained to Göbbels about the presence of Jewish intellectuals in Berlin. However, “after a terrific commotion in artistic circles, particularly among actors”, a number of Jews married to Aryans were released. The survival of nearly all the Mischlinge was due to the fear that it would meet with public anger and resistance. In February 1943, the Gestapo seized thousands of Mischlinge. Their Aryan wives followed them to where they were detained “and there they stood for several hours screaming and howling for their men”. Faced with the secrecy of the deportation process being exposed, the Jewish husbands were released. [6] After February 28, 18,000 Jews were left in Berlin, “precariously sheltered at night by Aryan friends”. [7]
All three capitals in the greater Reich had their underground Jewish populations, and in Berlin and Vienna there were still skeleton Jewish communal organisations. [8] In Vienna, the hidden Jews were known as ‘U-Boats’. [9] Despite their perilous position “they still faced better odds than the deportees who arrived at the killing centres”. [10]
France had over 300,000 Jews, over half of whom were foreign, and most of those were stateless. The Zionist movement had little support among French Jews and most foreign Jews supported the communists. [11] By autumn 1942 some 27,000 stateless Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, [12] but when the Nazis sought permission to deport French Jews, the French authorities were implacably opposed to the request. [13] The French also refused to revoke the naturalisation of Jews.
Several thousand Jewish communists were involved in the resistance and they were responsible for the rescue of thousands of children. [14] The SS complained of the sympathy of the population with the arrested children and even the French police were unreliable. In Lyons, Klaus Barbie was prevented from arresting up to 3,000 Jews by the Italian Fourth Army. [15] By April 1944, two months before D-Day, there were still 250,000 Jews in France: “The Nazis, it turned out, possessed neither the manpower nor the willpower to remain ‘tough’ when they met determined opposition.” [16] Contrary to the views of Herzl and Nordau, the roots of the emancipation went deep.
One of the reasons for the Nazis’ failure was that the Judenräte (Jewish Councils), which were not set up in France till after 1941, had little support in the Jewish community. Even then the Nazis had to appoint two Jewish directors from Vienna “and the committee was boycotted by French-born Jews”. [17]
Belgium was ruled by a German military administration under General Falkenhausen. The Belgian railway men “contrived to leave doors unlocked or to arrange ambushes, so that Jews could escape”. [18] Even the Belgian police did not cooperate with the Nazis.
Because the Jewish leadership had already fled, with 40,000 others, the Jewish Council commanded little authority and unsurprisingly very few Belgian Jews were deported. [19] The resistance assassinated one of its leaders and henceforth the Judenräte “were as much afraid of the resistance movement as they were of the Gestapo”. [20]
Nearly all Belgium’s Jewish children were hidden in children’s homes, schools for the sick and private residences. [21] The one attempt at a mass round-up of Antwerp’s Jews was on September 3 1943. At the insistence of Queen Elizabeth and Cardinal van Roey, they were released. When the country was liberated from the Nazis in the autumn of 1944, 25,000 Jews had been deported.
In Holland the Nazis set up a Jewish Council, the Joodsche Raad, which “unfortunately managed to win the trust of the Jewish population” [22] and proceeded to deport the stateless Jews first – a quarter of the total Jewish population of 140,000. [23] “The result was a catastrophe unparalleled in any western country; it can be compared only with the extinction … of Polish Jewry.” [24] Three quarters of all Jews in Holland were exterminated. And yet this was despite the overwhelming opposition of the local populace. Eichmann recalled that “the battle for the Jews was especially hard and bitter” – the Dutch were resolutely opposed to anti-Semitism, even though they faced the full weight of Nazi rule. [25] The Catholic Church even forbade the administration of the holy sacrament to Dutch Nazis. [26]
When the Gestapo, along with some Dutch collaborators, raided the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam on February 11, the workers of the Kattenburg raincoat factory in the Waterloolein came to their help, and one worker died. The funeral of this worker six days later led to further riots. [27] On February 19 1941 the Dutch Nazi WA raided the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, but they were beaten off by the Knokploegen combat groups – the majority of whom were socialists and communists. When 40 WA returned, and tried to march through the Jewish quarter two days later, 20 were wounded and one killed. Meanwhile Dutch workers began attacking the homes of prominent members of the WA. [28]

Mass resistance
Holland was the only country in all Europe where students went on strike when Jewish professors were dismissed. Amsterdam was the only European city where there was a general strike against the deportation of Jews. But this was 1941 and the Nazis rushed four police and SS battalions to Amsterdam. The display of force succeeded and 60 Dutch workers were sent to German concentration camps. [29] Many years later, dockers’ leader Piet Naak was awarded a decoration from Israel for having led the strike. He sent it back saying that, just as he had supported the Jews in 1941, he now supported the Palestinians. [30]
A large number of Jews lived underground, at least half of whom were caught. [31] Of the survivors, 8,610 were married to non-Jews, a few thousand were working for the government and at least 20,000 were hiding with Aryans. Nearly a thousand Dutch Jews in mixed marriages avoided deportation through false sterilisation certificates. [32] When on June 20 1943 a large proportion of the Joodsche Raad were arrested, “the Jews found it difficult to conceal their delight”. [33]
In Norway, the bulk of the 1,700 Jews were stateless German refugees, who were seized in October and November 1942. Sweden immediately offered asylum, and Swedish nationality, which the Nazis rejected, but as a result about 900 Jews were smuggled into Sweden. Some two thirds of Norway’s Jewish community escaped deportation. [34]
Denmark was “almost the only happy-ending story” in Nazi-occupied Europe. [35] The country retained its government until the autumn of 1943. The Danes were resolutely opposed to German anti-Semitism and when the Nazis suggested introducing the yellow badge they were told that the king would be the first to wear it. The Nazis did not even manage to distinguish between native and foreign Jews. [36]
After riots broke out in Danish shipyards, when the dockworkers refused to repair German ships, Himmler decided to tackle the Jewish question. However, General von Hannecken, the military commander, “refused even to issue a decree requiring all Jews to report for work”. [37]
On October 1 police were brought specially from Germany, to round up the Jews, but they were told that not to break down doors, because the Danish police might object and “they were not supposed to fight it out with the Danes”. [38] Just 477 Jews were seized and deported to the model camp, Thereinstadt. All returned, bar those who died natural deaths, including a 102-year-old woman. [39] Most Jews had been forewarned and went into hiding. Many were shipped by fishermen to Sweden.
The Danish Jews were fortunate that the Swedish Zionists had not learnt of the plans to rescue them. In 1939 the Swedish parliament passed a law permitting entry to German Jews. Chief rabbi Dr Ehrenpreisz requested the Swedish government not implement this legislation. But “Ehrenpreisz did not succeed in thwarting that wonderful rescue effort, since it came to him as a surprise too”. [40]
In Italy and Italian-occupied areas, the deportations were carried out against “unremitting Italian opposition”. [41] When the Zionists protested about the extent of mixed marriages, Mussolini exclaimed that it was “proof of the perfect civic, political and above all moral equality between all Italians, whatever their remote descent”. [42]
Italy was the scene of the only successful attack by partisans on a Jewish concentration camp, Servigliano. [43] Italian opposition to the deportation of their Jews had a knock-on effect on other fascist regimes. General Roatta declared that it was “incompatible with the honour of the Italian army” to deliver Jews from Yugoslavia to the Nazis [44] and even prevented the Nazis from commandeering Jewish apartments. [45]
When the Nazis occupied Vichy France, the Italian zone in the south became a place of relative safety for the 50,000 Jews living there. Twenty-two thousand Jews were deported to the interior of the Italian zone. Eichmann sent Alois Brunner to Nice and Marseilles, but by the time he arrived the French police had destroyed all the lists of registered Jews. [46] When the Italian army left Yugoslavia, the Jews left with them. [47]
Mussolini for a long time had close relations with Zionist leaders such as Weizmann. In 1937 Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky came to an agreement with Mussolini whereby a navy school at Civitavechia would be established as a training camp for the revisionist youth group, Betar. Jabotinsky believed that “it would be better … if fascist Italy became the mandatory power in Palestine instead of Great Britain”. [48]
Even when Mussolini introduced, in 1938, anti-Jewish legislation, the exemptions were such that probably the majority of Jews were excluded. [49] In December 1943 the Nazis decided to tackle the obstruction of the Italian authorities and arrest 8,000 Rome Jews themselves. Most of the intended victims were, however, warned in time and 7,000 escaped. [50] In the spring of 1944 Italy the Nazis deported some 7,500 Jews to Auschwitz, of whom 600 survived. [51] Of the 2,500 Jews in Trieste when the Nazis marched in, less than 500 were found on May 7 1945. [52]
In April 1941 when the Nazis entered Yugoslavia, they established the puppet state of Croatia under Ante Pavelić. By the autumn of 1943 34,000 Jews had been deported. Even then the country was not Judenrein (‘cleansed of Jews’), as a paragraph in the anti-semitism legislation made ‘honorary Aryans’ of Jews who had made a contribution to “the Croat cause” – many of the ruling clique in Croatia were married to Jewish women. The 1,500 Jewish survivors in this area were all highly assimilated: “Assimilation in the east, when it was at all possible, offered a much better chance for survival than it did in the rest of Europe.” [53]

Partisans
In Serbia the Nazis faced the most determined partisan resistance. All Jews were killed on the spot. Some 5,000 of them who joined the partisans survived, again demonstrating that resistance always offered better chances of surviving than collaboration. Reitlinger suggests that many thousands more survived either in Italy or Albania or through rapid assimilation. [54] However, by July 1942 Belgrade was officially Judenrein. [55]
The Nazis complained that Bulgaria had “no understanding of the Jewish problem”, according to Lucien Steinberg. It had a strong Communist Party, led by Georges Dimitrov, who had ridiculed Himmler in the Reichstag fire trial. “While communist parties sprang to the defence of the hunted Jews everywhere in occupied Europe, they were more vigilant in Bulgaria than elsewhere.” [56] In January 1941 the government had agreed to introduce anti-Jewish legislation, but various exemptions rendered it meaningless, with the result that “an epidemic of conversions broke out”. In July 1942 the Jewish badge was introduced, but 80% of Jews [57] did not wear it and those who did received so much sympathy that “they are actually proud of their sign”. [58]
The Bulgarian government then decided to expel all Jews from Sofia to the countryside, which was not what the Nazis wanted, since this caused their dispersal. Not that it mattered. In protests organised by the communists, tens of thousands of Bulgarians demonstrated outside the palace and took to the streets, trying to stop the Jews being taken to the rail stations. [59] The Nazis were also unable to form a Jewish Council: “The same thing happened in Bulgaria as was to happen in Denmark … the local German officials became unsure of themselves and were no longer reliable.” The German ambassador, Adolf Beckerle, informed the SS that nothing more could be done. The result being that “not a single Bulgarian Jew had been deported or had died an unnatural death” when Bulgaria was liberated in August 1944. [60]
Greece was different. Two thirds of Greek Jewry lived in Salonika. Reitlinger estimates their population in 1941 at 67,200. The Nazis immediately set up in October 1942 a Jewish Council headed by Chief Rabbi Koretz, who, when he gave a speech at the Monasteriotes synagogue extolling the new life in Poland, required police protection. [61] There were no anti-Jewish decrees till July 1942. [62] In Athens so effectively were Jews hidden that only two transports to Auschwitz were filled from the Greek capital in 1944. [63] The only Jews exempt from deportation were those with foreign passports and the personnel of the Judenrat, who were eventually sent to Bergen-Belsen. Except for those who had managed to escape south to the Italian zone and a few hundred Jews in Salonika living underground or at the sorting camp at Pavlo Mela [64], nearly all Greek’s Jews perished in Auschwitz. Judenrat chairmen Koretz and Albala were sent to Bergen-Belsen as ‘exchange Jews’. On August 17 1944 the last Greek transport reached Auschwitz. It contained the entire Jewish population of the isle of Rhodes – some 1,200 people. [65]
Romania was the most anti-semitic country in pre-war Europe. It had the highest number of Jews after Poland. [66] In August 1940, marshal Antonescu, head of the Iron Guard regime, declared all Romanian Jews to be stateless, with the exception of a few hundred families. “The Zionist movement and indeed the whole of the Zionist organisation… was looked upon quite favourably by the Romanian authorities.” [67] Even after the fall of the Iron Guard government in the summer of 1941, Romanian soldiers engaged in massacres and deportations.
The Romanians entered Odessa in south Russia on October 16 [ 1941. After a landmine destroyed their headquarters, Antonescu took his revenge by killing 22,000 Jews between October 23 and 25. [68] Some 120,000 Jews of the eastern and western territories of Romania were deported beyond the Dniester river to Transdniestria. [69] Prime minister Ion Antonescu formed a Judenrat on December 16. On April 10 1944 the Red Army encountered Jews for the first time since their advance – a ghetto of 9,000 workers, the only survivors of the almost complete extermination of Besserabian Jewry three years earlier. [70] By August 1942 the Romanians had killed nearly 300,000 Jews. But then everything changed.
In the autumn of 1942 more than 70,000 Jews lived between the rivers Dniester and Bug. In February 1943 Zionist activist Ben Hecht placed an advert in the New York Times, which read: “For sale – 70,000 Jews at $50 apiece. Guaranteed human beings.” Hecht had read a Swiss newspaper clipping of an offer by the Romanian government to allow these Jews to leave Romania for that price.
The response of Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress was to issue a statement on February 23 1943 denying that such an offer had been made, and stating that “no collection of funds would seem justified”. [71] In fact, as undersecretary of state Adolph Berle confirmed to Bergson, the story was indeed true. Wise later claimed that on July 22-23 he personally obtained permission from Roosevelt to ransom the Romanian Jews, but that the arrangement was held up in the state department for five months. [72] In August 1944 Romania surrendered to the Red Army and about half of its 850,000 Jews survived. [73]
The extermination of the Polish Jews was part and parcel of the Nazis’ demographic policy of creating an “empty space” (volkloser Raum) in the east. Some three million, more than 90%, were murdered. [74] Reitlinger argues that the official figure of 157,420 who returned after the war from Russia is dwarfed by the number of Jews from Polish White Russia who chose to stay in the Soviet Union. Up to 700,000 may have escaped from Poland and eastern Galicia into Russia. A quarter of a million Jews, including those in Auschwitz, the Łódz ghetto and the hidden Jews survived the Nazi occupation. [75] (The fact that such large numbers remained concealed is testament to the fact that anti-semitism was not all-pervasive. [76]) Reitlinger estimates that between 60,000 and 70,000 of the Baltic Jews escaped the holocaust by escaping to Russia. [77]
The Ukraine contained the true ‘reservoirs of eastern Jewry’. In addition to the 568,000 Jews from east Galicia, annexed in 1939, over two million lived here. [78] When the Russians retreated in 1941, most employable Jews left with them, leaving only their families. German paramilitary Einsatzgruppe C reported that rumours about the fate of the Jews had already preceded them and that many Jewish communities were reduced by 70%-90% – and in some cases 100%. According to Einsatzgruppe B, “in many towns the Soviets had evacuated the entire Jewish population”. But for the Bolshevik revolution, despite all the subsequent Stalinist horrors, at least a million and a half more Jews would have died. [79] And this is the measure of the utter uselessness of the Zionist ‘solution’ to the Jewish question. Even in the Ukraine, Einsatzgruppen C reported that “Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take active steps against the Jews”. [80] A few weeks later they complained again that the inhabitants would not betray the hidden Jews. It was in the Baltic area, where Einsatzgruppen A operated, that the Nazis were able to count on local support. Even here Stahlecker observed: “To our surprise, it was not easy at first to set in motion an extensive pogrom against the Jews.” [81] On September 21 1942 the Nazis whined that Jews were being hidden by Poles and that the same was occurring in Galicia. Several thousand Jews joined the partisans. [82] The communists led the resistance in the ghettos, Warsaw excepted. But the Soviet Union and Stalin played no part in forming the partisans, since they had put their trust in the Nazi-Soviet pact. [83]

Holocaust reparations fraud
Exploitation of the holocaust by the Zionists has never been more blatant than when it came to the question of reparations. In 1952 the German government signed an agreement to pay $120 million to the Jewish Claims Conference (CC), to go to individual survivors of the death camps. The CC promptly annulled the agreement with Germany, using the money for Zionist projects. [84]
In August 1998 the CC secured a $1.25 billion settlement from the Swiss banks. Despite the fact that the USA was also a primary haven for transferable Jewish assets in Europe, no similar compensation scheme has been sought from them. Likewise Israel. [85] Edgar Bronfman of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) admitted that they had accumulated “roughly $7 billion in compensation monies”. [86]
The CC wanted a chunk set aside for its own ‘special fund’. Michael Kleiner, a member of the Israeli Knesset, described the CC as a Judenrat which “sits on a huge pile of money belonging to private individuals, but is doing everything to inherit [it] while they are still alive”. [87] Rabbi Israel Singer, secretary general of the WJC, said that the monies should “meet the needs of the entire Jewish people, and not just those Jews who were fortunate enough to survive the holocaust and live into old age”.
Historian Henry Friedlander has calculated that only 475,000 prisoners survived the Nazi camps in spring 1945. As Jewish prisoners made up no more than 20% of the total, it is clear that 100,000 at most survived. [88] In a May 1999 state department briefing, Stuart Eizenstat estimated the number of surviving slave labourers at between 70,000 and 90,000, putting the number of Jewish survivors at 20,000. Yet when it negotiated with Germany for compensation in 1999, the Zionists estimated the number of former Jewish slave labourers still alive at 135,000, a third more than in 1945! [89]
Not surprisingly holocaust-deniers use these false statistics to ‘prove’ that there was no holocaust. If 135,000 survivors of the camps are alive today, then 600,000 must have survived the war – half a million more than previously thought.
The Gribetz plan to allocate and distribute the Swiss monies to the holocaust survivors went even further down this road. It argued there were nearly 700,000 Jewish survivors of the slave labour camps still alive. If true it would mean at least 2.8 million Jews survived the camps. In which case the figures for the numbers of Jewish dead during the war would be less than three million. It seems that the Zionist leaders have all but admitted that the holocaust-deniers are correct. [90]
The WJC declares that it has amassed $9 billion in holocaust compensation funds, which it maintains belong to the Jewish people: i.e., the WJC itself. [91] However, when it held a holocaust reparations gala at New York’s Pierre Hotel on September 11 2000, elderly Jewish survivors, not consulted in advance of – let alone invited to – the “star-studded gala”, picketed outside. [92]

Lessons of the holocaust
The essential feature of the holocaust for Zionist propagandists is its uniqueness. According to them, there are no lessons for humanity, no universal messages as to how human beings conduct themselves – certainly nothing to be learned about racism and fascism. The only message is that whatever Israel does in the name of the Jewish people is justified. For Yehuda Bauer the holocaust’s uniqueness lies in the attempt to annihilate a whole people and what he terms “the quasi-religious, apocalyptic ideology” of the Nazis. [93] Indeed, by “subsuming the Jewish losses under a universal or ecumenical classification”, one is effectively justifying anti-Semitism. [94] It is a “betrayal of Jewish history”. [95]
This claim to uniqueness is a “distasteful secular version of chosenness”. [96] It arises from the fear that comparisons might be drawn between the Nazis’ treatment of Europe’s Jews and Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians. This injunction against comparing the holocaust to anything else breaks down, however, when the Zionists themselves make the comparison! When Begin compared the PLO to the Nazis, that was fine, but when the people of Beirut were being bombed by Israeli planes, comparisons with the Warsaw ghetto were not on.
In fact there are any number of lessons to be drawn from the holocaust. Firstly it was not unique to the Jews. Not only did it encompass both gypsies and gays, but it would also have extended to the Poles and the Slavs. [97] Poles in Germany were forced to wear a distinguishing badge, with a ‘P’ replacing the yellow star.
The use of gas chambers to murder the Jews was a direct continuation of the Nazis’ murder of the physically and mentally handicapped, of whom more than 50,000 died between December 1939 and August 1941. [98] The euthanasia programme, a “psychiatric holocaust” [99], was brought to an end by the opposition of the German people. In the summer of 1941, according to Dr Fritz Mennecke, Hitler’s train was held up by a large crowd who jeered the Führer. [100] It culminated in the sermon of Bishop Galen of Münster on August 3 1941, whose words, “especially his references to the threat of death hanging over invalids and seriously wounded soldiers, spread like wildfire”. [101] Even those populations in the east which had been indifferent to the Einsatzgruppen began to “perceive the true nature of the German racial ladder”. [102]
There are other lessons. The refusal of the Americans and the British to open up their borders to the refugees and the failure to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz raises questions about the Zionists’ quiet lobbying – “they made the point without much emphasis”. [103]
And in fact the attempted liquidation of whole peoples is anything but unique – from the slaughter of an estimated 10 million Africans in the Belgian Congo, to Rwanda, the Armenian genocide [104] and the Atlantic slave trade. But if, as the Zionists argue, the holocaust is unique, then it must be beyond understanding. It has no cause beyond the Jews themselves.

Manipulation
Despite accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ against their critics the Zionists systematically worked to sabotage rescue efforts during the holocaust. Zionism has always preached acquiescence in the face of actual anti-semitism. When President Reagan declared, at the Bitburg cemetery in 1985, that the German soldiers and Waffen SS were “victims of the Nazis just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps”, the Zionist response was one of understanding. [105] The Simon Wiesenthal Center gave Reagan the ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ award in 1988 and in 1994, the Anti-Defamation League awarded him its ‘torch of liberty’. [106] As Nathan Perlmutter of ADL explained, “real anti-Semitism” consisted of policies “corrosive of Jewish interests”, such as affirmative action and cuts in the defence budget! [107]
The cynical way that Zionist propagandists and fundraisers use the holocaust is best described by Israeli writer Boaz Evron: holocaust awareness is “an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present”. [108]
________________________________________
Notes
1. See D. Goldhagen, Hitler’s willing executioners, New York 1996.
2. L. Steinberg, Jews against Hitler, London 1970, p.19; see also H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, London 1994, p.161.
3. G. Reitlinger, The final solution London 1953, p.177. Christopher Burney estimated that 500 Jews interned in pre-war days survived in Buchenwald despite the fact that they were supposed to have been transferred to Auschwitz in October 1942 (Ibid., pp.160-61).
4. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.161, citing Göbbels’s diary for March 6 1943.
5. Ibid., p.90.
6. G. Lewy, The Nazi persecution of the gypsies, Oxford 2006, p.289.
7. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.161.
8. Ibid., p.165.
9. R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.177.
10. Ibid., p.183.
11. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.82.
12. Ibid., p.101.
13. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.165.
14. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.104.
15. Ibid., p.323.
16. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.166.
17. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., pp.72, 306.
18. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.166.
19. Ibid., p.166.
20. L. Steinberg, op. cit., pp.139, 143.
21. Ibid., pp.148-49.
22. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.131.
23. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.167.
24. Ibid.,.
25. L. Brenner, 51 documents, New Jersey 2002, p.270, citing Adolf Eichmann in Life magazine, December 5 1960.
26. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.157.
27. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.330.
28. L. Steinberg, op. cit., pp.158-59.
29. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.331; H. Arendt, op. cit., p.169.
30. C. Pottins, Labour Review, April 1981, p.669.
31. H. Arendt, op. cit., pp.168-69.
32. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.178.
33. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.161.
34. Ibid., p.351.
35. Ibid., p.345.
36. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.172.
37. Ibid., p.173.
38. Ibid.,.
39. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.163.
40. M. Shonfeld, Holocaust victims accuse, New York 1977, p.111, provides a photostat of the official protocol of the Swedish parliament alleging that Zionists obstructed the rescue of Jews to Sweden.
41. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.278.
42. Popolodi Roma, May 29 1932.
43. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.76.
44. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.177.
45. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.367.
46. Ibid., p.325.
47. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.178; see also G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.368.
48. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.58.
49. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.178.
50. The fate of the remaining 1,007 Jews was the subject of Rolf Hochhuth’s play The deputy (the representative).
51. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.180.
52. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.357.
53. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.184; see also G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.365.
54. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.358.
55. Ibid., p.363.
56. L. Steinberg, op. cit., pp.307-08.
57. Ibid., p.380.
58. H. Arendt, op. cit., pp.185-87, citing Walter Schellenburg.
59. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.309.
60. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.188.
61. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., p.372.
62. Ibid., p.371.
63. Ibid.,.
64. Ibid., p.377. Reitlinger also suggests that 2,000 may have found sanctuary in Athens. When registration of Athens Jews was ordered on December 18 1943, only 1,200 reported to the Judenrat out of the 8,000 believed to be in the city.
65. Ibid., p.378.
66. Ibid., p.394. Reitlinger estimates that before the cession of territory to Hungary and Russia there were about 725,000 Jews.
67. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.320.
68. Hilberg puts the figure at between 25,000 and 30,000 at Dalnik (R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.118).
69. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.314.
70. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., pp.240, 398.
71. B. Hecht, Perfidy, New York 1961, pp.191-92.
72. S.B. Beit Zvi, Post-Ugandan Zionism on trial, Tel Aviv 1991, p.284, citing S. Wise, Challenging years, New York 1949, pp.274-79.
73. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.193.
74. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.339.
75. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., fn. pp303-04; see also R. Hilberg op. cit., p.81.
76. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., pp.497-99, p.299.
77. Ibid., p.292.
78. Ibid., p.277.
79. R. Hilberg, op. cit., pp.107, 109.
80. Ibid., p.119.
81. Ibid., p.210.
82. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.199.
83. L. Steinberg, op. cit., p.258.
84. N. Finkelstein, The holocaust industry, London 2000, p.87.
85. Ibid., pp.115, 119, citing A. Eldar in Ha’aretz, February 21 2000, and J. Dempsey in Financial Times, April 1 2000.
86. Ibid., p.108, citing B. Neuborne in New York Times, June 24 1998.
87. Ibid., p.124.
88. Ibid., p.125.
89. Ibid., p.126.
90. Ibid., pp.159-60, fn.24.
91. Ibid., p.152.
92. Ibid., p.153.
93. Y. Bauer, Midstream (November 1998), cited by G. Seidel, The holocaust denial, Leeds 1986, p.9.
94. L. Dawidowicz, The holocaust and the historians, Cambridge, Mass 1981, p.17; cited in G Seidel, op. cit., p.11.
95. E. Wiesel, Against Silence, New York 1984, Vol 3, p.146; cited in N. Finkelstein, op. cit., p.45.
96. N. Finkelstein, op. cit., p.48, citing Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
97. H. Arendt, op. cit., p.217.
98. G. Reitlinger, op. cit., pp.129-31.
99. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.226.
100. Ibid., p.132.
101. G. Lewy, op. cit., p.265.
102. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.128.
103. Ibid., p.323.
104. The World Jewish Congress, Yad Vashem and Elie Wiesel all withdrew from an international conference on genocide in Tel Aviv because it included sessions on the Armenian genocide. See N. Finkelstein, op. cit., p.69.
105. R. Hilberg, op. cit., p.116.
106. N. Finkelstein, op. cit., p.30.
107. Ibid., p.37.
108. Ibid., p.41.

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