6. The background to collaboration

 

It is not enough to document what Kastner did and what the Supreme Court of Israel and the Israeli Government approved of him doing.  One has to ask ‘why?’.  Why did Kastner think it right to actively assist in leading hundreds of thousands to their deaths in exchange for the lives of a few?  Why did the top Zionist leadership feel compelled to defend him after this crime was proved?  Why does the Victorian Jewish Board of Depities (VJBD) continue to defend him to this day?

 

To understand this, we must look at the basic Zionist policy during the period of the Holocaust.

 

Today of course, Zionism presents itself as the representative of all Jews everywhere.  But before and during the war, Zionism was quite clear about its role as a specific political movement concerned solely with those Jews who wished to colonize Palestine, and the large majority of Jews were opposed to it.   Zionist  activity meant organizing Jewish emigration to Palestine and building a homeland in Palestine.

 

To the reproach that they didn't do enough about rescuing Jews in general from Nazi occupied Europe, Zionists could and did reply that this was not the function of Zionism, Zionism was not then, as it is not today, a movement for the protection of Jews, but a movement for establishing a Jewish State in Palestine.  The only difference is that today Zionism pretends to have a broader function and to speak on behalf of all Jews.

 

Stories about heroic Zionist efforts to smuggle Jaws into Palestine are so much a part of the popular culture in Western countries like Australia today that people tend to forget that during the Holocaust this was a disruption of the war effort, not a life saving operation.

 

The people smuggled into Palestine had already escaped from Nazi Europe and the activities to smuggle them in were not directed against the Nazis but against the British.  Failure did not mean that the refugees were returned to enemy territory, but that they were detained on other British territory such as Mauritius, instead of being allowed into Palestine.

 

Hundreds of thousands, and even millions of Jews wanted to get out of Europe alright, but Palestine was generally the last place they wanted to go.  Contrary to popular myth there was no historic or cultural link between the mass of European Jews and Palestine at all. 

Most European Jews were basically city dwellers and the U.S.A., which absorbed some two million Jewish migrants in the great exodus from Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1914 would have been the preferred destination.  Put anywhere at all, away from the Nazis, would have been welcomed.

  <>
The problem was how to get away from the Nazis, not how to get into Palestine, and the fact that most Jews did not particularly want to go to Palestine is proved by the fact that the overwhelming majority have stayed well clear, even after the State of Israel was established.

 

Those who did want to colonize Palestine had already created so much Arab antagonism with their policies of ‘conquering land’, ‘conquering labor,’ and ‘conquering trade’ (that is, boycotting Arabs), that the British authorities, who were quite sympathetic to Zionism, had to restrict Jewish immigration. 

Otherwise, pro-Nazi agitators like the Grand Mufti would have been assisted to win substantial support for the Axis cause, especially among the feudal ruling class,

  <>
Thus from every point of view, except for building a Jewish State, immigration to Palestine should have been the last thing on any Jew's mind during the second world war.  But for Zionists, the Jewish State was everything and this warped perspective is now the subject of praise.  <>

For the majority of mainstream Zionists, that warped perspective meant sitting out the war building up the 'National Homeland' in Palestine and organizing campaigns for unrestricted Jewish immigration and for a Jewish Army, while the overwhelming majority of Jews, like everyone else during the second world war, had other concerns which included organizing partisan resistance movements and enlisting en masse, in the Allied Armies.

 

6.1       Failure to support Resistance

 

The Victorian Jewisg Board of Deputies (VJBD) has specifically complained about a 'Palestine Speaks' broadcast, of 5 June 1977, which said:

 

'Not only did the International Zionist movement with its world-wide political influence, its financial intelligence and arms-smuggling resources fail to send any arms or ammunition to help the beleaguered ghetto fighters…'

  <>
But that statement is a simple fact.

 

The World Zionist Organization prided itself on its international organization and especially its intelligence network and so on.  It was the only specifically Jewish international organization which hid liaison offices both inside, and on the periphery of Nazi Europe; which had direct organizational links with Zionist groups throughout Europe and direct access to and political influence with the Allied powers, and which had been engaged in arms smuggling and financial operations.

  <>
The only other international Jewish organization was the Bund, which had far less resources and did far more to publicize the Holocaust and seek support for Jewish resistance in Europe.

 

<>The vast apparatus of the World Zionist Organization, including its illegal armed forces in Palestine etc., was not used to publicize the Holocaust and support resistance, but took part in covering it up until the Allied powers decided to publicize it.
 

This vast Zionist apparatus was not used either for assisting beleaguered ghetto fighters or aiding rescue activities. Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, organizer of rescue activities in Slovakia asks in his book ‘From the Depths’:

‘Why didn't they try, from their place of freedom, to break through to us and send us a secret messenger?  This question becomes greater when we see that the governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which were in free lands, sent secret messengers daily to their loyal people in the occupied countries.  And therefore our amazement grows.  Why don’t the great organizations of Jewry, use these messengers, if they have no other way?

 

And during all of the years since we developed this method, those in the free countries did not once attempt to send messengers  to us - rather, WE had to send them and to pay for  them.  How many did we send them only for them to return empty-handed – because those over there did not have time to answer?

 (Quoted in 'The Holocaust victims accuse', by Rabbi Moshe Shonfeld) ³²

 

<>The only known assistance from the international Zionist movement to Jewish resistance in Nazi Europe was when the British Royal Air Force parachuted some volunteers from Palestine to make contact with partisan forces.  Those who were escorted by Tito's partisans from Yugoslavia to Hungary were handed over to the Gestapo by their Zionist ‘liaison’ in Budapest - Rudolf Kastner.
 

 <>Many Zionists in Nazi Europe had no choice but to fight back against the Nazis and some acquitted themselves with honor in ghetto rebellions and partisan warfare, although these resistance activities were generally led by Communists and Bundists rather than by Zionists.
 

It is not necessary, as Dr. Foster seems to imagine, for anti-Zionist programs on 3CR to mention this fact, since it has been very thoroughly drummed in by Zionist propaganda which conveys the impression that Zionists were the main organizers of resistance.

 

As Dr. Foster mentions, the Zionist participation in the Warsaw ghetto uprising is ‘well documented'.  Indeed, it is documented to death and exaggerated in numerous stories, books and plays, on stage, screen and television, which picture the Jews of Warsaw fighting under the Blue and White Zionist flag, not mentioning that the Polish flag was flown as well.

 

Large masses of Jews organized resistance movements and took part in partisan warfare throughout occupied Europe - usually under Communist leadership, often under direct command of the Red Army, and generally making quite a substantial contribution to the Allied war effort.

  <>
Generally, Zionists preferred Masada-like last stands to the more effective form of resistance - partisan warfare.  But even at Warsaw, where their contribution was greatest, the majority of fighters were Communist, Bundist or unaffiliated.  Moreover, although both left-wing Zionists and Revisionists did make a major contribution to the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, their first target was other Zionists, mainly mainstream ones, who were leaders of the Nazi sponsored Judenrat, the ghetto police and the Jewish Gestapo.

 

The leading pro-German, anti-British Zionist theoretician, one of the well known international leaders of a dissident faction in Zionism, Dr. Alfred Nossig, was shot by the Warsaw ghetto fighters as a Gestapo agent.  Whatever role some Zionists played in the resistance activities, the plain fact is that they got little or no support from the international Zionist movement, whose leadership was too busy demanding unrestricted immigration, and a Jewish Army in Palestine.

That is not to say that Zionists in Palestine were incapable of giving assistance to partisan warfare.  On the contrary, the mainstream Zionists and the Revisionists maintained very efficient clandestine armed forces in Palestine throughout the war, and these both had extensive arms smuggling operations which substantially depleted British armories and forced the diversion of British troops to guard duty.  But these arms were for use against the British and the Arabs, not against the Germans.  Details will be found in ‘Cross Roads to Israel’ by Christopher Sykes. ³³

 

6.2       Extremist Zionists and the Axis

 

Although the Haganah, representing the mainstream Zionists, maintained a ceasefire throughout most of the second world war, Zionist policy was to
 ‘fight the war as though there was no White Paper (restricting immigration) and to fight the White Paper as though there was no war'.

 

In ‘fighting the White Paper as though there was no war’, the mainstream Zionists did manage to tie down substantial numbers of British troops and naval units to guard Palestine.  This may be called stupidity rather than outright collaboration, but the same cannot be said for the policy of the Zionist Revisionists and their clandestine armed forces the Irgun.

Apart from sporadic raids earlier, the Irgun formally declared war on Britain in January 1944 and organized systematic terror activities against the British forces in Palestine from then on.  This was while European Jews were still being exterminated by the Nazis.

  <>
There are accusations that the Irgun proposed a formal military pact with Nazi Germany, promising intelligence and other support against Britain on condition that a victorious Germany would establish a Jewish State in Palestine, although it is clear that Germany never accepted this alliance, having been allied with the Grand Mufti instead.

 

A memorandum dated January 1941 from a report by the Naval attaché at the German Embassy in Turkey reads as follows:

 

‘It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question through evacuation.  ‘Judenreines Europa’.  The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historic boundaries. The solving in this manner of the Jewish problem, and thus the bringing about with it of the liberation of the Jewish people once and for all, is the objective of the political activity and the year’s long struggle of the Jewish freedom movement: the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi ) in Palestine.

The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government  and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans (one should notice, in this respect the fascist-Zionist cooperation in the years stretching between 1933 and 1939 - K.P.) - is of the opinion that:

 

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national, aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
   

2.  Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed Hebrew nation (volkisch-nationalen-Hebraertum) would be possible, and
   

3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national, and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would  be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East.  Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side, provided the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish liberation movement are recognized by the German Reich government.
   

<>This offer by the NMO, whose validity extends over the military, political and information levels, inside and also according to certain organizational preparations outside Palestine, would be bound to the military training and organizing of Jewish manpower in Europe, under the leadership and command of the NMO.  These military units would take part in the fighting to conquer Palestine, in case such a front is formed.
 
 <>The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the drawing up of the New Order in Europe, already in its preparatory stage, would be connected with a positively radical solution of the European Jewish problem in conformity with the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish people.  This would strengthen to an uncommon degree the moral basis of the New Order in. the eyes of the entire world.
 

The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it. ³⁴

(Klaus Polkehn, ‘The Secret Contacts: Zionist-Nazi Relations', 1933-1941, 'Journal of Palestine Studies, ' Spring-Summer 1976)

 

This document comes from East German sources and has not been confirmed conclusively from material in Western archives, although it is quite consistent with the behavior of the Revisionist Zionists as a fascist party allied with other fascist parties in pre-war years. 

Since it could be an East German forgery, or could have originally been a British forgery, we will not rely on this document. But there is no doubt whatever that the Irgun's offsiders, the even more extreme ‘Stern Gang’, Lehi, or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel did establish treasonable relations with fascist Italy and launched terrorist attacks on British forces in Palestine with Italian aid and as a direct component of the Axis war effort. 

 

<>They were shot as Axis quislings by the British and denounced by the mainstream Zionists, although this did not prevent cooperation being re-established after the war was over, Dr. Foster can call it what he likes, but we would call a declaration of war against Britain in 1944 and a formal alliance with an Axis power, voluntary collaboration with the Nazis.
 

 <>Of course the mainstream Zionist position was basically on the side of the Allies and the Irgun was only an extremist minority led by the extremist Menachem Begin, now Prime Minister of the extremist State of Israel, who came to Palestine as a soldier in the Polish Army fighting Nazis but deserted to fight Britain instead.  Thus the accusation can be put much stronger than it has been on 3CR.
 

Not only did the International Zionist movement fail to aid the beleaguered ghetto fighters, but the only use it made of its facilities for arms smuggling etcetera was to support terrorist attacks on the Allies with the assistance from the Axis.

  <>
While Jews in Europe, including some Zionists, were fighting the Nazis with help from the Allies, some Zionists in Palestine were fighting the British with help from the Axis.

 

6.3       The Haganah reports to Eichmann

 

The accusation that the Haganah was supplying intelligence reports to Adolf Eichmann in 1937 may appear fantastic.  But no, unlike the alleged Irgun proposals for an alliance with Germany, the documents confirming intelligence links between Feivel Polkes, commander of the Haganah, protector of the Jews, and Adolf Eichmann of the security service of the SS can be authenticated from German war records captured by American troops and kept at the National Archives in Washington.

  <>
The negotiations arose in connection with Zionist involvement in the brisk trade exporting Jews organized by Gestapo agents anxious to make Europe ‘Judenreine’. ³⁵

 

In the archives of the Reichs Fuhrer of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, on microfilm roll RFSS 411, frames 2936012 to 2936069, will be found details of Polkes’ offer of intelligence information in a visit to Berlin from February 26 to March 2, 1937; and also Eichmann's travel report on his subsequent visit to Palestine and his conversations with Polkes on October 10 and 11, 1937 in Cairo's Cafe Groppi, after Eichmann was kicked out of Palestine by the British.

 

Here Eichmann reports the approval Polkes expressed of German ‘radical’ policies leading to increased Jewish immigration to Palestine, and reports intelligence information received from Polkes concerning pro-Soviet Arab leaders (who were trying to prevent an Arab-Axis alliance) and concerning the location of an underground Communist radio station broadcasting to Germany.

  <>
Fantastic?  Yes, but on the public record!

 

This background may help explain how the Jewish Agency's policy - the World Zionist Organization's policy, could lead it to support Kastner's collaboration with the Nazis in exterminating Jews.  When this came up, negotiations and ‘common interests’ with the Nazis were already nothing new.

 

6.4       Zionist priorities during the Holocaust

 

Zionist policy during the Holocaust is best summed up in the words of Yitzchak Greenbaum speaking on ‘The Diaspora and the Redemption’, ³⁶  at a Tel Aviv meeting in February 1943:

 

For the rescue of the Jews in the Diaspora, we should consolidate our excess strength and the surplus of powers that we have.  When they come to us with two plans – the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land - I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land.  The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraization of the land.

 If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the ‘Keren Hayesod' (United Jewish Appeal) to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing?   No! and once again No!³⁷

 

<>Greenbaum confirms this in his postwar book ‘In Days of Holocaust and Destruction’:
 

‘. . .when they asked me, couldn't you give, money out of the United Jewish Appeal funds for the rescue of Jews in Europe, I said, 'NO!' and I say again ' NO!'…one should resist this wave which pushes the Zionist activities to secondary importance.’ ³⁸

 

Notice that Greenbaum had not only insisted that buying land from the Arabs was more important than rescuing Jews in Europe, as he admitted after the war, but he had even called for less to be said about the slaughter, so as not to distract attention from buying land!  It was an explicit call for a conspiracy of silence.

 

<>Greenbaum, whose son was an exceptionally notorious Kapo at Auschwitz, was not just some insignificant Zionist functionary shooting his mouth off.  He was Kastner's immediate superior in the Jewish Agency, as head of the Rescue Committee for European Jewry, and he became a cabinet Minister in Israel's first Government.

<>Greenbaum's policy was the Zionist movement's policy³⁹ Kastner was only carrying out an agreed policy.

<>This policy was summed up in the slogan ‘one goat in Eretz Israel is worth an entire community in the diaspora.’⁴⁰
 
<>As Rabbi Shonfeld comments: 

‘The rescue committee of the Jewish Agency falsely bore the name ‘rescue’.  It would be more appropriate to call it the Committee for Covering Up, Ignoring and Silencing... the thoughts of Zionist officials and especially the chairman, Greenbaum, were steeped in plots and schemes to use the Holocaust and its consequences to build up the national home, and to realize the demands for establishing a Jewish State.’ ⁴¹

 

This attitude was further demonstrated in a letter from Nathan Schwab, representative of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland, to the Rescue Committee for Czech Jewry:

 

‘Since we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the group that they must always remember that matter which is the most important, which is the main issue that must always be before our eyes.  Alter all, the allies will be victorious.  After the victory, they will once again divide up the world between the nations as they did, at the end of. the first war.  Then they opened the way for us for the first step and now, as the war ends, we must do everything so that Eretz Israel should become a Jewish state.  Important steps have already been taken in this matter. 

As to the cry that comes from your country, 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, and territories, after the-war?  And so it would be foolish and impertinent on our side to ask the nations whose blood is being spilled for permission to send money into the land of their enemies in order to protect our own blood. 

Because 'rak b'dam tihyu lanu haaretz’ (only through blood will the land be ours).  As to yourselves, -- members of the group – ‘ atem taylu’ (‘you will get out’ ), and for this purpose we are providing you with funds by this courier.’

⁴²(Letter from Nathan Schwalb to the pro-Zionist Jewish Rescue Committee in Czechoslovakia)

 

As Rabbi Shonfeld comments:

 

Here Mr. Schwalb expressed the complete Zionist ideology and stated clearly and openly the politics of the Zionist leaders in the area of rescue:  The shedding of Jewish blood in the Diaspora is necessary in order for us to demand the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ state before a peace commission.   Money will be sent to save a group of ‘chalutzim’ (pioneers), while the remainder of Czech Jewry must resign itself to annihilation in the Auschwitz crematoria. ⁴³

 

6.5       Suppressing the News

 

There is no doubt about the fact that the Zionist leadership kept quiet about the Holocaust while it was going on.  Kastner was able to excuse his own silence about Auschwitz by telling the Court that other Jewish Agency representatives suppressed the news he sent out while negotiations proceeded:

 

<>I learned that the Jewish Agency and Joint Distribution Committee Representatives in Switzerland, Moshe Schwalbe 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 the Istanbul Rescue Committee (of the Jewish Agency).  They were also kept secret from the press.  I informed them almost daily by cables, about the pace of the extermination.  My cables were never published anywhere. ⁴⁴
 

Indeed, as Ben Hecht explains:

 

<>There, will be many witnesses, to testify about this silence during Greenwald's trial, among them Professor Aktzin, dean of the Law faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  I quote from the trial record:
 

‘TAMIR: IS IT TRUE THAT THE JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE AND THE JEWISH AGENCY DID SUPPRESS THE NEWS OF THE EXTERMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES UP TO AND THROUGH 1941?

  <>
'PROFESSOR AKTZIN:  THE ZIONISTS, JEWISH AGENCY AND JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE DID REFRAIN FROM PUBLICIZING IN THE AMERlCAN PRESS THE MASSACRE OF JEWS.’

 

While the war was still on in 1945, a Jewish mission of survivors from Poland came to the annual meeting of the World Jewish Congress.  They came with accusations, and the leaders of the Jewish Congress listened stoically to their complaint.  The survivors from Poland accused these leaders of Zion of having failed to arouse the nations of the world to the fact that the Jews were being exterminated.  The mission accused the leaders of Jewry of having neglected practical possibilities of rescue and help.  The leaders stated that the omissions, were the result of a deliberate decision.  They offered as explanation ‘the opinion of the executive board was that it was inadvisable because of our diplomatic ties with these governments.’ (Of the Free World.) ⁴⁵

 

<>Greenbaum justified the Zionist leaders policy of hiding the facts about the Holocaust from the public, in a speech he made at Sokolov House on 1 January, 1964.  He said:
 

<>‘Whoever is building the homeland and is battling for the very existence of the homeland, is excused from knowing; for he has another, greater obligation.’ ⁴⁶
 

<>Thus after the war too, Greenbaum reaffirms that the holocaust had to be covered up because the knowledge that European Jewry was being exterminated would have distracted attention from the more important question of building a Jewish State in Palestine.  This was also the occasion on which Greenbaum produced another gem: 

‘It would have been worthwhile to sacrifice another million Jews for the glory of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt.’ ⁴⁷

 

6.6       Zionist Leaders Admit Inactivity

 

<>Despite the popular impression, Zionist leaders do not seriously contest that they were inactive during the holocaust.  Here is Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World JEWISH CONGRESS speaking at a commemorative meeting on 4 March, 1962:
 

<>‘There is no doubt that future Jewish history will judge the generation of the Holocaust which lived in free lands as guilty.  It will accuse it of failing to adequately prepare for the Nazi danger in its beginning stages, and of not daring to fight desperately the annihilation in this period.  I do not know whether, in the time of the war, the Allies could have prevented the death of millions of Jews.  But there is no doubt in my heart that it was possible to save tens of  thousands of Jews with active, daring measures by the democratic governments.  But most of the responsibility lies upon us, due to our self-satisfaction with requests and routine demands and to the fact that groups of Jews did not have, enough courage to pressure the democratic governments with dramatic means and motivate them to act drastically.
 

I will never forget the day on which a telegram from the Warsaw ghetto was delivered to me, it was addressed to Rabbi Stephen Wise and to rnyself.  We were asked why Jewish leaders in America do not protest day and night on the stairs of the White House until the President orders the bombing of the concentration camps and the railway tracks leading to them.  We did not do so because the majority of Jewish leaders then were of the opinion that they should not interfere with the free world's war effort against the Nazis with stormy protests.  Therefore we should not transfer the guilt to those who suffered and paid with their lives.  If there is a basis to the historical 'I accuse', let us have the courage now to direct it against that part of the generation which was lucky enough to be outside of the Nazi domination and did not fulfill its obligation toward the millions killed.’ ⁴⁸
(Reported in Davar 22 April 1964)

 

<>While admitting most of the responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands, if not millions of Jews who could have been saved, Goldmann tries to spread the blame around a bit, to include everyone who was not actually a victim of the Holocaust.
 
<>As Rabbi Shonfeld comments on this speech:
 

Today all have regrets: the past Nazis, the good Germans, the merciful Catholics, the very democratic British and Americans, and even the Jewish secular leaders.  However, as we said, the statute of limitations against war crimes is not to apply to the Nazis and their accomplices, whether non-Jews or Jews…⁴⁹

 

<>Actually, Nahum Goldmann received and ignored so many similar messages during the Holocaust that he was bound to become confused after 20 years.
<>The telegram from the Warsaw ghetto did not refer to bombing concentration camps and railway tracks.
 

It came from the 'Jewish National Committee' in Warsaw, via the Polish underground, on 21 January, 1943, and simply read as follows:

 

We notify you of the greatest crime of all times, about the murder of millions of Jews in Poland.  Poised at the brink of the annihilation of the still surviving Jews, we ask you:

1.         Revenge against the Germans

2.         Force the Hitlerites to halt the murders

3.         Fight for our lives and our honor

4.         Contact the neutral countries

5.         Rescue 10,000 children through exchange

6.         500,000 dollars for purposes of aid

Brothers - the remaining Jews in Poland live with the awareness that in the most terrible days of our history you did not come to our aid.  Respond, at least in the last days of our life.⁵⁰

 

Nor did all ‘that part of the generation which was lucky enough to be outside of the Nazi domination’ fail to ‘fulfill its obligation toward the millions killed’.  Not even all Jewish nationalists took Nahum Goldmann's Zionist stand that they ‘should not interfere with the free world's war effort against the Nazis with stormy protests’ (a pathetic lie considering the Zionist decision to ‘fight the White Paper as though there was no war’ in Palestine).

 

The Bundist⁵¹ member of the Polish Government in exile, Artur Zygelbojm committed suicide as a public gesture to draw attention to what was happening in Warsaw.  Despite the Zionist fears, he has never been accused of ‘interfering with the free world's war effort against the Nazis with stormy protests.’

 

6.7       A message Zionist leaders ignored

 

<>The message Nahum Goldmann thought he remembered from Warsaw about bombing concentration camps and railways, actually came more than a year later from Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, a rescue worker operating in Slovakia.  If anyone thinks some 3CR programs speak too strongly, let them study this message:
 

<>May 15, 1944 - In a cave, near Lublin.  Sholom and Greetings.  We send you this special message to inform you that yesterday theGermans began the deportation of Jews from Hungary.  It is the beginning of deportation of all the Hungarian Jews

<>Every day, twelve thousand souls are being taken off.  Four deportations of forty-five such train-loads move daily out of Hungary.  Within twenty-six days all that area will have been deported.
  <>The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas.  A great number are dead on arrival. The Germans allow a few of the strongest to stay alive.  Those who are allowed to live are branded with a number burned into their arm and the Star of David burned into their chest.

<>Most of these privileged ones die within a month.  Others take their place.
  <>Those who go directly from the train to the gas chambers to be suffocated are not branded.  They are completely consumed in the ovens and leave no evidence behind.  These are 95% of each transport.

<>The dead bodies are burned in specially made ovens.  Each oven burns 12 bodies an hour.  In February there were 36 ovens burning.  We have learned that more have been built.

 <>Information supplied us by a few eyewitnesses’ reveals that in February there were four disposal buildings.  We have learned that more have been built since then.
 

Formerly, the Germans killed and burned the Jews in the Forest of Birkenwold, near Auschwitz.  Now the killing and burning take place in the buildings shown on the enclosed map.

  <>
In December, the Germans built special trains to transport the Jews of Hungary to their extermination.  This is the schedule of Auschwitz, from yesterday to the end; twelve thousand Jews - men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones - are to be suffocated daily and their bones and ashes are to be used to fertilize the German fields.  <>

And you - our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of  freedom, and you, ministers of all the kingdom - how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder?  Silent while thousands on thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, were murdered.  And silent now while tens of thousands are being murdered and waiting to be murdered?  <>

Their destroyed hearts cry to you for help as they bewail your cruelty.  Brutal you are, because of the cold-bloodedness of the silence in which you watch.  <>

Because you sit with folded arms and you do nothing, though you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour.

In the name of the blood of the thousands on thousands who have been murdered we beg, we plead, we cry out and demand that you take action, that you do deeds now - at once!

  <>
That the ministers of kingdoms and all the Lands raise a loud and piercing outcry that must enter the ears of the world, the ears of the German people, the ears of the Hungarian people.  Let them cry out a warning to the German murderers.  Let them proclaim that they know all that has been, done in the past, and that which is still being done.  And the Pope, himself, should join in this cry of outrage against the German murderers.  <>

Let this outcry be heard over all the radios and read in all the newspapers of the world, that unless they stop at once the deportations of Hungary’s Jews - then will Germany be forever exiled from civilization.  <>

We ask that the crematoria in Auschwitz be bombed from the air.  They are sharply visible, as shown on the enclosed map.  <>

Such bombing will delay the work of the German murderers.  <>

What is more important - to bomb persistently all the roads leading from Eastern Hungary to Poland and to bomb persistently the bridges in the neighborhood of Karpatarus.  Drop all other business to get this done.  Remember that one day of your idleness kills twelve thousand souls.  <>

You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don't you know the Hell around us?  For whom are you saving your money?  <>

How is it that all our pleadings affect you less than the whimpering of a beggar in your doorway?  Murderers!  Madmen!  Who is it that gives charity?  You who toss a few pennies from your safe homes?  Or we who give our blood in the depths of Hell?  <>

There is only one thing that may be said in your exoneration – that you do not know the truth.  This is possible.  The villain does his job so shrewdly that only a few guess the truth.  We have told you the truth several times.  It is possible that you believe our murderers more than you believe us?  May God open your eyes and give you the heart to rescue in these last hours the remainder.  <>

Most important is that which I write about the bombing of the Auschwitz Crematoria and the bridges leading to them.  <>

Such bombing can vitally delay the evil work of our slaughterers.  And God who keeps alive the last remnant of Israel will show His mercy for which I pray.  I pray as I write out of the sea tears of the people of Israel.  We wait God's help.  One from the market who witnesses the woes of his people. ⁵²

(Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, Exhibit of the Defense, no.36, State Attorney v. M. Greenwald, District Court, Jerusalem CC124/53)

  <>
During the Kastner case, Kenachera Eader of the Jewish Agency was asked 'Did you receive this letter from Rabbi Weissmandel?' He answered:  <>

'Letters like, this came, to us every day'.⁵³

 

But Auschwitz was not bombed.  Despite receiving these heart rending messages, the Zionist leaders contented themselves with routine requests.  Presumably the point was they could not initiate ‘stormy protests’ without endangering the ‘deals’ that their representative Kastner was making to rescue a few Zionists and bring them to Palestine - and from the Zionist point of view, that was more important.

 

As well as the myth about not wanting to interfere with the Allied war effort, Zionist leaders have attempted to excuse their inactivity during the holocaust by pretending that they did not really know what was happening.⁵⁴ 

<>See for example Nahum Goldmann's speech of February 1968.
 

But this excuse is refuted by numerous documents.  The whole world knew about Hitler's extermination policy after the formal Allied declaration about it in December 1942, and the Zionist leaders knew from their own sources long before then. 

See for example the speech of Knesset member Chaim Landau at a symposium held by the Israeli newspaper Maariv on 24 April, 1966⁵⁵

 

6.8       Other Zionists Accuse

 

<>The worst that Zionists will admit to, and this interpretation is widely accepted, is that they deliberately refrained from putting sufficient pressure on the Allies to intervene to rescue Jews, because they did not want to prejudice friendly relations and the future establishment of a State of Israel with British and American support.
 

That admission is damning enough, and has been quite sufficient, to justify use of the term ‘collaboration’ by Zionist Revisionists who themselves accept the story that the conspiracy of silence was in response to British pressure, and who naturally regard immigration to Palestine as the central question in rescuing Jews.

 

<>A great deal of the exposure of Nazi collaboration by the mainstream Zionist leadership was carried out for political reasons by Revisionists who rightly say that agreeing to remain silent about the Holocaust, while millions were being murdered, amounts to collaboration with the murderers.

<>Thus Greenwald's defense counsel in the Kastner case, Shmuel Tamir, today Minister for Justice in the State of Israel, points out that Davar the official Zionist Labour Federation newspaper, did not publicize the holocaust and even ran an editorial saying:
 

<>The Nazi denial of extermination has a good foundation. Not as many were annihilated as was feared.⁵⁶
 

<>Tamir says:
 

Until mid-July, six weeks after the killing of twelve thousand a day had begun, still not a single authoritative word is uttered by the Jewish Agency or any Zionist officials that ‘the deportation had started - that already half a million were exterminated.

 

The Jewish Agency had by then the best and most exact informative source on the fate, of the Jews of Hungary, and on the deportation, and there was no British censorship of such items, as was proven in Court.  But from the end of May until the 16th of July, for a full month and a half, when 12,000 Jews are being killed a day, still not a single, authoritative word is uttered by the Jewish Agency or any Zionist officials, that there deportations have started and are continued; that already half a million Jews were exterminated.  For a full month and a half, Mr. Sharett and the Jewish Agency are knowingly and willfully suppressing all the news known to them.⁵⁷

 

He continues:

 

<>And why this suppression of the dreadful news by Ben-Gurion, Sharett, Weizmann and all the official leaders of Jewry?   Because, had the masses in Palestine known then what was happening in Hungary, and known then the stony hearts of their leaders, a storm would have risen in our land.  Power would have fallen out of their hands.  And this, it seems, was more important to them.
  <>There is no other explanation.  Therefore I said:  'Collaboration here, parallel to collaboration there.  But if the collaboration there has developed under German pressure, here we talk of men who lived in the free world, whose discretion could be more balanced, who were in control of good youth, wonderful youth, which awaited a command.  The fact remains that the moral and historical responsibility, as far as Jews are concerned, lies first and foremost on those who lived in the free world.  And though I am here to prove the guilt of Kastner, I say that his responsibility is lesser than that of the leaders of our free Jewish world.⁵⁸
 

<>Ben Hecht, a supporter of the same Zionist party sums up:
 

<>These organizations, these philanthropists, these timorous Jewish lodge members in Zion, London and America, these Zionist leaders who let their six million kinsman burn, choke, hang without protest, with indifference and even with a glint of anti-Semitic cunning in their political plannings. 
I sum up against them…
  <>
My faith says that nearly all the six million Jews could have been saved and the honor of our century saved with them- had the powerful American Jewry alone united in a campaign to save them..  And had those Palestine leaders who stayed Mum on the slaughter and were garrulous as geese on the needs of Zionism in Palestine- had they cried out-would they have survived as leaders?  Would the British have ousted them and gutted ‘the dream of Zionism’?
 <>Again, I do not know, I only know that, by my measure, such honorable human behavior would have been of deeper worth to the world than a dozen States of Israel.⁵⁹
 

<>But the truth is far worse than what Zionists will admit to - joining a conspiracy of silence under British pressure.  As will be shown shortly, the only British pressure was against immigration to Palestine, and it was Zionists who were exerting pressure on Britain not to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.
 

A fairly accurate account of Zionist thinking at the time is given by Mapai leader Eliezer Livneh, expressing his regrets in a column entitled ‘Thoughts on the Holocaust’ in the newspaper Yediot Aharanot:

 

Our Zionist orientation educated us to see the growing land of Israel as the prime goal and the Jewish nation only in relation to its building the land.  With  each  tragedy befalling the Jews in the diaspora, we saw the state as the evident solution. We continued employing this principle even during the Holocaust, saving, only those who could be brought to Israel.  The mandate’s limitation on immigration served as a political factor in our battle to open the doors to aliya and to establishing the state.  Our programs were geared to this aim and for this we were prepared to sacrifice or endanger lives.  Everything outside of this goal, including the rescue of European Jewry for its own sake was a secondary goal.  ‘  If there can be no people without a country’, Rabbi Weissmandel exclaimed, ‘ Then surely there can be no country without a people , and where are the living Jewish people if not in Europe’?⁶⁰

 

6.9        The Very Existence of the 'Jewish Agency' Helped  the Nazis

 

<>As the revisionist newspaper Herut asks:
 

<>How are we to explain the fact that the leaders of the Jewish Agency and the chiefs of the Zionist movement in Palestine kept silent?  Why didn't they raise their voices?  Why didn’t they shout about it over the whole wide world? Why didn't they appeal in broadcasts of their ‘secret’ Haganah radio station to Jews in ghettos, camps and villages to flee, to the woods, to mutiny and fight, to try to save themselves?  By Silence, they collaborated with the German to no less, an extent than the scoundrels who provided the Germans with the death lists,  History will yet pronounce its verdict against them.  Was not the very existence of the Jewish Agency a help for the Nazis?  When history tries the so-called Judenrat and the Jewish police, she will also condemn the leaders of the Agency and the leaders of the Zionist movement.⁶¹
 

And that really is the verdict of history.

 

Just as Judge Benjamin Halevi found that the Zionist Jewish Agency's ‘Relief and Rescue Committee’ in Budapest was a department of the Nazi SS, alongside the departments for extermination and looting, so we must find that the very existence of the ‘Jewish Agency’ (the world Zionist Organization) was a help to the Nazis in carrying out and covering up their crimes.

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