Zionist Opposition to Rescue Outside Palestine

Whereas most Jews feared for the safety of European Jews, Zionism’s leaders feared for the effect
of rescue on Zionism. David Ben-Gurion’s memo to the Zionist Executive of 17th December 1938,
was no personal aberration.
‘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 on the other , the
Jewish sense of pity will prevail.... We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the
refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.’1
At its previous meeting on 13 November 1938, three days after Krystalnacht, there was a debate
on the emigration of German Jewry. Moshe Shertok (Sharrett), later to become Israel’s second
Prime Minister, explained how Charim Weizmann ‘does not think that the Jewish Agency can
participate in activity for emigration to other countries. But we must take part in this meeting (an
assembly for German Jewry) in order to step up the pressure on the government to increase
immigration to Palestine.’ Yitzhak Gruenbaum, later appoint as Chairman of the Jewish Agency’s
‘Rescue’ Committee opined that ‘We must commence an open war against Germany without
consideration for the fate of the Jews in Germany... Of course the Jews of Germany will pay for
this, but thee is no other option.’2 Shabtai Beit-Zvi described the attitude of the Zionist leaders as
‘laying siege’ to Germany’s Jews.3
In Britain there was a wave of sympathy for Germany’s Jews, and 7,000 children were brought to
England in the kindertransport.4 Krystalnacht in many ways opened the gates for much of the rest
of Germany’s Jews to emigrate. Of the 350,000 Jews who left Germany between 1933 and 1939,
over 200,000 left in the 14 months from Evian to the start of war. Argentina and Brazil in particular
opened their borders after July 1938. Chile admitted 10,000 Jews, Paraguay 1,000, Peru 2,000,
Colombia 1,400, Argentine, which was Herzl’s original choice with Palestine for Jewish emigration
admitted 25,000, Bolivia 9,000, Brazil 15,000, Peru 2,000, Uruguay 3,500 and other countries
14,600. Even Cuba admitted up to 6,000 83,000 Jews in total were absorbed by Latin America up
to the end of 1939.5 Shabtai beit-Zvi argues that although many countries closed their doors after
Evian, there were others who opened the gates to Jewish refugees.
Robert Silverberg, a devoted Zionist, described how ‘Within the Zionist movement itself there were
actually some ultramilitants who argued that it was a good strategy to make no attempt to liberalize
the United States immigration laws.’ They were ‘virtually fanatics, to whom the building of a Jewish
homeland in Palestine took priority over all other claims, even the claim of saving lives.’ 6 When
Morris Ernst was asked by Roosevelt to draw up a post-war resettlement plan for Jewish refugees
‘Jewish leaders decried, sneered and then attacked me as if I were a traitor… I was openly
accused of furthering this plan of freer immigration in order to undermine political Zionism.’ 7
The bitter opposition of the Zionist establishment, led by Stephen Wise, President of the American
Jewish Congress, to the rescue activity of Bergson and Merlin, where the destination was not
Palestine, was logical in Zionist terms. If other countries could save the Jews of Europe, what was
the point of a Jewish State? The fight to establish a Jewish state was counterposed, as Ben-

1
Y Elam, 'Introduction to Zionist History' Tel Aviv 1972 ppl25/6 cited in Machover/Offenburg op. cit, see also
'Ot, organ of the Youth cadre of the Israeli Labour Party, no 2 Winter 1967.
2
S Beit Zvi, p.192-3.
3
S Beit Zvi, p.198.
4
S Beit Zvi, p.207.
5
S Beit Zvi, p.209. citing American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 42 p.162.
6
Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p. 138, Pyramid Book, New York, 1972.
7
Silverberg, op. cit. p. 334.
Gurion’s memo above demonstrated, to the fight to rescue as many Jews as possible from
extermination, regardless of destination.8
On January 15 1940 Stephen Wise wrote to Chaim Weizmann urging him to join the President’s
Council for Refugees. Not in order that the Zionist movement could make its own suggestions for
schemes aimed at getting Jews out of Europe and away from the Nazi danger, but in order that
‘you may represent the case of Palestine... in view of the ceaseless persistence of J.D.C. people....
in urging such fata morgana as Santo Domingo, British Guiana and Mindanao, it would be
exceedingly important for these people at first hand to hear the story of Palestine from you.’ 9 In
Palestine of course, Jewish immigration was severely restricted because the British had faced a 3
year general strike and insurrection from the Palestinian Arabs, who didn’t want to be
dispossessed. If immigration to anywhere was illusion it was Palestine, yet the primary concern of
the Zionist movement was not getting Jews out of Europe, but immigration into Palestine. Wise
was particularly concerned, as he told Abba Hillel Silver, with the threat to the UJA appeal that
schemes such as Guiana, Mindanao and Kimberley posed. They were seen as a threat to Zionism
by competing with funders for resources. 10 Wise thought little of the Alaska scheme and even less
of Guiana. When Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister suggested the former German
colony of Tanganyka Wise exploded that ‘I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany than
live somehow, anyhow, in the lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany
in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back... to Germany.’ 11

Zionism had been set up to abolish diaspora Jewry not to transplant it from Europe to the United
States. The belief that only Palestine could be a refuge was common to all wings of Zionism.
According to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, President of the Zionist Organisation of America (1945-
1947):12
I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or
nearly all, talking about a Jewish state.. But I ask... 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.” 13
The Zionist Organisation did not merely fail to prioritise Rescue, it actively opposed anything which
did not have Palestine as its destination.14
Bergson, Merlin and Hecht were a minority within a minority, yet they did not comprehend that it
was Zionism itself which had led to the catastrophic failure to build a rescue movement.
Revisionist Zionism internationally opposed Ha’avara but it did virtually nothing to promote the
Boycott. In Germany, the Revisionist leader George Kareski vigorously opposed Boycott and
enthusiastically supported Nazi race measures including the Nuremberg Laws. In Nazi occupied
Europe, the Revisionists distinguished themselves by their collaboration, often making up the
8
Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Ch. 24 ‘The Wartime Failure to Rescue’.
9
S Beit Zvi, p. 247.
10
S Beit Zvi, p.248. Tanganyka (Tanzania) was of course adjacent to Uganda and Kenya!
11
Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue – The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945, p.124.,
Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1969.
12
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/silver.html accessed 9.12.11.
13
Rabbi Hillel Silver to 49th Annual Convention of the ZO of America, New York Times, 27. 10. 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.” (Information Bulletin, Communist Party of
Israel, 1969, p.197). Cited in Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p. 335. Pyramid Book, New
York, 1972.
14
S. Beit Zvi, p. 11.

2
backbone of the hated Jewish Police in places like the Warsaw and Lodz Ghettos. They also
hoped to sign treaties with European’s anti-Semitic rulers to transfer their Jewish populations
wholesale to Palestine.15
In July 1941, as the Final Solution began with Operation Barbarossa, the Zionist anti-German
boycott council began picketing the offices of Agudat Israel in the USA. Unlike the Zionist
movement Agudat wasn’t proposing to establish trading relations with Nazi Germany, but sending
food packages to Jews in occupied Palestine. It was one of the darkest and most shameful
episodes of Zionism’s betrayal of the Jews of Europe that they opposed food packages being sent
to the starving of Warsaw and other ghettos on the grounds that the Nazis would steal some of
them. Not only did the Zionist ‘rescue committee’ made no attempt to contact or help the ghettos
themselves, but they actively opposed others doing so. Their justification, as Dr Joseph
Tenenbaum, a senior official in the AJC and ZOA wrote, was that ‘the absolute minimum that we
Jews must do is not to interfere with Britain’s war needs, even if this comes at the expense of
victims in Poland or elsewhere.’ 16
Anything which relegated the fight for statehood to second place had to be opposed. Not only did
this include the fight to rescue European Jewry to destinations other than Palestine but anything
which the imperialist powers, England and the USA, objected to. The Jews of Europe were seen
as Zionism’s contribution to the war effort. No one of course had asked the millions of Jews in
Europe whether they agreed to be the sacrifice. Virtually every serious historian, including Zionist
historians who aren’t propagandists, reached the same conclusion.
To their credit, Agudat Israel refused to bow to the blackmail of US Zionism. The Zionists, when it
came to European Jewry, confined their ‘campaign’ to a few polite letters to the Western leaders
and decried public activity, at most holding the occasional mass rally to emphasise that Zionism
was the only solution, had not hesitated to engage in pickets of those sending food parcels to the
doomed Jews of Europe. The American Zionists used England’s opposition as their excuse to
picket Agudat Israel. In fact Agudat managed to obtain permission to send 10,000 packages a
month for a year. A small amount but at least it was something and it also enabled contact to be
maintained with the ghettos. Whereas the King of Greece and the exile government ceaselessly
campaigned to be allowed to send food ships to their hungry compatriots, the Zionists were
opposed to relieving the starving Jews of Poland in the name of ‘the war effort’.
An exception to the criminal behaviour of the Zionist leaders was Avraham Silbershein, based in
Geneva for the WJC whose agent in Lisbon did his best to forward the food packages through the
Portuguese Red Cross.17 He was a member of the Zionist Actions Committee and Poale Zion. He
used the facilities of the WJC offices in Geneva, but soon found he was being hindered and
obstructed, not least by Gerhard Riegner, the Geneva office’s Director. He therefore had to turn to
the Association of Galician Jews in America. One initiative that he undertook was the attempt to
ransom Jews being held in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen He was granted a budget
of $1,250 a month by the AGJA. 250 Jews were released by February 1940 but the WJC made it
clear that the initiative didn’t have their support. To make matters worse, Silbershein aimed to get
the Jews he had had released to Shanghai and was also trying to raise money to send them to
Bolivia. But Nahum Goldman, President of the WJC, intervened to put an end to the support of
the AGJA for Silbershein’s initiatives. Sol Lau, President of the AGJA, resigned as President. As a
result, ‘things fell apart irreversibly.’ 18

15
Silverberg, p. 154.
16
S Beit Zvi, p.249-250 citing Der Tag 22.7.41..
17
S Beit Zvi, p. 253 citing Yizhak Weissman, In the Face of the Titans of Evil (Hebrew), p. 129.
18
S Beit Zvi, pp.255-256.

3
Christopher Sykes, son of military diplomat and politician, Sir Mark Sykes, observed that “From the
very beginning of the Nazi disaster, the Zionist leadership determined to wrest political advantage
from the tragedy.” 19
David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency, wanted the struggle against the White
Paper to take precedence over everything else... several meetings of the Executive between
February and May 1940 were devoted to a consideration of proposals for intensifying
resistance to the White Paper.20
Hitler’s war against Europe’s Jews was not discussed once throughout 1939 and 1940, by the
Central Committee of Mapai, the ruling party in the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine). 21 In
May 1944, as the deportations from Hungary were about to begin, Mapai was convulsed by a split,
led by Yitzhak Tabenkin of Le Ahdut Ha'avodah over the ‘burning question of whether the Soviet
Union was a true light unto the nations.’ 22 Ben-Gurion’s record is abysmal in this respect. When
he returned from the USA, he held a press conference on 8.10.42. Not a word was mentioned
about the holocaust. On 15.10.42. the Zionist Executive Committee held a meeting. Ben-Gurion
dwelt at length on ‘A Zionist Plan of Action and American Jewry.’ The holocaust was referred to in
passing in just one sentence. 23 The only recorded example of Ben-Gurion devoting a whole
speech to the holocaust was on 30.11.42. when an extraordinary meeting of Asefat HaNivharim
was held in protest against the extermination of European Jewry. Even then the emphasis was on
opening the gates of Palestine not calling on all the countries of the world, especially the USA, to
open their borders. Ben-Gurion’s concern was rescuing Jews from the ‘degenerate diaspora.’ 24
Even at the height of the deportations Ben-Gurion was worried that rescue might eclipse Zionism:
“We must do everything, including things that appear fantastic. But on one condition--that the
action does not damage Zionism.” 25 The desire of American Jews (and others) to rescue Europe's
Jews “was conveniently structured by the Zionist programme in a way that involved only helping
Jews to reach Palestine.” 26
Where immigration controls weren’t so strict or even where they were not imposed, Jews found
shelter. As Porter notes, several thousand German Jews sought refuge in Shanghai, where no
one had thought of setting immigration limits.27
Throughout the Holocaust Ben-Gurion remained silent.
‘… Ben Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism... Ben Gurion above all others
sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in
Europe... the forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the
advantage of Zionism.28
Yet after the war even as devoted and loyal a historian as Walter Lacquer spoke of ‘an uneasy
conscience.’ 29 Lucas described it as ‘a gnawing sense of guilt’
... Did the Jewish Agency and other organisations do all that had been possible to save the
Jews of Europe from extermination. Were the various wartime negotiations with the Nazi

19
Sykes p.137.
20
Sykes op. cit. p.239.
21
Porter, p.66 citing Dina Porat, The Blue & Yellow Stars of David.
22
S Beit Zvi, p.137.
23
S Beit Zvi, p.89 citing Ha'aretz, 9.10.42 and In the Campaign, Vol IV, pp. 43-56/
24
S Beit Zvi, p.90.
25
Minutes of Jewish Agency Rescue Committee, 2.2.44. cited in Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial, S Beit Zvi, p.
310.
26
Lucas p.189.
27
Porter p.26
28
Ibid. pp.187/8.
29
Lacquer op. cit. p.56.

4
 executives of death morally impeccable? …. Did the concentration on attaining statehood itself
impede rescue? Did Zionist statecraft contribute to the toll of Jewish life? These and other
questions involving the historical and ideological relations of Israel with world Jewry were
submerged in the unconscious mind of the nation like the reservoir of a chronic nightmare.
From time to time they came to the surface demanding precise elucidation in the courts of law,
as in the Kasztner case.30
JB Agus asked whether or not ‘the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute(d) decisively to
the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularising the
notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe? 31
Lacquer observes how Zionism's Jewish critics asserted that ‘the Nazi leaders, in their speeches
and writings quoted Zionist sources from time to time to prove that Jews' were different, that they
could not be assimilated.’32 But the record of the Zionist leadership in the United States went
beyond passivity to actively attempting to obstruct the rescue efforts of others, including Bergson
and Merlin’s Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.

Evian
The Evian Conference in 1938 was called by the USA primarily as a means of assuaging the guilt
of the western world over their refusal to admit Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Its ostensible
purpose was to find a place of refuge for the Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The
Conference was condemned from the start by its acceptance of the existing refugee policies of the
countries who attended. Indeed their attendance was made conditional on not being put on the
spot. Shabtai Beit-Zvi is in a minority with his belief that the Conference was a sign of the
willingness of the major powers, in particular Roosevelt, to do something. The only time when
Roosevelt was prepared to admit refugees outside of the quotas was at the end of 1941 when
2,000 statesmen, artists and scientists, who had been trapped as a result of the invasion of France
in the unoccupied part, were admitted. It was only in the years 1938-1940 that the USA admitted
more than half the pathetic quotas allotted to Germany and Austria.33
Santo Domingo
The only concrete development stemming from Evian was the offer from Gen. Trujillo of San
Domingo to accept 100,000 Jewish refugees. The Brazilian representative, Helio Lobo, also
indicated that Brazil could accept 40,000 emigrants a year, though nothing like this number. were
ever admitted.34
Beit-Zvi shows in his study that the Jewish Agency, headed by Zionist leader Berl Locker, were
unremitting in their hostility to the Santo Domingo offer and did their best to destroy it. Trujillo was
what could be called a radical dictator. He certainly wasn’t a fascist and had supported the
Republicans in Spain and given shelter to thousands following Franco’s victory. fn
Trujillo’s motives were mixed, not least his desire for white European settlers.35 This enabled the
Zionist Yiddisher Kempfer to attack the project in a fit of anti-racist rhetoric, that the settlement
originated ‘in the curse and disgrace of his racist hatred for the Negroes of Haiti.’ Only the support
of Roosevelt for the Dominican project caused the Zionist leadership of Stephen Wise to restrain

30
Lucas op. cit. pp.326/7.
31
J B Agus 'Meaning of Jewish History', New York, 1963 Vol 2 p.447.
32
Lacquer op. cit. p.500.
33
S Beit Zvi, p.178.
34
S Beit Zvi, p.170.
35
S Beit Zvi, p.214.

5
their opposion. 36 Ida Silverman, a friend of Wise and Goldmann, of the WJC an emissary of the
WZO, had no such inhibitions. In Congress Weekly of December 1941, she decried the settlement
as being 10% non-Jewish.37 She complained that 10% of the marriages were to non-Jews.
Silverman gave vent to Zionist’s real objection – that any Jews saved might be lost to the ‘Jewish
people’. ‘It is inevitable that under the conditions that prevail at Sosua, a generation will see the
Jewish settlers lost to Jewish life...’ For Silverman, ‘what is at stake is the survival of the Jews as a
people, and not merely their existence as individuals.’ 38 In other words, what was the point of
rescuing refugees from the holocaust if they are lost to the Jewish people? This was what was
later termed ‘cruel Zionism’. The Orthodox Agudat Israel have often come out with the same
sentiments when they complain that the ‘losses’ to assimilation are equal to the losses in the
holocaust.
What brought the Dominican project to an end was a report ‘Refugee Settlement in the Dominican
Republic’ by the Brookings Institution, Washington DC of August 1942. The Report itself was
ideologically driven, arguing that the Dominican Republic couldn’t absorb more than 5,000
refugees. The resettlement of Europe’s ‘surplus population’ had become ‘one of the postwar
problems.’ 39 But whereas Trujillo’s racism was an excuse for some Zionists to oppose the
Dominican project, the Brookings Report argued that white settlements in the Dominican Republic
were destined to become white.40 The Dominican government published its own report by way of
response, but as was often the norm when the Zionist movement and elite groups opposed such
an initiative, the damage had already been done.41

The main area of settlement was Dorsa, where the first 50 settlers arrived in March and April
1940. By January 1941 300 settlers had arrived. But despite lukewarm endorsement from Marie
Syrkin of Poale Zion, who wrote a report in Jewish Frontier of February 1941 emphasising that
‘The Sosua project should not be confused with a territorialist venture.’ Opinion in the Zionist
movement was overwhelmingly hostile. Three areas of settlement for Jewish refugees from
Palestine met with opposition from the Zionist movement – in British Guiana, Mindanao in the
Philiphenes and Kimberley in Australia, where a territorialist organisation Freiland had sponsored
it.42 Another such idea, saving Jewish refugees in Alaska, was actually raised by Poale Zion’s own
paper, only for the organisation to be ‘severely reprimanded’ by the World Zionist Organisation.43
Dr Arye Tartakower, writing in Poale Zion’s Iddisher Kempfer, January 8, 1943 laid down the
movement’s policy: ‘We must imprint in the minds of Jews and others of good will that only one
way exists to solve the refugee problem, that all forces must be concentrated around this way, and
money not wasted on unproductive side programs.’ 44 S Beit Zvi conjectures that just as the Zionist
movement sabotaged the Dominican project at its American end, so too did they act to prevent the
emigration of refugees from Spain and Portugal.45 When Beit Zvi interviewed Tartakower about his
hypothesis, the latter replied that ‘The Jewish Agency was interested, and rightly so, in transferring
people elswhere than to Santo Domingo and exslusively to Eretz-Israel.... As long as the possibility

36
S Beit Zvi, p.219.
37
Unlike latter-day Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel, of whom an estimated one-third are non-Jewish!
38
S Beit Zvi, p.221.
39
S Beit Zvi, p.232, p.224, Report p.7.
40
S Beit Zvi, p.225.
41
S Beit Zvi, p.231 citing Capacity of the Dominican Republic to Absorb Refugees.
42
S Beit Zvi, p. 218.
43
Iddisher Kempfer, 17.5.40. S Beit Zvi, p.240.
44
S Beit Zvi, p. 233.
45
S Beit Zvi, p. 236.

6
seemed to exist... The Jewish Agency was incined against Santo Domingo from t he beginning...
They saw it as being directed against Eretz-Israel.’ 46
Of course none of this prevented Tartakower, as a spokesman for the World Jewish Congress,
pontificating after the war that ‘“The Orthodox were flexible in their approach and were thus able to
adapt to conditions of ‘total war’ more readily than other Jewish groups…apparently it set the pace
for other groups.” Presumably it was this ‘flexibility’ that enabled Agudat to defy the pickets of
Tartakower’s mob.47

The Zionists however were alarmed for quite different reasons. They feared that the Conference
might succeed, in which case Palestine would be irrelevant.48 They therefore sought to ensure that
the question of Palestine was first and foremost at the top of the agenda. ‘Every speaker, every
article in the (Zionist) press, exuded hope and expectation that the conference would open wide
the gates of Eretz-Israel.’ 49 In a letter to Stephen Wise, President of the American Jewish
Congress, on behalf of Chaim Weizmann, George Landauer writes that ‘we are very much
concerned in case the issue is presented at the Conference in a manner which may harm the work
for Palestine. Even if the Conference will not place countries ot her 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 concrn as it may bind Jewish organizations to
collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to
interfere with our own campaigns.’ 50

As one pro-Zionist historian notes:

From the start they [the Zionists] 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 Zionism within Palestine
would both have been relaxed. this was the last thing that the Zionist leaders wished
for…. Even in the more terrible days ahead they made no secret of the fact even when
talking to Gentiles that they did not want Jewish settlements outside Palestine to be
successful... The Zionists wanted to do something more for Jews than merely help them to
escape danger.. They wanted to make them the object of respect, not the object of pity... If
their policy entailed suffering then that was the price that had to be paid for the rescue of the
Jewish soul. It is hard perhaps impossible to find a parallel in history to this particular Zionist
idea... that such was the basic Zionist idea is not a matter of opinion but a fact abundantly
provable by evidence...’51 (my emphasis)
Robert Silverberg reaches the same conclusion:
‘it would not be excessive to say that the truly dedicated Zionists hoped for the failure of the
Evian talks. How disastrous it would be for Zionism if Australia say, were to agree to admit a
million Jews at once! They did not want a Jewish colony in Australia; they wanted Europe’s

46
S Beit Zvi, p.237.
47
Arye Tartakower, “Efforts at Aid and Rescue During the Holocaust,” in Jewish Resistance During the
Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1971, p. 438. cited in David Kranzler: Orthodox Ends, Unorthodox
Means, Goldberg Commission Report on American Jews During the Holocaust.
http://jeanettefriedman.com/david-kranzler-orthodox-ends-unorthodox-means-goldberg-commission-report-on-
american-jews-during-the-holocaust/
48
S Beit Zvi, p.166.
49
S Beit Zvi, p. 145.
50
S Beit Zvi, p.153.
51
Sykes op. cit. pp. 188/9.

7
 suffering Jews to go only to Palestine, and if getting them there meant a prolongation of their
suffering until the political climate was right, so be it.’ 52
At the Jewish Agency Executive of 26.6.38. Yitzhak Greenbaum stressed that ‘Immense dangers
loom from the Evian conference. It could mark the end of Palestine as a land of immigration.... that
in the course of their search for a way out, they will find some new territoryto which they will want
to direct Jewish emigration. We must defend our principle – that Jewish settlement can succeed
only in Eretz-Israel, and therefore no other [place of] settlement can be considered.’ 53 This
doesn’t, however, prevent the future Chairman of the Rescue Committee, from asking ‘what will we
do with huge camps of additional workers.’ 54 This of course was a private and confidential
meeting.
In the previously mentioned letter to Stephen Wise, George Landauer stressed that ‘We are
convinced that Palestine offers possibilities for the immigration of tens of thousands of Jewish
refugees who can be absorbed in agriculture, in new industrial enterprises and in various public
works...’ 55
Menahem Ussishkin an original opponent of Herzl from Russia was ‘very much concerned by the
Evian Conference.’ It was ‘a terrible danger for us.’ His concern was not that it might fail but that
‘they will try to find a territory for Jewish immigratioin.’ Most Jews would have viewed that as a
success, but not the leaders of Zionism. Ben-Gurion too expressed his ‘fear, like Gruenbaum and
Ussishkin, (is) that at this time the conference is liable to cause immense harm to Eretz-Israel and
to Zionism.’ Apparently Roosevelt had expressed the opinion that Palestine could not solve the
Jewish question. Ben-Gurion’s response was that ‘We must see to it that this dangerous tendency
does not find expression at the conference.’ 56
Yet Ben-Gurion was well aware that Palestine was incapable of absorbing large numbers of Jewish
refugees. Arthur Ruppin, leader of the Zionist delegation to Evian and known as the father of land
settlement in Palestine, admitted in a press conference a few days later that Palestine could not
absorb more than 10,000 Jews annually. The Jewish Agency response was therefore a sentence
of death to the vast majority of Jewish refugees.
When the US and Britain held a similar but smaller conference in Bermuda in January 1943, the
same attitude prevailed: ‘the Bermuda Conference undertook humanitarian duties without
reference to Zionist political aims, so it was of no interest to Zionists, and its weak result was not
regretted by them.’ 57 Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian came to the same conclusion.58
Once the achievement of statehood became the overriding goal of the movement, the Zionist
realpolitik developed a rigorous logic and a momentum of its own in which humanitarian
considerations were subordinate.59

When the failure of Evian was established, it functioned to serve as ‘convincing proof of the
indifference and hypocrisy of the world towards the fate of the Jews.’ 60 Der Angriff, Goebbel’s
paper was delighted with the failure of Evian. It was proof that no one wanted the Jews. 61

52
Silverberg p. 175.
53
S Beit Zvi, p.155.
54
S Beit Zvi, p.155.
55
S Beit Zvi, p.153.
56
S Beit Zvi, p. 156.
57
Sykes, p. 242.
58
Lucas op. cit. p.l88.
59
Ibid. p.l90.
60
S Beit Zvi, p.138.
61
S Beit Zvi, p.179.

8
One outcome of Evian was the setting up of an Intergovernmental Committee whose first meeting
was on 3 August 1938. George Rublee was appointed as Director and it is from him that the
Rublee Plan to finance the emigration of Germany’s Jews emanated. In fact there was a Schact
Plan, which was another word for blackmail, with international Jewry being expected to raise a
$1.5 loan to finance the emigration. It gave way to Rublee’s own plan, which was based on the
Ha'avara blueprint.
German Jewish money would be used to fund exports whose sale would then recompense those
who had loaned the money. But although, after Krystalnacht, the Nazis switched from boycotting
the Intergovernmental Committee to working with it and Rublee it was in any event too late as the
clouds of war began to darken. But Jewish organisations which had supported Boycott were as
opposed to Rublee’s plan as they had been to Ha'vara.62

The Church and its Response to the Holocaust

NEEDS BROADER INTRODUCTION AND WIDER EXAMPLES
In Hungary, Justinian Cardinal Seredi, the head of the Roman Catholic Church appealed on behalf
of the Christian Jews, insisting that they should be treated differently from those of the ‘Israelite
faith.’ As Porter notes, despite all the nonsense from the Zionists and Rabbis about how the Jews
only survived because of their religion, ‘the reaction of Jews was immediate. Kasztner saw long
lines of Jews in front of the Franciscan Church and the smaller Rokus Church.’ 63

Non-Jewish Attitudes to the Jews

In Vienna, ‘To the surprise of the German authorities, many local Austrians who came into direct
contact with the deportees were not without humanity.’ Despite the years of Nazi propaganda
depicting the Jews as sub-human and ‘Despite their own strained circumstances, a few farmers
gave clothing to their Jewish workers. Many ignored the prohibition against giving the Jews
anything other than the prescribed near-starvation diet’. Others offered to send and receive mail
from Hungary. The SS had a number of Christians arrested and sent to concentration camps
‘some of whose lives ended in concentration camps alongside the Jews they had tried to help.’
Some 100,000 Austrians were incarcerated in concentration camps, of whom 20,000 died,64.
The ex-fascist Hungarian Socialists, turned against Szalasi and offered clandestine assistance to
the Jews. One of their members contacted the Jewish Council and offered Arrow Cross papers,
uniforms and armbands to young Jews who were involved in rescue operations.65
A telling incident about how Germans who opposed Hitler’s anti-Semitism had to be careful was
that of Shmuel Zygelboim. After attempting to get out of Germany, having been sent back by The
Netherlands, he offered a hotel owner his watch in lieu of payment. Just then a passer-by went
past and the hotel-owner shouted ‘Don’t haggle with me, Jew’. When the passer-by was gone, the
hotel owner returned the watch and a Reichsmark and wished him good luck.66

62
S Beit Zvi, p.188.
63
Porter p. 225.
64
Porter p.236.
65
Porter p.318.
66
S Beit Zvi, p. 203.

9
 Lodz
Even Bauer concedes that ‘Rumkowski probably was the nearest thing to a major war criminal.; 67
although he also tries to argue that the idea of working to make yourself indispensable to the Nazis
was a strategy for survival. In July 1944, 68,000 of Lodz’s 250,000 Jews were still alive. In
January 1945 the Soviets captured Lodz. If they had come a few months earlier, liberating 68,000
Jews instead of 800, ‘might not Rumkowski, despite all his crimes, have been hailed as a hero? 68
Rumkowski, who was a General Zionist, had 5 categories of those who should be deported first:
i. 2,000 refugees from provincial towns
ii. families of men sent outside the ghetto for slave labour
iii. families on relief
iv. criminals arrested for any reason whatsoever and
v. anyone who had ever been an enemy of Rumkowski
Unlike Warsaw, there were no bloody scenes, as in Warsaw. All went smoothly. The first
deportations started on January 15th to 29th 1942. 10,103 were sent ‘for resettlement’ and reached
their final destination at Chelmno. None returned. 69 When Rumkowski was ordered to send more
deportees , he used all his powers of persuasion to assure the workers that deportation did not
mean death. 700 men and women were left behind to clean-up the ghetto and he could have
stayed behind with them, but he chose not to. 70 Holocaust survivor Lucile Eichengreen came
forward in 2000 to provide evidence showing that Rumkowski was also a pedophile.71

Pre-1933 anti-Semitism of Nazi party

“During the period from 1930 to 1933, however, with an eye to a possible coalition with other right-
wing forces, the NSDAP officially rejected the rowdy anti-Semitic tendency and officially stressed
its intention of solving the ‘Jewish Question’ in a ‘reasonable’ or in other words legal manner.
pp. 18-19, Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews , OUP,
2010.

67
Linn p.95 citing Bauer, They Chose Life, 43.
68
Linn p.96 citing Bauer, They Chose Life, 43-44, emphasis added.
69
Trunk, Judenrat, Tushnet, Pavement of Hell. Ibid. 48.
70
Trunk, Judenrat, p.48.
71
Eichengreen, L. Rumkowski and the Orphans of Lodz. (San Francisc, Merury Hourse, 2000)

10