Zionist and Nazi Collaboration
Lenni Brenner - 51 Documents_ Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis-Barricade Books (2010).epub- (498.46 KiB) Downloaded 145 times
"The founder of the political Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, was aware of the philosophical common ground between Zionism and anti-Semitism when he wrote: “The governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.”* Herzl “frequently asserted, in all in- nocence, that anti-Semites would be the Jews’ best friends and anti-Semitic governments their best allies"
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p2
How did Zionism react to the cruel Nazi measures? In effect, the Zionist movement also believed that Jews should not be part of Gentile society. This fact explains why the rise of Nazism resulted in greatly increased strength for Zionism among German Jews. It also explains why a convinced Nazi like Ado- lf Eichmann was able to be on cordial terms with Zionists, and even to describe himself as pro-Zionist, while remaining dedicated to the Nazi ideology. Eichmann “was by no means alone in tak- ing this ‘pro-Zionism’ seriously; the German Jews themselves thought it would be sufficient to undo ‘assimilation’ through a new process of ‘dissimilation’ and flocked into the ranks of the Zionist movement.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p11
A decade after his death, the First World War was to prove a turning-point in the fortunes of Zionism, as the Western allies planned the division of the Ottoman Empire, which was fighting on the side of Germany. Palestine was then under Ottoman control. The Zionists followed a policy of betting on both sides in the first two years of the war. The headquarters of the World Zionist Organ- ization was then still in Berlin, and its leaders there pursued efforts to form an alliance with Germany.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p6
Zionists Help Nazis to Expel Jews And Made Profit From Doing SoWell before the 18th Zionist Congress, the Zionist movement has made clear its in- tention of sabotaging the anti-Nazi boycott. The Zionist Federation of Germany went so far as to reassure a senior Nazi official that “the propaganda which calls for boycotting Germany, in the manner it is frequently con- ducted today, is by its very essence completely un-Zionist.”** The unfortunate precedent was thus cre- ated of sacrificing the interests of the Jewish masses in Europe for the sake of Zionist polit- ical ambitions. The usefulness of this was not lost on the Nazis. “In signing... the Ha’avara agreement, the German authorities were simultaneously pursing two objectives: breaching the boycott organized against Germany by the Jews in various foreign countries and facilitating the departure of Jews from the Reich to Palestine. “But, little by little, the second objective came to be considered the more important in Berlin. On one hand, the effects of the Jewish boycott had been considerably weakened while on the other hand, the expatriation of the Jews had become one of the major goals of the Na- tional Socialist regime’s internal policy. Now the Zionists were the only ones, among Jews and non-Jews, to propose a constructive solu- tion to the Jewish problem in Germany and above all to be able to put it into effect.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p19
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Apart from all its other unpleasant as- pects, the persecution of Jews was also a lu- crative form of big business. It is common knowledge that many Nazis amassed large fortunes, generally out of the property or slave labour of their victims. What is less widely known is that the Zionist organizers of emi- gration, through their collaboration with the Nazis, also took their share of material bene- fits at the expense of individual Jews. “Eichmann therefore sent Jewish func- tionaries abroad to solicit from the great Jew-ish organizations, and these funds were then sold by the Jewish community to the pro- spective emigrants at a considerable profit — one dollar, for instance, was sold for ten or twenty marks when its market value was 4.20 marks.”* Thus philanthropy, administered by the Zionist movement, became highly profitable. However, the aim of all the Zionist “rescue” operations and agreements with the Nazis was hardly humanitarian, as is evident from the account of the missions of Bar-Gilad and Ginsberg. “These two Jewish emissaries had not come to Nazi Germany to save German Jews: that was not their job. Their eyes were fixed entirely on Palestine and the British Mandatory. They were looking for young men and women who wanted to go to Palestine be- cause they wanted a national home of their own and were prepared to pioneer, struggle and, if necessary, fight for it. Their interest in those German Jews who turned to Palestine as a haven of refuge, as the next best after the United States or the United Kingdom, was secondary to their main purpose... “Their end was to them far more import- ant than the means which they were now compelled to employ; and though they could not see the future, nor imagine what it would bring, they had no qualms about the price they had to pay so long as they managed to get their Jews to Palestine.”**
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p32
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Most Judenrats Were Zionists
A key role in the extermination program was played by the Judenrats, or Jewish Coun- cils, which the Nazis appointed to run each ghetto. “The Judenrat served as an instru- ment for keeping things calm. It lulled both the youth and the adults into a false sense of security, so that they shouldn’t think about rescue activities. Unfortunately, most of the members of the Judenrats were Zionists. They thought that by collaborating with the Ger- mans, they were doing a good thing. By pre- paring the lists of Jews who were sent to their deaths, they thought that they were saving other Jews. The heads of the Judenrat suffered from a superiority complex, thinking that they were doing a historic thing in order to redeem the nation and the entire Jewish population feared them.” Thus, “the first thing the Nazis did in Upper East Silesia, too, was to establish a ‘council of elders’ (Judenrat) and, as in every place, they appointed Zionist activists to head the council.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p50
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Monik (Moses) Merin, one of the Zionist activists in the community of Sosnowiec, was propped up by the Nazis as ‘emperor’ of all the ‘councils of elders,’ and he appointed the leaders of these councils in every community. Of course, he named to these shameful pos- itions only his friends in ideology from the Zionist camp. The Satanic plan of the Nazis assured that the personal fate of each Jew — whether for life or death — be exclusively left up to the decisions of the ‘councils of elders.’ The Nazis, from time to time, decided upon a general quota for the work of the camps and for extermination, but the individual selec- tion was left up to the ‘council of elders,’ with the enforcement of kidnappings and arrests also placed in the hands of the Jewish police (kapos). By this shrewd method, the Nazis were highly successful in accomplishing mass murder and poisoning the atmosphere of the ghetto through moral degeneration and cor- ruption.”
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p51
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Agudath Israel Party Helped Nazis Suppress Resistance
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Two rabbis belonging to the Agudath Israel Party, Blumenfeld and Glicensztajn, made propaganda on his behalf among the Hassidic elements and saw to it that no resistance ideas should take root in the religious schools and colleges.” Gancwajch set up an “ambulance service” which helped round up victims for the Nazis, and also every Tuesday handed in an intelligence report which he “boasted that the Gestapo awaited with impatience, because they regarded it as the only reliable assess- ment of what was happening in the ghetto.” The Agudath Israel Party, now one of Israel’s respected political parties, helped the Nazis to suppress resistance “by telling (its) num- erous followers that the ghetto was not only the Lord’s punishment for Jewish desertion of orthodoxy and atheism, but a blessing in dis- guise designed to bring the Jews back to the state of piety.”*
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p58
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World Zionist Organisation Dismisses The Holocaust as 'Bolshevik Propaganda'
Lenni Bremner, Zinonism in the age of dictators, Chapter 24When did the Western Jewish establishment and the Allies discover that Hitler was systematically killing Jews? Reports of slaughter in the Ukraine started reaching the Western press in October 1941, and in January 1942 the Soviets issued a detailed report, the 'Molotov Announcement', which analysed the workings of the Einsatzgruppen. The memorandum was dismissed by the WZO in Palestine as 'Bolshevik propaganda'.[(8)]
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As The Final Solution Began, Only A Small Fraction Of Zionists Broke With Nazi's
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Finding it no longer feasible to rid Europe of Jews through emigration, Hitler opted for another way. “In January 1938, he had already given orders that Jewish emigration was to be directed primarily to Palestine, and when that gate was also closed he embraced the sim- ple way out that was now offered to him, the ‘Final Solution’ of the extermination camp.”*
This new situation confronted Zionism with a critical choice between two cours- es of action. The first was to declare war on Nazism, renounce the 1938 agreements totally and raise the banner of Jewish revolt against Nazism throughout Europe. This, of course, would have meant abandoning once and for all any possibility of securing even the most limited “legal” emigration of Zionist man- power from Europe through cooperation with the Nazis in future, should the logistical situation later change to allow for that.
The choice of resistance would also mean that the Zionists would have to throw themselves into the struggle against oppression and anti-Sem- itism in Europe, side by side with Gentiles and assimilationist or progressive Jews. For Zionists, this would have implied not only a serious compromising of their most profound- ly-held beliefs but also, perhaps even more serious, an admission of defeat for their whole philosophy. The second course of action open to the Zionists was to accept that the situation had changed, at least temporarily, in a direction unfavourable to them, and to attempt to sal- vage as much as they could by reaching new, but more limited, arrangements. This would, of course, mean acquiescing in the deaths of large numbers of their co-religionists. It would, however, have the advantage of keep- ing the door of communication with Nazi Germany open, to be used if the situation changed back to a more favourable one in fu- ture. Furthermore, it would involve no funda- mental watering-down or defeat of the Zionist ideology.
The Zionist movement was led inevitably to this agonizing choice by its signature of those early agreements with Nazi Germany. Some apologists have argued that in this the Zionists were not acting from really sinister motives, and were unaware of the cruel end to which it could lead. Apart from the mor- al danger of blindly maintaining that the end justifies any means, it is highly doubtful that the Zionist leaders, with their remarkable skill in long-term planning, were unaware of either the true nature or the potential course of Nazi policy, which were obvious to most ordinary Europeans by at least the mid-1930s. In this context, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, Gideon Hausner, made some very valid com- ments.
Referring to Hitler, he stated: “When he gave free rein to hatred for the Jews, he had also taken the steep path that plunged down to the ‘Day of Boycott’ against the Jews on April 1, 1933, to the Kristallnacht of Novem-ber 9-10, 1938; to the ‘physical extermination’ decision of July 31, 1941. This was the logic of events, each of which evolved from the one be- fore, and led inexorably to its successor. The way of anti-Semitism led to Auschwitz.”* The logic of the steep path did not apply only to the Nazis. By accepting the fatal prin- cipal of common interests and consequent cooperation with Nazism, however limited its scale in the 1930s, the Zionists set themselves on their own parallel steep path downwards.
The two phenomena of anti-Semitism and the Zionists’ alliance of convenience with it, in the hope of using it as the “propelling force” they needed, cannot be separated completely. They reacted mutually on each other, as inevitably happens with any two political forces whose relationship is one of close contact, whether in confrontation or cooperation. In any case, whatever excuses could be advanced for Zionism’s agreements with Nazism in the 1930s, these cannot be valid for any continued cooperation after the Nazis had launched the full-scale implementation of genocide in mid-1941. During the per- iod 1941-44, a number of individual Zionists in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, such as Mordechai Anielewicz. broke with Zionism’s traditional policy and participated in revolts against Nazism. But these revolts were all organized locally, by Jews in Warsaw, Vilno, Bialystok and other areas, often in coordina- tion with each other within occupied territor-ies, but without the cooperation of the Zionist movement on the international level.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p35-8
Zionist Rounds Up Jews For Execution, Betrays Communist Leader of Ghetto Resistance
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“On April 5, 1943, an announcement ap- peared on the walls of the ghetto, urging Jews who had relatives in Kovno to join the transports from the neighbouring villages, principally from Snipiszok, allegedly bound for Kovno. The announcement was couched in alluring language, depicting better living conditions and easier housing accommoda- tions than were available in the crowded Wil- no ghetto. Gens put himself out for the Kovno scheme, and many unsuspecting victims vol- unteered to join the Kovno caravan. All in all, some 5,000 Jews mounted the trains... It soon became evident that instead of proceeding to Kovno the trains were unloaded at Ponary and the victims mowed down with machine gun fire.”** Some of the victims, however, were able to escape and tell their tale.
Gens played a particularly treacherous role in betraying the leader of the Vilno ghetto resistance, Itzik Witenberg, who was a com- munist and thus a particular target for the hatred of the right-wing Revisionists.
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p45
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Only Communists and Other Leftists Organise to Defend Ghetto Fighters - Not Zionists
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But in his painstaking 849-page study, Ainsztein does not quote a single instance of military assist-ance to these revolts by the Zionist movement’s highly organized worldwide apparatus outside Nazi-occupied Europe. In fact, he repeated- ly pointed out that the only allies the ghetto fighters had outside their ghetto walls were lo- cal groups of leftists or other anti-Nazis, such as the People’s Guard (later People’s Army) of the Communist Polish Workers’ Party.*
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p39-40
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Zionism and AntiSemitism
ibid p4Herzl had a favourite promise:
Zionism would dissolve all revolutionary and socialist elements among the Jews.”
In 1903, the founder of the Zionist move- ment was received in St. Petersburg by an- other anti-Semitic leader, the Tsar’s Finance Minister Count Witte, who also favoured the Zionist plan to remove the Jews from Europe. Witte told Herzl: “If it were possible to drown six or seven million Jews in the Black Sea, I would be perfectly happy to do so, but it is not possible, so we must let them live. But we en- courage the Jews to emigrate: we kick them out.”**
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British Anti-semites and Zionists
ibid p5The most important foundations laid by Herzl for Zionism’s future successes were anti-Semitic circles in Britain. A substantial number of Russian Jewish refugees from Tsar- ist pogroms chose Britain rather than Pales- tine as their refuge, thus disappointing Zionist hopes
But the Zionists found that a number of extreme right-wing politicians in Britain were only too willing to stir up a vicious campaign aimed at denying these unfortunate refugees the right of asylum. Herzl gave these right-wingers his bless- ing and encouragement. In his evidence to the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, which investigated the question in 1902 and 1903, Herzl called for the stream of migra- tion to be diverted away from Britain. He thus agreed with the racist Arnold White, one of the leading theorists of the campaign to ban Jews from Britain.*
ibid p6The most important British anti-Semite of that age, in terms of his eventual services to Zionism, was the fanatical Jew-baiter Lord Arthur Balfour. In a parliamentary debate on the immigration issue, Balfour made a speech in which he put forward a case for anti-Sem- itism that is all too familiar. He declared: “It would not be to the advantage of the civiliz- ation of the country that there should be an immense body of persons who, by their own action, remained a people apart, and not merely held a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow-countrymen. but only intermarried among themselves.”* Herzl was able to declare with satisfaction that “anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I.”
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p7Apart from the argument that Zionism was a convenient way of ridding Europe of its Jews, Weizmann also used the imperialist argument that “a Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal.”*
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Jews Immediately Recognise That A "Jewish Nation" In Palestine Will Mean Driving Jews Out Of Their Home Countries
FARIS YAHYA - Zionist Relations With Nazi Germany, p7The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was the outcome of these diplomatic ef- forts. This first charter for a Zionist “national home” was thus motivated by a combination of imperial ambitions and anti-Semitic preju- dices on the part of the right-wing politicians who issued it. It is interesting that the strong- est opposition to it within the British govern- ment came from its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu, who clearly recognized the anti-Semitic motivations behind the policy of Balfour and Lloyd George. Montagu wrote: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation... When the Jews are told that Palestine is their nation- al home, every country will immediately de- sire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country.”**
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“There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, they are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to different galaxy.” — Moshe Katsav, President of Israel May 2001.
“One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” — Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994
“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” — Moshe Yaalon, Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, 2002.
“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” — Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the IDF, April 1983.
“Our two nations both faced great challenges when they were founded. And our two nations have both relied on the same principles to help us succeed. We built strong democracies to protect the freedoms given to us by an Almighty God” — George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, May 2008
