Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины

apiece. These Jews could have been transported to Palestine via Turkey - a few days' ride by

truck. The Romanian offer was confirmed by the U.S. State Department. The offer would become

void once Romania was occupied by the Germans - an occupation that was imminent. Ben Hecht in

his book Perfidy relates placing the following ad in New York newspapers:

FOR SALE

70,000 JEWS

AT

$50 APIECE

GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS

Zionist leaders, however, denied the existence of such an offer and sabotaged fund-raising

efforts. As a result, the 70,000 Romanian Jews perished. Ben Hecht's indignation is

unrestrained:

But in 1943, we, who called out the plight of the Romanian Jews to the

world, were discredited by the Zionist unions, the established Zionist

leadership and their associated philanthropies, as scandalmongers. Our attempt

to get the Jews out of Romania before the Germans came was scotched.

The 70,000 Jews who might have been saved were herded into barns by the

Germanized Romanians under General Antonescu, hosed with gasoline, ignited, and

shot down when they came blazing and screaming out of their cauldrons.

Was it for this the conspirators of Silence had been holding their

high-level meetings, fraternizing with presidents and prime ministers and

keeping intact Weizmann's ... policy of an 'exclusive' ... Palestine? This

Silence, this wretched business of Jewish leaders lying about the slaughter of

Europe's Jewry - trying to hide it, soft-pedal it - for what?

These organizations, these philanthropists, these timorous Jewish lodge

members in Zion, in London and America - these Zionist leaders who let their

six million kinsmen 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. These factotums, these policy-makers, the custodians of the

Jewish future in Palestine ... these Zionist men and women - I haul into the

prisoner's dock of this book. (Ben Hecht, Perfidy, in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The

Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals,

1977, p. 102)

The Eichmann Offer. The war afforded more than one opportunity to save Jews. Here is another

significant opportunity, the offer this time coming directly from Adolph Eichmann:

So I am ready to sell you - a million Jews. ... What do you want to save?

Virile men? Grown women? Old people? Children? Sit down - and talk. ...

Now I am going to prove to you that I trust you more than you trust me. When

you ... tell me that the offer has been accepted, I will [as an initial

demonstration of good faith, even before you make any payment] dissolve

Auschwitz and move 10 percent of the promised million to the border. You take

over the 100,000 Jews and deliver for them afterwards one thousand trucks. And

then the deal will proceed step by step. (Adolph Eichmann, quoted in Raul

Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1133-1134)

Eichmann's initiative, according to his testimony in Jerusalem, had been

influenced largely by the propensity of rival SS factions to negotiate with the

Jews. He was going to confine the offer to freeing 100,000 Jews, but then

thought that only a major gesture, involving a million, was going to have any

impact. When Himmler approved the scheme, Eichmann was actually surprised.

(Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1134)

However, Joel Brand, attempting to negotiate this exchange, met with no support, either from

representatives of the Allied nations, or from Jewish representatives. When he realized that

the offer would not be accepted, he burst out with:

Do you know what you are doing? That is simply murder! That is mass murder.

... [O]ur best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children

will be first! (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p.

1137)

Among the objections was not that the deal would fail, but rather that it was undesirable that

the deal succeed:

"But Mr. Brand," the British host exclaimed, "what shall I do with those

million Jews? Where shall I put them?" (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the

European Jews, 1985, P. 1140)

The plain fact was that there was no place on earth that would have been ready

to accept the Jews, not even this one million. (Adolph Eichmann in Raul

Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1140)

A similar comment was made with respect to the above-mentioned Antonescu Plan:

The British Foreign Office ... was concerned with the "difficulties of

disposing of any considerable number of Jews" in the event of their release

from Axis Europe. ... [W]ithin the Foreign Office there was fear of large-scale

success.... (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, P.

1140)

And a similar reaction with respect to discussions concerning the rescue of Bulgarian Jews:

Hull raised the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and

are threatened with extermination unless we could get them out and, very

urgently, pressed Eden for an answer to the problem. Eden replied that the

whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and that we should move

very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like

Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make

similar efforts in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up on any

such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in

the world to handle them. (Harry Hopkins in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of

the European Jews, 1985, P. 1122)

The role played by Jews in the Allied indifference was, to repeat, one of support of inaction:

There is considerable difference of opinion among the Jewish people as to the

policies which should be pursued in rescuing and assisting these unfortunate

people, and no one course of action would be agreeable to all persons

interested in this problem. (American Secretary of State Hull in Raul Hilberg,

The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1125)

The Rudolph Vrba Accusation. The reports above of American Jews and world Jews doing little to

save their coreligionists under Nazi occupation, or of even obstructing efforts to save them, or

reports of the Antonescu Offer, or of the Eichmann offer - these do not exhaust the accounts

leading to the conclusion that the Jewish role in saving Jewish lives during World War II fell

short of heroic, and perhaps was typically complicitous or collaborative, and sometimes even

becoming criminally so. Rather, other such accounts can be found, among them the one offered by

Dr. Rudolph Vrba in the Oshawa Times account below. Vrba's accusation standing by itself falls

short of totally convincing, and would need to be bolstered by substantive detail before it was

given full credit. Nevertheless, Vrba's accusation is reproduced below to demonstrate that the

accusations of Jewish non-assistance focus on many events in many parts of the world, and

because it heightens the probability that further investigation would credit some of these

accusations:

Jewish Council Blamed For Deaths of 400,000

FRANKFURT (AP) - A Canadian professor contends that 400,000 jews killed by

the Nazis at the Auschwitz extermination camp could have been saved had the

Budapest Jewish Council warned them in time instead of co-operating with the

Nazis.

Dr. Rudolph Vrba, 43, associate professor of pharmacology at the University

of British Columbia, in an interview gave an account of his escape from

Auschwitz and his efforts to warn the world of the fate threatening more than

1,000,000 Hungarian Jews.

Vrba testified last Friday at the trial here of two former SS (Elite Corps)

colonels charged with the mass murder of Hungarian jews during the war.

Vrba, a native of Czechoslovakia and a Jew by birth, said he was deported

to Maidanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in June, 1942, and two

weeks later transferred to Auschwitz.

In the spring of 1944, he heard that 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews were to die

at the notorious camp and decided to flee and tell the world about the crime

that was going to be committed.

Together with another prisoner, he hid in early April, 1944, underneath a

pile of construction wood within the outer security zone of the camp which

usually was not closely guarded.

After spending three days in their hideout with hardly any food the two

family [sic] made their getaway and eventually crossed the Slovak border.

In Cadca, Slovakia, he informed the Jewish Council which in turn passed on

the information to the Bratislava and Budapest Jewish councils, Vrba said.

But, he said "The Budapest Jewish Council were co-operating with the Nazi

authorities who promised them that they would allow some 2,000 select Jews to

travel to Switzerland if they hid from the Jewish community the truth about

what was in store for them at Auschwitz."

Thus, he added, Hungarian Jews did not put up any resistance when they were

taken to the Auschwitz death camp, believing that they were merely being

"resettled."

Vrba continued that only after Swiss newspapers June 22, 1944, published

his story about the Hungarian Jews and copies of his report were sent to U.S.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Pope, protests from several

governments, including the U.S., British and Swedish governments, forced the

Hungarian head of government, Admiral Horthy, to stop the deporting of more

Jews from the country.

Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg but changed his name after escaping from

Auschwitz. (Oshawa Times, December 30, 1968)

Jewish help compared to Ukrainian help. And so here we are faced with the following

incongruity. Ukrainians were dying at the hands of the Nazis, were dying fighting the Nazis,

were dying saving Jews - and yet Morley Safer now brands Ukrainians as Nazis. In contrast,

American Jews were not allowing the Jewish Holocaust to interfere with their lifestyles, were

vetoing proposals to assist and rescue European Jews, and yet they are now privileged to accuse

Ukrainians of being Nazis. People who did next to nothing to save the European Jews, people who

obstructed the rescue of European Jews, people who acted while not under threat of death now

turn around and judge those who while under threat of death did not live up to impossibly high

moral standards.

Appropriately did Reb Moshe Shonfeld place on the title page of his book The Holocaust Victims

Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals the quotations "Our enemies will

subjugate you" (Vayikra) - "Those enemies will be from within" (Chazal). Reading Reb Shonfeld's

book invites the conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for Nazi collaborators in Ukraine was

misplaced - perhaps it is the case that the largest repository of unprosecuted Nazi

collaborators today is to be found in the state of Israel; and invites consideration of the

further conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for enemies of Judaism in Ukraine is similarly

misplaced - he might instead have looked for the truly dangerous enemies within - for Jews like

Simon Wiesenthal, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Elie Wiesel, Jerzy Kosinski, and - yes - Morley Safer