A representative at the Zionist Institute of Jewish Affairs wrote, “In numerous cities and towns, particularly in the Ukraine and White Russia, Jews were among the first to be evacuated.” The institute admitted that Jews received preferential treatment from the Soviet government, which devoted thousands of trains for evacuation of Jews from such cities as Kiev, Odessa (which had the second-largest Jewish community after Warsaw), and Smolensk. After warfare erupted, but before Germans invaded Russian cities and towns, the Soviet government transported troops to the western front and then used the same trains to evacuate the majority of the Jewish population from those areas. Joshua Rothenberg of Brandeis University said, “Much of the Jewish population of the conquered territories escaped annihilation by fleeing before the invading armies arrived.”175
When war began, the JDC helped Jews emigrate from Europe. In 1941, the JDC facilitated Jewish immigration from German-occupied areas and from Lithuania to Palestine and Japan. The JDC also worked with the International Red Cross to help Jews leave Europe. On July 30, 1941, the Soviet Union and the Polish government arranged to have the JDC send packages to Polish Jews whom the Soviets had evacuated to Central Asia. From 1942 to 1945, the JDC spent $2.2 million on assistance. In 1943, the JDC delivered food, clothing, and other essentials, which the Soviet Red Cross distributed.176
Zionist sources admit that the evacuation of the Baltic Jews and the native population began before the war began. Following the war, German investigators discovered that the Soviets had carried out massive arrests, deportations, murders, and other atrocities on June 13 and 14, 1941, just prior to the German invasion. The Soviets evacuated nearly all of the Jews from the towns in the west closest to the border long before the Germans took control of them. Zionist sources disclosed that this was possible only because the Soviets had already devised an evacuation plan, facilitated by the fact that the Jews resided in just four cities, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk, all in Ukraine. About 85 percent of the Jews living in Ukraine lived in those cities in 1939. In White Russia, present-day Belarus, 87.8 percent of the Jews lived in big cities.177
In 1941, the Red Army evacuated a reported 80 percent of the 3,597,000 Jews who resided in Soviet territory that Germany would soon occupy. Eighty percent would be 2,877,000, leaving roughly 720,000 Jews under German jurisdiction, many of them older and resistant to moving. This suited the Soviets, who did not want additional eaters who were unable to work in their camps. Given their experience during World War I, the Jews also believed that they would fare better under the Germans than under the Soviets. However, they were most likely to perish during the hardships of war such as hunger, cold, epidemics, and lack of medical attention. In 1944, Arthur R. Davies, a war correspondent in Europe, said that Shachne Epstein of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee reported that the Soviets evacuated 3.5 million Jews from German-occupied territory to Siberia, including 750,000 Jewish refugees from Poland in the spring of 1940.178
The Soviets were intent on saving Jews living in areas that the Germans conquered. The Soviets awarded Jews influential positions in the government where many of them functioned as party officials and specialists. In late 1942, David Bergelson said, “The evacuation saved a decisive majority of Jews of the Ukraine, White Russia, Lithuania, and Latvia. According to information coming from Vitebsk, Riga and other large centers which have been captured by the Fascists, there were few Jews there when the Germans arrived… This means that a majority of the Jews of these cities were evacuated in time by the Soviet government.” Germany occupied an area in the Soviet Union where 2.03 million Jews had previously resided. Only one-fifth of those Jews fell into German hands. Gerald Reitlinger, author of Holocaust: The Final Solution (1953; revised edition, 1967), one of the first books promoting the idea of a holocaust, and The SS: Alibi of a Nation, said that the “bulk” of the three million Jews living in prewar Russia, and 1,800,000 Jews residing in the annexed areas escaped into the interior of the Soviet Union.179 His figures contradict the propaganda that the Zionists and the communists disseminated, especially after the war when the media distracted the masses with threats of nuclear war.
Following the war, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, arranged for the JDC to take care of Jews in displaced-persons camps. The JDC also financed the program Relief in Transit, which accommodated legal and illegal Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. The program, with access to millions of dollars, provided food, clothing, and transportation. From 1945 to 1952, the JDC spent $342 million to assist Holocaust victims. Starting in May 1945, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland distributed huge shipments of goods that the JDC sent to Polish Jews who had arrived in Warsaw from the Soviet Union. The JDC financed Jews who wanted to stay in Poland as well as those who wished to leave. Most wanted to leave, so the JDC furnished trucks, food, and clothing and subsidized Zionist kibbutzim for youths.180
The Ha’avara Agreement
According to Jewish law, a Jew should be loyal to the country in which he or she lives. However, a Zionist, according to the World Zionist Organization (WZO), owes “unqualified loyalty” to the Israeli state. If a conflict exists, a Zionist must choose the Zionist state.181 Most assimilated American German Jews did not want “hordes of Russian Jews” inundating America. These Eastern European Jews were of a different culture and were scorned for their traditional ways, including their black clothes, beards, and mannerisms, all distinctively foreign. Their presence in America might generate anti-Semitism and call into question the standing of assimilated Jews in the communities where people had accepted them.182
The Reverend William Blackstone, of Oak Park, Illinois, a dispensational Christian, influenced by John Darby and Dwight Moody, devised the Blackstone Memorial, which called for the restoration of Jews to Palestine and an end to Jewish suffering in Russia. He acquired the signatures of 413 prominent Americans, including executives, politicians, Jewish and Christian leaders, editors, publishers, and even the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He presented the document to President Benjamin Harrison on March 5, 1891. The Chicago Tribune printed its text, and many major newspapers publicized it for several weeks. Yet Harrison did not act upon the memorial. Next, Blackstone presented the document to President Theodore Roosevelt, who also did not respond as Blackstone had hoped.183
In 1897, leaders of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) declared, “We totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel’s mission, which from the narrow political and national field has been expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets.”184
Jacob de Haas, secretary of the First Zionist Congress and from 1892 to 1900 editor of the newspaper Jewish World in London, introduced Theodor Herzl to influential people in Britain. In 1899, the Third Zionist Congress elected Leopold Greenberg, a British journalist, and de Haas to its propaganda committee. Greenberg, a friend of David Lloyd George, invited Herzl to his home and introduced him to prominent British Jews to persuade them to accept Zionism. De Haas, a propagandist, moved to America in 1902, where he became editor of the Boston Jewish Advocate. Herzl recommended de Haas to Richard Gottheil as the new ZOA secretary to replace Stephen S. Wise. De Haas soon befriended Harvard-educated Louis D. Brandeis, who by 1908 was committed to Zionism.
American Zionists assumed the major responsibility for the Zionist Organization when World War I began. They established the Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs in New York on August 20, 1914, and elected Brandeis to lead the fifteen thousand-member organization. Brandeis, as the head of American Zionism, conducted a speaking tour in the fall and winter from 1914 to 1915 to gain support for the creation of a Jewish homeland. He suggested that this would solve anti-Semitism and the Jewish problem in Europe and in Russia. He urged Jews to unite. Organization is essential, especially f
or a minority ideological group. Under his leadership, the organization grew to more than 250,000 members.
Nathan Straus, co-owner or R.H. Macy & Company, along with his brother Isidor, was a close friend to Brandeis. Straus, a devoted Zionist, dedicated most of his fortune to the Zionist cause. He told Brandeis about the Blackstone Memorial. On April 21, 1916, Brandeis wrote to the State Department to get a copy of the memorial, but someone had lost or misplaced it.185 On May 8, Brandeis asked Straus to contact Blackstone, who responded favorably. On May 22, Brandeis then wrote to Blackstone, who agreed to furnish him with an updated document that he hoped to present to President Woodrow Wilson. Because Brandeis had traversed the country urging support for Zionism and because the media had publicized the pogroms in Russia, many non-Jews were now associated with the Zionist organization.186
In August 1912, during the presidential campaign, Brandeis and Wilson had met privately for three hours in New Jersey to discuss economic issues. Afterward, Brandeis supported Wilson and urged his friends to do likewise, and Wilson began using Brandeis’s term “regulated competition.”187 Although he took a seat as an associate justice on the Supreme Court on June 1, 1916, Brandeis continued to work for the Zionist cause.188
Though close to Wilson, Brandeis was still uncertain about Blackstone presenting his revision. So on May 8, 1917, he wrote to Jacob de Haas, who encouraged him. On June 7, Brandeis, still hesitant, again wrote to de Haas, saying he thought it unwise and untimely to attract unwanted publicity for the memorial. America was neutral about the war in Europe. From 1916 to 1918, Brandeis met regularly with Wilson to discuss the economy, Zionism, Palestine, the Blackstone Memorial, and the Balfour Declaration. Brandeis urged Blackstone to wait for the most opportune moment to present his document. Impatient, on June 14, Blackstone wrote to Wilson, enclosing a copy of the original memorial. One of the endorsees of the document was William E. Dodge, the father of Cleveland Dodge, Wilson’s Princeton classmate and a big financial supporter.189
At the end of June, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise ceremoniously gave the Blackstone Memorial to Wilson. On June 30, 1917, Wise wrote to Blackstone, telling him that he had unofficially presented the petition to Wilson, who graciously accepted its concepts because of his religious propensities as the son of a Presbyterian minister. But Wise agreed with Brandeis that it would be best to delay any publicity about the memorial. They also agreed that Wilson’s biblically based faith assured success for the Zionists,190 perhaps the reason for their initial support of his presidency.
Brandeis had already talked about the memorial with Wilson, who agreed with the document’s ideologies. But the British, not yet in possession of Palestine, were still negotiating with the Zionists over the disposition of Palestine and the Turks. Therefore a public announcement of the memorial was critical. Brandeis, in his travels throughout the country, had built faith-based grassroots support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, an early basis for Christian Zionism. Wilson and Brandeis had to assure the public that they had not adopted British policies and that their objectives were compatible with national interests. They never officially presented the memorial to Wilson, since it recommended that every nation convene a conference to resolve the “Jewish Problem.” Such a conference was incompatible with the relationship that the US government had with Britain, which had jurisdiction over Palestine following the Great War.191
Before he accepted it, Prime Minister David Lloyd George wanted assurance from American politicians that they would support the Balfour Declaration. On October 16, 1917, Edward M. House, a key Wilson adviser, told the British intelligence chief in New York that the president favored it, with reservations, on the condition that the British not disclose his acceptance. To provide legitimacy, Wilson arranged to have key Jews ask him to approve of it before a public announcement. The British issued the declaration on November 2. On August 31, 1918, Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise, saying that he was gratified by the success of the Zionist movement. On June 30, 1922, Congress would adopt a resolution “favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Congress also guaranteed that it would do nothing to alter the rights of any of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine.192
On July 20, 1921, a New York Times headline asked America to save six million Jews in Russia from a potential massacre. The paper referred to Dr. Joseph Kreinin, a noted Jewish social worker and president of the Russian Joint Board of Jewish Societies, who said, “Russia’s 6,000,000 Jews are facing extermination by massacre. As the famine is spreading, the counter revolutionary movement is gaining and the Soviet’s control is waning. This statement is borne out by official documents presented to the Berlin Government, which show that numerous pogroms are raging in all parts of Russia and the Ukraine.”193
According to Kurt Klein, about 523,000 Jews lived in Germany in January 1933, less than 1 percent of the population, with about a third of them living in Berlin. Almost thirty-eight thousand Jews emigrated when Hitler came to power, going to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland.194
Despite the claims of some people, including Klaus Polkehn, a Soviet-bloc writer, Hitler did not formalize anti-Semitism as a government policy when he became chancellor in 1933. Polkehn admitted that in early 1933, German officials began cooperating with the Zionists to “increase the inflow of German Jewish immigrants and capital to Palestine.” The Zionists concealed this fact until the 1960s, insisting that they were trying to save Jewish lives. Interestingly, they devised this arrangement with Germany at the same time that the AJC and numerous other entities were waging economic war against the country.195
In Jewish Emigration from the Third Reich, Ingrid Weckert, says that Jews certainly did not have to “sneak out” of the country, leaving all of their property and assets behind, as so many court historians claim. Reich officials naturally welcomed this emigration, particularly after international Jewry declared a worldwide economic boycott against Germany, a catastrophic blow at a time of massive unemployment and economic stress. This economic war led to the protective legislation that the Reich enacted. German and Jewish authorities, especially the Zionists, collaborated to facilitate the emigration process, making it easy for Jews to leave the country. Despite the actions of a few Jews representing all Jewry, thousands of them had resided in Germany for decades and still considered it their home.196
Frederic Morton, the Rothschilds’ biographer, maintains that Emile and Isaac Péreire, early Jewish bankers and Rothschild competitors, were not the worst enemies that the infamous banking family would ever have. Morton says that Hitler was the most determined, powerful foe that the Rothschilds would face.197 Until his advent, the Rothschilds were the power in Frankfurt.198
In early 1933, the Rothschilds hired IBM to identify German Jews because the family had lost control over them and wanted to single them out in order to relocate them to Palestine whether they wanted to go or not. Thomas Watson of IBM traveled back and forth to Germany, a fact the New York Times failed to mention. The German government awarded him because he was doing it a huge favor in identifying Jews. While many Germans disliked the Jews and their predatory behavior, it was Jewish financiers who funded the IBM project.
In Jewish History and Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak said that the rabbis in the ghettos controlled and exploited the Jews, but then the Jews began to intermarry, intermingle, and assimilate. To retain control, especially of the poorer Jews, the rabbis had to identify and then somehow compel them to move to Palestine. Perhaps the Jews, with their extensive communications networks, could coordinate a few Kristallnacht-style pogroms, then arrange for officials in other countries to halt Jewish immigration. Then the Jews could gain sympathy on a number of levels, and the Zionists could move the Jews to Palestine and continue to construct the basis for a religious requirement—the Holocaust—while blaming Hitler and the hardworking Germans who resented people who exploited the efforts of
others. Most Jews resisted leaving Germany since this would mean fighting the Arabs for the rest of their lives. Yet what choice did frightened Jews have? Some of the first ships to Palestine complete with swastikas and Hebrew phrases on the sides, came from Germany under the government’s direction.
Arthur Ruppin of Berlin’s Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography wanted to establish a WZO branch in Palestine; he opened the Eretz Yisrael Office in Jaffa. At the Ninth Zionist Congress in 1909 in Hamburg, he and Max Nordau anticipated that the Young Turk revolution would drastically enhance expectations in Palestine.
In May 1933, during a closing session of the AJC at the Hotel Willard in Washington, D.C., former US Representative Meyer Jacobstein introduced a resolution for an integrated worldwide program to deal with the persecution of Jews in Germany. One of the conference objectives was to plan the World Jewish Congress in 1934 in Geneva. Attendees called on American Jews to elect delegates to the congress, which re-elected Stephen S. Wise as the honorary president. Other officers included Bernard S. Deutsch, Nathan Perlman, Louis Lipsky, and Samuel Margoshes. They unanimously endorsed a resolution saying that “Palestine alone offered a permanent solution to the problem of Jewish homelessness, particularly with reference to those Jews in Germany who are seeking a refuge in flight.”199
In 1933, Sam Cohen, the manager of a Palestinian citrus company, signed an agreement with the German Ministry of Economics to facilitate the transfer of one million marks to Palestine. People in Palestine would use the funds to purchase agricultural equipment from Germany for sale in Palestine. This was the precursor of the transfer (Ha’avara) agreement. Jews angrily attacked the accord, viewing it as a traitorous attempt to incapacitate Zionist efforts to boycott German exports. This was somewhat accurate in that the National Socialist government agreed to this arrangement “to make a breach in the wall of the anti-German boycott.”200
The Ruling Elite Page 9
