Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: 1938

Showing posts with label 1938. Show all posts

Friday, July 28, 2023

Remembering what happens when Jews rely on others (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

If there was ever a time that Jews needed the help of the West, it was against Hitler.

And we all know how that turned out.

Put aside the refusal to bomb railroad tracks in order to slow down the transportation of Jews to their death in the concentration camps. And put aside how long it took countries to get together to make a united effort to save Jewish refugees who needed destinations in order to escape the Holocaust.

What happened when countries did get together with the sole purpose to help Jewish refugees escape the danger and find a new home? The answer is Evian.

And the results were not pretty.

In his new book, And None Shall Make Them Afraid, Rick Richman describes "Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel" -- the stories of 8 Jews whose lives and actions contributed to the success of Zionism and the establishment of the Modern State of Israel. The 1938 Evian Conference intersects with the life of Golda Meir, who attended the conference, and the life of playwright Ben Hecht, who dealt with the Jewish leadership that followed and relied too much on world leaders they thought actually wanted to help.

The problem with Evian became clear before it even convened, starting with the invitation itself, which defined the goal as to

consider what steps can be taken to facilitate the settlement in other countries of political refugees from Germany (including Austria).

Notice that there is no mention of the identity of the refugees that the conference was supposed to help--Jews. Merely political refugees.

This avoidance was pervasive.

Richman points out:

To read the speeches of the nine-day Evian Conference, which convened on July 6, 1938, in the Hotel Royal's Grand Ballroom with 140 representatives from thirty-two countries, is to see a cascade of euphemisms, all designed to avoid using the words "Jews" (who were the subject of the Conference) and "Hitler" (who had created the problem the Conference was called to address). (p. 141, emphasis added)

This included the lack of any condemnation of Hitler or even any "message" addressed to him (p. 144).

That use of euphemisms is reminiscent of the tendency of today's media which in their headlines reduce Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis into cars that on their own volition run down Israelis --

At the conclusion of the conference, only the Dominican Republic was willing to accept Jewish refugees.

A political cartoon that depicted the situation of the Jews before the Evian Conference served as an accurate description of its result:

But Nazi Germany knew that the purpose was to help the Jews and not just refugees in general. Hitler's Foreign Office publicly gloated in response to the refusal of the participants in the Conference to offer to help:

it appears astounding that [those] countries seem in no way anxious to make use of these elements [the Jews] themselves now that the opportunity offers. (p. 148)

Richman writes about the inaction of the Conference:

It sent a signal to Hitler that no nation in the world wanted the Jews, that Palestine had effectively been closed as a place of refuge, and that German could deal internally with the Jews as it wished, without fear of even a critical resolution from the West. (p.148-149)

He notes that some historians find a connection between the failure of the Evian Conference and the Kristallnacht pogrom that occurred 4 months later. (p.149)

World leaders today are not doing much better. A look at the UN gives a snapshot of where those countries stand today.

And what about Jewish leaders?

During Kristallnacht, more than a thousand synagogues were burned and more than 7,000 businesses were destroyed. Hundreds of Jews died and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

What was the response from Jewish organizations?

Three days after Kristallnacht, the major American Jewish organizations met and formally agreed that "there should be no parades, public demonstrations or protests by Jews." They adopted a strategy of silence, out of fear that Jewish protests might lead to accusations of special pleading. [p. 158, emphasis added]

When Roosevelt condemned the pogrom 5 days later, he made no reference to Jews. What he did make were some generalized platitudes, concluding that there would be no protests and no increase in immigration quotas. The Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote at the time, "At long last, America has spoken."

Someone less satisfied was the Jewish playwright Ben Hecht, who once wrote about himself, "Most of the Jews I know are, like myself, a little startled to find themselves Jews." Despite what was, up to then, a weak Jewish identification, seven months after Kristallnacht, Hecht wrote a collection of stories in a book called A Book of Miracles. It included The Little Candle, which vividly recounted an international pogrom in Germany in which half a million Jews were murdered. He became friends with Peter Bergson, a follower of Vladimir Jabotinsky, leading to Hecht becoming even more active.

He wrote about what was happening in Germany, getting the word out at a time when FDR was doing nothing and Jewish leadership was passive. In March 1943, he wrote a script for a pageant at Madison Square Garden entitled "We Will Never Die," highlighting the dangerous situation of Jews in Europe. It featured a number of famous Broadway stage personalities. In his autobiography, Hecht writes about a phone call he received from Rabbi Wise reaction:

I have read your pageant script and I disapprove of it. I must ask you to cancel this pageant and discontinue all your further activities on behalf of the Jews. If you wish hereafter to work for the Jewish Cause, you will please consult me and let me advise you. [p.170]

Hecht hung up on him.

There were 2 sold-out performances the first night and 40,000 saw the pageant, with thousands more listening outside on loudspeakers. It went on to be performed in DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In September, Hecht wrote a poem entitled Ballad of the Doomed Jews of Europe, which the Bergson Group had published in an ad in The New York Times.

And again, Jewish organizations were opposed:

Both the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress opposed the ad's publication when Hecht had proposed it at the end of 1942, fearing it was too provocative. When it was ultimately published a year later, another 1 million Jews had been murdered.

During this period, the Roosevelt administration took no action whatsoever to save the European Jews. (p. 172)

Finally, in January 1944, Roosevelt took action on the advice of his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr, who informed him that the State Department was blocking aid to Jewish refugees. According to Morgenthau, if FDR did not act quickly, he would risk an election-year scandal. This is what led to the creation of the War Refugee Board.

The Board was successful in saving the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, but it came into existence far too late, after more than 5 million Jews had been murdered.

Jewish organizations failed.

Today, Jewish organizations again suffer from a lack of confidence.

Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, is a collection of 22 essays assembled by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser. As established in the book's Acknowledgments, there is a need to address

The failure of the American Jewish establishment to counter the growing hostility toward the Jewish community [which] is endangering Jews across the country. This failure is scandalous.

...we have weak, politicized bureaucrats too often more concerned with their social status, the perks of power, and their organizations’ financial success than with their responsibility to defend the community. As can be seen in their priorities, staffing, and programs, they seem more loyal to a progressive ideology than to the safety of Jews.

Jews and Israel can no more rely today on the nations of the world to help them than it could when those same Western countries were needed the most. By the same token, Jewish organizations cannot afford to be complacent, valuing the connections with world leaders above the best interests of the Jewish people. At a time when there is growing friction between Israel and American Jews, it is even more important for Jewish organizations to put Jews and Israel before politics and progressive ideology

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

A short history of "Arabs Threaten Jews" (not "Zionists")

I decided to do a quick search of headlines that said that Arabs threatened Jews.

April 17, 1920: Arabs threaten to massacre all Jews of Palestine (which included many non-Zionists at the time.)

March 14, 1925: Arabs threaten to attack Jews if they honor Balfour when he visits.

August 11, 1925: Arabs threaten to massacre all Jews in Palestine again (even though the headline says "of Zion movement."

November 23, 1929: Arabs threaten force if Jews continue to worship at the Western Wall.

May 13, 1936: Arabs threaten Jews in Arab countries if they don't get their demands met in Palestine.

June 26, 1936: Bedouin in Transjordan threaten to march across the river to aid their brethren in the "great Arab revolt."

June 30, 1936: Algerian Arabs threaten Algerian Jews.

October 10, 1938: Arab leaders send a telegram to Chaim Weizmann threatening the lives of all Jews in the "East" if Zionists don't accede to their demands, saying it would be the worst calamity in Jewish history.

May 30, 1946: Rulers of Arab states warn Palestinian Jews of plans to have Jews immigrate from DP camps to Palestine. One leader says that if 100,000 Jews enter Palestine after almost being slaughtered in Europe, then the Arabs would slaughter all 100,000 of them.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The French reaction to Kristallnacht: Let's pretend to care about Jews while watching them suffer

Reading the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of Kristallnacht is overwhelming. While the story did not start out on the front pages, the coverage snowballed over the next few days as Nazi restrictions on Jews increased and editorials in newspapers expressed outrage.

The outrage did not extend to doing a damn thing to help Jews in Germany, though.

A French newspaper published this editorial cartoon:

And the New York Times reported of angry reactions to the pogroms and anti-Jewish edicts in France:

But there were two other stories out of France that week.

In this one, we see that France turned away the Jews who were fleeing Germany - Jews the Nazis were allowing to leave.

And days later, after French newspapers said how unacceptable it would be for France to make an agreement with a Nazi Germany that so cruelly and proudly persecuted Jews, France worked hard to make exactly that agreement.

That agreement was signed on December 6, 1938, and the articles about it didn't mention a thing about Jews.

Then, as now, the world pretended to care about Jews - but was not willing to lift a finger to actually save their lives. It was all lip service.

So whenever the world demands that Israel compromise on its security today, remember that it is also no lip service. No one will guarantee Jewish security and survival besides Jews themselves.

The only difference is that now we have a state and an army.

There's another relevant lesson for today. Don't make agreements with genocidal madmen.

They tend not to be too trustworthy.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

1938: Columnist is sympathetic towards Jews in Germany - but not THAT sympathetic

Later this month, Ken Burns is releasing a documentary, The US and the Holocaust, on how the United States did not help Jews escape their doom.

Here is one example of how some Americans thought on the eve of the Holocaust.

William Bruckart was a moderately successful and influential columnist in the 1930s, who published a regular syndicated column called Washington Digest.

In December 1938, only ten months before World War II would break out and when there were no longer any illusions about Hitler's attacks on Jews, he wrote about how terrible Hitler was - but sympathy for German Jews was not enough reason for the US to allow Jews to immigrate.

Danger of 'Jewish Problem' for United States in German 'Purge'

Opening of Gates to Refugees Might Introduce Disturbing Influence.
By WILLIAM BRUCKART WNU Service, National Press Bldg., Washington, D. C.

WASHINGTON. — Press service wires and cables and radio from abroad have been clogged for several weeks with hundreds of thousands of words about the plight of the Jews in Germany; about the abuses visited upon the Jewish race by the European madman, Hitler, and his camp followers; about the humanitarian pleas of our own President, Mr. Roosevelt, for appeasement of the conditions. There has been what I believe to be one of the greatest waves of emotion, waves of resentful national sentiment, that this country ever has known. I recall none like it, none as overwhelming, none as deep-seated as that through which we have been passing, and in my opinion our nation should have resented such outrages.

While no one with a heart can fail to grieve to a greater or less extent about the indescribable harshness, the unforgivable meanness of Hitler, it occurs to me that we should begin to temper these waves of emotion somewhat. There are other factors to be considered, factors and consequences of the thing that is now called "the Jewish problem," that require calm reasoning. In other words, let us say that America is and must remain for Americans, and charity, while it is sweet, cannot be exploited, or carried to extremes simply because we feel a sadness for a group upon whom an injustice has been sent. Like millions of other Americans, I am hopeful that some way will be found to aid the Jews who are being driven out of Germany, but I am unwilling that we, as a nation, shall create additional and unwarranted difficulties for ourselves by extending a helping hand. Therefore, the United States must not be the goat.

It is one thing to render aid. It is quite another thing to inject into our own bloodstream of national life additional elements without knowing what those elements are. After all, the damage is something that we did not cause; the injured are a people who have no knowledge of our way of doing things and may never cooperate with us, and we must prevent being dragged into the other fellow's fist fight.

I suppose there are very few persons in the United States who do not believe that Hitler's "purge" of German Jews constitutes a blot upon modern civilization. I know that leading Germans in the United States wish there were ways and means to stop the action. There can be no defense of the outright seizure of $400,000,000 of money from the Jews of Germany under the guise of a "fine" although there is a lesson of warning in it. ...
....
The unwanted race is simply the victim and a knowledge of how its members have had the sufferings brought upon them adds little or nothing to the search for a method to protect their lives. Where are they to go? That is the real question. Hitler doesn't care where they go or what happens to them. Some one else has to lead the way. Our nation has joined in that leadership, and rightly so. But we have policies and principles and traditions which must be respected. If, in our eagerness to help the German Jews, we should transgress those established principles, then we, as well as the Jews, will have to pay a penalty.....

We ought not kid ourselves. There are many persons swearing allegiance to the United States who do not like Jews. Those persons may be otherwise good citizens, but they distrust a Jew because he is a Jew, making no distinction between individuals. It is stating nothing new to say that there has been almost a steady undercurrent of criticism of Mr. Roosevelt from certain quarters because Jews have been given prominent places in the New Deal. I think it is not stretching the imagination at all, therefore, to point to the Jewish problem as one that may become involved in politics at some future time, although I hope it never does.

Mr. Roosevelt has proposed removal of some of the immigration restrictions as a means of bringing into this country more German Jews than our immigration laws now permit. In so doing, he verged on politics himself. Any one familiar with the debates on immigration policies in the early 1920s must recall the severity of that battle. The issue was whether we, as a nation, were going to be haven for all corners and just hope that they would do things the American way, or whether we should restrict the number coming here to live to a number which could be absorbed into our national life. Labor unions and most employers favored the restrictions, and when we think of the number of unemployed in the last five or six years—people fed and clothed by the federal government—it appears that we allowed too many to come in. It seems we could have excluded all of them to advantage.

Behind the scenes of the immigration restriction also was a determination on the part of Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, then a senate power, to prevent introduction into the United States of all kinds of "isms." The senator foresaw the spread of radicalism by means of entry of the European backwash and rubbish. There was not much discussion of this phase because our government did not want to offend any foreign nation. It was a basic reason, however, and it is too bad that it was not given more public consideration.

Fortunately, there can be no change in the number of foreigners admitted from any nation without action by congress. The United States can take only so many—something like 30,000 a year—of those purged Jews, unless congress amends the law. And when I say it is fortunate that there must be action by congress before there can be a change in policy, I mean no inferences.

In consideration of whether we ought to let a deluge of refugees enter, I cannot help thinking of a possible spread of trouble. For example, if our definite national position of protest against Hitler's policies should bring retaliation, every Jewish refugee allowed in this country would be clamoring for the United States to take revenge on Germany and Hitler. Their influence would be great because they could tell what happened to them and give an idea of what is happening.

As far as relations between Germany and the United States are concerned at the moment, all that can be said is that the United States has let the world know of its disapproval. When Ambassador Wilson was recalled, it was just the same as saying to the world of nations that Uncle Sam hasn't any respect for Hitler.

Bruckart isn't an antisemite - no, he really cares about the Jews in Europe. He feels very bad about them. He hopes nothing bad will happen to them, even though it is already happening.

But doing anything to save them? That's un-American.

His mention of Senator David Reed refers to one of the architects of the 1924 Immigration Act which was designed to limit immigration to the US, especially of Jews and Asians. There was an element of Nazi-style eugenics in that law: northern Europeans were considered more wanted and healthier than those from central and southern Europe, where most Jews were attempting to immigrate from. It reduced Jewish immigration by about 90%.

This article assumes that there were desirable immigrants and undesirable ones - and Jews were definitely on the undesirable side of the equation. Moreover, it implies that the many Jewish immigrants who had come to the US in the early part of the century were still not real Americans, and that they were radicals.

That next to last paragraph is something. Bruckart is saying that Jews who arrive in America would tell the truth about how the Nazis act, and it would be bad for "real" Americans to hear the truth because it might prompt them to do something to stop it.

I was curious whether Bruckart would have continued his isolationist position after Pearl Harbor, but we'll never know - he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1940 at age 48.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Three minutes of color film footage of the Jews of Nasielsk, Poland, on the eve of the Holocaust (video)

In January, The New York Times wrote a story about a new documentary about the discovery and preservation of a remarkable color home movie.

Glenn Kurtz found the film reel in a corner of his parents’ closet in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in 2009. It was in a dented aluminum canister.

Florida’s heat and humidity had nearly solidified the celluloid into a mass “like a hockey puck,” Kurtz said. But someone had transferred part of it onto VHS tape in the 1980s, so Kurtz could see what it contained: a home movie titled “Our Trip to Holland, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, France and England, 1938.”

The 16-millimeter film, made by his grandfather, David Kurtz, on the eve of World War II, showed the Alps, quaint Dutch villages and three minutes of footage of a vibrant Jewish community in a Polish town.

Old men in yarmulkes, skinny boys in caps, girls with long braids. Smiling and joking. People pour through the large doors of a synagogue. There’s some shoving in a cafe and then, that’s it. The footage ends abruptly.

Kurtz, nevertheless, understood the value of the material as evidence of Jewish life in Poland just before the Holocaust. It would take him nearly a year to figure it out, but he discovered that the footage depicted Nasielsk, his grandfather’s birthplace, a town about 30 miles northwest of Warsaw that some 3,000 Jews called home before the war.

Fewer than 100 would survive it.

Now, the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter has used the fragmentary, ephemeral footage to create “Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” a 70-minute feature film that helps to further define what and who were lost.

It isn't so easy to find the actual footage as a whole, but I found a lower-resolution version with some added background music.

The kids are excited, making faces, jumping into the view, even hitting each other. Men and women help their elderly parents down the stairs of the synagogue. It is all utterly unremarkable except that nearly all of them would be gone within a few years.

This is a rare view of how dynamic and alive the Jews of pre-war Europe were, and how many distinct worlds were lost in the Holocaust.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!

Tonight is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The usual reasons given for this day are so that we won't forget the evils of antisemitism, and we solemnly pledge "never again."

Unfortunately, much of the world already has forgotten the lessons and support the rights of those who want to see it repeated.

Today's antisemites who style themselves as being merely "anti-Zionist" or "pro-Palestinian" say that they have learned the lessons of the Holocaust, so much so that they can give instruction to the Jewish state as to how it hasn't learned those lessons. They strenuously deny being antisemitic, and they have lots of "proof:" they have Jewish friends, they have Jewish members, they have seders, they are acting according to Jewish morality, they quote "Justice, Justice thou shalt pursue."

And for the most part, the world that claims to be horrified by the Holocaust believes their denial of being motivated by Jew-hatred.

But they aren't the only ones who have denied being antisemitic.

This 1990 Canadian news story shows that a neo-Nazi skinhead also denied hating Jews:

He didn't hate Jews. He just didn't want them around anymore.

The Soviet Union also denied hating Jews. Soviets were only anti-Zionist, and they defined “international Zionism” as a “shock detachment of imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism" that happened to be led by the "Jewish bourgeoisie."

Nazis denied discriminating against Jews as well. In the run-up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, they claimed that they would allow any Jewish athletes to compete. The only problem was that sports clubs in Germany didn't allow Jews, and they didn't want to interfere with their decisions.

And one couldn't expect Germany to support Jewish sports clubs, because they were...Zionist!

"It is hardly fair to expect that state support be given to purely Jewish organizations, which, being composed almost exclusively of Zionists, are even today in sharp political conflict with the government," said Hans Von Tschammer und Osten, the German minister of sport.

Like the Soviets, the Nazis were merely anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish!

Father Charles Coughlin amassed a huge radio audience in the 1930s and emphasized that Jews were behind the Communist revolution. He published a magazine, Social Justice, which serialized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But he denied being antisemitic as well. (NYT, November 28, 1938)

Henry Ford, who also published the Protocols, strenuously denied having any negative feelings towards Jews as well. He only pointed out how Jews were behind all wars and the Jew is "the money maniac." (NYT, October 29, 1922):

It turns out that of you take them at their word, there are no antisemites at all. Palestinians don't hate Jews, they just want to ensure Jews have no political power. Louis Farrakhan isn't antisemitic, he's just pointing out that most Jews belong to the Synagogue of Satan - but not all of them.The Arab nations didn't hate Jews, they say that all their Jews left voluntarily after listening to Zionist lies.

Most of these can point to Jews who support them and who agree that they are not antisemitic, only misunderstood.

By the same token, Haman didn't hate Jews, he was just concerned that they have different laws than the rest of Persia. Pharaoh didn't hate Jews, he was just concerned about a fifth column in ancient Egypt.

It is easy to laugh at the denials of antisemites from decades or centuries past; their lies are transparent. Yet today, a large percentage of people are more than willing to accept the current denials of antisemitism from the anti-Israel crowd, as if their current excuses for singling out most Jews have any more validity than those of the antisemites of the past.

It isn't only today that antisemites dress up their hate in the garb of nationalism, or social justice, or morality, or science, or protecting the interests of "victims" of Jewish actions.

They've always done it.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!