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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
himself. Their misstatements lower Jewish credibility; their hatred incites a reactionary
anti-Semitism.
In fact, Morley Safer's accusation of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis is not a cry for
justice nor an advancement of historical truth, but is, rather, a weapon sometimes brandished
under political motivation even when the facts do not justify its use, and at other times
sheathed, also for political reasons, even when the facts cry out for its use. Thus, a
Ukrainian may be prosecuted even though the evidence against him is patently fraudulent, as was
the case in the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk (Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall
of a Show-Trial, 1994). A Jewish Zionist, in contrast, may go unprosecuted for very real
collaboration with the Nazis, though he may be unable to avoid final justice imposed through
individual action:
Moldetsky, a leader of the Zionist Workers Party (Poalei Zion), who was
appointed head of the council of elders in Bedzin, and who, over the course of
years, chose thousands of Jews for forced labor and extermination, succeeded in
remaining alive. For the mass deportations, Moldetsky published a decree which
was completely fraudulent and deceiving, in which he said: "Jews, dress up in
your holiday clothes and march joyfully to the gathering places mentioned
above. No one is to remain at home. ..." The Jews, in their innocence,
obeyed him. The result was that people with large families - as well as the
elderly - a total of 8,000, were sent to Auschwitz. The babies were pushed
into sacks by the Nazis.
...
After the war, Moldetsky - by merit of Zionist activities - was
understandably one of the first to receive an immigration certificate to
Palestine. His collaboration in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews did
not make him unfit in the eyes of the officials of the Jewish Agency, who were
distributing the certificates. He went to Eretz Yisroel where, it has been
reported, the revengeful hand of the Jews of Bedzin killed him while he was
taking a trip in the mountains. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, pp. 122-123)
A related demonstration of how the accusation of Nazi collaboration is not levelled impartially,
but is used as a political weapon can be found in the case of Dr. Israel Kastner.
Comparison 2: Ukrainian Cruelty on Behalf of the Nazis Compared to Jewish Cruelty on Behalf of the
Nazis
Morley Safer states, addressing himself to Simon Wiesenthal: "I get the impression from people
that the actions of the Ukrainians, if anything, were worse than the Germans." What can Mr.
Safer possibly mean by such a statement? Does he mean that he knows of a Ukrainian whose
actions are worse than Hitler's, and another Ukrainian whose actions are worse than Himmler's,
and another whose actions are worse than Eichmann's, and so on down the line? Surely, this is
an impossibility, as Ukraine has never been accused either of starting the Second World War or
of engineering the Final Solution. Surely all that Mr. Safer means is that some Ukrainians can
be found who were worse than the average German, or the average Nazi, or even the average member
of the SS. Agreed - undoubtedly such Ukrainians exist, but what of it? Similar deviants exist
in all groups. Relevant here is that every faithful account of the Jewish Holocaust is peppered
with statements such as the following:
Question survivors of the ghettoes and camps. They all certify that the
beatings they received at the hands of the Jewish 'golden youth' were filled
with scorn. They fulfilled their tasks with a zeal and cruelty to a greater
extent than that required by the German commanders. (Y. Efroiken, Sanctity and
Valor of the Jews, in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
He [K. Tzetnik] depicts the figure of Eliezer Greenbaum, son of Yitzchak
Greenbaum, who, thanks to his tactics of acting as informant and displaying
cruelty - to an extent which amazed even the Germans - was elevated to the rank
of the bloc commander. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
Practically all of the kapo officers were academicians - persons with degrees
who behaved like wild beasts and at times were more cruel than the Nazis. (Reb
Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish
War Criminals, 1977, p. 121)
Is it in the interests of historical truth to allude to the Ukrainian beasts without mentioning
the Jewish beasts? Does the depiction of one without the other constitute information or
disinformation, reporting or propaganda? Who commands such bias in the media? Who pays for
it? These are issues worthy of address by a team of intrepid investigative reporters, should
any be found.
Comparison 3: Ukrainians Saving Jews Compared to Jews Saving Ukrainians
Jews have had many opportunities to save Ukrainians. For example, Jews could have saved
Ukrainians during the induced famine of 1932-33, during which Jews fared better than Ukrainians
for several reasons: (1) Jews tended to be urban whereas the famine tended to be rural; (2) Jews
were more affluent, and money buys food even during a famine; (3) Jews received support from
other Jews in the West; (4) Jews occupied positions of authority, and in fact can be said to
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