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THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH An HIR series
To
Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht, Hillel Kook, alias Peter Bergson, the political
leader of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (ETZEL), an underground patriotic Jewish army
in British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ went to the United States during the
Holocaust and fought from there a losing propaganda battle to save the
European Jews from Hitler’s fire. Peter Bergson was opposed by the mainstream leaders
of the American Jewish community, led by Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise,
creator of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress.
Stephen Wise did everything he could to sabotage Peter Bergson’s effort. And
thanks to Stephen Wise and his ilk, the Bergson movement, though it managed
against all odds to save 200,000 Jews, could not save more (see Part 1 for this story). Ben Hecht, an Oscar-winning screenwriter in
Hollywood, was Bergson’s right-hand man in this noble and tragic mission to
save the Jews from their own ‘leaders.’ He authored the advertisements
for the Bergson movement, and also a quite successful
theatrical pageant titled We Will Never Die to raise awareness about
the Holocaust in the United States. In 1961 Ben Hecht wrote Perfidy, where he
narrated and documented for posterity not this story, but a related one. It
is the story of an amazing trial that took place in Israel in the early 1950s
when Malchiel Greenwald, a penniless 72-year-old man who self-published a
tiny three-page newsletter in Jerusalem, accused Rudolf Kastner, a high
official in the Israeli government, of having assisted Adolf Eichmann in the
extermination of Hungary's 400,000 Jews (there were about 800,000 Jews in
Hungary but the nazis could not finish the job, as the war ended). Nobody
would have noticed except that the Israeli government defended Kastner by
suing Greenwald for slander. Greenwald won. What this trial revealed about the Labor Zionist
leadership of the Jewish Agency, which went on to form the Israeli Government
and Establishment, is very difficult to process. I am speaking of people such
as David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, and Chaim Weizmann. I think everybody,
and certainly every Jew, should read Perfidy. But many people don’t
like to read, so, better yet, Perfidy should be made into a movie. I shall pitch this movie to you: a combination of
the ‘legal thriller,’ the ‘conspiracy theory,’ and, remarkably, the ‘true
story’ genres. Everything in my pitch below is documented in Perfidy. [ Buy Perfidy
from Amazon ] [ Read Perfidy
at HIR on pdf ] ________________________________________________________ Perfidy, the movie. Start with a quixotic character, Malchiel Greenwald.
A penniless old Jew from Hungary in the blazing sun of Jerusalem: tilted
black fedora, walking stick, overcoat, and goatee. Left for dead, once, in a
Vienna pogrom, he immigrated to British Mandate ‘Palestine’ and organized
from there illegal runs to save desperate Jews from Hitler. But Catastrophe
swallowed his family. The world is now in its early 1950s; Greenwald, in
his early seventies. No matter: there is injustice in Israel so Greenwald, in
the twilight of his life, becomes a journalist. Some would say this is
straining the term. Greenwald’s newsletter is a three-page stencil (an old
‘photocopying’ technology that mostly disappeared by the late 1970s); the ink
is purple and runs to the touch; the slimy-dry paper makes one cringe. In
each issue there is but one article, by Malchiel Greenwald, who has emptied
his pockets to make one thousand copies to give out free, in cafés, to amused
but polite condescension. Careful. Moses, too, had a speech impediment. Greenwald publishes many issues. Nothing happens.
One day he accuses that Rudolf Kastner -- once the head of the Jewish
Agency’s Hungarian Rescue Committee (created, ostensibly, to rescue Jews from
the Holocaust), and now a high official in the Israeli government -- helped
Adolf Eichmann to exterminate four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews. What?
Outrageous nonsense, no doubt. Does anybody notice? And why should anybody
care? This is old Malchiel Greenwald. He has holes in his shoes. He hands out
free copies of his blurry, three-page stencil in cafés. The Israeli government notices. The Israeli
government cares. The Israeli government -- not Rudolf Kastner, mind you, but
the Israeli government -- sues Malchiel Greenwald for slander. Enter Shmuel Tamir. Talented lawyer. Full of life:
rock climber, dancer, art-lover, husband, father. His reputation is caring
about justice and taking up lost causes. Like Greenwald’s own departed son,
he is a former soldier of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, an underground Jewish army
that fought to establish an independent Jewish state, commanded by Menachem
Begin. The Irgunists were attacked by the Arabs, by the British army, and by
the forces of the official, British-approved Jewish Agency of David
Ben-Gurion (see here for an
example). But the Irgunists would not kill fellow Jews,
this was doctrinal. And they fought well: against all odds, they got
their Jewish state. So these are not what you call ordinary people: these are
makers of history. But the Irgun was not invincible: Irgunists have not
been given credit for an independent Israel because they don’t run it. Israel
is run by the Jewish Agency leaders. Chaim Weizmann is president until
his death in 1952. David Ben-Gurion is prime minister from 1948 to 1953. Then
Moshe Sharett is prime minister from 1953 to 1955. Then again David
Ben-Gurion from 1955 to 1963. This captures all of the years of the
prosecution of Malchiel Greenwald. Greenwald’s daughter Rina takes her old man to see
Tamir. I cannot pay, explains the septuagenarian. Is there evidence? People
in a bar were talking about Kastner. That’s it? And I got an anonymous
letter. The straightforward geriatric insists he has a nose for journalism:
the story is true. And the lawyer, like the old man, knows that certain
things went down because they both lived them. Tamir takes the case. But,
says Tamir, I will run this trial my way. Agreed. Greenwald has a
nose, too, for men: Shmuel Tamir is a giant of Jewish history (and the Jews
are at the center of history). Enter the Honorable Benjamin Halevi, presiding
judge. He is partial to the dignified and smartly dressed Israeli official,
Dr. Rudolf Kastner, whom the government now sits in the box to depose as
first witness, and upon whom he smiles benignly. Like everybody else, Halevi
is full of respect for government. He is, after all, a government official
himself. Like everybody else, Halevi wants Kastner to win because the Israeli
government will not then have leapt like a panther to savage this anonymous
old man in order to defend a butcher of Jews. Preposterous. Halevi will not
then have to shatter his pride in the hallowed leaders of the new Jewish
state. If Kastner wins. The judge is confident things will turn out
this way. But Benjamin Halevi is not corrupt, and this will matter. Rudolf Kastner testifies eloquently about himself.
About his efforts during the war to save Jews from Hitler. About the Jews he
saved. About him cajoling and bargaining with the Nazis: Dieter Wisliczeny,
Kurt Becher, Adolf Eichmann... About many meetings, about travels far and
wide, to Vienna, Bratislava, Berlin, always in the company of the
exterminators, but most often with Kurt Becher. He boasts of the lives he
saved thanks to his influence with these top Nazi killers. He boasts but...he
does not seem entirely comfortable. Tamir listens hard because Tamir has no evidence. He
is waiting for the lie. He is waiting for a loose thread that he can
pull, in the hopes that he will end up with the entire rug in his hand. And
as he waits, he begins to formulate the kind of question that a lawyer and a
scientist likes: the kind that contains within it, already, the germ of the
answer. Why was Kastner so free to travel around with the
top Nazis when all other Jews were being deported to their deaths? Why did
the Nazis, at the same time that they were murdering Europe’s Jews, favor
Kastner, head of the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee, of all things, and
receive him at the highest level? To the court Rudolf Kastner states -- categorically
-- that as an advisor to the Chief Prosecutor for the International War
Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg, which Kastner was, he gave neither testimony
nor affidavit in favor of Kurt Becher. Who was Kurt Becher? He served
first as an SS officer in Poland when the Nazis began to torture and murder
the Polish Jews, then became a platoon commander on the Russian front during
the exterminations there, and, having distinguished himself as a Jew-killer
also in the death camps, he was made the chief Nazi vulture, responsible for
removing gold from a dead Jew’s tooth (for German banks), hair from a dead
Jew’s scalp (for German pillows), and the ashes from the dead Jew’s burnt
body (for German fertilizer). Perhaps also the meager fat remains from a dead
Jew’s body (for German soap), though there is controversy concerning this
point.[1] It was called the ‘Economic Department.’ But
Kurt Becher was freed by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal and is now one of
the richest men in the new Germany. He has received many honors and his firm
sells wheat to the Israeli government -- still getting rich from the Jews. Having stated, categorically, what a vicious lie it
is that he played any role in helping Kurt Becher escape justice, Israeli
high official Rudolf Kastner exits the witness box. The newspapermen are
rushing out already to write of the vindication of Dr. Rudolf Kastner, savior
of Jews, and Judge Halevi, equally convinced by the testimony, asks Tamir
whether his client would not prefer to enter a ‘guilty’ plea (remember:
Malchiel Greenwald is the man on trial). Tamir turns to his client. Never,
replies Greenwald. On the next court date the cross examination of
Rudolf Kastner begins. The first lie: Rudolf Kastner was not really the head
of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Hungary. Kastner agrees with the
Jewish Agency records, which Tamir submits, and which show one Mr. Komoy as the
official head. Kastner had elbowed Komoy to the side, allowing him however to
keep his title. It is a small lie, when all is said and done. But Tamir is
only warming up, and his canine shows when he smiles. The second day of cross examination is more interesting.
Shmuel Tamir had started out with no evidence but now he has some, because
the government’s lawyer has submitted lots of material to support Kastner’s
testimony. First, Tamir gets Kastner to say, once again, that he gave no
testimony or affidavit in favor of Becher’s release from Nuremberg and then
proposes to Kastner that he really did do this. Kastner: “That is a dirty
lie!” But if you had done this, would it be a national crime? It would,
concedes the witness. Then Tamir pulls Exhibit 22 from the awesome pile of
documents the government has brought. It is a letter from Kastner to Jewish
Agency official Eleazer Kaplan. When the government submitted this letter
Tamir’s sharp eye had noticed right away the key paragraph, which he now
reads aloud to the witness: “Kurt Becher
was an ex-SS Colonel and he served as a liaison officer between me and
[Heinrich] Himmler [head of the SS] during our rescue work. He was released
from prison in Nuremberg by the occupation forces of the Allies owing to my
personal intervention.” In his letter Rudolf Kastner boasts of his
intervention in favor of Kurt Becher, though he just told opposing counsel
that any suggestion he did such a thing is a “dirty lie.” He is cornered. And
yet he continues to deny that he gave a sworn affidavit in favor of Becher.
Kastner seems quite uncomfortable now. The government perceives the danger in its position.
The previous lawyer is dismissed, and from now on the government’s case will
be presented by Chaim Cohen, the Attorney General of the Jewish state, no
less, and the man who drafted the death-penalty law for Jewish collaborators
with the Nazis, no less. This man will defend Rudolf Kastner. It is
okay to say it like this, for despite the technicality that the Israeli
government is prosecuting Malchiel Greenwald, it is now clearly Rudolf
Kastner who is on trial (and the government). Chaim Cohen is a legal power. But can he stop this?
On the next court date Shmuel Tamir resumes his
cross examination. Once again, if you had interceded in behalf of Kurt
Becher, would this be a national crime? It would, concedes the witness. Tamir
then produces the following document, signed by Rudolf Kastner, and he reads
out loud to the witness: “I the
undersigned, Dr. Rudolf Kastner, wish to make the following statement in
addition to my affidavit submitted to the International Military Tribunal
under document 2605 P.S. concerning former Lt. General Kurt Becher... There
can be no doubt about it that Becher belongs to the very few SS leaders
having the courage to oppose the program of annihilation of the Jews, and
trying to rescue human lives... Having been in personal contact with Becher
from June, 1944, to April, 1945, I should like to emphasize, on the basis of
personal observations, that Kurt Becher did everything within the realm of
possibilities to save innocent human beings from the blind fury of the Nazi
leaders... “Therefore,
even if the form and basis of our negotiations may be highly objectionable, I
never doubted for one moment the good intentions of Kurt Becher... “In my
opinion, when his case is judged by Allied or German authorities, Kurt Becher
deserves the fullest possible consideration... “I make this
statement not only in my name but also in behalf of the Jewish Agency and the
Jewish World Congress. Signed, Dr. Rudolf Kastner, Official Jewish Agency in
Geneva. Former Chairman of Zionist Organization in Hungary, 1943-1945.
Representative of Joint Distribution Committee in Budapest.” The mood now changes visibly in the courtroom. The
judge, shocked, wants to know who gave Kastner permission to do this in the
name of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress -- officially, in
point of fact, in the name of the Jews. A nervous Kastner names names.
One is Dobkin, now one of the high chiefs of the Jewish Agency. Another is
Barlas, a member of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Constantinople
during the war (we shall meet him again). There is also Perlzweig, chief of
the political department of the World Jewish Congress. And Riegener, European
representative of the World Jewish Congress. Judge Halevi wants to clarify
whether these people gave Kastner permission to save Becher. They did,
explains Kastner. When Tamir resumes his cross-examination Kastner has
lost his composure, and he yells at opposing counsel, like a wild man, that Shmuel
Tamir is the one committing a national crime (by exposing Kastner). The
Israeli government seems to agree: it is defending Kastner. There is also an affidavit by Walter H. Rapp,
lieutenant colonel of the American army, legal officer of the US State
Department, and head of the Evidence Counsel of the War Crimes Council in
Nuremberg. His affidavit states that only because of the extraordinary
intervention of Dr. Rudolf Kastner, only because of his “pleadings and
endeavors on behalf of Becher,” as Rapp put it, and only because Kastner said
that “Becher was instrumental in saving the lives of tens of thousands of
Jews...at great personal risk to himself with self-sacrificing, if not
heroic, acts,” was Kurt Becher released. No other SS officer in custody at
Nuremberg has been treated this way, adds Rapp. Now the Israeli press, so confident at first that
Kastner had been vindicated, points out the obvious: it seems that Kastner is
a Nazi collaborator. And it asks the uncomfortable question: Why is the
Israeli government of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, and the recently
departed Chaim Weizmann spending a fortune to defend Rudolf Kastner?
The trial will last three years and it will answer
these questions. Survivors from the Hungarian slaughter are called as
witnesses. Tamir corners Kastner again and again. Chaim Cohen is unable to
stop the avalanche of revelations and perjuries. A man who should have been
assassinated but wasn’t (a big mistake) is produced at trial, and he testifies:
Joel Brand. So, a story emerges, all recorded in the proceedings of the
Government of Israel versus Malchiel Greenwald. Here, in brief, is that story.
The Hungarian town of Kluj had some 20,000 Jews --
these were ‘Eastern’ Jews, more Jewish than Hungarian, unlike the Jews in
Budapest who tended to be assimilated. Many of them are involved with
Zionism. Kastner, from Kluj, comes to Budapest and sets up an outfit to help
Jews escape from Hungary. He quickly shows a knack for making friends with
the top Nazis. This is perceived as an advantage, and so he quickly becomes
the de facto head of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee. Kastner’s two
chief colleagues are Joel Brand and his wife Hanzi Brand. At first Rudolf Kastner, with the help of Joel
Brand, behaves like a Jewish patriot. They bombard Jewish Agency officials in
Switzerland, Constantinople, and Tel Aviv with detailed accounts of the
European slaughter, and warn of what is yet to come. And yet the Jewish
Agency and Joint Distribution Committee Representatives in Switzerland, Moshe
Schwalbe and Saly Mayer, do not give information to the press about the mass
killings. Neither does David-Ben Gurion's Jewish Agency in Palestine. It is
all kept secret. “My cables were never published anywhere,” Kastner explains
in court. This is true. And it conforms to a general pattern in the
mainstream Jewish leadership. Many witnesses corroborate this in court. One
telling anecdote is that of a group of survivors from the Polish massacre who
came to the annual meeting of Stephen
Wise and Nahum Goldmann’s World Jewish Congress in
1945 to complain that very little had been done to rescue and help Europe’s
Jews. The leaders explained that this was a deliberate decision: “the opinion
of the executive board was that it was inadvisable because of our diplomatic
ties with these governments.” The reference is to the governments of the
‘Free World.’ In other words, the leaders of the democratic governments of
the Free World didn’t want to rescue and help the European Jews who were
being slaughtered, so the mainstream leaders of organized Jewry preserved
their “diplomatic ties with these governments” by letting the Jews of Europe
burn. But back to Rudolf Kastner. The German Third Reich was collapsing in 1944. It
would not win the war, this was clear. But there were still many Jews left to
kill. Almost a million of them in Hungary. A race to the finish: the Germans
would devote all their energies to kill these last Jews before the war effort
collapsed and Europe was liberated. Killing Jews was that important. When the Jews fight they are a tremendous foe: the
Jews produce the best soldiers in the world. Ask the mighty Greco-Macedonian
army, which could not defeat the angry peasants, badly trained, and badly
armed, who fought the Maccabean Revolt and kicked them out. Ask the Roman
military, which had to throw almost every legion they had to defeat the Jews,
most of them civilians, in the first and second centuries. Ask the British,
who in British Mandate Palestine cannot defeat the tiny Irgun Tzvai Leumi,
pledged to kick another mighty empire out, like their Maccabean ancestors,
and fighting also, like their Maccabean ancestors, a Jewish elite allied with
the foreign imperial forces. Ask Adolf Eichmann. He knows, because a
few starving, untrained, and badly armed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were
remarkably hard to defeat by Hitler’s mighty Wermacht, and they fought to the
death, taking a great many Germans with them. Rudolf Kastner admits in court
that Adolf Eichmann told him he did not want a repetition of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising. But this requires fooling the Hungarian Jews: they must not
understand their fate: extermination. In the Eichmann Confessions,
published in Life magazine in 1960, the chief exterminator himself
explains this: “We wanted Hungary combed with a tremendous thoroughness
before the Jews could really wake up to our plan and organize partisan
resistance.” For all the ridiculous Nazi propaganda against the
Jews, it must be said that the chief exterminators understand certain things
about their quarry. They understand that the Jews love peace. And they
understand that the Jews love life and believe in hope. And that mostly, and
fiercely, they hope. “People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as to life
itself,” writes Ben Hecht. Or more eagerly, perhaps, in the case of
the Jews. So Krumey and Wisliczeny, two chief exterminators, meet with the
leaders of Hungarian Jewry and explain that severe restrictions will be
imposed on the Jews, but the “bad things” (exterminations) will not take
place if the Jews cooperate with their own humiliation. “I want the rabbis to
reassure the members of their congregations,” Krumey explains. (The deportation
and extermination of the Hungarian Jews is but two months away.) A few
hundred Jews do not believe this story and they kill themselves. A few others
begin to have suspicions, and some even meet in secret to discuss armed
resistance, or flight. The Nazis are worried. Someone important, someone the
Jews will trust, is badly needed to assuage their fears. Rudolf Kastner is attractive to the Nazis. He is the
representative in Hungary of the Jewish Agency of Palestine, and the de
facto head of its Rescue Committee. He is a member of David Ben-Gurion’s
Mapai party, which controls the Jewish Agency in Palestine, with British
blessing. The Jews of Hungary are isolated and without connections. But
Kastner has connections. Lots. And the Nazis are very nice to Dr. Rudolf
Kastner. So the Jewish leaders in Hungary defer to Kastner. Maybe he can do
something, they think. The Nazis are thinking the same: Kastner can do
something. But for them it means the opposite. Kastner can do something, yes. He can select 388
Jews from his home town of Kluj to be saved, including his family. The Jews
in Kluj are being deported in trains -- not to Auschwitz to be exterminated,
insist the Nazis, but to Kenyermeze...to work. But people work better with
their entire families around, explain the Nazis, so everybody is being
moved to Kenyermeze. Kastner is needed to assuage the fears of these Jews in
Kluj, and upon this performance depend the lives of his 388. So Kastner buys
the lives of his 388 with the slaughter of the remaining 20,000 Jews of Kluj.
He goes to Kluj and assures everybody that the Nazis speak the truth. Thus
reassured, the Jews, full of pride for the importance of their own Rudolf
Kastner, who is ably looking after their welfare, get on the trains to
Kenyermeze. Some of them hustle and hurry on because they’ve been told the
first arrivals get the best places. Without Kastner this operation is impossible. You
see, there are only twenty Hungarian gendarmes and one German SS officer
guarding 20,000 Jews in the Kluj ghetto. The Nazis are low on personnel: this
is the end of a war which they have lost. The Rumanian border, inside which
Jews are no longer being killed, is three miles away from Kluj. Kastner could
easily save these Jews, if he were to tell them what is going on (in fact, he
can save most Hungarian Jews, for as Eichmann confessed, the Nazis are
not prepared to handle a massive uprising). But the Nazis are no longer
worried. This point deserves a pause: Kastner is allowed to go to Kluj
completely alone with nary a Nazi escort. And Kastner demonstrates that he deserves this Nazi
trust. He is not the only one. Other so-called Zionists,
such as Kluj big-shot Hillel Danzig, also participate in the deception
(Danzig however apparently didn’t know exactly how bad the fate of the
deported Jews would be, though he knew it would be “much worse” than his own,
he concedes in court). Hillel Danzig is one of the big-time journalists of
David Ben-Gurion’s Davar, the journal that has been keeping silent
about the Holocaust, despite all the reports coming to the Jewish Agency from
its own people in Europe. And the 20,000 in Kluj are not the only Hungarian
Jews to whom Kastner gives no warning. He gives no warning to the 800,000
Jews of Hungary. But the Jews in Kluj have additional poignancy because this
is Kastner’s home town. He grew up with these folks. Some of them know him
since he was a child. He smiles at these people, reassuringly, and he tells
them they are to go to Kenyermeze...to work.
Are 20,000 murdered Jews from Kluj a fair price to
pay for Kastner’s 388? Kastner thinks so. His 388 are not little people, not
humble workers fit only for the gas ovens. But important people. People of
substance. This distinction Kastner will make himself at trial. After some of
the survivors from Kluj accuse him in court, and Judge Halevi elicits from
him the clarification that he didn’t warn anybody of the impending slaughter,
Kastner tries desperately to counter his guilt with this:
Indeed, it is not a coincidence: the important Jews
are the 388 whom Kastner saved.
Eichmann was in a deal-making mood. 388 important
Jews spared for his butcher’s wages of 20,000 nobodies to be incinerated was
not the only bargain on offer. The court learns of another deal because Joel Brand
has not been assassinated, when, obviously, he should have been. One does not
leave a loose thread like this hanging if one means to cover up the murder of
400,000 innocent human beings. Joel Brand testifies at court, and the story
emerges. During the war Joel Brand is right under Rudolf
Kastner in the Hungarian Jewish Agency Rescue Committee. But Brand is not
Kastner. He doesn’t know of the deals Kastner is making. He believes,
innocently, and like so many other Jews, then and now, in his Jewish
leaders. He trusts. Brand wants to save Jews. For this reason, precisely, because Brand wants to
save Jews, Eichmann summons him. Brand is the first member of the Rescue
Committee to meet him in person. “Do you know who I am?” Eichmann asks, the
way Satan might. “I am the man who carried out all the actions [of the Jewish
extermination] in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Slovakia.” Imagine Brand
meeting such a man, announcing himself like this. “My next task is Hungary,”
says Eichmann. But he wants to make a deal: “Blood for Cargo and Cargo for
Blood.” The cannibal wants to know which Jews Brand would like to save in
exchange for deliveries of supplies to the Nazis. Women capable of bearing
children? Men in their prime? What? He wants an answer quickly. Eichmann is
impatient because he is very busy. So many Jews, so little time. “I am not
empowered to decide whom you are to murder!” replies Brand. God bless him. “I
would like to save everybody. I don’t understand this deal.” Eichmann says he wants trucks. “Ten thousand trucks
are worth a million Jews to me,” he explains. “Tea and coffee, too, and soap.
One thousand tons of tea and coffee.” Poor Germans. They are at wit’s end. So
desperate has become their plight in this year of 1944 that they’ll even let
some Jews live if they can get basic necessities. Joel Brand thinks that maybe the Jewish Agency can
organize for the delivery of this cargo. But how can anybody trust Adolf
Eichmann? The butcher has foreseen this problem: Eichmann will free one
hundred thousand Jews in advance, and upon receiving the proportionate
payment, he will release another ten percent. And so things will go while
cargo is supplied. In this way Eichmann guarantees his ‘good faith.’ He
probably thinks himself generous, expansive even: “Pick them anywhere you
want,” he says. “Hungary, Auschwitz, Slovakia -- anywhere you want and anyone
you want.” And he promises to cease the deportations of Hungarian Jews to
Auschwitz while the negotiations are being conducted. Brand will go to Constantinople and meet with Jewish
Agency representatives there, and he is to come back in two week’s time at
the most. If he returns, his verbal report of the acceptance of the offer
will be enough, and 100,000 Jews will be freed at once, in expectation of the
cargo. The representatives of the Jewish Agency in Turkey are notified, they
tell Joel Brand to come, and he sets out, full of hope, for it seems that
Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the World Zionist Organization, will be meeting
him in Constantinople. The people in Turkey had said: “Chaim shall await
him.”
Chaim Weizmann was always much allied with British
policy and with the British-approved Jewish Agency. After the war he would
become the first President of Israel when David Ben-Gurion became its first
prime minister. If this man had come personally to meet Joel Brand to help
save 800,000 Hungarian Jews, this would have been remarkable. In August 1937, Dr. Weizmann, as the official leader
of World Zionism, addressed a Zionist convention in London, and said: “I told the
British Royal Commission that the hopes of Europe’s six million Jews were
centered on emigration. I was asked, ‘Can you bring six million Jews to
Palestine?’ I replied, ‘No.’...The old ones will pass. They will bear their
fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel
world. . . . Only a branch shall survive. . . . They had to accept it.
. . .” Some guessed, correctly, that Chaim Weizmann’s
reference to the Jews of Europe as “dust in a cruel world” meant that he
would abandon them to the German Nazis. As if to confirm these worries, in
1939, at the outbreak of war -- that is, at the outbreak of the Jewish
disaster -- Chaim Weizmann announced that he would take a recess from all
Jewish activities. So Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist
Zionism, in opposition to Weizmann’s dominant movement, went to the Jews and
“barnstormed the ghettoes of Europe,” in Ben Hecht’s phrase, “urging them to
flee before they were wiped out. [But] he [Jabotinsky] and his Irgun comrades
were attacked by official Zionism as dangerous trouble makers,” and the
official (Labor) Zionists in this way discredited the warnings of the
Revisionists, helping to keep many Jews where Hitler could find them. In court, Chaim Cohen, Attorney General of Israel,
will declaim Weizmann’s ideology to Judge Halevi in defense of Rudolf
Kastner: “For those and
millions of Jews like them there came true the old curse, ‘And lo, they were
meant but to be taken like sheep for slaughter, for killing, for destruction,
for crushing and shame.’ These should escape? They had no feet on which to
run. They should revolt? They had no hands with which to fight. No spirit was
left in them.” This is Chaim Cohen’s defense of Rudolf Kastner: What?
Kastner should have saved these Jews? These Jews were meant for
slaughter, he explains. And in his summation Chaim Cohen will explain
further: “It has always
been our [Labor!] Zionist tradition to select the few out of the many in
arranging the immigration to Palestine. Are we therefore to be called
traitors?” Are we to be called traitors, he demands, for
selecting the important Jews and letting the nobodies die in the gas
chambers? Are we to be reproached, he challenges, for saving the quality
Jews? But I challenge: Is he different from Joseph Goebbels? Goebbels
said: “The Jews deserve the catastrophe that has now overtaken them.” And he
also said: “In our Nazi attitude toward the Jews, there must be no squeamish
sentimentalism.” No squeamish sentimentalism for Chaim Cohen. No squeamish
sentimentalism for Chaim Weizmann, whose policy to abandon the “dust” of
Europe Chaim Cohen was defending. So it would have been remarkable if Chaim Weizmann
had really rushed to meet Joel Brand in Constantinople to save a million
nobodies, “economic and moral dust in a cruel world,” and meant only for
slaughter.
When Joel Brand arrives in Constantinople nobody is
there to meet him. His Turkish visa has not been arranged; he is not allowed
to disembark. But the man who came with Brand from Budapest is resourceful,
fixes the matter, and so they go on to the hotel. The Jewish Agency
representative meets them there and asks whether the Jews are really being
slaughtered (this is mid-1944; the whole world knows). In Judge Halevi’s
courtroom Brand says:
Brand then meets with the Rescue Committee, and he
explains he must be back in Budapest within two weeks, for those first
100,000 Jews who will be liberated upon his return. The British should not be
notified of Brand’s arrival, for the British have been cooperating with the
slaughter of Jews (they have closed
British Mandate ‘Palestine’ to Jewish refugees, among other things)
and there is worry that they might arrest Brand to sabotage his mission. At
the meeting it is decided that a top official of the Jewish Agency Executive
should be summoned. Venia Pomeranietz is sent to bring Moshe Sharett to
Constantinople. Brand thinks it might be a good idea to talk to
Steinhardt, the American ambassador in Turkey, who is in Ankara. Why? Because
Steinhardt is a Jew, and he will be sympathetic, he reasons. Barlas (who will
later give Kastner permission to save Kurt Becher in the name of the Jews) is
to go with Brand. This Barlas knows that special papers are needed to go to
Ankara, because he gets the necessary papers for himself. But nobody arranges
for Brand’s papers and he is not allowed to board the train. Brand is taken
to a building and made prisoner for about three days. The clock is ticking.
Then he is freed, and he can move about Constantinople for a week. He waits
for Sharett. The clock is ticking. One week remains. Less. Brand is told that the British are preventing Moshe
Sharett from coming into Turkey. Brand is urged to go to British Syria to
meet with Sharett. He will be back in a few days, they assure him. Brand
doesn’t like the idea. He fears the British will arrest him, and then 800,000
lives will be lost. He prefers to return to Budapest with a letter from the
Rescue Committee saying that the deal is agreed to, immediately saving 100,000
souls. The Rescue Committe can continue working to get the cargo in his
absense: he should return to Hungary at once. This of course makes perfect
sense, and it is the responsible and ethical thing to do. But Barlas tells
him not to worry: everything will be all right. He should go to Syria. Under
what he thinks is friendly pressure, Brand agrees to go. One Ehud Avriel, from the Halutzim (Pioneer)
movement, goes with him. The trip takes a few days. The clock is ticking.
Only a few days left. On its way to Syria the train stops in Ankara. Two men
board it briefly. They are agents in Turkey of the Revisionist Party and the
Agudath-Israel Orthodox Religious Party. Revisionist Zionism is the movement
founded by Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, in rebellion against the mainstream (and
anti-religious) Labor Zionist movement led by Chaim Weizmann, Stephen Wise,
and David Ben-Gurion. The Irgun Tzvai Leumi is a product of Revisionist
Zionism, and allied with it. The two Revisionist Zionists who briefly board
the train warn Brand not to proceed with the trip. They warn him that British
agents are waiting in Aleppo (at the Syrian border) to arrest him. “I was
terrified on hearing this,” says Joel Brand in Judge Halevi’s courtroom. “It
meant the failure of my mission and the extermination of my family and a
million other Jews in Hungary.” But, on the other hand, these are not
important men, Brand reassures himself. They are not with the main Zionist
movement. He tells Avriel what they’ve said and is told not to worry: there
are “iron-clad guarantees,” Avriel promises, from the British government. No
problem. And Avriel is with David Ben-Gurion’s powerful outfit: he is
important. But later Avriel makes Brand promise that, if he gets arrested, he
will say nothing at all unless someone from the Jewish Agency is present. If
he gets arrested? And the iron-clad guarantees? Not to worry? They arrive in Aleppo. Avriel says he will arrange
something and leaves the compartment. Immediately, the British come in and
arrest Brand. The next morning, he is taken to an elegant Arab villa where
the high-ranking British officers are stationed. There he finally meets Moshe
Sharett, with British officers present. Sharett already knows everything:
Venia Pomeranietz had briefed him. Sharett explains to Brand that he cannot
return to Hungary. He will go south. I regret this, says Moshe Sharett, but
there is no alternative. Moshe Sharett “regrets” the impending murder of
800,000 Hungarian Jews. Brand is taken to Cairo, via Palestine. Eichmann’s
two week offer has now expired. Brand hopes the hope of a wild, desperate
man: that Eichmann will wait a little longer, that the slaughter of Hungary’s
Jews has not begun. In Cairo Brand is questioned by the British, over
and over again. On the tenth day, this wretched man, feeling responsible for
close to a million innocent people, goes on a hunger strike, insisting that
he be allowed to return to Hungary. He is on strike for seventeen days, and
all this time he is being questioned. Then he gets a note from Ehud Avriel.
“It urged me not to make difficulties and to testify freely,” says Brand in
court, “and stated that everything was being done to ensure the success of my
mission.” After four and a half months, Brand is released and
compelled to go to Palestine. He may not return to Hungary. But here the
mistakes begin. The British should have murdered Joel Brand. They had just
made the decision to murder a million Hungarian Jews. What was another? What
explains the contradictions of the human mind? The same can be said for the
leaders of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, who also did not murder Joel
Brand, which then made it possible for him to testify in court nine years
later. And this, because of another mistake, when, believing in the justice
of power, the Israeli government sued Malchiel Greenwald for slander. Still hoping to rescue at least some of Hungary’s
Jews, Joel Brand writes desperately to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the
World Zionist Organization. I am shattered by Joel Brand’s naiveté: He
explains the full Eichmann offer, and he explains how the Jews are being
betrayed by the Jewish leaders in Palestine, who collaborate with the
British. He tells the whole story of what has happened to him. Eichmann’s
offer can still be accepted, he pleads, for those Jews who remain. The letter
that Chaim Weizmann sends in reply -- which he sends after, mind you, some
delay -- is submitted at trial by Shmuel Tamir: “Rehovoth, 29
Dec. 1944 Mr. Joel Brand Dear Mr.
Brand, I beg you to
forgive me for having delayed in answering your letter. As you may have seen
from the Press, I have been traveling a good deal and generally did not have
a free moment since my arrival here. I have read both your letter and your
memorandum and shall be happy to see you sometime the week after next --
about the tenth of January. Miss Itin --
my secretary -- will get in touch with you to fix up the appointment. With kind
regards, Yours
very sincerely, Dr. Chaim Weizmann naturally cannot distract himself
with a million nobodies who are “economic and moral dust in a cruel world.”
These nobodies “will bear their fate or they will not.” Chaim Weizmann is
much too busy because he is an important Jew. The meeting, of course,
did not materialize, but this was already promised in the formula: “Don’t
call us, we’ll call you.” It is interesting that Weizmann bothered to send
this letter. Joel Brand’s testimony in Judge Halevi’s courtroom
ends with these lines: “Rightly or
wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry’s official leaders ever
since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more
than a man can bear.” Should this be the last scene in the movie? It would
have great power. But if we aim to educate, and not merely to make art out of
history, the ending should include Benjamin Halevi’s gavel slamming down in
favor of Malchiel Greenwald. And then a spinning newspaper coming to a stop,
with its date clearly showing (for it matters that this is but the morrow of
the decision), and a large headline reading: ISRAELI GOVERNMENT APPEALS
VERDICT. Then a dignified dark screen, and a fade-in to the following
statement: “The
government’s appeal of Judge Halevi’s verdict to Israel’s Supreme Court
returned a split decision, which mechanically required the government to
prosecute Rudolf Kastner as a Nazi collaborator. The government’s dilemma,
however, disappeared shortly thereafter: Rudolf Kastner was mysteriously
assassinated (as Shmuel Tamir warned in court that he would be). Somebody, it
seems, was learning from past mistakes.” Fade to another dark screen that reads: “Attorney
General Chaim Cohen was promoted to Supreme Court Justice.” Fade to another dark screen that reads: “The book Perfidy,
upon which this movie is based, was banned for many years in Israel.” Now the movie can end. [ Buy Perfidy
from Amazon ] [ Read Perfidy
at HIR on pdf ] ________________________________________________________ What is the most
important lesson, here? The most important lesson, here, is that the Israeli
government which defended Rudolf Kastner to protect itself is the same
Israeli government that is getting ready to cleanse all remaining Jews from
the disputed territories, give these territories to the PLO/Hamas, hand the
Golan to Syria, and sit tight while another anti-Jewish Holocaust develops. The Israeli government is run by the same Labor
Zionist tradition. The alternative, the Irgunist/Revisionist/Herut -- and
later Likud -- tradition pretty much died as a true continuation of the
Jabotinsky movement with the passing of Menachem Begin. The movement continues
to exist, among ordinary Jews, but not as a political force contesting
elections. As discussed in Part
3 of this series, the recent Likudist leaders have
actually been the strongest backers of the Oslo ‘peace’ process that David
Ben-Gurion protégé Shimon Peres launched, and this Oslo process will soon
complete the destruction of Israel. This is the most important lesson:
just as the Nazis needed Rudolf Kastner to distract and reassure the
Hungarian Jews, so do the forces that would now destroy the Israeli Jews need
Ehud Olmert or any of the main current pretenders to the Israeli prime
ministership to distract and dupe the Israelis -- and to repress any protest,
too -- while the next slaughter, due very soon, is being prepared. This is a very difficult lesson for Jews to learn
because they don’t know the above history. The book Perfidy was banned
in Israel for many years so that the next generation of Israelis would not
learn who was running their country. And the leaders of Labor Zionism to this
day control most of the major
Jewish organizations in the Diaspora, as well as
the Israeli government, the Israeli education system, and the Israeli
media. Moreover, it is difficult for Jews to learn all
this because they would rather cling to their illusions than to their very
lives. As George Santayana correctly said “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.” The Jews are about to repeat their own tragic
past.
Is this inevitable? Well no. But without a
revolution, it is a certain outcome. If the Israeli Jews simply trust that
their so-called leaders will defend them, or that their Diaspora brethren
will come in a white horse to rescue them, their fate will be identical to
that of the Hungarian Jews in WWII. The Hungarian Jews trusted. And they died.
The next piece in
this series is:
________________________________________________________ Footnotes [1] Douglas,
L. (1998). The Shrunken Head of Buchenwald: Icons of Atrocity at Nuremberg. Representations,
63, 39-94. (p.55) |
The above is an ad that appeared in the
New York Times (14 Nov. 1961, p.37) when Ben Hecht's book first came out. ( click the ad to enlarge ) Notify me of new HIR pieces!
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