I've been meaning to get this post up for a couple weeks: on Israel lobbyist David Harris's testimony about the Holocaust before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration. Harris is the executive director of the American Jewish Committee and the child of a Holocaust survivor. His testimony was apparently in favor of open-border legislation, but it's not about the legislation. It's all about a historical issue that he says "resonates" to this day: the Holocaust and how America didn't do enough to save European Jews, the Roosevelt era's "great failing." I certainly grew up with that understanding. Why didn't we bomb the railroads out of Hungary? But why is this coming up now?
Here is David Harris playing on American complicity in the Holocaust:
Michael Desch of Notre Dame has studied the Holocaust and doesn't fault American conduct to the degree that Harris does. He wrote an important paper on the subject, called "The Myth of Abandonment." (I keep waiting for Yivo to hold a panel with Desch and Larry Zuckerman, who is studying the Joint Distribution Committee and takes a different view). Desch wrote to me about Harris:
Harris's history is not so much wrong but decontextualized (cf. my paper, pp. 123-26). Yes, the U.S. could have done more, but it did more than anyone else at the time.
And here is some context for Harris's remarks from The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick. Remember what Harris said about "leaders" identifying with the anguish in Europe? Novick:
How much did organized American Jewry do to press for rescue efforts?...in general, rescue was not a high priority item for major American Jewish organizations, or their leaders, during the war. The archives of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish congress show scant attention to the question.
Or here is another excerpt from Novick's book. In the late 1940s, a Holocaust memorial was proposed in New York City.
On three separate occasions--in 1946, 1947, and 1948--the representatives of the NCRAC [National Community Relations Advisory Council] organizations, including the American Jewish Committee... unanimously rejected the idea--and effectively vetoed the initiative. They were concerned that such a monument would result in Americans' thinking of Jews as victims: it would be "a pepetual memorial to the weakness and defenselessness of the Jewish people
Desch has a smart interpretation of Harris's testimony:
Not to mention, if "Never Again" applies to all humans, not just Jews, which would seem to be the point of the Nuremberg trial and its international legal progeny, then wouldn't argument after the fact castigating the prioritized hit list of the Allied Powers, especially the USA, be a supporting argument
favoring the USA doing something now to help the Pals considering the likes of what happened in Gaza so recently?
Wasn't it Ben Gourion who said he wasn't much interested in the Jews of Europe? Seems to me he said something like, "If I had the choice between saving all the Jews of Europe and only half the children of Israel, I'd choose the latter." This is a terrible misquote because I can't remember his exact words (he didn't use the word "Israel"), but perhaps someone has the correct quote at their fingertips.
So now it's just the US who has to pay for Holocaust callousness, while Israel still hasn't started paying for Palestine–it still qualifies as "theft."
It's amazing how shamelessly people like Harris treat the history of WWII as nothing more than a mass of clay from which to shape politically useful "lessons."
"But if only more leaders had had the capacity not only to grasp the genocide at hand, but also to identify with the anguish of the victims – the victims who till the very end wanted to believe that their plight as human beings would not, could not, go neglected."
One of the problem here is that Harris' does not grasp the environment of total war, when people were genuinely frightened, and their sons, friends, and neighbors were dying. There was more anguish, closer to home, than anyone could begin to identify with.
The number of refugees during WWII was staggering. Not all of them were Jews, although Harris does not seem to trouble himself over those that were not. For obvious reasons, no country was very excited about letting in huge numbers of foreigners during wartime. The Brits had reason not to want a massive influx of Jews to Palestine, the Zionist agencies in Germany, Britain, and the US, wanted Jews to go to Palestine, not their own countries, and the Zionist nation-builders in Palestine wanted Jews with money, youth, and professional skills, not just a mass of refugees.
In short, the problems were not so much moral as practical and logistical, considering that all the parties were literally fighting for their very survival.
David Harris is promoting pure horsepucky. Dr. Rudolf Vrba was one of five who escaped from Auschwitz. He wrote a document called The Auschwitz Protocol about what was going on there. From jewlicious.com's site is this comment about it: http://www.jewlicious.com/2006/04/rudolf-rudi-vrba-dies
Rabbi Stephen Weiss convinced FDR not to allow these fleeing Jews into the US. He pulled the same strings with Canada. The Zionists wanted the Jews to go to Palestine. Every piece of evidence about this is in Edwin Black's The Transfer Agreement, the 1984 edition only, the one with the photographs in it. I understand that Abe Foxman had this info removed from later editions. Libraries are now getting rid of the 1984 edition: pulping them. I bought a number from Amazon used books.
It was Jews who prevented Jews from Europe entering the USA.
How many copies do you have MRW? I'd be interested in one if you have extras and if you're willing to sell one.
Also on this site:
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/8170949/used/The%20Transfer%20Agreement
It states that Foxman wrote the afterword in the update version.
Is there any background info on this? I can't find the original version online @Amazon unfortunately.
Americans may have done more to prevent the killing of Hungary's Jews than Hungary's wealthy Jews did. Nevertheless, holding America's generations collectively responsible for not doing more to stop the mass killing in Europe is part of the strategy to steal more Palestinian land with more US weapons for Israel. Although Americans could have done more to stop the killing of European Jews by the Nazis, they did not finance or provide the weapons that killed them. Americans are actively contributing to the killing of Palestinians and Lebanese today, which is why Americans have collective guilt for the crimes Israel commits. The current explicit reason for collective American guilt needs to be addressed in policy, while an implied historical one should be left to the historians.
Well let's see, a lobbyist for Israel, whose immigration policy might delicately be said to fall just a tad short of an "open borders" ideal, agitating however for the U.S. to move ever closer to such an idea. Without so much as a molecule of mention as to whether same is in the interest of the U.S. or not.
Oh well, what's a double-standard here or there, right?
But wait, also no molecule of mention about why the U.S. should have done more to aid not just Europe's jews but fascism's other direct targets too such as gypsies and slavs. Or of course how the U.S. could reasonably accept the absorbtion of all of Poland and the Ukraine and much of Western Russia essentially.
Well gee, maybe it's just a bit of a triple-standard.
And yet, also not a word about why the U.S. should have done more to aid the victims of Soviet communism.
Hmm … getting up to quadruple-standard territory.
And why indeed stop at aiding *Europeans*? Lots Chinese would have liked to get out after Mao took over.
And there I think we have it; an at-least quintuple-standard dive off the high-board! With spotless execution given the total lack of mention of any of the other issues involved! A perfect 10!
Gee, how *do* these slanders about jews only being concerned about other jews and not caring about the interests of their diaspora countries continue to have such traction?
And *this* is a guy who purports to speak for American jewry? Oughta be fired.
Question: Just wondering who were the Other Agenda Specific speakers that were "invited" to the hearing and by whom?
Sin Nombre shows the quadruple standards at work. Why have only the Jews been heard on this?
Why are they the only domestic group given credence and tons of money? Yet Witty says the Israel Lobby is but a blip, as if it has not gone on for over half a century… Did the USA get attacked by Japan, and then Hitler jumped on? God forbid Uncle Sam give priority to USA interests, including all
Americans.
How presumptuous–idea that American had any obligation, moral or legal, to do anything whatsoever about the situation of the Jews in europe during the WWII period. What arrogance. Whatever America did, it was more than it was obliged to do, and considering the last half century of events in Palestine, many of us are starting to regret, not what we did not do, but what we did.
LD, try this link for possible 1984 editions, I see at least one, and you could ask the other sellers to specify what editions they are offering
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0025111302/ref=ed_oe_h_olp
Yeah, LD, write the sellers and ask of they are selling the 1984 MacMillan version WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHS. It has an evergreen cover. Must be the one with the photographs.
I'd sell you one if I had one left but I dont. I have about six of the Foxman kind. If I remember correctly, one of the ones I bought said Library of Congress, so either they're culling the Library of Congress of this book, or they have extra copies and are ditching the extras. If the latter, you can always order via interlibrary loan, but dont put up with the ones that have an extra author or have Abe Foxman anywhere near it.
Here's a link to a guy who got it right about Black's book. Edwin Black was the 'Jewish' writer for the Chicago Trib. The JDL put a contract out on him when the book first came out.
link to real-debt-elimination.com
As Edwin Black documents in his book, and I mean documents extensively, it was the Jews who did in the Jews. There was a price to get into Palestine, and Jews operating out of Palestine were in cahoots with the Nazi government to loot the German Jews' bank accounts by (1) having the Nazis confiscate all except for the dough needed for Palestine, then (2) divvying up the confiscated booty between them: the Palestinian Jews and the Nazis. The Palestinian Jews also broke the boycott, which was working. They gave Hitler $6 million (when he couldn't get a plugged nickel from the still-destitute-from-WWI-Germans) to bring 60,000 Jews to Palestine.
When you add in the fact that the Soviet archives of all the German camps brought to light in 1989 or 1990 only had records of 79,000 dead at Auschwitz and close to 400,000 microfilms of dead, it makes you wonder what else we dont know. All in all there were 17 million pieces of paper in the Soviet archives. These were transported — I think — to the US last summer or the summer of 2007 for the Smithsonian. Dont hold me to the Smithsonian, but I dont think it was the Holocaust Museum in DC. I hope not. The Germans were extraordinary record-keepers. It is highly doubtful that there were only AT A MAXIMUM, 2.75 sheets of paper per prisoner. Does not make any sense. (assuming the 6 million figure.)
For nearly a year, the Auschwitz Museum in Poland had all 79,000 records available on their Web site. That was in 2005. They stated it was 79,000, and you could scroll through the records. They included an English translation. So many of the deaths were typhoid or old age. Of course, people who couldn't make it to Palestine. I went through about 20,000 of them. Now they've buried that amount and you have to know the name of the person before you can see a scan of the record.
70 million + or – total dead in WWII.
25 million military dead.
45 + or – million civilians dead.
Russia lost 12 military and 25 million civilians
Japan lost 1.2 million civilians in the three minutes after the bomb was dropped.
France lost 1/3 of their male population.
FIVE MILLION NON JEWS were killed in the concentration camps….Never hear about them do we?
All the 'professional' jews talk about is the jews.
To hell with them. Next time they are rounded up in camps just bomb the fucking camps if they want us 'to do something'.
I guess the jews think that the allies should have abandoned every front, ditched every stragetic plan, directed every resource, risked every army, sent thousands of gentiles to die behind German lines trying rescue them, ignored the billions of other people whose fate hung in the balance and rushed into Germany (which was impossible) to save "the Jews".
What ignorant sob's. Few Americans even realize how close we came to losing the war…what a damn almighty bulldozer the German army was…the most powerful the world had ever seen…and in terms of military training and sheer manpower, one the world is not likely to ever see again. They need to read Eisenhower to find out many times the US and British command thought the war and the whole of Europe might indeed be lost.
Lenni Brenner writes:
Lenni Brenner
It is only natural that contemporaries should be skeptical when they first hear accusations that Zionists collaborated with Hitler. Israel is constantly at war. The public projects Zionist pugnacity back onto the holocaust era and assumes that the World Zionist Organization opposed Nazism after Hitler came to power in 1933. In fact the opposite is true and it easily documented.
In 1983, London's Croom Helm Ltd. published my first book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.
A London Times review declared that "Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's." The book attracted similar favorable scholarly comments, worldwide. Naturally specialist interest moved on in the subsequent decades, but today, thanks to the internet, unique visual confirmation of that collaboration has come to my attention and it is presented now to the public.
I related how Kurt Tuchler, a member of the German Zionist Federation Executive,
"persuaded Baron Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein of the SS to write a pro-Zionist piece for the Nazi press. The Baron agreed on the condition that he visited Palestine first, and two months after Hitler came to power the two men and their wives went to Palestine; von Mildenstein stayed there for six months before he returned. …
Von Mildenstein wrote favorably about what he saw in the Zionist colonies in Palestine; he also persuaded Goebbels to run the report as a massive twelve-part series in his own Der Angriff (The Assault), the leading Nazi propaganda organ (9/26-10/9/34)…. To commemorate the Baron's expedition, Goebbels had a medal struck: on one side the swastika, on the other the Zionist star."
I never located the medal. But in 2003 John Sigler, like myself an anti-Zionist Jew, found an image and description in a closed mail-bid coin sale. He bought a bronze version. A silvered token appeared in 2005. Silvering is often done to medals. It is about 1.5" in diameter and is thicker than a coin. There is no doubt re authenticity. John bought his bronze from the same respected coin dealer.
Recently John sent me a photo of the silvered bronze, for which I am very grateful. The Star of David side reads:
EIN NAZI FÄHRT NACH PALÄSTINA — A Nazi Travels to Palestine.
The Swastika side reads
UND ERZÄHLT DAVON IM Angriff — And tells about it in Angriff.
I happily forward it to the internet world, with documentation re von Mildenstein's visit and Zionist collaboration, and the first of the Baron's articles for Goebbel's journal.
Readers will doubtlessly have questions. Queries about the medal should go to John via www.onestate.org. Many questions about Zionist collaboration can be answered by going to Zionism in the Age of the Dictators at www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
Or readers can contact me at BrennerL21@aol.com. Do that and I'll also tell you how you can get a signed copy of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis. I edited it in 2002. It has von Mildenstein's article and complete texts of many sources quoted in Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.
MRW:
Have you seen Leni Brenner's "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators"? If not, check it out online at:
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/
Chapter 24 "The Wartime Failure to Rescue" is of special interest:
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch24.htm
Rabbi Weissmandel pondered over the startling letter:
Here's some context:
Neturei Karta has been saying this all along…
TEN QUESTIONS TO THE ZIONISTS
BY RABBI MICHAEL DOV WEISSMANDL ZT"L
DEAN OF NITRA YESHIVA AND AUTHOR OF MIN HAMETZAR
http://www.nkusa.org/HISTORICAL_DOCUMENTS/tenquestions.cfm
1.
IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:
a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and
b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and
c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.
2.
IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.
3.
IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:
a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.
b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.
c) No ransom will be paid
4.
IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.
5.
IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.
6.
IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).
7.
IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.
8.
IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"
9.
IS IT TRUE that the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.
10.
IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weitzman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weitzman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".
There are additional similar questions to be asked of these atheist degenerates known as "Jewish statesmen", but for the time being let them respond to the ten questions.
I generally try not to respond to the ludicrous nonsense often published about my book The Transfer Agreement–but this is one of the more idiotic posts. No contract on my life was ever taken by the JDL. That is funny. Even funnier is the stupid idea that ADL national director Abe Foxman got the photos pulled after the original 1984 edition. "Earth to mondoweiss blog readers" …all editions have virtually the same page layout and include the same photo array. These newer editions are in fact phtographic-based reprints of the actual 1984 Macmillan page layout. You will see it in the 2001 Carroll-Graf edition (recently out of print), and the current 2000 Dialog edition (soon out of print) still available at Amazon. Anyone can go to any library or used book store or Amazon and see how stupid these rumors are. If you want to see the pictures–open the book. They are in the center of every copy of every edition. As for Foxman restricting the book–another laugh… he wrote a forward and endorsed the book, but never asked for any corrections–which were impossible since the reprints were photographic page reproductions of the 1984 original. I too love that edition–it was my first book and a big one. The new Dialog reprint will come out later this year and of course include the photos. edwin black
From the Neturei Karta site.
"We state that according to our religious teachings, only G-d Himself knows when the redemption of the Jewish People is to occur, and it is only G-d who will make His will known to the entire universe with unmistakable signs. Any attempt to gather together the Jewish People with political and nationalist goals is forbidden to us as a crime of the highest divine authority."
- Letter to the French Newspaper Journal des Débats [Legislative Record] Friday, November 18, 1825
by the Chief Rabbi of Cologne
link to nkusa.org
How on earth do we get from this advice to the adoption of Zionism by many Jews (and Christians and Hindus)?
The whole letter is well worth reading.
Wow! Amazing that Edwin Black got wind of those comments above and responded here! I never heard anything about photos being pulled or a contract on Black (sounded implausible) but I think that Foxman lambasted the first edition then applauded the second and wrote a blurb (or maybe it was a preface) for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Foxman had tried to stop publication of the first edition.
I'm glad to have this message from Edwin Black.
I do not own the book myself. What puzzles me is that Foxman would wish to draw attention to it. He seems to be enamoured of the most simplistic and moralistic Shoah narrative, and the Transfer Agreement is actual history with all its attendant moral ambiguity and complexity.
Other interesting sources are:
*Jews for Sale?* — Yehuda Bauer, a leading Israeli historian of the Shoah
Leni Brenner's *21 Documents*, which is not avaliable online.
for more information on the fascinating Rabbi Weismandel, check out:
*The Unheeded Cry* by Abraham Fuchs (translated from Hebrew) and published by Artscroll. It is well footnoted and uses Min Hametzar as one of its sources.