From: Center for Policy Research <cpr>
Subject: Symbiotics: Zionism-Antisemitism


Zionism and the Holocaust
-------------------------- by Haim Bresheeth

The first point to note regarding the appropriation of the history
of the Holocaust by Zionist propaganda is that Zionism without
anti-semitism is impossible. Zionism agrees with the basic tenet
of anti-Semitism, namely that Jews cannot live with non- Jews.

The history and roots of the Holocaust go back a long way. While
the industru of death and destruction did not operate before 1942,
its roots were firmly placed in the 19th Century. Jewish
aspirations for emancipation emerged out of the national struggles
in Europe. When the hopes for liberation through
bourgeois-democratic change were dashed, other alternatives for
improving the lot of the Jews of Europe achieved prominence.

The socialist Bund, a mass movement with enormous following, had
to contend with opposition from a new and small, almost
insignificant opponent, the political Zionists.  In outline these
two offered diametrically opposed options for Jews in Europe.
While the Bund was suggesting joining forces with the rest of
Europe's workers, the Zionists were proposing a new programme
aimed at ridding Europe of its Jews by setting up some form of a
Jewish state.

Historically, nothing is inevitable, all depends on the balance of
forces involved in the struggle. History can be seen as an option
tree: every time a certain option is chosen, other routes become
barred. Because of that choice, movement backwards to the point
before that choice was made is impossible. While Zionism as an
option was taken by many young Jews, it remained a minority
position until the first days of the 3rd Reich. The Zionist
Federation of Germany (ZVfD), an organisation representing a tiny
minority of German Jews, was selected by the Nazis as the body to
represent the Jews of the Reich. Its was the only flag of an
interantional organisation allowed to fly in Berlin, and this was
the only international organisation allowed to operate during this
period. From a marginal position, the leaders of the Zionist
Federation were propelled to a prominence and centrality that
surprised even them. All of a sudden they attained political
power, power based not on representation, but from being selected
as the choice of the Nazi regime for dealing with the the 'Jewish
problem'. Their position in negotiating with the Nazis agreements
that affected the lives of many tens of thousands of the Jews in
Germany transformed them from a utopian, marginal organisation in
Germany (and some other countries in Europe) into a real option to
be considered by German Jews.

The best example of this was the 'Transfer Agreement' of 1934.
Immediately after the Nazi takeover in 1933, Jews all over the
world supported or were organising a world wide boycott of German
goods. This campaign hurt the Nazi regime and the German
authorities searched frantically for a way disabling the boycott.
It was clear that if Jews and Jewish organisations were to pull
out, the campaign would collapse.

This problem was solved by the ZVfD. A letter sent to the Nazi
party as early as 21.  June 1933, outlined the degree of agreement
that existed between the two organisations on the question of
race, nation, and the nature of the 'Jewish problem', and it
offered to collaborate with the new regime:

"The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of
Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda -
such as is currently being carried out against Germany in many
ways - is in essence unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do
battle but to convince and build."

In their eagerness to gain credence and the backing of the new
regime, the Zionist organisation managed to undermine the boycott.
The main public act was the signature of the "Transfer Agreement"
with the Nazi authorities during the Zionist Congress of 1934. In
essence, the agreement was designed to get Germany's Jews out of
the country and into Mandate Palestine. It provided a possibility
for Jews to take a sizeable part of their property out of the
country, through a transfer of German goods to Palestine. This
right was denied to Jews leaving to any other destination. The
Zionist organisation was the acting agent, through its financial
organisations. This agreement operated on a number of fronts -
'helping' Jews to leave the country, breaking the ring of the
boycott, exporting German goods in large quantities to Palestine,
and last but not least, enabling the regime to be seen as humane
and reasonable even towards its avowed enemies, the Jews. After
all, they argued, the Jews do not belong in Europe and now the
Jews come and agree with them.

After news of the agreement broke, the boycott was doomed. If the
Zionist Organization found it possible and necessary to deal with
the Nazis, and import their goods, who could argue for a boycott ?
This was not the first time that the interests of both movements
were presented to the German public as complementary. Baron Von
Mildenstein, the first head of the Jewish Department of the SS,
later followed by Eichmann, was invited to travel to Palestine.
This he did in early 1933, in the company of a Zionist leader,
Kurt Tuchler. Having spent six months in Palestine, he wrote a
series of favourable articles in Der STURMER describing the 'new
Jew' of Zionism, a Jew Nazis could accept and understand.

This little-known episode established quite clearly the
relationship during the early days of Nazism, between the new
regime and the ZVfD, a relationship that was echoed later in a
number of key instances, even after the nature of the Final
Solution became clear. In many cases this meant a silencing of
reports about the horrors of the exterminations. A book
concentrating on this aspect of the Zionist reaction to the
Holocaust is Post-Ugandan Zionism in the Crucible of the
Holocaust, by S. B. Beth-Zvi.

In the case of the Kastner episode, around which Jim Allen's play
PERDITION is based, even the normal excuse of lack of knowledge of
the real nature of events does not exist. It occured near the end
of the war. The USSR had advanced almost up to Germany. Italy and
the African bases had been lost. The Nazis were on the run, with a
number of key countries, such as Rumania, leaving the Axis. A
second front was a matter of months away, as the western Allies
prepared their forces. In the midst of all this we find Eichmann,
the master bureaucrat of industrial murder, setting up his HZ in
occupied Budapest, after the German takeover of the country in
April 1944. His first act was to have a conference with the Jewish
leadership, and to appoint Zionist Federation members, headed by
Kastner as the agent and clearing house for all Jews and their
relationship with the SS and the Nazr authorities. Why they did
this is not difficult to see. As opposed to Poland, where its
three and  a half million Jews lived in ghettoes and were visibly
different from the rest of the Polish population, the Hungarian
Jews were an integrated part of the community. The middle class
was mainly Jewish, the Jews were mainly middle-class. They enjoyed
freedom of travel, served in the Hungarian (fascist) army in
fronline units, as officers and soldiers, their names were
Hungarian - how was Eichmann to find them if they were to be
exterminated ? The task was not easy, there were a million Jews in
Hungary, most of them resident, the rest being refugees from other
countries. Many had  heard about the fate of Jews elsewhere, and
were unlikely to believe any statements by Nazi officials.

Like elsewhere, the only people who had the information and the
ear of the frightened Jewish population were the Judenrat. In this
case the Judenrat comprsied mainly the Zionist Federation members.
Without their help the SS, with 19 officers and less than 90 men,
plus a few hundred Hungarian police, could not have collected and
controlled a million Jews, when they did not even know their
whereabouts. Kastner and the others were left under no illusions.
Eichmann told Joel Brand, one of the members of Kastner's
committee, that he intended to send all Hungary's Jews to
Auschwitz, before he even started the expulsions!  He told them
clearly that all these Jews will die, 12,000 a day, unless certain
conditions were met.

The Committee faced a simple choice - to tell the Jews of Hungary
about their fate, (with neutral Rumania, where many could escape,
being in most cases a few hours away) or to collaborate with the
Nazis by assisting in the concentration process. What would not
have been believed when coming from the SS, sounded quite
plausible when coming from the mouths of the Zionist leadership.
Thus it is, that most of the Hungarian Jews went quietly to their
death, assured by their leadership that they were to be sent to
work camps.

To be sure, there are thirty pieces of silver in this narrative of
destruction: the trains of 'prominents' which Eichmann promised to
Kastner - a promise he kept to the last detail. For Eichmann it
was a bargain: allowing 1,680 Jews to survive, as the price paid
for the silent collaboration over the death of almost a million
Jews.

There was no way in which the Jews of Hungary could even be
located, not to say murdered, without the full collaboration of
Kastner and his few friends. No doubt the SS would hunt a few Jews
here and there, but the scale of the operation would have been
miniscule compared to the half million who died in Auschwitz.

It is important to realise that Kastner was not an aberration,
like say Rumkovsky in Lodz. Kastner acted as a result of his
strongly held Zionist convictions. His actions were a logical
outcome of earlier positions. This is instanced when he exposed to
the Gestapo the existence of a British cell of saboteurs, Palgi
and Senesh, and persuaded them to give themselves up, so as not to
disrupt his operations. At no point during his trial or elsewhere,
did Kastner deny that he knew exactly what was to happen to those
Jews.