Trudy Gold
The World’s Response to the Jewish Refugee Crisis: 1933-1941, Part 1
Trudy Gold - The World’s Response to the Jewish Refugee Crisis: 1933-1941, Part 1
- Good afternoon everyone wherever you are and of course today Yom HaShoah and I’m going to be looking at the world’s response to the Jewish refugee crisis. Now let me say from the beginning, because this is quite an emotive subject in fact, let’s take out the word quite it’s a very emotive subject, because obviously we know now that German and Austrian Jewry could have been saved in its entirety if there have been places for them to go. However, having said that, we must never forget who the perpetrators were. It was the Nazi Party, and then their allies who actually allowed and made this appalling catastrophe, a rent, not just in the Jewish world but to me, a rent in civilization. So, when I talk about this very very emotive subject, please bear this in mind and of course we can discuss it later on in the chat. Can I also say this is an incredibly big topic, and it’s going to be further covered. Rex Bloomstein back in the 80s made a brilliant film called Auschwitz and the Allies, and he’s going to be showing it in two parts, because what I’m doing is I’m looking up to 1941. But of course one needs to look up between 1941 and 45. And the other area that’s very important is of course Zionism, and the Shoah, and also the British response in Palestine, and I will be covering that separately. So what I’m going to try and do is bring various threads together. Now the first point to make is, and of course we’ve already covered this, is that one of the first acts of the Nazi regime was the announcement of a boycott of all Jewish businesses and places of work. Now, the response to that was the great rally in Madison Square Garden and you will remember that Goebbels wrote in his diary. We’re not yet strong enough to go against world Jewry.
You see, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of Nazi policy and of anti Semitism. The Shoah is surely one of the most obvious examples of powerlessness in history, and yet the world still gives the Jews the notion, they gave it to them then, and they still give it to us today. This notion of Jewish world power. It’s one of, and David Pima talked about this on Saturday when he talked about propaganda, it’s one of the most pernicious stories ever told against the Jews, and frankly, I believe it has its roots actually in Christian anti Judaism, the notion of the deicide. Now, I’m not insane. I do not believe that all non Jews, Christians, go around thinking the Jews murdered Jesus. Of course they don’t. But the point is, it’s in the culture. And I think that is one of the planks that is going to lead to indifference, and then you have to see how much culpability was that in the final solution. So, Nazi policy, remember, develops over eight years. There are three different stages. The first is the social, legal, and political exclusion of the Jews. Then of course you have ghettoization. Now, according to Yehuda Bauer, who when I need to deal with something controversial, I use Bauer because I think he is the doyen of all Holocaust historians, the great Yehuda Bauer. He puts the decision to actually commit mass extermination of the Jews was March 1941, when the commissar orders were given, re the treatment of civilian population, and the actual mass murder, the total murder of the Jews of Europe, begins with the invasion of Russia, June the 22nd, 1941.
And of course the Wannsee Conference is retroactive, because the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 cleans up, to use Nazi language, what was already proposed. So, up until 1941, Jews could get out of Germany, and Austria, and Czech. In fact, there was the promotion of immigration, and along with it, making life as difficult as possible for the Jews, so they would want to get out. Also, after 1938, forced immigration, and more and more theft of Jewish property. Even after the war breaks out, there are other options. There was a plan called the Nisko plan to dump all the Jews. Poland was divided up. One area was called the Nisko reservation and there was a plan to dump all Jews in the Nisko reservation but then Frank, the governor of Poland, worries about the problem of feeding them. There was also a plan to send all Jews to the island of Madagascar. That was dropped because the Madagascar wasn’t under Nazi control and that was dropped in 1940. There was even a plan, it’s called the Schacht Ruble plan, to sell. An approach was made to Arthur Ruble in early 1939 to sell the remaining Jews of Germany to World Jewry. By the time that gets underway though it’s too late and we know that Jews were let out of concentration camps provided they had exit visas as late as October 1941. Now let me give you another notion on the robbing and the allowing out.
Two years before the fall of Czechoslovakia, Goering had always been trying to take control of the Rothschilds still works there. Rothschild meanwhile had transferred their holdings to the alliance insurance company in London, a British company. After the Anschluss Baron Louis de Rothschild was arrested in Vienna. There was always the dream of catching a Rothschild, you know that poor family, the name of Rothschild. The Germans in fact, they held him to ransom in return for the steelworks. The Germans paid three million with Czech currency and Rothschild passed over the Swiss border. So basically that’s one of the prime examples and there were other examples in Hungary as well. Even the toughest Nazi officials could be bribed for money but we’ll be talking more about that later on in the year. Another point to make, one of the great tragedies was that as the Nazis ratchet up their policies, the screw tightens on world Jewry. It tightens particularly on Austrian and German Jewry and by the time we get to the Jews of Poland and the invasion it’s really too late to get any considerable numbers out and then you see the real real tragedy. So the question that I know that many Zionists ask and it’s a very painful question, we’re going to later look at the attitude of the Palestine mandate to what was going on. In May 1939, four months before the outbreak of war, the British really curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine. Why? Because pragmatically the British government had decided it was in their interest to appease the Arabs. The Arabs under the control of Haj Amin al Husseini, who I’m going to do a whole session on, he made it absolutely clear that no Jews should immigrate into Palestine.
What they did was they allow 15,000 a year for five years and whoever has the majority will have the state. So that’s another issue, that they closed the doors of Palestine. Also don’t forget against the backdrop of all of this had been the 1929 Wall Street crash. In fact fear of Jewish immigration was important and I am very grateful to my friend Joan for sending me some more notification of what was happening in America but certainly fear of Jewish immigration in Britain and America from around the turn of the 1900s. In Britain the Aliens Act was passed which… And we’re going to be looking at these things in June, and in America the whole notion of free immigration into America, white Anglo Saxon Protestant America was rethinking. At the end of the First World War America begins to close its doors because of a fear of communism and of course all these refugees, the stereotype of Jews flooding and other people flooding into America, are they bringing their communism with them. In Britain the Aliens Act of 1905 but after the Wall Street crash when there was social economic and political instability that’s when the countries of the world adopted a very tough immigration policy. And you’ve got another issue to think about. When you cannot sufficiently feed your own population, do you bring into your country refugees? Do you bring in economic migrants?
Do you bring in people who are actually suffering persecution? And this is a notion that we have never really solved to this day. But remember, the Nazis do not close all the frontiers until October 1941. And another point to make, there’s absolutely no doubt that there wasn’t a huge tinge of anti Semitism, particularly in the American State Department and in the Middle East Department at the Foreign Office. And this is an interesting quote of Bowers. Did they hinder, obstruct, and finally paralyse initiatives that could have saved Jewish lives? Now, this is a quote from Eleanor Rathbone, the 14th of December 1943. We are not satisfied that the utmost has been done for rescue. We know that the difficulties have been enormous. We do not belittle them. We know that the vast majority of victims are outside our reach. They can never be relieved or rescued, except by final victory. And that may come too late to save them, but more might have been saved if more courage and resource and imagination had been put into the task. Because, never forget, there was a minute silence in the House of Commons on December the 17th, 1942. And that is a year and a half before Hungarian Jewry were finally attacked. So, let’s not get our blood too high because never forget it’s the Nazis who did it. And another point to make. Really, up until 1935, the majority of Jews in Germany remained in the hope that the Nazis, A, wouldn’t survive. And that gradually, or if they did, gradually, they would modify their policies. It’s after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that more and more realised the writing was on the wall. And it’s only after Kristallnacht that almost all of them wanted to escape. And Nazi propaganda didn’t utter explicit threats of murder until the end of 1938. And until mid 38, Jews as Jews were not put into camps. Yes, if they were communists. If they were liberals, of course, yes. But there’s no yet a roundup of the Jewish community.
However, this is a speech of Josiah Wedgwood in Parliament. A persecuted minority was emigrating. Was there not a moral obligation of the liberal democracies to open the doors? And this is a comment of August 1939 from a Nazi newspaper, De Weltkamp. We are stating openly that we do not want the Jews, whilst the democracies keep on claiming that they’re willing to receive them and then leave them out in the cold. And another point to make when we talk about rescue and rescue efforts. In the early 30s, it also meant the maintenance of Jewish life in Germany for those yet to emigrate and funds have to be supplied. Between 1935 and 1937, 100,000 German Jews were financially supported by the joint. These are Jews who had lost their jobs. And in the 30s, 37,000 Jews underwent vocational training to prepare themselves for emigration. So it wasn’t clear, we didn’t know what was happening next. Yes, when we look at the Zionist leadership, I think you’re going to get very angry because when you read some of the statements of Weizmann, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, it was, they did predict it. But for the majority of imaginations, can you ever really predict the unimaginable? You see today, we know it happened. And also don’t forget the power of the image.
Yes, there was cinema. But nobody had televisions in their homes at this period, there wasn’t instant news. So, and nothing like that had happened in Europe before. So, we have to try and balance it. Now, what I’m going to do is I’m going to look specifically now at the Anglo Jewish response, because there are some extraordinary people and there are others who are not so extraordinary, but I want to try and balance this presentation and remember, I’ve had to make choices. Because against the backdrop of this horror, I would suggest to you that many people acted with indifference and selfishness, be they Jew or Gentile. But there were some extraordinary people, both Jew and Gentile, who were incredibly noble, and that’s the key: what is it that makes us rise above the world we live in? Now, back in 1933, the Board of Deputies had rejected all cause for a boycott, and this came at the request of German Jewry. They didn’t want to rock the boat. But in the East End, you’ve got to remember, Anglo Jewry is very divided between the so called “Kazanhood,” the establishment, and the new immigrants, and the United Jewish Protest Committee. Its president was Dr. David Jockelman, and this is the poster: ‘All Jewish shops, factories, and workshops will be closed. All Jews will march in a body to Hyde Park and demonstrate against the persecution of Jews in Germany. All Jewish workers will stop work and join the great demonstration against Hitlerite persecution.’ And this is a letter from the local newspaper from a protester, he didn’t sign his name. ‘The policy of the assimilationist Jews, that is Jews as Jews don’t count. We are to act only as citizens of this country. We are to leave it to others, to the great men, to the press, to make protests.
We are to do nothing ourselves. However, Central British Fund May '33 raised 200,000 pounds to alleviate the plight of German Jewry. By 1935, over half a million, and the money came from all socioeconomic groups, even the poor, even the people who couldn’t really afford it. And in fact, it’s the poor who are, in many ways, the East End Jews, particularly the political Jews, who are the most helpful. By '39 80 percent of refugees in this country had registered with the Jewish Refugee Board, and it was involved in retraining and education. It was in Bloomsbury House. By 1939, British Jewry has raised 3 million pounds. So, on one level, yes, it is helping. And now, a pink opposition against refugees. Opinion was hopelessly divided, both in Parliament, amongst the British population, and amongst the press. I mean, for example, on the side of the good, Stanley Baldwin launched an appeal for funds. Harold Macmillan sheltered 40 Czech Jewish refugees at his Sussex home. Margaret Thatcher’s family took in a Kinder. The Attenborough family took in a Kinder. I remember when I went to the Kindertransport reunion in 1988, that’s right, yeah 1988, I met some people who were very upset that they hadn’t been taken in by Jewish families. And one of them had been taken in by a vicar’s family, and she’d married the son of the vicar, and she said, 'Yes, they gave me a good life, but on one level, I was robbed of my Jewish heritage.’
On the other hand, you had the extraordinary Rabbi Schonfeld, the son in law of Rabbi Hertz, who was going around Jewish areas, knocking on doors, and telling Jews to take in religious children because there was a sort of option in the immigration papers that allowed a certain number of religious Jews in. And this was done in conjunction with an extraordinary character called Rabbi Weissmandl, a Slovakian Jew who had managed, believe it or not, bribe Nazi officials. Now, the opposition to immigration, well, the Beaver Book Press, the Express, you’re not going to believe some of the comments I’m going to read later. This is Lord Dawson of Penn, President of the Royal College of Physicians. He told the Home Secretary that the number that could be usefully absorbed or teach anything useful in medicine could be counted on the finger of one hand. In fact, the BMA threatened a strike because of the number of Jewish doctors coming into the country. You’ve got to remember, the career civil service act of 1933 threw the Jews out of teaching professions which meant from kindergarten through to professorial level and also no Jewish doctors, lawyers or dentists could be trained from 33 onwards. They couldn’t exclude them finally from the professions till 38 because they didn’t have enough Germans yet. In fact in Berlin 50% of the doctors and 50% of the lawyers were Jewish. Now this is an MI5 report of March 38. The Germans want to flood Britain with Jews to create a real Jewish problem. So Neville Lasky is presiding over a deeply divided community.
Half a century of immigration had placed huge strains on the existing structures and also the traditional elite controlled them and they also faced the threat, please don’t forget, of an external threat of the growth of a very nasty fascist movement, run by the aristocratic Oswald Mosley. They’re dealing with the threat of antisemitism abroad and the problem of Palestine because in the face of marked Arab hostility which culminated in ‘39, the British are changing their policy on Palestine which was obviously the place that wanted the refugees and another point the Zionists were fighting the other organisations in London because they wanted the lion’s share of the funds believing that the real solution to the Jews was Palestine. Another interesting point, that the association of Jews with communism. British Jews were over represented in the international brigade in Spain. Many had been drawn to the communist party and the young communist league. Why? Because they were the only organisations fighting fascism and of course therefore fighting antisemitism. So the canard of Jews as communists was also very potent. You know 2,000 Jews actually joined the international brigade from Britain alone and this is a quote from Martin Gilbert. The east end of London was full of street corner meetings, immigrant communities were very politicised and also it’s the antisemitism of the right that drew more and more Jews into the left. And another point, there was a huge contrast between the rich and poor Jews, and it was the cousinhood felt very threatened by mass immigration and we’ll be dealing with this in a lot more detail because in June and early July we’re going to concentrate on Britain from Victorian England onwards. And this is a quote from Rabbi Hertz. Helplessness to provide a comprehensive remedy for the injustice and inhumanity.
This was Bower. Too much time spent on fundraising and too little on strategy. Trapped by their own acculturated values. It’s an establishment which had a weak communal leadership, a lack of unification and a lack of collective esteem. It’s so much so that on the 11th of December 1942 an article in the London Evening Standard each organisation, each body and committee bent on outwitting and out distancing each other. So from the beginning there was a problem but let’s turn now to a potential solution and can we see the- For some, and can we see the first slide. Here you see Sir William Beveridge, a great hero later Lord Beveridge, Director of the LSE, the architect of the British welfare state. Now at the time of Hitler’s coming to power and the act that threw Jews out of the teaching professions or the academics he was actually in Vienna and with him was Lionel Robbins. Can we see Lionel Robbins? He was a professor at LSE and they read the story in a Vienna newspaper and they decided to do something about it. They met up in Vienna with a fascinating Hungarian Jewish scientist called Leo Szilard, Dr Leo Szilard. Can we see his picture please Judi? Okay fascinating man and a colleague of mine will be lecturing on him later on in the course.
He is actually the man who conceived the notion of chain reaction when he was in London walking by Bloomsbury Square and of course was one of those involved in the creation of the bomb at Les Alamos and was responsible for writing the Einstein letter that put Truman on the path to develop, beg your pardon Roosevelt, on the path to developing the bomb. And this is a fascinating quote from him in answer to the question, is there any intelligent life beyond our earth. Hungary is a front for martian aliens they are already amongst us just called Hungarians. He referred to an extraordinary group of scientists Edward Teller, Dr Strangelove, remember the extraordinary Kubrick film, Johnny von Neumann called by many the cleverest man in the world, Eugene Wigner, Theodore von Karman who by the way was a descendant of Rabbi Judah Lowe, the Maharal of Prague, Johnny Carmini and George Poilya they were all of Jewish birth. So Leo Szilard was one of that extraordinary group of Jewish scientists. He tries to persuade Beveridge and Robbins to open a university in exile but Beveridge said what we’re going to do is we’re going to place scientists in institutions in the free world and in May 1933, can we see the next slide please Judi, they met up with Professor George Trevelyan who was later minister master of Trinity. So it’s very important that you understand there’s some really good Brits of the old, I would call them of the old school, they are people who have a huge sense of conscience but also they are doing it for their own ends because they understand this incredible wealth of talent. And they meet up with George Trevelyan during a weekend in Cambridge. Szilard came to London to help them with the venture, he later goes to America of course.
Beveridge asked Lord Rutherford who’d won the Nobel Prize in 1908 and he was past president of the Royal Society. He was Britain’s foremost scientist to be president, to actually to be chairman of a group which they called the Academic Assistance Committee. Despite his ill health he agreed to do it and in 1937 he died, can we see the next slide please. Ernest Rutherford was brought in to help as I’ve already said and when he died it goes to Dr William Temple, can we see him please Judi. Dr William Temple at that time was Archbishop of York and he later became the Archbishop of Canterbury and it was Temple, he was an incredibly righteous man who later with Rabbi Hertz founded the CCJ to combat bigotry, the Council of Christians and Jews. He tried very hard to do everything he could to alleviate the lot and many Protestant clergy actually supported help for German Jews. And this is a paper they put out from September 1939. The fellowship of knowledge has no frontiers, truth is universal and wherever it is discovered its value is for all searches of knowledge who are in a peculiar degree the servants of humanity. In helping to choose those amongst them whose opportunity to pursue their calling in their own land has been frustrated we are doing something very material to preserve that solidarity of civilization which the inflated materialism of our era has imperilled. So the committee brought in brilliant young scientists from both the left and the right to help.
They had their first meeting in May 1933, they were given space by the Royal Society in the attic of Burlington House and in May the 10th don’t forget the burning of the books, over 18,000 books. Now let’s also save the books, thoughtful scholars, think of the 15 years of extraordinary work in Weimar, the arts and the scientists, in art history Warburg 70,000 items pertaining to the Renaissance were transferred to London before Hitler came to power. Gombrich, Ernst Gombrich the brilliant, well the brilliant everything, the brilliant art historian, the brilliant writer, his short history of the world is required reading for every grandchild by the way. He helped when he came to London. The Wiener Library, Dr Alfred Wiener, literature from the beginning of the Hitler period on racial and political theory. It was first housed in Amsterdam then in 1939 it was brought to London. He was helped by British experts, the Hirsch Music Library in Frankfurt, 15,000 volumes, priceless autobiographies, first editions, Mozart, Beethoven, Purcell. Hirsch moved to Cambridge and in 1936, passed it all to the British Library. Also the Stefan Zweig collection of manuscripts and many of the musical content now is at the British Library. Now, the Council was very careful not to say anything too inflammatory and to build a consensus as broad as possible. Beveridge was in favour of making public statements criticising the Nazis, but colleagues tried to hold him back.
And they said, look, stop the polemics because we don’t want it to be felt that we are being part of a Jewish pressure ball. However, when Einstein came to London in May 33 to raise funds for the Assistant, the Academic Assistant Committee, with a meeting at the Albert Hall, care was taken to avoid deliberate criticism. But what he said was absolutely fantastic. This is what Einstein said. If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual freedom, we must keep clearly before us what is at stake and what we owe to that freedom, which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles. Without such freedom, there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister. Most people will lead a dull life of slavery. It is only men who are free to create the inventions and intellectual works, which to us moderns makes life worthwhile. Now, all the money they raised, and this particular committee raised over £100,000, most of the donors were academics from universities. They used it to support individuals they brought over to this country with grants. They found that they used it to find them posts at universities, both in Britain and in other safe countries. I mean, for example, the Woolworth Institute was staffed by six people, and their families were brought over. They saved over 2000 people. Now, this is where of course Britain benefited. Of those 2000, 16 became Nobel Prize winners, 18 were knighted, 100 became members of the Royal Society, Ernst Chain won the prize in 45, Hans Krebs in 53, Max Born in 54, Max Perutz in 62, brought over people like Pevsner, all these names Jeffrey Elton the great historian, I’ve mentioned Gombrich, Karl Popper, the Open Society, Ludwig Gutmann, who is of course is the father of the paraplegic Olympics, it was he who set up hospitals to deal with paraplegia, not just the physical condition but the mental things.
But the point was, they did bring in people who became incredibly useful to the British. So, again, who do you save? When we look at Varian Fry and I know there is a Netflix series, Varian Fry and his team made the decision to save the intellectuals. He saved over 3000 of the great brains of Europe, but what about ordinary folk? Folk like us. So, those decisions, but never forget, it was the Germans and their allies, the Nazis and their allies that brought everybody in to hell. Now, there were other efforts. The World Jewish Congress had been founded in Geneva in 1936, but its headquarters were in New York City. It saw itself, quote unquote, as the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people, and was very much established in reaction to the rise of Nazism. This is its preamble to mobilise the Jewish people and democratic forces against the Nazi onslaught, and to fight for equal political rights everywhere, particularly for Jewish minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, and to create a worldwide Jewish representative body based on the concept of the unity of the Jewish people. And of course it had had precursors. AJC and the Comite des Delegations Juives have been established in March 1919 to represent Jewish communities at the Paris Peace Conference. It was them who called for a World Jewish Congress, and the first meetings were in London in 26, and the first preparatory conference was held in Geneva in 13-2. It was headed by a Zionist, Nahum Goldman, to establish, this is important, to establish a permanent address for the Jewish people.
Amidst the fragmentation of Jewish life and the Jewish community, a real legitimate collective representation of Jewry which will speak in name for 16 million Jews to the nations and governments of world as well as to the Jews themselves. It’s said our goal is Jewish unity and the strengthening of Jewish political influence to ensure the survival of the Jewish people which involved the creation of the Jewish state. And for the meeting of 1936, there were 230 delegates from 32 countries. Stephen Wise, the American rabbi, was the chair and Goldman was the chair of the administrative executive committee. So basically, there are organisations within world jewry and please don’t forget the joint, the extraordinary American joint that was sending money to help as much as possible. Against the backdrop, don’t forget and can we see the next slide please. Now this is fascinating because Arthur Koestler, let me just find his wonderful quote for you, excuse me, yes, Arthur Koestler, this is comments of two people who were saved by the academic assistance committee. A civilization which admired character instead of brains, stoicism instead of temperament, nonchalance instead of diligence, the tongue tied manner instead of elephants, that’s fascinating. That’s Koestler talking about Britain, the Britain he saw. This is Sir Hans Krebs quoting Carl Zuckmayer. Home is not where a man is born but where he wants to die, where he wants to carry out his life and bring it to a close as is ordained.
It is where he has put his roots, can we go on to have a look at Krebs, yes, always found him a fascinating character. It is where he’s put his roots down in this earth which he has broken by his own toil and frankly so many of these German Jews who came to this country they really did, and later on the Austrians and the Czechs, they really did change British society for the better despite all the hostility. Now though can we see the next slide please, yeah. Against the backdrop I’ve already mentioned how Anglo Jewry was having to fight fascism and it’s the British Union fascists was led by a fascinating character called Sir Oswald Moseley who was married to, let’s see, can we see the next slide please, the beautiful Diana Mitford, one of the five Mitford sisters. One of them was madly in love with Hitler, the unity, and she spent much of her time in the 30s with Hitler. In fact Diana and Oswald were married in Germany with Hitler at the wedding. She was the daughter of Lord Redesdale, her first husband was Brian Guinness and in fact it was a relative, Lord Moyne, who was Minister for State in the Middle East who was later assassinated by the Lehi and I will talk about that later on in the course.
But these two aristocrats lead the British Union of fascists and British Jewry is having to fight that and there are many many biographies about the threat of fascism in this country and I don’t have to tell those of you from America how bad it was in America in the 30s. You had the German Bund, you had characters like Lindbergh, you had characters like Father Coughlin with his radio station, so antisemitism, fear of foreigners was up a hundred notches. Having said that there were some extraordinary individuals who saved Jews and can we go on and have a look at two of the most extraordinary, that is Ida Cook and can we see her sister please, Ida and Louise Cook. Now Ida and Louise Cook were two opera mad sisters, now they lived very ordinary lives, they were very close to each other, neither of them ever married and one day when Ida was passing a record shop she heard opera and she fell crazily in love with opera. They saved up, she was a secretary, they saved up and they made enough money to buy themselves a phonograph. And they became so obsessed with opera, that they began to save all their money to take trips. And because they were eccentric English women, and because they somehow appealed to some of the great stars like Galli-Curci, they invited the sisters to New York. Later on, Ida became a writer for Mills and Boon. Now many of you will note that Mills and Boon, I still think it’s one of the most popular publishing houses in the world. They churn out romances. Now under the name of what was her name? I’ve got to think of her. She was one of their most popular writers. Let me see if I can find- Yes, Mary Burchell.
She used to write a novel a year, and she wrote 130 novels and began to earn a lot of money. When they were in- And of course they were crazy about opera, so they would go to Germany and they would go even to Bayreuth. Because they wanted to be part of the whole panoply, they would dress very exotically. They would have feather boas, neck skirts and all sorts of phoney jewellery. Until in 1937, through one of their opera friends because opera stars were fascinated by these characters, they found out about the plight of German Jews. Consequently, they got it into their heads that they would save as many as possible. How would they do that? They would smuggle things into Germany that would enable German Jews to purchase, to actually, they took Jews with them. What they did was they sold Jews on their costumes and they would take in expensive furs, who knew whether they were real or not. They then gave them over to Jewish families which enabled the Jews to get the money to get out. Because remember, you could still buy your way out of Germany. So, consequently, it’s been estimated that they saved at least 29 people. So, please know that there are these extraordinary individuals who for whatever reason and they took terrible chances. So, consequently, they were very, very important and you will know that one of them actually lived to 1991. And I believe Patrick actually met them. Now the problem was though as time went on not enough Jews were getting out of Germany and it all gets ramped up. I’m going to read you an extract from the Sunday Express of June the 19th 1938. There is a new exodus of the children of Israel.
Not from Egypt, but from Germany. Jews are being herded from one place to another, threatened and insulted. The children of Israel are sore afraid. In Britain, half a million Jews find their home. They are never persecuted and in many respects are given favoured treatment here. But just now, there’s a big influx of Jews, foreign Jews, into Britain. They are overrunning the country. They are trying to enter the medical profession in great numbers. They wish to practise as dentists. Worst of all, many of them are psychoanalysts. They need no medical training but arrogate to themselves, the function of a doctor and the doctor often obtains an ascendancy over the patient. Of which he makes base use if he is a bad man. The hostility to Jews in Germany cannot be condemned, cannot be condoned, beg your pardon, but beware lest the presence rush of Jews into this country injures the cause of Jewry here. There is no intolerance in Britain today. Intolerance is loathed and hated by almost everyone in this country. And by keeping a close watch on the causes which fed the intolerance of the Jews in other European countries, we shall be able to continue to treat well those Jews who have made their homes amongst us. Okay, Hitler is ratcheting it up. And of course in March 1938, he goes home to Austria, the Anschluss. Can we see the next slide please? Yeah, the Anschluss where 10 percent of the population of Vienna were Jewish and the other 90 percent were on the street screaming for Adolf Hitler.
We’ve already had the Aryanization of property and now the Anschluss, and I’ve already mentioned to you in another presentation, it took the Germans five months to Nazify Austria. And it’s at this stage that pressure is being put on Roosevelt to do something. Now Roosevelt had a very tight quota, and a lot of evidence has come out. Even though his wife was very supportive, he was really not much of a friend to the Jews. But there was an American called James P. McDonald. Can we see the next slide please? Now James Grover McDonald, he was born in Ohio. He was a very, very interesting man. He was a very religious Christian, he’d studied political science. He had a teaching fellowship at Harvard. He was very, very bright, he became a professor at Indiana. And he, in 1919, he went into the civil service. And in 1933, he was assigned to chair the high commission for refugees from Germany affiliated to the League of Nations. But they got no funding from it. He appealed to support from governments, from the Vatican. He actually later became very close to Chaim Weizmann and his assistant Norman Bentwich, who was the deputy director. He met with the central British funds to discuss aid plans, he visited Germany. And in April the 4th 1933, this is a meeting he records with Nazi officials. He says they were charmed by my fluent German and Aquiline features, and spoke openly about their plans for the Jews. Which was an obsession with so many Nazis. When I indicated my disbelief in their racial theories, they said what other Nazis has said, but surely you, a perfect type of Aryan, could not be unsympathetic to our views.
His diaries by the way have now been published. It’s called Advocate for the Doomed. And in 1951 he himself wrote a credo: To me, the threat of Jewish extermination in Germany was a threat also to all Christians. The threat to the Jews was not only a hideous wrong, but also created a world problem of overwhelming significance. Hence, it was not only for the sake of the Jews, but for the larger cause of freedom, justice, and equal treatment of all human beings. I, a blonde Aryan offspring of Scottish, Canadian, and Midwestern stock, a teacher and student, became a champion of Jewish aspirations and equal rights. It was an irresistible call, and he is going to be part of the American delegation to a place at Evian. Now, have we got a slide on Evian? Yes, in 1933, in 1938 between the 6th and the 15th of July, the allies met at Evian, 32 countries. And if it was Evian is on the Swiss German border. The conference was to deflect criticism from the policy of the quota system. Cynically, we know that now. So 32 countries, 24 voluntary organisations went as observers.
It was the American delegation was headed by a man called Myron Taylor, who was a lawyer and a businessman. And the proposal for it, a lot of pressure from McDonald, but also from Sumner Welles who wanted an international conference. I should mention before I go on, that James P. McDonald is going to have a very illustrious career in terms of Jewish politics. He did everything he could. He later became a member of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, which I’ll be talking about in a couple of weeks. And on the 23rd of July 1948, he was made special representative to Israel. He was Truman’s personal choice. It was not a popular appointment with the American State Department because they thought he was far far too Jewish, and he was not a professional diplomat. He talks about a meeting he had in London with Ernst Bevin. I had to tell myself that this was not Hitler seated before me. He provoked Bevin evidently into losing his temper by suggesting that a Briton should send a diplomatic representative to Tel Aviv. February 1949, he becomes the first American ambassador to Israel. And this was a man, you should read his story, because he was on conversation terms with Hitler, with Roosevelt, with Pacelli Pope Pius XII, and with Chaim Weizmann. So, the purpose of Evian. 300,000 Jews in Germany and now you have a further 200,000 in Austria. Before 1938, they’d left at a steady rate, but now huge Nazi radicalization. Top foreign officials were warning it might encourage other countries to try and get rid of their Jewish population. This is a briefing for Lord Halifax. The question of the Jews in Central Europe will be raised sooner or later and can only be resolved comprehensively, perhaps radically.
Worried that, quote unquote, worried that a crackdown on Jews in Poland, Romania and Hungary would unleash a movement of population involving several million people. So, what the British are saying, anti-Semitism is so high in Europe that it’s just going to increase the crackdown and it’s going to affect our policy in Palestine and also the number of Jews coming into this country. The Americans formally invited the Romanians to participate and the foreign minister said, quote, he hopes that Jewish resettlement will be extended to his country and this is an interview with the Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, February the 8th, 1938. We have to force the veteran, the western democracies to choose between opening up new territories for Jewish immigration or accepting a violent solution to the conflict. It is difficult to restrain people from carrying out pogroms and those in Paris and London should be made to know that we won’t always be able to do this. A decision must be taken quickly. And this is a memo that the Romanian government grew up which it presented in London. This is the 5th of December, '38. A Jewish state must be established and cooperation with Jewish organisations be supported with decisive action on the part of the western powers to quickly and thoroughly solve the Jewish problem.
This is the 4th of September, 1938. Discussion between Hitler and the Polish ambassador, Lipsky. Hitler states the Jewish problem could be solved by immigration to the British colonies based on an agreement with Poland, Hungary, and possibly Romania. This is a reply from the Polish foreign minister, Beck. On this score, I told Hitler we would erect a magnificent monument to him in Warsaw if he brought about such a solution. Right. This is from William Mackenzie, the Canadian Prime Minister. We would have riots if we agreed to uphold a policy that admitted a large number of Jews. Okay, so basically what happened at Evian was that very few countries would do anything. And this is Golda Meir. Can we see the next slide, please? This is Golda Meir. I don’t think that anyone who didn’t live through it, she was a delegate, can understand what I felt at Evian, a mixture of sorrow, rage, frustration, and horror. I want you to get up and scream at them all. Don’t you know that these numbers are human beings who may spend the rest of their lives in concentration camps or wandering around like lepers if you don’t let them in? This is a speech of Hitler’s just before the conference. I can only hope and expect that the other world which has such sympathy for these criminals will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. For our part, are willing to place all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, even if need be put them under luxury liners.
And in the following weeks, herded hundreds of destitute Jews across the land borders, etc., etc. Now, what happened to Evian? The Dutch agreed to take in a few more, as did the Danes. But basically, let me read. This is from the Australian delegate. Britain’s immigrants only wanted a certain number of Jews to have been admitted, Australia can do no more. Britain, the government is investigating the possibilities of settling a limited number of refugees in East African colonies. Canada, the unemployment problem and economic uncertainty severely restrict the power to absorb considerable number of immigrants. United States suggests a permanent committee be set up in Paris to consider the problem. Argentina, immigrants must be kept mainly to experienced agriculturists and those in selected occupations. Belgium will not, as a point of honour, assume international obligations whose consequences she cannot see. The Dominican Republic said it would in fact, allow 100,000 in, but unfortunately, not that many got there. So basically, Evian was a complete disaster and on one level it gave the nod to Hitler. Goebbels writes in his diary, we savages are better than the so-called civilised world because we say exactly what we are going to do. And following Evian, Hitler began to expel Polish-born Jews who had come in after 1914. These are the Ostjuden, if you remember, that was in the German Workers’ Party Manifesto, the Nazi Party Manifesto.
He began to expel them to the Polish border. It was October, November 1938. It was a cold winter. The Nazis are shooting at them. The Poles won’t let them in. They are housed in stable blocks and amongst them was a family called Grynszpan. The sister sent a note to her brother in… And he of course was in Paris. And he went into the embassy in Paris and he shot the first secretary, von Raff. And this is what was found in his pocket, he immediately submitted, he admitted, gave himself up to the French police. Being a Jew is not a crime, I hope President Roosevelt would take pity on us refugees. I am not a dog, I didn’t mean to kill, I lost my head, and the note may god forgive me, I must protest so that the whole world would hear my protest. So, I’m going to stop there because, of course, following that came Kristallnacht. So I know this was a tough lecture to give and I’m sure it was tough to receive.
Q&A and Comments:
Ah, Peter is telling me there’s a walking group ah that might interest me, Peter.
Yes, Bernice, Netflix is showing a film called Transatlantic, the story of Varian Fry and his people with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. Yes, and of course, he made that… And of course, you have that whole notion of who should he save, the intellectuals or not. I must tell you my son-in-law saw it and thought it was quite disappointing, but I haven’t seen it yet.
This is from Alan Warman, I received this today, Jews have two memorial days, Yom HaZikaron to remind us of the cost of having Israel, Yom HaShoah to remind us of the cost of not, that’s very interesting. From Julian Pokroy who heads up the SAZF, thank you, South African Zionist Federation. I like that, Alan, can you send it to me if you don’t mind, Judi?
And Rita, April the 18th, it’s in memory of our late mother who left this world too soon, she was a Holocaust survivor, I wish you a long life, Rita. Elliot, to the shame of Canada, on June the 7th, 1939, the St. Louis- unfortunately, I hadn’t time to talk about the St. Louis, I overestimated so I will find another slot, of course, it’s very important, the St. Louis.
Shelley, three months ago an 85 year old female friend of mine who needs a walker took an Uber, the Haitian driver who didn’t know she was Jewish went on all about how cursed the Jews were because they killed Jesus, she was afraid to protest because of her age and infirmity.
Yeah, yes, and Rose is talking about the St. Louis, and Michael says Mackenzie King did not make the comment, none is too many, the comment was made by the deputy minister of immigration, thank you for that, Michael.
Tim Abrahams, in relation to what you said about the start of the possibility of a lot of Jews being saved, if other countries had let them in, there is a saying that the only thing needed for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. So, are other countries partly responsible? You see, this is the problem, Tim. This is the problem, nobody could have actually foreseen, even in 19, look, Nahum Goldman himself said, even in 1939, I could not have predicted the inferno. He said you needed the soul of a poet to imagine. I mean, who could imagine Auschwitz? So it’s such a complicated question, I honestly don’t know the answer, we all have to make our own minds up.
Yes, Marcy tells us Transatlantic also deals with Mary Ann Gold and heron bigger. Yes, of course, he was a Quaker. Look, don’t forget, there were some extraordinary individuals who did help.
Q: What were the minutes silence in the House of Commons?
A: Michael, this is so much evidence came through that by December the 17th 1942, it actually came from the Polish government in exile. There were nine governments in exile in London, that there was a minute silence, it was actually proposed by the MP Sidney Silverman. And so there was, there was a minute silence for the murdered Jews of Europe. So yes, and in fact Martin Gilbert, when he was still alive would give lectures in Parliament on that date. Fascinating. And now the British want to erect a memorial to the Holocaust near Parliament, as though it will make any difference. Sorry, that’s me being very cynical. Yes. When news arrived at the scale, even in 1942 they didn’t know the scale. You’ve got to understand that the Russians were the… First of all we have the Polish government in exile, but I will be talking about all of this I promise you. I’ve only really got up to 1938, it’s such an important topic that I began by asking the big questions, but really, we’ve only got up to 1938, because we have to look at the big picture, and then fill in the detail it’s too important not to.
This is Selma, my mother came to Canada as a domestic in 1930. That was the only way she could get in, her brother who lived in Chicago, hope that by that way she could eventually come to America, the border of the US was closed to Jews immigrating to America from Russia. Yeah, you see yes and domestics were allowed in, I mean I have some very sophisticated friends who very sophisticated mothers and grandmothers had to come to this country and work as domestic it’s, yeah. Yes, it’s talking about the ship the St. Louis and he says, one author, Irving Abella wrote one is too many about this event. And saying that it wasn’t Mackenzie I’m sorry, you know, I got this information from books but that’s what I love about lockdown somebody can always, always knows more about something than I do.
Sorry Trudy, kinder is the plural, the single is kind, yes of course.
Yes, Nicholas yes I mentioned the Attenborough family who took in two sisters, or his family forever even when they went to America, yeah they were wonderful people. Yes, that’s right. Yes, it was Lord Beveridge yes Amelia’s saying who said it took the initiative to set up Cara is still exists as the Council for assisting refugee academics. Yes, I had the privilege of knowing Kohn, and he taught me I think he was the president at the time, and not long before he died. I spent a wonderful afternoon with him when he told me so many stories Sir Ralph Kohn amazing man, and also a great musicologist scientist and a musicologist, and his wife, of course, the lovely hadassah was survived from Holland.
Carol the bottom line is the Britains slam the door in the face of Jews in Palestine afterwards they they still didn’t allow them in knowing exactly what happened in the war they love the picture of the noble Arab Yes Carol but be careful. What, the countries act out of self interest as well. There were some very noble Brits. At the end of May, beginning of June we’re taking a rest from the normal syllabus and myself and my colleagues were all choosing people we think are great note, for example, Julian’s going to talk about Elizabeth the second, and I believe Patrick’s going to look at Lord Robeson, and I’ve decided to look at Josiah Wedgwood and Wilfred Israel. There are so many you could choose, but the whole issue of Palestine, and they were good guys don’t forget all the wind gates. But on the whole, the British policy was pragmatic self interest, and I would say tinged with Jew hatred. As a friend of mine once said, an American friend of course, the Jews just made terrible colonials.
Selma Opler gangsters versus Nazis how Jewish mobsters battled Nazis in World War Two era by Michael Benson. Yes, that sounds like an interesting book. I must look at that, maybe get him in. Thank you.
Shelley I saw a documentary on PBS last night about Nicholas Winton whose parents were Jewish said rabbis approached him was very subset with Jewish children were sent to Christian homes and wanted it to stop. Nicholas Winton was an incredibly interesting man. I also, look I was lucky I lived in Hampstead, and I knew, I worked in Hampstead and I knew Nicholas Winton quite well. You know when he… He saved so many children including friends of mine and he didn’t realise he’d done anything special. It was only when his wife was going through papers in the attic she found it and Esther Rantzen had a programme on British television. We actually created a study guide, one of his children, by that time a very successful businessman, actually came to the centre and said to a couple of my colleagues I want to make Nicholas Winton famous and in fact we created a study guide and the book was written about him by, let me remember who, one was one of the Czech children, Vera Gissing who was saved and the other was Muriel Emmanuel whose husband was Ralph Emmanuel who was a great star of the German Jewish studies department. He did so much to get it going in Sussex, a wonderful man who passed away quite recently. I’ve been so lucky that I knew so many of these characters. Today was in Poland the march from Auschwitz to Birkenau to commemorate 9,000 people marched. Thank you for that information Anna.
Audrey says it was very moving.
One slide, oh Joe was saying one slide of Dr Temple, no changes, something wrong with your machine. Amelia thank you for talking about beverage, so many people forget the British Constitution.
Monty says please be aware Transatlantic is not documentary about Varian Fry, it’s based on a novel. You see this is the problem, you know that’s what my son-in-law said and what I find fascinating, sometimes the real story is much more interesting than fiction. Varian Fry was a fascinating man, I’ve done a lot of work on him, so has Patrick, an absolutely fascinating individual, given to mental health problems, probably homosexual, he died alone and unloved. Virtue is not always rewarded.
And this is from Sharon, a Canadian official named Winton was heroic like Varian Fry in Saving Jews. When his parents arrived in Canada they changed their family name from Wertheim. Bernice, my husband was brought to Dublin by Rabbi Schonfeld with other children after surviving four camps. Yeah he was a great hero Rabbi Schonfeld, a lion of a man and son-in-law to Rabbi Hertz.
Oh this is Lorraine, we live on Moyne Drive in West Vancouver, yeah.
Carol is making a political point, I point out that on this day here in Israel we are fighting for our democracy against a narrow-minded government yeah.
Susan, hi Susan, it’s lovely to see you last week. The Quakers were also involved in saving Jews, there was an office in Vienna run by a member of the Cadbury family and a Cornish Quaker named John Sturge, Stevens, who was also involved in helping Jews escape from Vienna, including Albert, artist Albert Reuss, Stevens, even housed some of them when they got here.
Thank you Judi. Yes of course, and I haven’t really had time to elaborate because please don’t forget there were many people from all walks of life, some motivated by religious views, some motivated by political views and others because they were really angry and others because they were mavericks.
Michael, when the British Union of Fascists was first created it was not anti-Semitic, in fact there were Jewish members of the BUF, similarly there were Jewish members of the Italian Fascists movement. Yes this is an issue that we will be looking at.
And Monica Simon’s asking about Idra and Marie-Louise Cook, yes they have been recognised at Yad Vashem. Yes, very much so.
Marilyn, it’s been suggested that Jews were not anxious to dwell too much on the fate of the Jews because it was felt that a population would not be keen to pursue a war if it was primarily to rescue Jews. The wider threat was considered more acceptable of course. You see it’s so very, very complex- You know, jews themselves, and I think I mentioned this, they didn’t have that much self-confidence. Yehuda, my mother was involved in a cloak and dagger operation in South Africa in ‘36 involving a shipload of Jewish refugees from Europe. I think the ship’s name was the SS Stuttgart and this happened in the face of opposition from South African pro-Nazis. Reports I have seen cited Shimoni G. 1980, Jews and Zionism, and the South African experience.
Right, oh that’s Gideon Shimoni, right. Yehuda, we are going to be running some specific courses on South Africa. Wendy is actually working on it as we speak.
Yes that’s right, McDonald did become the first ambassador to Israel.
Q: Did Switzerland accept refugees as residents or just want to be staging posts?
A: Christine, I’m going to do a whole session on Switzerland.
Helen’s disappointed I didn’t address the issue of German Jews fleeing to South Africa. My late father, Fritz Rothschild, escaped Germany on the last boat. The boat was named Stuttgart. Yes Helen, I’ve just mentioned that Wendy is going, we’re going to do a whole series on South Africa. What we’re trying to do is to make it as, what’s the word, as coherent as possible. If I had taken country by country you would become, it’s just too much to take in. So we’re going to look at, what Wendy wants to do is to look at the sweep of South Africa which we haven’t yet covered. So and don’t forget we also haven’t covered the whole sweep of America. So it will be discussed and as you said there’s lots of complications.
Jean says cynically, I always believed that the government didn’t have a black problem to unite their followers, they would have created a Jewish problem. Andy, my father and aunt sang in the romance of the people in the Kingsbridge armoury in the Bronx, New York, September '33. This spectacle cast 6,200 people in a pageant that showed the struggle of the Jews throughout the centuries. Under the auspices of the American Palestine Committee, 20,000 people attended the performances which raised funds to settle German Jewish refugees in Palestine. The spectacle was performed in various American cities. Yes absolutely amazing and in the main it was the new immigrants who were involved Andy, yes and of course there were other pageants in the war, mainly actually run by ironically the Irgun and penned by Ben Hecht. So yes these stories will be told. Fascinating.
Yes I did say Golda Meir was an observer not a delegate if I misspoke Melvin. Yes I will do a programme on Nikki Winston at some chance time or somebody will I promise Paul.
Again asking about South Africa, this is all grit for Wendy who is working on it as we speak. Yes telling us that Grynszpan actually survived the war though he was in a French prison. Landau, Sandra Landau, the original Varian Frye movie is much better.
Yes I remember it but I don’t think you can get it on Netflix, it was John Hurt wasn’t it? William Hurt, beg your pardon. Yes Sandra Myers, sorry to add to this but the CBF was divided amongst themselves regarding the money raised. The issue of Otto supporting refugees, Robert Whaley-Cohen was firmly anti-Zionist, why the Slavs were firmly pro-Zionist. Yes of course Sandra thank you so much for this.
Sandra is my resident expert on this. and yeah there’s so much information we’ve got to deal with. Stephen Press, episode one of the US and the Holocaust PBS America explains very clearly the xenophobic backlash from the late 19th century. George Honig in spite of Evian, 50,000 Jews came to Europe after '38, raising the Jewish population to 90,000.
And Nina’s talking about Hollywood. I think I’ve got to stop now, I know there are a few more questions and the reason I’m stopping is we have another presentation have we not Judi?
[Judi] We have, we have Joan Rosen, yes.
And it’s an important presentation he’s talking about is it possible to have a theological response to the Shoah. I asked specifically that Jeremy give this presentation I know it’s a very difficult one but I really would, look I know it’s a tough week not only is it Yom HaShoah and I am dealing and my colleagues are all dealing with very difficult material but we will get through it and don’t forget despite all the issues that we’re facing today as I said to you yesterday I still believe in the positive destiny of the Jewish people. Maybe I have to but I do. Anyway thank you all for that and thank you all for your information. I’m going to say this again I don’t think there is- I don’t know what you think Judi I don’t think there can be a group like ours, can there? We get so much information in from all of you so thank you all very much and God bless everyone.