Trudy Gold
The Impact of the Shoah on the Jewish World
Trudy Gold - The Impact of the Shoah on the Jewish World
- Good evening, good afternoon everyone, and welcome to a very, very difficult presentation both to give and to receive, because now I’m going to look at the impact of the Shoah on the Jewish world. And of course the first thing to say is it’s probably too soon to evaluate. I mean, how long will it take us before there’s any hope of normalisation, particularly in a world where we are still seeing antisemitism rearing its ugly head? We’ve had a horrific incident recently, two horrific incidents in London, one of course Diane Abbott, and the other one a cartoon in the Guardian. And I’m actually going to be lecturing on antisemitism on the left in the next couple of weeks because I think it’s quite important, because one of the, one of the things that I know a lot of people did believe, including survivors, was that antisemitism would die after the Shoah. Because if you think about it, Jews are always accused of powerlessness, of power. But what could have shown more powerlessness from the Jews, than the Shoah itself? And also the impact it had when the films were first shown on the cinemas, and if you remember, those of you who are my age will remember that when we went to the cinema, you had the B picture, the A picture, and in the middle the news reels. And the news reals lasted for about 15 minutes. And we know that people were actually fainting and were being sick, even though, as we spent a lot of time with you on the fact that there was a lot of knowledge. And of course, that’s what Rex’s film dealt with. And just to sort of, if you like, make that point again, we knew, the world knew, the world was informed, or rather, governments were informed of mass murder from the summer of 1941. It came through the Russians and it came through the Polish government in exile through an extraordinary man called Jan Karski.
Then there was the Riegner telegram of November 1942 when he talks about the murder of the Jews of Europe. The Wannsee document had been leaked to him. Riegner ran the World Jewish Congress from Geneva. And then of course there is a note from the Polish foreign minister Raczynski, when he lays out the the deaths. And that led to the declaration in December 1942, nine countries made a declaration on the murder of the Jews of Europe. There was a minute silence in the House of Commons. And of course, the worst part of this appalling indifference was the fact that Hungarian Jewry was not attacked until 1944. So the question is, could the camps have been bombed? Would it have made any difference anyway? Could the Nazis have been bribed? And we know that they were, there were many, there were many instances of that. And could the countries of the world have taken in more refugees? So these are the questions that hang over the Jewish world and particularly over the Zionists. Because if you remember, they were the ones who almost predicted this. Remember Jabotinsky’s speech, remember Weizmann’s speech, Ben-Gurion made a similar speech, and basically they realised how little power they had. And many of the ways they tried to cope with trying to save Jews, sometimes later on is going to be seen as dealing with the devil. Another thing that we’ll be addressing later on. But if you want to understand the centrality of the murder of the Jews to Hitler, I want to look at the last letter that he actually wrote on the 29th of April, 1945.
Can we see that slide please? Now, this is from his political testament, April the 29th, 1945. It was made the day before he committed suicide in the bunker. “But nor have I left any doubt that if the nations of Europe are once more to be treated only as a collection of stocks and shares of those international conspirators in money and finance, then those who carry the real guilt for this murderous struggle, this people will also be held responsible, the Jews. I have further left no one in doubt that this time it would not only be millions of children of Europeans of the Aryan peoples who were starved to death, and not only hundreds of thousands of women and children who we burned and bomb to death in the cities, without those who are really responsible also having to atone for their crime even if by more humane means.” This is what makes Holocaust denial so absolutely ludicrous. This is from Hitler’s testament, the last letter he writes before he commits suicide. And there you have it in black and white. This, of course is an extract. And in fact, to make sure that everything was done very carefully when the, it was the British who found this, they actually made sure that it, not one person was given it to translate. There were over four people. There were at least four people who had to translate different parts of it. But here we come to the last bit. “But before everything else, I call upon the leadership of the nation and those who follow it to observe the racial laws most carefully, to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the people of the world, international Jewry. Set down at four o'clock. Berlin, April 29th, 1945.” And of course we have just passed that terrible anniversary. I’m now going to show you the map of the catastrophe. And I’m using Martin Gilbert’s history atlas. And if you think about it, before the war, Europe was the heartland of the Jewish world.
That is another huge change. There were 3 million Jews in Poland, around 200,000 of them that survived. Lithuanian Jewry, 95% of it was wiped out. If you look at the Jews of Holland, 108,000 of them murdered. I’m not going to go by figure by figure, you know the horror and the catastrophe. And as I said, this is from Martin Gilbert. But the point is, if you think about that in terms of lines of dissent, we will never know all the names because if you wipe out a village, there is no, particularly in the East, there is nobody left to tell. And if you think about it, Hitler was absolutely resent, was relentless, birth was sentence of death. That is Yehuda Bauer’s phrase. I think it’s the only time in history, and I want to be very careful about this, that birth was actually sentence of death. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been other appalling atrocities, I’m not negating that. But if you were born a Jew, in Hitler’s diseased mind, in the diseased mind of his followers, you had to die. And what is even more bizarre, because in the end it’s a fantasy, but even as his military position worsened, he continued the policy against the Jews. They went on murdering right up until the end. I’m going to quote now from , “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but it was paved by indifference. It was paved with collaboration. Antisemitism was entrenched in European society for 2,000 years. Often the local population police and army assisted the Nazis in their genocidal policies.” So many, many people knew. Did they actually believe is another very interesting notion. Because now when we talk about murders, you have screens in your lives, you have the news that is immediate.
Not many people have televisions in 1945, and it’s actually the liberation of the camps and their showing of them on the screens that make a difference. Today, perhaps we have a different kind of guilt, but we do have guilt, I think. So bearing in mind with the Zionists, at the centre of Zionism was the notion of the in-gathering of the exiles. On one obscene level, Zionism had always said, if you think of the words of Leon, if you think of the words of Leon Pinsker, when he said, “Antisemitism is a psychic aberration, it is a 2,000 year old disease, it is incurable.” And he says, “Even those of you who are fleeing to America,” this is from Eastern Europe in 1881 onwards, “You are fooling yourselves.” So of course Zionism is made up of many other things. But there is this thread that the in gathering of the exiles. So Zionist now, and the actual demand for statehood, you’ll remember, came out in May 1942 at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. And I’m actually talking about that next on Thursday when I talk about the British Zionism and Palestine. But it was in the war that all the Zionist leadership, be they to the left or to the right, whether they believed in conciliation with the British, they demanded statehood now so that the wrong, as they said, the ancient wrong to the Jewish people be righted. Again, the Zionist definition of Jew was nationhood. So as the Allies advance across Europe they come across various camps. Now, can we see some shots? Because of course they didn’t go to liberate, they found camps. And of course, Auschwitz itself was liberated by a Ukrainian regiment attached to the Red Army. Here you see liberations by Russians. It’s almost an unbelievable scenario. There were over 5,000 camps of one sort or another in Nazi occupied Europe. Slave labour camps, sub camps.
So the soldiers, on one level, the leadership might have known, and of course who knew better than the Eastern Europeans, soldiers, how cruel the Nazis and their allies were. But to actually come across these camps, it made such an extraordinary impression on people. Now, one side, I want to use Belsen as our example, because it was, can we come onto the next slide please? Because it was actually liberated by the British. The British came, they came across Belsen on April the 15th, 1945. Now, as the British advanced, Himmler still fantasised that he could deal with the western army’s Allies, so he hands it over without a fight. And what the British soldiers found there, it absolutely haunted them. I’ve met soldiers who were part of the liberation. And if it wasn’t, imagine what it was like for the people there, including I’m sure people that many of you know. And my very close friend Anita, was actually liberated from Belsen, as was her sister. They found 13,000 unburied bodies and 60,000 people in the camp, many of whom had been brought in on death marches from the east. So as the Russians were advancing what the Germans were doing were marching them into the, marching them west. There was no water, there was hardly any food. And there is no, if you think about it, typhus was rampant. It was, as people there have told me, it was a living hell. And this is, and it, can we see the next slide please? This is an extract from Richard Dimbleby, a very, very famous war correspondent, and later one of the mainstays of British television. And this is what he said. “Here, over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could have, you could not see which was which. The living lay with their heads against the corpses.
And around the move, that awful ghastly possession, procession of emaciated people with nothing to do and with no hope of life.” He later said this was the worst day of his life. And one of the tragedies was, that of course the soldiers wanted to help. So they started giving people chocolate. They started giving, because who knew in those days about nutrition? So another 13,000 people actually died in the weeks after liberation. Many had typhus, but it was a terrible, terrible time. Now, one of the first doctors into Belsen, he absolutely knew the story must be told because he believed the day would come when people would doubt it. And he of course contacted his brother-in-law, the famous Sidney Bernstein. At that time, can we see his shot please? Here you see Sidney Bernstein. At that time he was working with the BBC as a cameraman. He was also working with Alfred Hitchcock on a film called “Under Capricorn” with Ingrid Bergman which was shown in 1947. It had such an effect on him. And of course the five reels were later given to the, six reels were given to the Imperial War Museum. One of them was lost, but has been found recently and was made into a very good documentary. Now, later on, Sidney Bernstein becomes one of the mainstays of British cinema. He became Lord Bernstein of Granada. And a nice little aside for you, he was responsible for the longest running soap, I think in world history, “Coronation Street.” So, but whilst he’s here, and he was a great fighter for the Jewish people, what he wanted to do, he took Hitchcock’s advice who told him to make it in the round. And he made the film. The film was to be shown at every, he brought in Germans from nearby regions so that they could see exactly what had happened.
The film originally was to be shown on every German cinema, but it wasn’t. And that actually caused huge problems. And later on he made a film called “The Painful Reminder,” when he talks about why the film was not shown. But what about the survivors themselves? And can we see the next slide please? As I said, the death toll was unimaginable. Around 200,000 people had managed to survive. Some had been hidden by the righteous, some out of huge decency, others protected for money. Some had been taken or fled into deepest Russia. Others had joined the Jewish partisan brigades like the Bielski Brothers or Zorin. And obviously their overwhelming desire was to return home. What happened in the camps? In the camps, survivors somehow managed to come back to life. They moved them into DP camps in Germany, Austria, Italy. Most of the camps in the American and British zone, and a DP camp was established adjacent to Bergen-Belsen. There were several large camps, usually between four and six, 4,000 and 6,000 in each camp. Now, by 1947, there were approximately 250,000 displaced persons, Jewish people in Europe. I should mention, of course, the horror for the whole world. You know, there were 11 million refugees at the end of the Second World War because of the German policy of slave labour. Can you imagine 11 million people on the move at a time when the Cold War starts up again? Think about it, our great allies, the Russians, the minute the war is over, how are we going to cope with this? And of course, the Cold War. And that’s one of the reasons the film was never shown in Germany because they wanted to bolster up West Germany against the communists.
Amazing organisations like the Joint War, they come into the camps for food, clothing. And what happened was, remember you’ve got intelligent people coming to life. They form self-governing organisations. Zionists, were very, very active. However, there are still quotas on people coming into Britain and coming into America. Now, there was over the overwhelming desire on the part of survivors. Their first desire seems to be to return home. They need to find out, has anyone survived in my town, in my village? And what is going to happen is there’s a movement back. Now, can you just imagine. You’ve survived hell, you want to go home just to see if anyone else, can you imagine the letters that were being posted up on the Red Cross? Try, try to find family. The Europe was, I’ve already tried to describe the, the chaos in Europe. I’m sure many of you have seen the films, the bombed out cities, the lack of foods and resources, people being shunted around, overcrowded trains, the horrible story. Now, unfortunately, as survivors returned home, they met with hostility. One of the main prisons of the Germans was venality. They’d looted the wealthy German Jewish families. If you think the great art collections in Austria, in Germany, they were completely denuded by the Nazis. Their jewellery, their art, their money. Remember the Nazis were allowing the Jews out right up until 1941. And in return, they took all their possessions. But what about ordinary families in the towns and in the villages? War brutalises, war cheapens life. But think about homes, possessions, clothing, bedding, what had happened in the ordinary, what had happened in the ordinary towns and in the ordinary villages in Eastern Europe in particular. But basically 75% of those who survived in France, in Holland, and in Belgium went back. But what about the Jews of Eastern Europe?
But before I do that, because we are talking about the aftermath, can we go back a slide and have a look at the war crimes trials? Because this is going to be dealt with in a lot of depth by Dennis Davis, because as, what we’ve been trying to do over the past few months is to integrate into each other’s presentations. Now, the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, in the aftermath of World War I, there have been conferences in Geneva and in the Hague, which laid down the rules of warfare. That in itself is almost bizarre, isn’t it? Distinctions were to be made between the treatment of civilians and the military. Laws were formulated also to deal with the treatment of prisoners of war. During World War II, beginning with Edward Benes, who was the exiled president of Czechoslovakia. The Czech government was in exile in London. Various governments were reporting on Nazi atrocities, particularly towards civilians in the East, because if you think about it, the treatment of the population in France, in Belgium, in the West, look, nobody wants to be occupied. And it was very brutal. But it was nothing compared to the treatment of people in the East because the Nazis are fighting a race war and there’s a racial hierarchy. And the Slavs are at the bottom of the racial pile. They are not even considered human by the Nazis and their allies. So Russians and Polish, Russian and Polish prisoners of war in particular, were used for slave labour. And in fact, the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz was on Russian prisoners of war. Now, in response to the appalling reports of Nazi brutality, War Crimes Commission was created in October 1943, with representatives from Australia, America, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, India, Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece.
I’m giving you all the countries so that you understand that this is an attempt of an international body. Luxembourg, Norway, New Zealand, China, think what the Chinese had suffered at the hands of the Japanese in Nanjing, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and Canada. And what happens is lists of wanted Nazis are drawn up, war criminals, and Russia, because of the problems of the group, think China, think the West, think the Cold War, Russia was not represented. But after the war, in August 1945, the London Agreement establishes an international military tribunal to deal with the, to deal with the criminals. Now ironically, it was a Jewish lawyer, Hersch Lauterpacht, who has, at the School of International Law at Cambridge in his memory, a Jewish, he was a judge. He was professor of international law. He defined categories which laid down procedural rules, what crimes have been committed. And the categories were crimes against peace, the waging of an aggressive war, and war crimes. I’m quoting, “Disregarding the Geneva conventions that related to the treatment of prisoners of war, crimes against humanity, the wholesale murder of a civilian population.” So in accordance with the London Charter, indictments were jointly lodged by the four principal prosecutors, which represented in the end, it’s the four important powers.
Germany and Williams dealing with this was divided up, the four powers, Russia, America, Britain, and France, all with their own zones. Now the proceedings, and of course you see there some of the major, one of the major war criminal, war crimes trials. You see Goering there, that that was the trial of the most important Nazis that they had under their control. Of course, Hitler had committed suicide. So had Himmler, and Goering was the biggest prize. And he of course committed suicide in his cell rather than face the hangman. I think of all those monsters, it’s Julius Streicher, the obscene creature who shouted “Purimfest” as he was about to be hanged. Now there were various, look, in fact the proceedings continue for almost a year. If you like the ironies of history, they culminated on Yom Kippur. 12 defendants were executed, three sentenced to life, and four had prison sentences, and three were acquitted. There were various later trials in the American Zone. But by 1949, these trials were halted. Why? Because we needed to build up West Germany against the allies, against the Russians and their allies. And it must be said that many countries which had been under Nazi rule did continue with their own trials, often against collaborators. Now, Simon Wiesenthal, who I’ll be talking about much more later on, devoted his life to tracking down Nazis. This is his estimate. He estimated that out of 100,000 known criminals, only 10,000, or 10%, were brought to justice. And his question was, “Why?” Well, I’ve already said that tensions between the allies were high. Our wartime ally, Russia, was now our enemy. And the most important thing is the allies wanted to bolster up West Germany. And of course, Austria.
Austria managed to put forward the case that she was the first victim of Nazism. And in addition the chaos in Europe, the chaos in Germany, low level ex-Nazi officials remained in government to ensure the smooth running of the country. And the West, particularly America, did not want to repeat the problems of Versailles and what had happened to Germany at the end of the First World War. Now, what about Jewish responses? Well, of course we do know that the Zionists, look, think about the Zionists in Palestine. They were going to be caught up in a war. And their main response was get, let’s get as many Jews as possible to Palestine. And once the state was created, they became involved in so many difficult areas. I mean, just think about it, there were 600,000 Jews in Palestine in ‘48. By 1951 there were two and a quarter million. Think about what happened to the Jews of the Arab world. Over a million of them had to flee. And then many of them came to Israel. They had to be housed, they had to be clothed. Israel had to create itself into a nation. So was fighting Nazis the main priority of the Israeli government? No, but it was the priority of some individuals. And of course you have characters like Abba Kovner who had survived the Vilna ghetto. He was one of the heroes of the Vilna ghetto. And he stayed behind in Europe along with some soldier, Jewish soldiers who’ve been in the Jewish Brigade, I’ll talk about that later today, and other partisans. And they decided on dim judgement .
And they did execute quite a lot of Nazis. And they did poison the bread in a barracks where the SS were being held. And there was even a plot to poison the water supply of five German cities but it didn’t come to anything. But Israel, the Israelis in the end, are going to bring Adolph Eichmann to justice. Because after, if you think about it, Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, all three were dead. Heydrich was assassinated in the war. The next one was Eichmann. And not only did Wiesenthal keep up his efforts, but an extraordinary man called Fritz Bauer, and my son-in-law, Phil, will be lecturing about him. He also, he was a state prosecutor in Germany, and a Jew, been imprisoned in, he’d been imprisoned in a camp, but he went back to Germany and tried to bring as many Nazis to justice as was possible. So there were different responses. However, can we now go on please? Yeah. Because many people… Poland was the heartland of the Jewish world. And many Jews began, who survived, began to make their way back. Some of course have been in hiding. And there’s some extraordinary stories of those who were in hiding and some were protected by marvellous people. Never forget there are more Poles recognised in Yad Vashem than any other nation. On the other hand, there’s some serious issues in Poland today. So it’s an incredibly ambiguous society.
Now, concerned, what was one of the problems as the Jews returned home, came out of the woodwork from hiding or came back from Russia, or came from the DP camps, there was a great deal of concern of the growing antisemitism in Poland. Joseph Tenenbaum, who was president of the, the American Federation of Polish Jews. He meets with Cardinal August Hlond, who was head of the Polish Catholic church in June 1946. And unfortunately, Hlond, a very, very ambiguous figure, refused to take action. On one level he was a bit of a hero in Poland because he was the only member of the College of Cardinals to be arrested by the Gestapo. He was a huge critic of the communist-backed Polish government post-World War II. And in fact, in 1992, his canonization was begun. He was named venerable after Pope Francis confirmed his heroic virtue. Again, there’s going to be a real tension about this. You all remember the controversy over Edith Stein? Edith Stein was the Catholic nun in Auschwitz. I mentioned her to you before. She died in Auschwitz. The Catholics say she’s a martyr. The Jews say she died because racially she was a Jew. She had Jewish parents and that’s why she was murdered. On the 18th of September, 1939, he had left Poland, this Cardinal Hlond. And at the request of the Polish government, he went to Rome to report on the Nazi actions in Poland. And this is what he wrote. “Many priests are imprisoned suffering humiliations, blows, maltreatment. A certain number were deported to Germany. Others have been detained in concentration camps. Many are subjected to barbarous torture. The Canon Casimir Stepczynski was forced, in the company of a Jew, to carry away human excrement.
A curate who wished to take the place of the venerable priest was brutally beaten.” And in his final observation to Pius XII, this is what Hlond wrote. “Hitlerism aims at the total destruction of the Catholic church. It is known for certain that 35 priests have been shot. In many districts the church has been crushed. The church and cemeteries are in the hands of the invaders. All have been pillaged.” So on one level he’s a great hero. He’s obviously brave, and he’s a great hero of the Catholic church. However, and in fact the Vatican did broadcast his report. But this is his dealings with the Jews. This is 1936, a pastoral letter, because as I’m sure you know, after the death of Pilsudski in 1935, the level of antisemitism in Poland was up considerably. Ironically, the antisemitic government was working with people like Jabotinsky to train Jews for them to leave Poland for Palestine. They wanted them out. Now this is a letter of '36. “So long as Jews remain Jews, a problem, a Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist. It is a fact that Jews are waging war against the Catholic church. They are steeped in free thinking and constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement, and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that they have a corruptive influence on morals and that they’re publishing houses are spreading pornography. It is true that they are perpetrating fraud, usury, and deal in prostitution. Jewish youth have a negative effect on Catholic youth.
But there are many Jews who are believers, honest, just, kind, and philanthropic. We know Jews who are ethically outstanding, noble and upright. One may lose one, one may love one’s nation more, but one must not hate anyone, even Jews.” And this is something else he said. “It’s good to prefer, to prefer your, it is good to prefer your own kind when shopping to avoid Jewish stores and stalls, the marketplace. One should stay away from the harmful influence of Jews, keeping away from their anti-Christian culture and especially boycott the Jewish press. We do not honour the indescribable tragedy of this nation, which was the guardian of the idea of the Messiah and from which was born the Saviour. When divine mercy enlightens the Jews to accept his and our Messiah, let us greet him into our Christian ranks with joy.” Now can we see the next slide please? Pius XII. Of course, the problem with Pius XII, who he is reporting to, is that all the Pope would do in World War II is condemn all atrocities. He has a very, very difficult record. And I think some of you who’ve listened avidly to our programme will know that Rabbi Rosen, not Jeremy Rosen, but his brother, who is, he actually is the Jewish official who is responsible for relations with the Vatican. He gave a very interesting lecture on Pius XII. There are many, many contrary reports on Pius XII. He is one of the most controversial figures in history. And I think we’re going to, I’m going to leave him alone, except to say that from a Jewish point of view, he certainly didn’t do anything to save except maybe a few Jews in Rome. But I’m going to leave that open 'cause I want to go back to Poland. Can we go on please?
Just to give you the figures. At the end of the war, there were some, about between, let’s say about 40,000 Jews in the new Polish state. Out of about 350,000 survivors, some 40,000 went back. However, then after the, but the largest number of Polish Jewish survivors, about 230,000, had spent the war in the Soviet Union having been deported between '39 and '41. About 180,000 opted to return in accordance with the Polish-Soviet repatriation. So by the 1st of July, 1946, you had 240,000 Jews in Poland, and an additional 30,000 Jews who remained in Russia actually left for Poland in 1957. So what was the situation? I think we have clearly illustrated that the Polish government, that the, before the war had a very intolerant attitude towards the Jews. It’s a very dark subject in Poland today, because a Polish historian, Barbara Englander, has been talking about the Polish record as not being very good during the war. And there are right wing members of the Polish government who are trying to bring a charge against her for defaming the Polish state. Now, as Jews returned, and it didn’t just happen in Poland, it happened in Slovakia, it happened in many Eastern European countries where they were spat out, their property had been taken over, and there was a lot of hostility, not just anti-Semitism, but there were murders. Thousands of Holocaust survivors were murdered as they returned home, including the man who led the Sobibor uprising. Now the horror culminated in a small town in southern Poland called Kielce.
In July 1946, returning survivors were attacked by a mob. 42 were murdered and 40 seriously wounded. They couldn’t return to their houses, so they were being put up in a hostel. And the mob went on the rampage very much whipped up by the local priest. The Jews fled, they threw to the river that stones were thrown at them and they were murdered. What it’s going to lead to is something called Brihah. Now, to go a little more into depth over the Kielce pogrom, there is a blood libel attached to it. On the 1st of July, an eight year old boy called Henrik was reported missing by his father. He comes back, but according to his father the boy claimed he’d been kidnapped by an unknown man, a Jew. Two days later, the boy and his father went to the local communist-controlled police force. And whilst passing the so-called Jewish house, the boy pointed to a man who said, “I’d kidnapped him.” What it led to was the people going, the rumour, the rumour went around that the Jews are kidnapping all our children, people begin to pelt the house with stones. That’s when the Jews tried to flee to the river. The civic militia, they break into the building. There was no abducted children. The inhabitants of the home were made to surrender their weapons, which they did have proper permits for, and to give up their valuables. Then someone started firing. It all escalated. A number of priests attempted to enter the building. And in the end there was terrible murder. In fact, a Catholic nurse who tried to help was mistaken for a Jew and was murdered. Two Jews who weren’t in the house were murdered in a separate incident. Regina Fitz, her three-week-old child and her male companion were robbed, and the woman and the child were murdered.
There were other non-Jewish Poles amongst the dead. Two state servicemen had actually been killed by Jews trying to defend themselves. And another was killed by the mob. Now, the trains passing through Kielce were also being watched for Jews. And it was two passengers were murdered. It was an appalling, appalling incident. But please don’t forget, it’s against the backdrop of the communist in the big cities, the hated communists. And of course that terrible canard that all Jews are communists. Just as there’s a lovely canard in London at the moment that all Jews are capitalists. And so the point is there was a terrible pogrom. And the day after there was, the communist authorities, they organised a very correct commemoration. But it was enough. It was enough. In fact, nine of the major perpetrators were sentenced to death. And the militia commander was sentenced to one year for not stopping the riot. But it leads to Brihah. Now, I must say, unfortunately, the Bishop of Kielce when he was asked, he said, “As long as Jews concentrate on their private business, Poland is interested in them. But at the point Jews interfere in Polish politics and public life they insult the Pole’s national sensibilities.” You had similar remarks from the Bishop of Lublin. In fact, the American ambassador wanted Hlond to explain the position of the church. All he did was to condemn violence, but blamed Jewish collaboration, quote unquote, “with communists and Jews occupying leading positions in Poland in the state life.” So, but it leads to Brihah. Can we go on please?
I will be discussing on Thursday how the Jews tried so hard to fight in the British Army. It wasn’t really, it wasn’t until the third, August 1944 that Churchill finally consented to a proper Jewish Brigade fighting under that insignia. And Winston Churchill sends a telegram to Roosevelt. “The Jews of all races have a right to strike up the Germans as a recognisable body.” Frankly, the New York Times dismissed it as a token. And this is from the Guardian. The Guardian that at the moment is in such trouble. “The announcement that Jewish Brigade will fight with the British army is welcome, if five years too late. One regrets that the government has been so slow to siege the opportunity.” October '44, they were shipped to Italy under Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, he was in the 8th Army, and they were involved in the Spring Offensive of '45. Now this, well, this is for my South African students. South African pilots, many of whom were Jewish, flew in a Star of David formation during an attack run as a tribute to the Jewish Brigade. And they were very much praised by the British commander of the 10th Corps. And we know that at the end of the war some of them joined up with Abba Kovner, the partisans, and survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And we know that they did execute SS. There were in, there were, they had their own casualties. 83 died fighting for the British, 200 were wounded.
They were officially disbanded in the summer of 1946. And then some of them joined Nakam, the avengers, which I’ve mentioned and no doubt will talk about later. Others were involved in Brihah. Now, what was Brihah? Brihah was a movement to get the Jews out of Eastern Europe. Because obviously now, after the Kielce pogrom, after their reaction, the reaction of the civilian population, “Europe is the graveyard of the Jewish people,” said Begin. And the Haganah, Irgun, they all helped the Jewish Brigade, all these organisations came together to try and smuggle 100,000 Jews out of Europe and eventually to Palestine. And most of them were smuggled into the American Zone. The Americans were much more lenient. And also there was a political reason behind it because they wanted to put pressure, they wanted the Americans to put pressure on the British to allow the Jews into Palestine. We need a Jewish state now. So consequently, what I’ve discussed with you are the immediate aftermath. I will be discussing Thursday and the following Wednesday, Jews and Palestine. So what I’m hoping, with my colleagues, it’s all going to come together as a mosaic. But as I said to you before, it’s such a complicated issue. And what I’m going to do now is deal with some of the statements of some of our most profound thinkers. Just to give you something to think about, because of course many writers, and David Pim has done some extraordinary sessions on poetry.
Many writers, poets, and philosophers have talked about the Shoah. All one has to think about is Eli Wiesel, to think about Primo Levy, to think about some of the great historians. I’m going to read a few philosophers and historians, I’m going to read cold because I want to leave you with these thoughts. And it’s not just about the Shoah it’s also about post-Shoah and Jewish identity. And I’m going to start with a hero of mine, Isaiah Berlin. This is what he had to say about Jewish identity. And he was a Zionist, a liberal, the first Jew to be a fellow of All Souls, Oxford. And this is what he said. “Poor Jews who are at all conscious of their identity of Jews are steeped in history. They have longer memories. They’re aware of a longer continuity than any other which has survived. The bonds that unite them have proved stronger than the weapons of their persecutors and detractors and stronger than the persuasion of their own brothers. Fellow Jews who argue these bonds are not strong, that the Jews are united by no more than a common religion or common suffering, that their differences are greater than their similarities, therefore, a more enlightened way of life, liberal rationalist, socialist, communists, will cause them to dissolve into their social and national environment. If this was true, Israel would not have come into being. Historical consciousness is amongst the most powerful motivations.”
I now want to come on, of course, if you haven’t read Isaiah Berlin, you are missing a great treat. Not just his content, but the beauty of his language. I’m now going to, can we have the next slide? One of the greatest of the Jewish historians, Abram Leon Sachar. And this is what he wrote about the war. “Which of us could have conceived the Europe, steeped in the tradition of the Enlightenment and Renaissance, of classical liberalism and public secular education, was capable of methodically destroying its entire Jewish community. In one terrifying convulsion world Jewry was deprived of a third of its population. The entire demographic structure of Jewish life was altered traumatically and irretrievably than at any time in its long and tragic history. Conversely, only a generation ago, the dream of a Jewish national home in Palestine was still equated with an autonomous enclave within the British imperial system. Today the garrison is gone, an Israeli army has taken its place, and the Star of David waves from a flagpole.” And can we go on please? The great, great Yehuda Bauer. I’m coming back to Bauer because I haven’t left enough time. And he is a man who describes, deserves so much. He says this in an interview. “It seems to me that there is no Jew in the world who is not in some sense of degree socially uneasy. I don’t think there is a country where Jews feel totally insecure. Israelis do not feel uneasy about themselves. They constantly face other problems and very serious ones.” And this is Isaiah Berlin talking with him.
“When I go to Israel, I don’t feel I’m in a foreign country. In Israel I don’t particularly feel a Jew, but in England I do. But I remain totally loyal to Britain, to Oxford, to liberalism, to Israel.” And this is what Isaiah Berlin said. But remember he died in the nineties. “The purpose of Zionism is normalisation. The creation of conditions in which Jews could live as a nation.” Bauer, “I don’t want to stop Jews living where they live, if they do not mind being in a minority.” Remember, this is a post-Shoah conversation. “If you don’t want to belong to a minority and you want a normal life, you can only fully attain it in a country whose culture is yours.” Can we go on quickly? Tom Segev. “The most fateful decision in Israel’s history, other than the founding of the state itself, the mass immigration of the 1950s, the Six Day War and Israel’s nuclear project, were all conceived in the shadow of the Holocaust.” I’m going to repeat this. This is so important. “The most fateful decisions in Israel’s history, other than the founding of the state itself, the mass immigrations of the 1950s, the Six Day War and Israel’s nuclear project, were all conceived in the shadow of the Holocaust. Just as the Holocaust imposed a posthumous collective identity on its 6 million victims, so did it form the collective identity of this new country, not just for the survivors who came after the war, but for all Israelis then and now.” And I think I’m going to stop there 'cause although I do have more to say, I think it would be best to say that for another time and have a look at questions please.
Q&A and Comments:
This is Shelly. “Doesn’t the white power movement today realise that Hitler would’ve considered them non-Aryan mongrels who need to be enslaved or killed. In America most people have a mixed ethnic background.”
This is from Martin. “My uncle Morris was part of the British army who liberated Belsen, he never got over it.”
And this is from Margaret. “My father-in-law was in the liberating army in Bergen-Belsen, according his children. But he would never speak about this.” Yes, yes, it completely, remember they were young, and it completely traumatised them.
Stuart, “I have a US Army Yiddish phrase book that was distributed to US troops that were liberated from, who were liberating former Nazi held towns and concentration camps, as well as DP camps after the war.” That’s interesting.
Q: Sharon is asking, “Are you going ahead with your film for school children?”
A: Well, we’ve got to get it accepted in schools. That’s the problem. Anyone who can help us, please.
“I was interested,” this is from Serena. “I was interested to learn from an anorexia expert that chocolate actually helps starving survivors more effectively than sugar water because chocolate contained phosphorus.” I will have to check that out. I’ll have to check that out, Serena, I can’t answer that.
This is David Friend. “My Uncle Marcus, MK Wing Command, who went into the camps as a member of Montgomery’s staff. He was haunted by this experience, never slept with the lights off. We gave copies of the actual photos he took to the excellent museum in Belsen today.” Thank you very much for that, David.
“You haven’t explained about the Bernstein film and why it wasn’t screened.” I’m sorry, I thought I had guilt them, Gita. They didn’t want to upset the Germans. You see to show Germans pictures of what their fellow countrymen had done during the war would not have helped Allies who were trying to build up West Germany. Cynicism.
Q: “Apologies, but which armies did you say were involved in liberating the camps?”
A: It depends where the camps were. The Americans, the Russians. Particularly in the east, it was the Russians. And of course the British.
Q: “Weren’t non-Jewish refugees, some Nazi, some Sudetenland Germans also in the same camps?”
A: Yes, Shelly, and I’ll be talking about that when I talk about the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry because it was an American called Earl Harrison who stopped that happening.
Zoom user, “Not only a quota for USA and Britain, but a ban on getting to Palestine.” Yes. I’m going to spend a lot of time on that.
“Goebbels committed suicide so he couldn’t be brought to justice.” Or he couldn’t live without Hitler. And don’t forget, it wasn’t just he who committed suicide. It was his wife who had murdered their five children.
Karen, “The survivors of Bergen-Belsen took over the former officer’s quarters, which were once NATO headquarters, which these displaced persons began to marry when possible and have children. There was even a kindergarten for the many babies born after the liberation, life prevail.” Yes. That’s the human spirit, isn’t it, Karen? The human spirit.
This is from Esther. “My great uncle went to eastern Austria-Hungary after the war and for 10,000, and well dug on the Jewish . He shouldn’t have. Them all killed, back to his time off getting out of the camp and pulled a gun on the guy who had his motorcycle.” Yes, Esther, there are terrible stories.
“My grandmother and mother were hiding in different places in Slovakia, all rest of the family, about 27 of them perished.” Yes, the Slovakians had a particularly gastly record. In fact, the president of Slovakia, who was a Nazi collaborator, was a priest, Tiso. And he sold, he actually, he paid the Germans to take, to deport the Jews.
Michael, “Austria, as you mentioned, claimed to be the first victim of Nazism and asked West Germany for reparations. Chancellor Adenauer’s response was that West Germany would send Austria Hitler’s bones.”
Lovely, Nona, “1939, '40 Ukraine, Poland. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews of a town, , and shot them in the forest with the aid of the Christian community. My partner was a survivor, along with his older brother, because their parents urged them to leave with the Russian army, which evacuated ahead of the Nazi invasion.” You see, this is so painful, I know. And so many of you, your families have been touched by all of this, far more than touched.
Rose, “I feel so negative about the Pope and how the church dealt with the Jews. They had to look at the Ratline in Bolzano, where the church helped Nazis escape after the war. Rabbi David Rosen, Rabbi Jeremy Rosen’s brother, married my spouse and I in South Africa.” Oh, that’s a lovely story. At least there was a good story.
Tanya, “Forgotten mention, my mother’s brother managed to escape from Slovakia and was in the Czechoslovak army group in Britain, in British army.”
Q: Could I explain brihah?
A: Brihah means escape. Brihah was a movement that was set up as a response to the horror in Eastern Europe to get as many Jews out as possible, endgame Palestine. And it was made up of members of the Jewish Brigade, of Haganah, of Irgun, survivors of the ghettos. All sorts of, Abba Kovner’s group. It was an extraordinary group of people. And there, look, remember back in '42, the Zionists said, “Unequivocably, we need a state and we need it now.” Because their rationale was if there had been a Jewish state in the thirties, the Holocaust might not have happened. Now that’s for you to debate and think about.
Lena, “It may be worth mentioning, in 1941 thousands of Polish Jews escaped into Russia to escape the advancing German army. They were not deported. Those who were left meaning and knew that they would’ve been rounded up as political prisoners.” Yeah, in fact, my friend Robert Wistrich, though, his father was a communist and they fled into Russia. But he was put in a camp in a deep, he was actually put in a gulag. But he did survive the war. And Robert was born after the war. Stalin remember was, was…. He, look, no, I’m not going to go there. But you know how irrational Stalin was.
Q: Louise, “There’s a lot of discussion about slavery in Britain at the moment. Would you define the situation of the Jews in the camps as slavery, as forced labour?”
A: Oh, I wouldn’t, I would not define it as either. They were waiting to die. Jews that were used as slave labourers, once they could no longer work, they were murdered. It’s a different story. That doesn’t mean that slavery or forced labour is not itself evil, but with, remember with the Jews birth was sentence of death. I have to be very careful here. Karl Popper, remember what he said. “The 20 and 21st century is all going to be about the meaning of words, not philosophy.” I prefer philosophy myself.
Don, “I thought that the Nurenberg Tribunals did not adopt Lauterpacht’s crime against humanity because of the British policy in South Africa and racial separation in the American South. Lemkin’s term genocide was however adopted.” Don, I’m going to have to check that out for you. I’m going to ask Dennis. Of course, Raphael Lemkin was also very, very important. He was also a Polish Jew. And he was the one who came up with the term genocide. And he was responsible for the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They were both extraordinary characters.
No, the category, I’m sure the category crime against humanity was used at Nuremberg. So I’ll talk to an expert. Thank you for that, Don.
Yehuda, “I’ve been asked by anti-Zionists and others who were simply ignorant why the Jewish survivors simply didn’t return home after World War II. Two millennia of persecution, the Holocaust, and local active collaboration with the Nazis all need to be explained.” Yehuda, this is the problem. Remember the quote, “There are no people more difficult to understand than the Jews.” With Diane Abbert and this latest Ferrari with the Guardian newspaper, people have muddled up. They don’t know Jewish history. They don’t know what the word Jew means. Even if they’re benign, they’re talking about the Jewish religion. They don’t get it because we are incredibly complicated.
Monty, “I have quoted this before and I’m going to say it again. A Lithuanian said centuries ago he granted the Jews the right of refuge because they would not transgress the obligation of being polite guests.” Thanks, Monte.
Nitzer, “My father was in the British Army, Jewish Unit, within the Royal Engineers, in North Africa and then Italy, when they reached near Milano at liberation. My father remained in Italy until 1948, running the biggest institution for Holocaust surviving children and youth. Most of them made aliyah.” Oh, thank you for that, Nitzer. I mean, yeah, these characters were so brave and what they did because the children had to be looked after, there were so many orphans. It’s extraordinary. Israel gave them a hope. You know, we now, because of what goes on and it’s so complicated, we forget the dream. But there was a dream.
Yes, Michael, Canadian troops. Yes, of course. I shouldn’t have just said the British, the Allies. Of course the Allies were involved in the liberation.
Betty, “It took my mother three months to walk back from Berlin to Lublin to find out who in her family survived. Only my father, who gave her bread lathered in butter with sugar on top. She vomited violently as her body could not absorb such riches after so much starvation.” Oh, Betty. And she found her dad or something.
“Some of the Selvino children tried to make aliyah legally and were caught by the British at Haifa and was sent to Cyprus for another year.” Yes, the irony of Cyprus. You know, Cyprus was, was gifted to the British, to Disraeli in 1878. So that’s another cynicism. And of course there were 50,000 DPs who had been caught by the British. The ships, we haven’t even mentioned the ships yet. And I’ll be talking about that either this Thursday or next Wednesday. So there were 70,000 around the ships, ran the gauntlet to Palestine. 50,000 were caught and sent to Cyprus.
This is Jonathan. “Menachem Begin was released from the gulag and fought for General Lander’s free army and made his way to Palestine and took over the command of the Irgun from David Raziel who was killed fighting for the British.” Yes, when I was talking about the Mufti, David Raziel, you see when war broke out, David Raziel offered his services to the British. The British actually got him a in prison, and they needed them because David Raziel, he was a poet, he was a soldier, he was an extraordinary man. One of his missions was to kill the Mufti. And of course the Irgun continued the war against the Nazis until '44 when Begin said that British were as bad as the Nazis when he took over the command.
Ron “I have friends who had handed as babies by their parents to friendly non-Jews to look after them until after the war, but never did see their parents.” Yes, Ron. Yeah. It’s an extraordinary story. And of course, you know, in Poland, after the collapse of communism and also deathbed confessions, the the extraordinary phenomenon of the shoe shop, shoebox babies, there were lots of children, babies who were given to Poles, and because the parents never came back, the Poles reared them as their own. And they were Catholic and they married. Can you imagine on the deathbed of your so-called parents, you are told, “Well, in fact, you’re a Jew.” And there’s a chap in Warsaw, called Constan Egebert, he’s actually opened up a hotline to deal with it.
Judy, “My parents and I survived in the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia. We were greeted with more, came back, then left. Joseph Tiso was tried and hanged after the war.” Yes, Judy. What an extraordinary group of people I’m talking to today. So many of you have got these, these memories, these searing memories.
Michael, “My family in Lithuania, almost a hundred persons, only a mother and her two daughters survived. Mother’s family, also very big, only one cousin by escaping a slave group, he joined the Partisans and lived.” Yeah, what can I say? Tatra Mountains.
This is from Barbara. “My parents arrived here from Europe in 1946. My mother was pregnant with me and she converted to Catholicism after arriving. When I asked her why, she said if Jews began to be persecuted here in America she wanted me to be safe. As a naive and ignorant 12 year old, I thought that was crazy. I’ve always been ambivalent about her conversion. Am now beginning to understand.” Yeah, yeah. Yes. Oh, Barbara, what can I say to you?
Ralph, “As a 19-year-old national serviceman, I visited Belsen and I still have photos. The memory still gives me my occasional nightmares.”
Yes. I think that’s it everybody. Thank you for all your comments. They’re quite profound and I know we have to psych ourselves up. I sometimes wonder why it’s you who have to be listening. It would be so much better if it was a more indifferent audience who has such strange views of Jews. And I believe so strongly we have got to get Jewish history into the mainstream. It’s the only way we’re going to do anything against antisemitism. That’s what I really fundamentally believe. And the other problem, those of you who have Jewish children and grandchildren or whatever your children, or whatever your children are doesn’t matter. Let them learn. Let them learn. Thank you, Carrie.
Anyway, all of you, lots of love, and I will see you on Thursday.