Trudy Gold
1945 - 1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 1

Trudy Gold - 1945-1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 1

- Well, good evening, everyone, from London as we continue to look at the situation of the Jewish world in the war years and then post-war, and because I think it’s such important information, I know I’ve covered some of it before in other presentations, but I’m bringing all of it together because I think in order to understand the modern Israel and the Jewish world today, this is the period we really need to concentrate on, and also that area that is so seldom taught, the relationship between the creation of the state of Israel and the Shoah. So, the ‘30s. Gradually, the clouds darkened. The Arab leadership under Amin al-Husseini would show no accommodation, and in the end, the British took the decision that it was in their own interests to restrict Jewish immigration in order to appease the Arabs, because if the war was looming, and if you were in the foreign office, you had to take that on. Then, so their main priority was to protect Britain, and to do that, they didn’t want war throughout the empire. So, consequently, we looked at the MacDonald White paper, which was a stab in the back to people like Chaim Weizmann, who had really believed in the honour of England, and I think it’s important to remember there were many people in the House of Commons and amongst the British who were very pro-Zionist, and it’s nobody, and I said this to you before, but I think it’s important to remember nobody could have predicted the Holocaust. Yes, the situation of the Jew was very, very dark, but could you actually have predicted the inferno?

The British stick rigorously to the policy even after Churchill becomes prime minister, even though he likes the idea of setting up a Jewish Brigade, and it put the Jews in Palestine in a very difficult position. The Irgun were, of course, rounded up. So were many of the Palmach, but then they were let out, and as we’ve already said, both many of the Irgun. No, I beg your pardon, Haganaha and Palmach fought with the British, including David Raziel of the Irgun, and it’s not until 1944 that Churchill finally establishes the Jewish Brigade, but during the war, the bulk of the Jews in Palestine had no choice but to fight the Nazis. As Ben-Gurion said, “We fight Hitler as if there is no White Paper, and we fight the White Paper as if there’s no Hitler.” And the regime in Palestine, the military regime adhered very, very tightly to the quotas, and what we’re going to see happening is a number of illegal ships are going to be run into Palestine as things become more and more desperate. Now, one of the most difficult issues that we have to face is knowledge of the Shoah. When did it really begin? And in terms of the attempt to wipe every Jew off the face of the Earth, it begins with the invasion of Russia. On the 27th of November, 1941, Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland sent a report to the Yishuv in Jerusalem. “With regards to the Jews, it seems no place has been allocated to them in Hitler’s Europe. The remnants who escape massacre, starvation, and oppression of the ghettos are no doubt to be sent overseas.” Now, after the invasion of Russia, all sorts of news is coming through, but it’s sporadic and it’s coming in different directions. Now, Riegner was very well placed to be at the centre of it all. He’d been born in Berlin.

He was a lawyer. He worked for the World Jewish Congress, first as a lawyer, then as the Director of the Geneva Office. Later, he becomes the director of the World Office, and he was going to be at the centre of Jewish issues, really from the middle of the '30s right up until the 1980s. He became the secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, and, remember, when World War II begins, Switzerland is largely surrounded by Axis-controlled countries, and on behalf of the World Jewish Congress, Riegner is collecting information through all the Jewish networks, also through spies in the various countries, and information is coming to him, and we know that in mid-July, 1942, Himmler toured Auschwitz. Afterwards, he dined at a villa owned by the Giesche Mining Works, and within weeks, the details of Himmler’s tour reached Edward Schultz, the German managing director of the company. Now, this evidence was, and I was talking to, I had an email from Joan Lessing. Hi, Joan, I hope you’re listening, because she knows an awful lot about this. Now, it wasn’t until 1983 that Schultz’s participation in this was really known. He was secretly anti-Nazi, and he was an informant to both the Swiss, the Polish, and later American intelligence. He comes to Switzerland on July the 29th, '42, to pass on the news to a representative of the Jewish community in Switzerland, who he was friendly with, a Jewish-Swiss investment banker, who passed the information onto Riegner, who had close contact through the World Jewish Congress to Zionist leaders in London, in Jerusalem, and in New York, and Riegner promised that Schultz’s identity was to be kept secret, so it wasn’t until 1983 that his identity was actually revealed.

Now, meanwhile, remember, it’s happening in the Soviet Union, and on the 6th of January, '42, Russia’s foreign minister Molotov sent a note to the Western allies and neutral powers, giving a stark account, town by town, of the abominable violence and the massacres. He begins to give details of mass murders in the Ukraine. 6,000 murdered in Lviv, 8,000 in Odesa, and 7,000 in Kerch, 10,500 in Dniepropetrovsk, places that are again in the news, and according to the report of Molotov, mainly old men, women, and children, stripped naked and robbed of their possessions before being shot. So this information is coming through, and this note was handed to all the foreign diplomats, and it’s going to lead in May '42 to the Zionists organising a meeting at the Biltmore Hotel, but more about that later on. So what happens with Riegner is that he prepares a telegram and he sends it to America and to London and to Jerusalem, and the problem, and we’ve already discussed this when we looked at America, for a long time, it was held up in the State Department, but, gradually, it’s released in London. Sydney Silverman, who was a Jewish MP and a great supporter of the community in Zionism, he publicises it, and then on November the 23rd, 1942, the headline in the Palestine Post, “Slaughter of European Jewry,” subheading, “Annihilation of Whole Communities.” The Jewish Agency in Palestine, the Yeshu, declared four days of mourning, culminating in a fast day on December the 2nd, 1942. Ben-Gurion made a speech. I mean, this is an absolute catastrophe, and other information, including leaked minutes of the Wannsee Conference, that was leaked, and more and more information coming in from neutral Sweden, neutral Switzerland, and neutral Portugal, where there are diplomats, there are spies, and through all of this, the Zionists of all political persuasions sent cries of help to the governments, to church leaders.

For example, in England, Archbishop Temple was incredibly supportive, begging that something would be done. In fact, what happened was the response was deafening from, there was just too much of it, but in the end, the governments decided they had to do something, and consequently, on December the 17th, 1942, there was a minute of silence in the House of Commons. It was the nine, and, of course, Britain was crucial, because there were many Allied governments represented in Britain, and it was the Poles more than anyone else, the Polish government-in-exile, that was bringing more and more evidence. There was so much, it was deafening, but in the end, on December the 17th, 1942, there was the Allied Declaration where they announced the murder of the Jews of Europe, and it’s followed by more and more information coming through Szmul Zygielbojm, who I’ve already mentioned him. He committed suicide because of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Churchill is making a lot of very sympathetic noises. People are making sympathetic noises, but in the end, very little is going to be done. There are demonstrations in America. There are demonstrations in Britain, of course. The Bergson Group that we’ve already talked about became incredibly active, but in America, as you all know, it’s only in 1944 that FDR established the War Refugee Board. So, basically, when one thinks of what actually happened, I’m going to quote from Karski. This is Jan Karski, one of the great heroes of the Polish resistance, who had smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto.

“The Allies consider it impossible and too costly to rescue Jews because they didn’t do it. The Jews were abandoned by all governments, church hierarchies, and societies, but thousands survived because thousands of individuals in Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Holland helped to save Jews.” Now, Karski was very partisan. It is so difficult to come up with any kind of rational discussion when you’re talking about these kind of things. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and, of course, there have been horrors throughout history, but this is the systematic, planned, bureaucratic, industrialised process of death, and it’s going to cover the whole of Europe. Now, how on earth can the Jewish world react to it? And the stunned silence of many. Also, and I’ve spoken to so many people about this, we knew it, but did we really believe it? But as far as the Zionists were concerned, there could no longer be a Zionist Congress because of the war, but what we can have is a meeting. Was it possible to rescue the Jews? Is there anything that we can do? How can we get the British to open the gates of Palestine? And, finally, can we see the next slide, please? If you don’t mind, Hannah. At the Biltmore Hotel in New York, the Biltmore Conference. 600 delegates, Zionist leaders from 18 countries, managed to make their way to New York, and it became the official stand on the ultimate aims of Zionism. What they said was it is essential that we immediately evacuate two million Jews to Palestine, and by 1944, the one million plan became the official policy of Zionism. There was intense opposition to the White Paper, which was freezing the Jewish community, and as I said, the military authorities in Palestine and the high commissioner was adhering to it so rigorously that the quota wasn’t even fulfilled, and the other point, the realisation that, from now on, we’ve got to turn to America.

Weizmann found the meeting much too unequivocal, because he had always been a great Anglophile, and he believed in a more softly approach. In fact, both Henrietta Szold and Ude Magnus rejected the demands of a state now, and what they wanted was an Arab-Jewish federation. You see, all the ideas that are considered today, this is why I wanted to spend time on this. They were there then. Biltmore, of course, was a substitute for the 22nd Zionist Congress, and, of course, I showed you the tragic theme. So, at the first, Weizmann came. Ben-Gurion came. Ben-Gurion was flitting around the world. He was in London. He was in New York. They were all doing anything they could to make people listen, and never was the Jew more powerless, and this fascinates me, because even today, we are ascribed with having power. The four main American Zionist organisations, Hadassah, Mizrahi, the Religious Zionists, Poale Zion, and the Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was a very, very important individual at the conference. In fact, there were 600 delegates. You see, before the conference, we’d all talked about building up the national home. It was over the extreme. It was only the extreme. The extremists really, I suppose, under the ideas of Jabotinsky who wanted a state now, but now, because of the opposition to the White Paper, although Weizmann is very angry about the anti-British stand, they decide to go for it. They call for statehood, although they did support a two-state solution in Palestine. So this is Ben-Gurion to Nahum Goldmann. “For the first time in our history, oppressed and plundered for hundreds of years, the oppressor and the plunderer has had to hand back some of the spoils, but, one day, they will have to pay compensation for what they’ve done to the Jewish people.”

And so the split in the community, what it really does, it means that Weizmann has lost his authority, and although he was very useful during the era of the creation of the state, nevertheless, he lost his power, and it moves on to younger men like Ben-Gurion. Because he had stood so hard behind the English, he never really got over it, and they made him president, but as he said, “What power did I ever have?” It made him very bitter, but, you know, this is the hindsight of history. With these kind of decisions, what decisions would anyone have made in absolute extremists? And even then, did they really understand? Could anyone understand the horror of the camps? Ben-Gurion makes. Can we see the next slide, please? Ben-Gurion, this is in 1942. He makes an extraordinary appeal. This is in a meeting. “We do not know exactly what goes on in the Nazi valley of death, or how many Jews have already been slaughtered, murdered, burnt, and buried alive, and how many are doomed to annihilation. Only from time to time does news of atrocities break through to us, the screams of women and children mutilated and crushed, but we do know what Hitler has in store for our people and what he wrote in 'Mein Kampf’ and what he has done and is doing to us before the war and during the war. We do not know that the victory of democracy and freedom and justice will not find Europe a vast Jewish cemetery in which the bones of our people are scattered, and our bleeding nation calls the conscience of humanity to trial before the judgement of history.” I want to interject with a line of Solzhenitsyn’s. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every man, every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

I mean, this is extremists. This is when people are called to account, and as far as the majority of Zionists are concerned, the world did not come up to account. The world neglected its responsibilities. “Our bleeding nation calls upon the conscience of humanity to trial before the judgement of history. We are the only people in the world whose blood as a nation is allowed to be shed. Only our children, our women, our brothers, and the aged are set apart for special treatment, to be buried alive in graves dug by them, to be cremated in a crematorium, to be strangled and murdered by machine guns, but one sin, because the Jews have no state, no army, no independence, and no homeland.” And that is the story of Ben-Gurion and Israel. Let me repeat this. “Because the Jews have no state, no army, no independence, no homeland.” Have you ever considered why Ben-Gurion, the left-wing kibbutznik, was so determined that Israel would have a nuclear deterrent? They are weaned on all of this, and that’s one of the problems I think that’s gone wrong today, that people are not taught the linkage between the greatest catastrophe and the creation of the State of Israel, and he goes on to say, at this meeting, “We demand the right to a homeland and independence. What happened to us in Poland? What God forbid will happen to us in the future? All our innocent victims, all the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, are the sacrifices of a people without a homeland. Let us tell our dear brothers, martyred and tortured in the Nazi ghettos, your tragedy is our tragedy. Your blood is our blood. We shall have no rest until we redeem you both from the Nazi hell and from debilitating exile and bring you to the land we are building and redeeming to our land.” So it’s completely unequivocal now.

The head of the Yishuv, which, of course, controls the Histadrut, which controls the Haganah, the Palmach, it’s got to be a state now. Now, what is happening also throughout the whole of the war is the running of the illegal ships, and can we go on? Back in February the 28th, 1940, the colonial secretary terminated all future land sales to Jews, and against the backdrop of the appalling situation, the Palmach and the Haganah, they create the . It’s called hapala. I hope I pronounced that. The Ascension. They didn’t say it was illegal. They called it clandestine, and between 1934 and 1942, all the organisations were involved. Some of the boats were run by revisionists. Some of them were run by the Haganah, and, of course, it’s going to go on right up to 1948. Over half the ships are going to be stopped by the Royal Navy, and there’s going to be some terrible, terrible catastrophes. The ship Patria, I’m just going to give you a few examples, because we have covered this in the past. Remember, this is the 25th of November, 1940. The Nazis, at this stage, want Jews out, and the Central Office for Jewish Immigration cooperated with Zionist attempts to bring Jews from Europe, and this is where you get that appalling libel that the Zionists cooperated with the Nazis. As I said to you last week, I would’ve sold my soul to the devil to save my family. What is happening is, for a short period of time, the Zionist and Nazi aspirations coincided. The Nazis wanted to get rid of their Jews. They didn’t begin the murders, remember, wholesale murder. Of course, Jews were dying of starvation and in concentration camps, but the wholesale murder is the invasion of Russia. So on the 29th of November, 1940, when the Patria sails, they are prepared to allow people out. In fact, certain individuals got out of concentration camps, Germans, as German Jews, as late as October 1941. In September ‘40, 1940, there were three ships, the Pacific, the SS Milos, and the Atlantic, to take Jewish refugees from the Romanian port.

There were 3,800 refugees on board. They came from Vienna, from Danzig, and Prague. They reached Palestine. The first ship reached Palestine on the 1st of November, 1940. The Milos, a few days later. The Royal Navy intercepted the boats, took them to Haifa. The British High Commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order to be taken to Mauritius and Trinidad. The refugees were transferred to the SS Patria for the voyage. It was completely ill-equipped. The Zionists tried to thwart the plan. The Haganah decided to place a bomb on board to disable the ship. Tragically, they miscalculated the size and the ship sunk in 16 minutes. It was carrying 1,770 refugees. Most were rescued, but 209 bodies were recovered. They went to, actually, a detention camp. There was such an international outcry, and in the end, the British, though, did deport. They let some stay, but they deported a whole group to Mauritius, and after the war, of those deported to Mauritius, 90% of them came to Palestine, and on the 24th of February, I’m just giving you a few examples. A ship was trying to take 800 Jewish refugees from the Axis countries through Romania. The diesel engine failed between her departure from Constanta and Istanbul. The Turkish, oh, this is the Struma. The Turkish authorities towed it from Istanbul through the Bosporus, and so you have this ship, there’s not enough water. There’s not enough food. The Turkish Jewish community are at the docks, trying to get food aboard, and it’s taken out, and we now know, and it was sunk. For a long time, nobody knew who sunk it, but it was recently known that it was actually after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It turns out it was sunk by Soviet torpedoes. As the ship was being towed, the sign over the side, “Save us.” There was only one survivor.

On the 9th of June, 1942, Josiah Wedgwood, who was the great grandson of a potter and a very pro-Zionist, he opened a debate in the House of Commons, “I hope yet to live to see those who sent the Struma cargo back to the Nazis hung as high as Aman, cheek by jowl, with their prototype Adolf Hitler.” So the British are sticking to their guns, but there are people in Parliament who are against us, and there are other boats that I can go on and on and on. There were so many boats, and they’re going to go on running throughout '45 to '48, and no doubt, we will go back to it. It’s an extraordinary period of desperation, incredible bravery, and against the backdrop of total powerlessness. I mean, to give you a number, 12th of February, 696 passengers managed to reach Palestine. 28th of February, 771. 12th of April, 817. 24th of April, 782. 26th of April, 553, and it’s an extreme. It was absolutely, it was a catastrophe, but some of them got through, and it was a total unifying factor for making the Jews more and more aware, and also the Jews in the diaspora, aware of the powerlessness of the Jew. I think it’s incredibly, incredibly important, and after the creation, after 1945, when they become even more determined, they start naming the boats for various heroes like Hannah Szenes, Enzo Sirini, Wingate, Tel Hai, the Max Nordau, the Josiah Wedgwood, the Henrietta Szold, Heimel Azerov, Ben Hecht, et cetera, and as I said, all the groups are going to cooperate. Can we see the next slide, please? As the events in Palestine unfold, Menachem Begin comes into the picture. Menachem Begin, of course, an absolutely fascinating character who later becomes the seventh Prime Minister of Israel. He was a member of the Revisionist Party. He’s written biographies. I really do advise you to read some of the biographies.

Read a good biography. He’s written his autobiography. So has Ben-Gurion. If you really want to get into the soul of them, there are so many books, and they all give a different picture and a different angle, but Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk. He was a brilliant young man, a brilliant young lawyer. In fact, my friend Felix Shaf told me so many stories of Begin because he was very involved in the Revisionist Movement, and he was present at that meeting in Krakow in 1937, where Jabotinsky laid his hands on Ben-Gurion’s shoulder, and he was imprisoned by the Soviets. He escaped and he joined Anders’ Army. Many of the revisionists were also patriotic for Poland, ironically, and in 1944, Anders’ Army is in Palestine, and he is demobbed. He didn’t desert, and of course, as we’ve already discussed, many of the revisionists were Betonics, and he joined the Irgun. Now, the Irgun was, for a while, fighting with the British, but it’s at this stage that, February 1944, Begin decides that, basically, the British are as bad as the Nazis because they are stopping the rescue of Jews, and the Irgun begins a campaign against the British, and in a couple of weeks, I’m going to look at these different reactions to the British, who was right, who was wrong. We will never solve it, you know, and I know a lot of you have your own very, very strong views on all of this, and, also, you have to bring into the argument the dream of some of the Zionist theoreticians.

Zionism is not a cohesive movement. It has many different threads and many, many different parts, but Begin, who later on becomes Prime Minister of Israel, all the characters I’m talking about, think Ben-Gurion, think Golda, think Begin, think Shamir, they are all going to take part in this terrible period, and later on, they are going to take part in the creation of the State of Israel and being very important in the history of Israel, mirroring all these different factions. Now, the next slide, please. Yeah, and this is when it all kicks off. Who on earth was Lord Moyne? Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, and he was a real British hero. He was also a cousin of Churchill’s wife. Even though he and Churchill were politically opposed, they worked together. Socially, they were very, very close. Of course, he came from an incredibly wealthy family, the Guinness family. In fact, near where I live in Kenwood is the estate that his family gave to Britain with their wonderful art. There’s a Vermeer there, and he was a very cultured individual. He was a keen yachtsman. He bought the first living Komodo dragon to Britain. He was seen as one of the British at their best. You know, the great adventurers. Churchill and Moyne were members of the same club. He had a large political career. He went to Kenya. He was a big man in the empire in Kenya, overseeing finances. He was cleaning up slums in Britain. He was Chair of Durham University, involved with the British film industry. Chairman of the West Indies Royal Commission, and from the outbreak of war, he sought the internment of his former daughter-in-law, Diana Mosley. Oswald Mosley’s wife had previously been married to his son.

They were at the peak of the British aristocracy, remember. In September ‘39, he chaired the Polish relief fund and gave up his London home, 11 Grosvenor Place, to the Polish officers, and under Churchill’s leadership, he held a lot of different posts. Between August '42 and January '44, he was Deputy Minister of State in Cairo, and until January '40, and until his death, Minister Resident for the Middle East. He had control of Persia, the Middle East, Palestine, and Africa. He had been opposed to a specifically Jewish army. He was worried about Arab sensibilities, and he was also in charge of, at one time, in charge of the ships, and as far as the illegal ships were concerned, the comments don’t come from him. There was a man called Tim Snow, who was head of the refugee section, and this is what he said after the sinking of the Salvador. “There could be no more opportune disaster.” Moyne had informed Eden’s undersecretary. This is December '41, so it’s tied up with the running of the ships. “The loading of 700 more immigrants will be formidable additions to the difficulties of the high commissioner. It will have a deplorable effect throughout the Balkans in encouraging further Jews to embark.” And he also said, in a later stage, “Any relaxation of our deterrent measures is likely to encourage further shipments of the same kind. In the war cabinet of March the 5th, 1942, all practical steps should be taken to discourage illegal immigration.”

Now, this is when it gets even more complicated, because, of course, Hungarian Jewry is not attacked until the invasion, until it appears that the Hungarians are going to leave the alliance. That’s when the Nazis roll in with Eichmann at their heels, and the deportations begin in April 1944, and all of you know that the most extraordinary thing happened, that Eichmann offered the blood for goods deal. I’m not going into it here, because I’ve lectured on it in the past. It’s a very complicated thing. But the point is one of the negotiators, there was, of course, Kasztner and Joel Brand. Joel Brand was actually sent off to relay the offer to the Allies, and according to Brand, who later goes to Palestine, he was interrogated by the British, and he thought that, in fact, Moyne was there. He wasn’t. In fact, the man who made the comment, “What should we do with a million Jews? Because that was the deal,” was, in fact, head of the refugee section, Alec Randall, but during Brand’s incarceration, both Brand and Moyne were interviewed by Ira Hirschmann, who was Roosevelt’s war refugee delegate in Turkey. According to him, Moyne suggested sending Brand back with a non-committal reply. What happened then is the British released Brand, he makes the way to Palestine, and he joins Lehi, which, by this time, is run by three men, including Yitzhak Shamir. Yitzhak Shamir had gone a stage further than the Irgun. Remember we talked about the Bergson Group? Bergson, of course, had died in police custody. Lehi Yellin-Mor, who of course went to the left, and another one is running the Irgun, the Lehi, and later on, Brand said, “I made a terrible mistake by passing this on. It’s clear that Himmler sought to sow suspicion amongst the Allies as a preparation for a Nazi-Western coalition against Russia.”

But having said that, a decision is made by the Lehi to kill Lord Moyne, and two young members of the movement, Bet-Zuri and Hakim, were given the job. Lord Moyne and his chauffeur were assassinated, and, actually, he was shot and died of his wounds. The two young men were later captured, and they were both executed. Later on, their bodies were repatriated back to Israel, and these two members of Lehi who assassinated Lord Moyne, stamps were issued in their honour, and they became heroes of Israel. This was during Shamir’s prime ministership. So, do you see how the sides are being taken? According to Lehi, the purpose of the murder was to show, and I’m quoting now. This is from Shamir through an interview. “To show the world that the conflict was not between a government and its citizens, but between citizens and foreign rule, the conflict between the Jewish people and British imperialism, and to take the war of liberation outside Israel.” This is what Lehi stated. “We accuse Lord Moyne and the government he represents with murdering hundreds of thousands of our brethren. We accuse him of seizing our country and looting our possessions. We were forced to seek justice and fight.” Although there were many appeals for clemency of the two young members of Lehi, they were executed. Yishuv completely distanced themselves from it. Weizmann was absolutely, absolutely horrified, and one of the reasons Lehi did it, they did believe he was responsible for the Struma. This is what Ben-Gurion said. “To England, terrorism like the murder of Lord Moyne is like a fly stinging a lion, but to Jewry, it is a dagger plunged into its heart.”

You have no idea how the British press went for them over this. Churchill, who I’ve got to say on balance, was very sympathetic, he said this. “If our dreams for Zionism come to an end in the smoke of an assassin’s gun, and our labours for its future produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider our position, the position we have maintained so consistently for so long in the past.” But having said that, the Jewish Brigade was finally established. Winston, this is before the assassination of Lord Moyne. On the 30th of July, 1944, the Jewish Brigade was actually formed. Can we see the next slide, please? There, you see Churchill’s response. “Dressed in mourning, Churchill today told a silent House.” Moyne was actually buried in the columbarium in Golders Green, where he lies very close to Freud. What a strange world, but, you see, he was one of Churchill’s closest friends, and this really, and after it, the British, the right in Britain really went absolutely crazy. They were actually demanding for, they were demanding the execution of all sorts of people in Palestine, et cetera, but alongside this, the Jewish Brigade was formed. Now, the New York Times said it’s a token. Even the Manchester Guardian, you know, the Guardian, which now is, of course, so anti-Israel, “The announcement that the Jewish Brigade will fight with the British Army is welcome, if five years too late. One regret that the government has been.

Our regret is that the government has been so slow to seize the opportunity.” In October, can we see the next slide, please? Can we go on? Yeah. The Jewish Brigade is shipped to Italy under Brigadier Ernest F. Benjamin, who had joined the Eighth Army. He was a brilliant British soldier, and they were involved in the Spring Offensive of 1945, and, in fact, they actually are under a Jewish insignia, and this is a lovely story for you South Africans. South African pilots, many of whom were Jewish, flew in a Star of David formation during an attack run as a tribute, and they were seen as an incredible fighting force. They were praised by the British Commander of the X Corps, and what happened after the war is actually very interesting, and I’m going to talk about that. In July '45, they moved to Belgium and Holland. They were officially disbanded in the summer of 1946, and many of them got involved in something that I know you will all know about, something called Grika and also something called Nakam. Now, of the Jewish Brigade, 83 of them were killed. 200 were wounded, but they were a brilliant fighting force. Now, as a response to Moyne’s assassination, the Home Office, bearing in mind they’re on the way to winning the war, as early as February '45, the Home Office advocated the compulsory renationalization of German and Austrian Jewry. They want to send out of Britain German and Austrian Jewry back to Germany once the war is over. Complaints were being received that Jewish refugees in liberated Belgium were being imprisoned by local authorities on the grounds that they were enemy aliens. Britain refuses to intervene.

The officials stated, “We would have more sympathy with the Jews if they regarded the war as a general war rather than a private conflict.” Can we see the next slide, please? What I’m having to do is to pull together so many threads. Now, the liberation of Belsen. You read about it, you see it, but do you really believe it? As the camps were gradually released, there were over 5,000 of them, you know. Major camps, concentration camps, death camps, internment camps. Gradually, the full horror of the Nazi monstrosity was finally revealed. Now, what happened was Auschwitz, I’m not going to say liberated. What happened was a Ukrainian regiment bumped into it on January the 27th, 1945. Already, to flee the advancing Soviets, the Nazis were sending Jews back into Germany, and many of them made their way to, well, made their way, were sent to Belsen, and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, she was in both, and I’ve spent a lot of time with her. She said, “Auschwitz was hell, but so was Belsen.” The starvation, the overcrowding, the horror. She said, “We were .” And, finally, it is liberated by the British. It was filmed. There was a young man working for the camera unit. His name was Sidney Bernstein. His brother-in-law Stone was the first Jewish doctor into Belsen, and he said, “You’ve got to come and film this because no one will ever believe it.” I know you’ve all seen footage of it. There have been many films made about it. There were Bernstein’s reels. Hitchcock, who he was making, he later made “Under Capricorn” with Hitchcock. Hitchcock advised him on it. There were other people who were taking films. There was, I think it was an American cameraman. Films were being taken. Films were shown at British cinemas, at American cinemas. The idea of the liberation film, and Richard Dimbleby narrated it, it was to be shown all over Germany.

In fact, it wasn’t, because in the end, West Germany was going to be bolstered up against the communist East, so, consequently, that film was never shown throughout Germany, 'cause Germany’s got to be our ally, and the horror of Belsen, though, when the films were first shown in the West, people were fainting. People were sick. It was absolutely devastating, and to read the transcript of Dimbleby is also harrowing. The Jewish pastors there, and tragically some of the soldiers tried to be kind and they gave chocolate to many of the victims, who tragically died. Anne Frank died of typhus at the liberation of Belsen, and what can I say? The liberation of Belsen. What hope could there be? Can we go on, please? As a result of the liberation, what are we going to do with all these survivors? And displaced persons camps were established. In the displacement camps, there were Jewish refugees, there were some Germans, and it’s going to be a while before this is cleaned up. Can we go on, please? Meanwhile, members of the Jewish Brigade, members of the Palmach, survivors, partisans, what are we going to do with our brothers and sisters in the camp? As early as late '44 and in early '45, members of the Polish resistance, Jewish members, met up with the former Warsaw Ghetto fighters who had survived, people like Abba Kovner and Zuckerman, and also the revisionists, they came together and they decided they have got to save the remnant of their people. What they have to do is to run them to Palestine. Officers of the Jewish Brigade assumed control of the operation. It was funded by the joint. There’s going to be lots of ways of getting them through, either over the Alps to Palestine, and it all accelerated after the Kielce pogrom.

So, the other part of the organisation, Bricha, a group of them, including many of the Jewish Brigade, they’re going to spend the next couple of years smuggling Jews into Palestine, either on the boats or trekking through. When the Exodus set sail from South France, they’d been training actually in the Rothchild Vineyards down there. All sorts of people helped. Cypriots helped. French helped. Italians helped. There was a huge groundswell of sympathy for the Jewish people at this stage. Meanwhile, it’s what happened in Poland that tipped the scale, and we just have time, I think, to look at Poland, but I should mention before that a group of survivors and partisans and the Jewish Brigade did decide to stay in Europe, and they created a clandestine organisation called Nakam, and what Nakam did was they decided to seek justice from Nazi war criminals, and they were responsible for many executions. It’s a fascinating story, and, again, the huge dilemma. You see, all the events I’m taking you through now, apart from the horror that we feel and the pain we feel, there are so many different ways of reacting to it, and I know that many of you are partisan, and what I’m trying to do and what my colleagues are trying to do is to give you the broad picture.

I have in the past lectured on the Nakam, if you’re interested. It’s in our archive. So what I’m doing today is really bringing these ideas together. In fact, I’m not going to go on to what happened in Poland. I think it’s much too big a subject. So, next week, I’m going to go on with Poland, and then I’m going to take two more sessions to get us up to 1947. So bear with me. I’m trying to pull together all the threads. The desperation, because of the Jews who survived, those who survived in the West, and the figures are devastating. Of those who survived in the West, in France, in Belgium, in the end, about 75% went home. It’s what’s happened to those particularly in the East, and in the end, there is a stampede for the Jews to leave Europe. Europe is the graveyard of the Jewish people. So shall we stop there? And then, next week, when I meet you again, I’m going to begin with what happened to Polish Jewry in 1945. So thank you very much, Hannah. Can you make a notice of that please? And let’s have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “Why did the Final Solution start with the invasion of Russia?”

A: Arlene, there can no longer be a Judenrein Reich. He’s gone for global war.

Q: Was murder what was in Hitler’s mind?

A: Certainly. If you think about it, two thirds of German Jewry got out. 60% of Austrian Jewry got out. He was prepared to let them go. He wanted to rob them, humiliate them, but he was prepared to let them go, and that’s where you’ve got that terrible argument. To what extent did those who didn’t act have complicity? And that’s one of the issues that marks certain of the people in Israel, in my view.

Q: Do I think Molotov was the original source because his wife was Jewish?

A: Unfortunately not, David. It’s a very interesting point, but there was so much evidence coming through that, and he would happen to be the foreign minister.

Ralph Myers. “You began your talk by saying that many of us, that who could foresee the Holocaust? Jabotinsky did.” Yeah, Trotsky did, but they didn’t foresee the Holocaust. They foresaw a calamity. They foresaw something absolutely appalling, and you see, Ralph, your question, it shows us the pain, doesn’t it? That terrible pain. You cannot murder a third of a people without the other two thirds, it troubling them or obsessing them for, how many generations? There’s a film that’s just come out, a documentary about the Hoss family, the descendants of the Hoss family, and Anita’s daughter Maya, and it illustrates that point. It’s called “The Commandant’s Shadow,” and it’s coming out in Britain soon, and it’s been taken by Warner Brothers, so I’m sure you’ll all have an opportunity to see it. It’s very, very complex.

Q: Jonna says, 'You’ve noted that the Holocaust began with the Nazi invasion of Russia. Wouldn’t it be fair that it actually began with the invasion of Poland when the Poles let loose to follow the example already?“

A: Yes. Now, Jonna, be very, very careful. What happened in Poland, the ghettoization, and the way the Nazis treated the Jews was beyond horror. The Poles, by the way, were also treated badly. Remember, the Nazis were fighting a race war. The treatment of Western countries like the French, the Belgians, and the Dutch was not as harsh of that of the Poles. All Poles had to do was to count up to 500 and write their own names. They were to be the slaves of the state. That is one of the reasons Poland is so complicated. They saw themselves as the victims. The Jews saw themselves as the victims, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, I shouldn’t say this, but my daughter has an article, a huge article coming out in Harper’s New York on this particular subject. It’s 6,000 words, and if you find it interesting, I might invite her in to talk about it, but we’re talking about, yes, Jews died in Poland. Of course they did. They were horribly ill-treated. They died of starvation, but the point is, the Final Solution, the decision to send the Einsatzgruppen and wholesale execute every man, woman, and child happened with the invasion of Russia. All historians agree with that, Jonna. It’s a complication, and in the end, does it really matter? Yes, it does, because the more knowledge we have, the more perhaps we can be alert to these things. That’s why I’m so against the sort of bringing together of all horrors and all genocides. Every genocide, every horror is a horror story, but we bandy these words much too carelessly, and you have to study every horror, so that perhaps, maybe, just as we have to study every good deed, because what we’re talking about is human nature, isn’t it?

Q: "What is your definition of revisionist?”

A: David, the revisionist definition of Jabotinsky et al is they wanted land on both sides of the Jordan. They were revising the map. Yes, Michael, I’ve got flags over the Warsaw Ghetto. I very much agree with you. You see, again, it’s a very, very strange story. The story of the Warsaw Ghetto was told by, in the main, by the left-wingers, people like Abba Kovner, et cetera, but the revisionists were also fighting. We can’t even come together over the horror of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Yes, yes, I think I’ve already mentioned that, Michael. Begin was head of Betar in Poland with about 50,000 members. Yes, Betar was particularly strong in Poland. Michael, Moyne believed that all ships bringing Jews to Palestine should be sunk. That’s why, I don’t think he ever said they should be sunk. He wanted to stop them, yes, but the problem was evidently, according to Churchill, and this is in Martin Gilbert’s book, Moyne was beginning to change his mind on Palestine, that perhaps what was happening to the Jews, something should be done about it. That was Churchill’s view. In the end though, although Churchill was furious, nevertheless, he refused to see Weizmann, but he gradually warmed up and he was furious when the British government didn’t recognise Israel, and he was furious with many of the things that Bevin did. He was still in parliament. He is an incredibly complex man, Churchill, but in the end, I think he comes down on the side of the angels.

Q: Mrs. Herskovitz said, “He was part of the group that killed who?”

A: I’m not quite sure. Yeah. There were two young assassins, but it was Shamir and his colleagues. You see, Noah, you see, you’re taking a very strong view as well.

Was the murder of Lord? You’re saying, what’s the difference between them and the murderers of, and of course, of the former general? You see, you are saying that any kind of political assassination is terror and murder. You know, the use of words is fascinating. I’m trying very hard not to come down one side or the other. I’m trying to present the facts, and my heart bleeds for all of it actually, 'cause I’m a Jew, and I don’t really know how to answer you.

Karl Popper, he said, “There will be no philosophy in the 20th and 21st century.” It’s all about the meaning of words. Who’s a freedom fighter? Who’s a terrorist? What does it mean? At a time when the Jewish community was so… Joel, “I missed the first 45 minutes of the webinar.” You can get it online.

This is from Eli. “Belsen was terrible. My parents spent six months there and my mother never got over the sense of hunger and starvation.” Yes, look, every survivor I’ve ever met, and I’ve had the privilege to work with many of them, how could they not be scarred? What I find extraordinary about many of them is their humanity and their strength of character. I’m very close to Anita, but I’m also close to a lady called Joanna Millan, who was found wandering in Theresienstadt when she was three years old with no memory. She had to recover her family’s story. She lost nearly everybody, but they’re both two of the most humanitarian people I’ve ever met, and when I was working on “Nakam and Din,” I actually talked to both of them about it, and these two survivors of hell, they both said to me, “Murder is always wrong.” I’m just throwing that into the equation. Remember, we are the People of the Book. Thou shalt not murder. When is it revenge and when is it justifiable homicide? Justifiable homicide. It’s so complex.

No, no, no, David. I said the Jewish Brigade. I talked about Moyne first because I wanted to cover that whole point, but the Jewish Brigade was formed in July. Yes, you’re totally right. No, I hope I didn’t misspeak over that.

It was actually, Rita, as far as I know, I will double check that, but I believe it was in July, but we can check it. Melvin, while the White Paper was a war measure, the Labour Party campaigned on revoking it if they won the '45 election. When they became the government, they did an about-face, carrying on the policy of stopping immigration. Yes, I’m going to spend quite a lot of time on Ernest Bevin, I promise you. Now, the Labour Party actually took a completely different stand. The Labour Party was very pro-Zionist during the war years and they wanted to open the gates of Palestine. Later on, they’re going to completely change under Bevin. You’re totally right.

“Nakam” is Hebrew for vengeance, yes, or they use the term “din,” which I believe means judgement . Is it to murder Nazis, or not to murder. I prefer to use the word “execute,” to execute Nazis.

You know, between 1945 and 1951, a third of the people who sat around the table at Wannsee had car accidents or committed suicide. Many historians believe that that was din or nakam. Which word do you prefer to use, Michael? Oh, the Bricha was the escape movement to get the Jews out of Europe.

This is Eleanor. “My father was stationed in Cairo after the South African regiment was captured in Tobruk, and he escaped capture due to being in hospital in Cairo. He worked in a British armament storage facility and was approached by the Haganah to steal British guns and armaments. He was instrumental in organising a South African smuggling ring that ran guns from Cairo to Tel Aviv around '44 and '45.”

Oh, goodness. As I’ve said to you a hundred times, this is why I love Lockdown, because so many of you can add to the information. Yeah, and I mentioned how the South African pilots flew the Star of David formation.

Thank you, Fern. Thank you, Rita. Thank you.

Harriett, look, once Tanya’s book is out, or her article is out, I think I will ask her, because, basically, what it’s about, she went to Poland. It all started, and I hope you will take this the right way, because she happened to see something in a paper, TripAdvisor, two comments on Auschwitz. You know, people actually write on TripAdvisor about their visit, and one of them said that the food in the cafe was rotten, and another one said they didn’t feel enough horror, and there were a few comments like that.

So, Tanya, who has never been to Poland, even though I have been many times and my other daughter has, she’s such a sensitive girl that, for all sorts of reasons, she never went, so she decided to go and to write about it, and she went twice and she interviewed all sorts of people and she’s written this 6,000-word article on what is going on in Poland today about memorialization and also the attitude of Poles to Jews, and I think it would be interesting that we do. I think it’s a very good point, Harriett.

Q: “Weren’t the rabbis ineffectual if they knew of change in ?”

A: I don’t quite know what that means. “Yad Vashem offers a course on the origin of the Holocaust.” Very interesting. Yes, yes, and of course, we have talked about this a lot online. Yehuda Bauer is the man. There are so many books on the Shoah, and there’s much new research, but if I’m looking for the moral line, I tend to go to Yehuda Bauer and my survivor friends.

“Timothy Snyder’s 'Bloodlands’ is a book on the Holocaust. He’s very interesting.” Yes, I agree with you. He is very interesting.

Ruth Deech, “UK Holocaust education is incomplete without the British blocking of refugees in Israel history, as you have just explained.” Obviously, Ruth, as you well know, you know more than anyone that it is totally ludicrous to teach the Holocaust and ignore ‘45 to '48. I cannot think what goes through the heads of these educators, and unfortunately, many of the organisations that are involved in Holocaust education and are Jewish also don’t bring this in, and, to me, it is insanity, because, all of a sudden, Israel appears on the map. Why? And nobody talks about what happened to the Jews of the Arab world either. There is no completion of the picture. You are totally, totally right. You are a hundred times right, Ruth.

Noah, I take your point completely. He’s saying, as an Israeli, he didn’t want the faces of the Lehi on the stamps. Thank you.

Diana’s saying she prefers when I don’t read. Occasionally, I need to read, particularly if I’ve got a very complicated tale to tell. Okay. All right. Okay, everybody. I will see you next week. We’ve got some very, very interesting lectures coming up at the moment, and take care of yourselves and see you soon. God bless.