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Holy Land Studies 13.2 (2014): 187–212
Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/hls.2014.0089
©Holy Land Studies
www.euppublishing.com/hls
ZIONIST-NAZI COLLABORATION AND THE
HOLOCAUST:AHISTORICAL ABERRATION?LENNI
BRENNER REVISITED
Tony Greenstein
Independent Researcher
Brighton, UK
tonygreenstein111@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Over thirty years ago Lenni Brenner’s Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
awakened the ghosts of Nazi-Zionist collaboration. This collaboration was
an extension of Zionism’s historical attitude to anti-Semitism in Europe,
which saw anti-Semitism as the natural reaction of non-Jews to the abnormal
presence of Jews. The Zionist movement was outraged by these public
revelations of collaboration and sought to censor them. Brenner brought
together some of the most damning evidence of Zionism’s collaboration
with the Nazis and their obstruction of the rescue of European Jews to
anywhere but Palestine. This essay critiques Brenner’s thesis, especially its
failure to analyse the Holocaust in depth. Brenner rightly denounced this
collaboration, but, as in the case of the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem, he produced no analysis of this official Israeli memorial project.
This essay furthermore explores the implications of Zionist collaboration as
in the case of Argentina under the Junta and for a future resurgence of anti-
Semitism.
Zionist Indifference to the Holocaust as it was happening
In retrospect the major shortcomings of Lenni Brenner’s Zionism in the Age
of the Dictators can be summed up as follows:
•A failure to mention Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped
from Auschwitz on 10 April 1944, or the Auschwitz Protocols.
•Treating Yad Vashem as a dispassionate, neutral academic institution
dedicated to Holocaust research, rather than a propaganda institute.
188 Holy Land Studies
•A failure to understand that the Judenräte (singular Judenrat; German
for ‘Jewish council’), were an integral part of the extermination
process.
•A belief that Europe’s Jews could be saved through bribery,
Weissmandel’s Europa Plan in particular. Brenner uncritically adopted
the politics of the Jewish Orthodoxy.
•Uncritically accepted the argument that Adolf Eichmann’s ‘Blood for
Trucks’ offer could have saved Hungarian Jewry.
•Personally blaming Rudolf Kasztner, the leader of Hungarian
Zionism and the Jewish Agency’s ‘Rescue Committee’ (Va’ada)in
Budapest, for the rapid extermination of Hungarian Jewry whilst
ignoring the role of the Jewish Agency.
•A failure to ask what the implications for the future were of Zionist
collaboration with the Nazis. With particular reference to Argentina.
The Zionist movement argues that the Holocaust was a product of
having no state and Jewish weakness but the Israeli state’s attitude to
anti-Semitism is no different from Zionism historically.
The Zionist leadership delayed publicising the Holocaust until
23 November 1942. Stephen Wise, a leading American Zionist, wrote to
US President Franklin Roosevelt that ‘I have had cables and underground
advices for some months, telling of these things. I succeed, together
with the heads of other Jewish organisations, in keeping them out of
the press’ (Brenner 1983: 231). On 23 March 1943 Davar, paper of the
Labour Zionist Histadrut, was reprimanded by Yosef Gravitzky of the
Jewish Agency’s Palcor news agency, for copying a report from a Nazi
paper, Ostland, that two million Jews remained in Poland. ‘It appeared
that reports concerning the final solution required confirmation by the
Third Reich’ (Beit-Zvi 1991: 51).
In 1933 David Ben-Gurion, later Israel’s first Prime Minister, told
Mapai’s1Council that ‘Zionism. . . is not primarily engaged in saving
individuals . . . in the event of a conflict of interest between saving
individual Jews and the good of the Zionist enterprise, . . . the enterprise
comes first’ (Teveth 1987: 855). David Ben-Gurion wrote in 1938 that:
‘I am still more worried about the elections of the (Mapai) branch in
Tel Aviv’ (Segev 1994: 105). Even Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion’s official
biographer, concluded that ‘If there was a line in Ben Gurion’s mind
between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must
have been a very fine one’ (Teveth 1987: 851).
1 Later the Israeli Labour Party.
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 189
The Role of Yad Vashem in the Creation of a State Narrative
of the Holocaust
The first proposal to establish Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Jerusalem, was made in September 1942 by Mordechai
Shenhavi at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), when
most of those who would die were still alive.2The Holocaust had begun
less than one year previously. At the same time that the Zionist movement
was denying knowledge of the Holocaust, the memorial plan proceeded as
if Europe’s Jews were already dead. Shenhavi argued that: ‘It was the very
last opportunity to score any financial success’ (Segev 1994: 430). Only
the worst anti-Semites would accuse the Jews of being interested in the
Holocaust for financial reasons.
In the event Yad Vashem was established by Israeli state law in 1953.
Among its collective memory objectives was to create a foundational
Israeli heroic myth surrounding the Holocaust. Yad Vashem tried to
reconcile Jewish resistance to the Nazis (which the Zionists grossly
magnified) with a defence of the Nazi appointed Judenräte, administrative
bodies during the Second World War which the Nazi required Jews to
form in the German occupied territories and which became part of the
process of extermination (Bauer 1979: 393, 401, 404). John Conway
described how ‘professional historians of the new state’, such as Yehuda
Bauer, created ‘the founding heroic myth of Zionist resistance and rescue
from their Nazi persecutors’ (Conway 2005).
Despite the Judenräte helping to round up Jews for deportation, Yisrael
Gutman and Robert Rozett argued that ‘The Judenrat reinforced the
Jews’ power of endurance’ (Linn (2004: 77, citing The Encyclopaedia of the
Holocaust: 762). To a hostile Yad Vashem audience, historian Raul Hilberg
explained in ‘The Judenrat-Conscious or Unconscious Tool’ that it was
necessary to understand why the Holocaust occurred in order to prevent a
repetition. ‘How do you do that if you do not study what transpired?’
(Hilberg 1979: 31–44). Yad Vashem’s Josef Melkman had written to
Hilberg (24 August 1958) refusing to publish The Destruction of European
Jews (1961, 2002). Yad Vashem disagreed with Hilberg’s ‘appraisal of the
Jewish resistance’ and his reliance on German documents (Hilberg 1996:
110–111). The linkage of heroism and resistance to the Holocaust resulted
in a distorted history of the Holocaust and a preference for research
devoted to resistance and revolt. The attempt to create a state-authorised
version of the Holocaust prevented Yad Vashem from producing a general
work similar to that by Reitlinger and Hilberg. Later Yehuda Bauer
described Hilberg’s work as an ‘unsurpassed landmark’ (Bauer 2002: 96).
2 Avishai Erlich (2009) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad_Vashem, accessed on
25 April 2014.
190 Holy Land Studies
Yad Vashem has a special wall devoted to the Mufti of Jerusalem,
Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, a minor war criminal. Its purpose is to
suggest that ‘there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy
the Jews’ (Segev 2000: 425) and the Palestinian enmity to Israel (Achcar
2010: 159–160). Yad Vashem could have devoted a wall to Walter Rauff
(1906–1984), a senior SS officer and head of the SS Technical Department
who was responsible for the project of extermination using mobile gas
trucks. Rauff was responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 Jews. But
Rauff was subsequently employed by West Germany’s intelligence service
and the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. The Mossad paid him, protected
him and helped him escape to South America.3
Argentina, Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Disappeared
Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina was ruled by a military junta. It was
word’s first post-war neo-Nazi government. 30,000 people ‘disappeared’,
of whom 12 percent were Jewish (Mualem 2004: 51–79).4In 1978 the
United States decided to restrict arms sales to the Junta on human rights
grounds (SIPRI 1979: 204–5). Israel stepped into the breach, becoming
Argentina’s major arms supplier, accounting for 25 percent of Israel’s
total sales (Howard 1983: 24). Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
believed that ‘in our relations (with foreign countries) we should be guided
by one criteria. . . and that is whether it is good for the Jews. . . ’ What
Ben-Gurion meant was being good for the Israeli state, since ‘the state
constitutes the highest goal of Zionism and the Jewish people’ (Mualem
2004: 51–79). The individual was unimportant; the state was everything.
By 1981 Argentina was buying 17 percent of its arms from Israel
(Bahbah 1986: 123). Israel is believed to have armed Argentina during
the Falklands/Malvinas war.5The Latin American Weekly Report argued
that ‘The Jewish state’s concern for the disappeared was subordinated to
political and commercial considerations’ (Bahbah 1984). Senkman and
Barromi described how: ‘At the same time that the ambassador was acting
on behalf of the detainees, Israeli agents were waiting outside, bearing
proposals for sales of the means of warfare. Thus, the arms sales were
only detrimental to the cause’ (Senkman 1999: 101–104; Barromi 1979:
104–5).
3 Shraga Elam and Dennis Whitehead, ‘In the service of the Jewish state’, Haaretz,
29 March 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/in-the-service-of-the-
jewish-state-1.216923.
4 Uki Go-i, ‘Jews targeted in Argentina’s dirty war’, The Guardian, 4 March 1999, at:
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/mar/24/guardianweekly.guardianweekly1
5The Jerusalem Post, 29 April 1982, The Guardian, 30 July 1982.
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 191
The Argentinean military Junta sponsored a wave of anti-Semitic
attacks. Bombs exploded in Argentine synagogues and Jewish schools.6
The Israeli state had a choice: between selling arms to the military Junta
or defending Argentina’s Jews. Israel chose the former. Jacobob Timerman
(1923–1999), the founder and editor of the liberal La Opinión, was arrested
in April 1977 and savagely tortured. As an example of his torturer’s anti-
Semitism, the following is a good example:
a hysterical voice began shouting Jew, Jew, Jew! The others join in and form
a chorus . . . Now they’re really amused and burst into laughter. Someone
tries a variation, while still clapping hands: ‘Clipped prick. clipped prick.
It seems they are no longer angry, merely having a good time. I keep
bouncing in the chair and moaning as the electric shocks penetrate my
clothes. (Timerman 1981: 60–61)
Timerman’s high profile forced Israel to make diplomatic represent-
ations ‘but it did not make public demands as it did on behalf of Jews
in the Soviet Union’ (Rein and Davidi 2010: 9–11). It is claimed it
‘secretly pressured Argentina to free Timerman’ (Kleiman 1982: 80).
Israeli Ambassador Ram Nirgad asked Timerman to sign a letter saying
that he was well treated and had no problems with the government.
Timerman refused (Rein and Davidi 2010: 16).
Timerman was attacked in the United States by right-wing Zionists
who believed he ‘asked for what he got’.7The Neoconservatives argued
that Israel was ‘an important supplier of arms and military equipment to
Argentina’ and therefore the Junta could not be considered anti-Semitic
(Lobe 2013). Dr Marcos, whose son Mauricio held Israeli citizenship and
was murdered by the Junta, was a founder of Associasion de Familiares
de Desaparecidos Judios. He described how he and other Jewish families
knocked again and again on the door of the Embassy, and were always
sent away.8
One of the main justifications for a ‘Jewish state’ is that in the
event of a resurgence of anti-Semitism, Israel will provide a safe haven.
Marcel Zohar, who was the Yediot Aharonot correspondent in Argentina
between 1978 and 1982, described how Israel’s government refrained
from processing immigration applications from Jews with a left-wing
background (Zohar 1990: 31). As I argued elsewhere, ‘an anti-Semitic
regime will also be . . . semi-fascist and a creature of US imperialism.
In short, one which the Israeli state is only too willing to do business
with...’ (Greenstein 1989: 1). Zohar recounts the struggle between
Danny Recanati, of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli ambassador,
6 Hugh 0’Shaughnessy in The Observer, 30 January1980.
7The Jewish Chronicle, 31 June 1981.
8 Aryeh Dayan, ‘A disappearing act’, Haaretz, 3 January 2003 at
http://www.haaretz.com/a-disappearing-act-1.23290.
192 Holy Land Studies
Ron Nergad. Recanati tried to help persecuted Jews escape from the
country, while Nergad cautioned that people defined as persona non grata
should not be rescued’ (Zohar 1990: 19–24). There was a fear that
those who were released and went to Israel would work with Palestinian
resistance groups.
A quarter of century later, the Israeli Knesset called for the extradition
of the Argentine military officers. MK Yossi Sarid described how ‘the
government of Israel never once lifted a finger and co-operated with
the Argentine murderers because of their interest in arms deals.... In
Argentina, Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its immediate interests’
(Mualem 2004).
Timerman attacked the Zionist leaders in Argentina as a Judenrat.
‘I would forget my torturers, I declared, but never the Jewish leaders
who acquiesced calmly in the torturing of Jews’ (Timerman 1980:
70–71, 78). La Opinión had protested against all acts of anti-Semitism,
but the President of the Jewish community, Nehemias Berznitsky,
disagreed because ‘that would create a confrontation with highly powerful
sectors of the army’. Under no circumstances would the Delegación de
Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (Daia) and the Argentina Jewish Mutual
Aid Association (AMIA) campaign openly and publicly against the Junta’s
anti-Semitism.
In a 1979 visit to Argentina, Geoffrey Paul, editor of The Jewish
Chronicle ‘was urged not to make an issue of the disappeared (by the
Zionist communal organisations). . . while the mothers of the Jewish
disappeared pleaded for publicity to bring the atrocities before the public’s
attention’.9In October 1983 a meeting organised by the Argentine Jewish
Movement for Human Rights to protest against anti-Semitic attacks
(bombing of synagogues etc.) attracted 7,000 people – a meeting which
Daia had boycotted.10 In 1984 at the 90th anniversary Congress of AMIA,
a group of women whose children disappeared. . . shouted ‘Nazi, Nazi’ at
those attending the Congress’. Their purpose was to prevent the entrance
of Yitzhak Navon, formerly (Labour) President of Israel, to Argentina.11
Hector Timerman, Jacobo Timerman’s son, became Argentine’s
Foreign Minister. When Israel raised the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre
and Argentine’s joint investigation with Iran, Timerman told the Israeli
ambassador it was none of Israel’s business. ‘Israel has no right to ask
for explanations. ...Israel does not speak for the Jewish people... Jews
who. . . live in Argentina are Argentinian citizens. The attack was against
9 Geoffrey D Paul, ‘A White Book’, The Jewish Chronicle, 25 May 1984.
10 ‘Argentine Protest’, The Jewish Chronicle, 28 October 1983.
11 ‘Bitter Protest by Grieving Mothers’, The Jewish Chronicle, 23 March 1984.
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 193
Argentina, and Israel’s desire to be involved in the matter only gives
ammunition to anti-Semites who accuse Jews of dual loyalty’.12
The Nazi appointed Judenräte (Jewish Councils)
In Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lenni Brenner failed to analyse the
role of the Judenräte within the process of the extermination of the Jews.
Instead he focussed on the character of their individual members. ‘Some
scholars have shown that not all leaders or members of the Jewish Councils
collaborated’ (Brenner 1983: 205). This is true but irrelevant. What was
important was not the subjective intentions of Judenräte members. No one
has claimed that all members of the Judenräte were collaborators, although
over two-thirds of the members of the Judenräte (67.1 percent) consisted
of Zionist supporters (Trunk 1972: 32). Hannah Arendt argued that:
Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this
leadership, almost without exception, co-operated in one way or another,
for one reason or another, with the Nazis.. . if the Jewish people had
really been unorganized and leaderless. . . the total number of victims would
hardly have been between four and a half and six million people’. (Arendt
1963: 125)
Hilberg described how the Judenräte became ‘a German tool as
a consequence of their origin, condition and strategy. . . . from the
beginning virtually all of the Councils were placed into an irreversible
position, regardless of the thoughts or perceptions of their leaders’. It was
Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovakian, Greek and Hungarian Jewry, who
best summed up the role of the Judenräte, when he told Joel Brand that
‘Our system is to exterminate the Jews through the Jews. We concentrate
the Jews in the ghettos – through the Jews; we deport the Jews – by the
Jews; and we gas the Jews – by the Jews’ (Ben Hecht 1961: 261).
The Judenräte were responsible for marking, concentrating,
expropriating and providing the lists of Jews to be rounded up for
deportation. In some ghettos the Judenrat and the Jewish Police conducted
searches to find anyone hiding from deportation (Trunk 1972: 484).
The Judenräte ‘could not serve the Jewish people while simultaneously
enforcing the German will’ (Hilberg, (2002: 242)). One cannot explain
how the Nazis had managed to achieve their objects with such efficiency
without taking the role of the Judenräte into account (Hilberg 1979: 62).
What Trunk calls the strategy and tactics of the councils was their futile
attempt to resolve this contradiction (Trunk 1972: 388–450).
12 Gabe Fisher, ‘Israeli ambassador upbraided in Argentina’, The Times of
Israel, 6 January 2013, at: http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-ambassador-upbraided-in-
argentina/.
194 Holy Land Studies
The Judenräte were lethal precisely because they sprang from the existing
Jewish leadership. The Judenräte represented the class interests of the Jewish
leadership within the ghettos. In Warsaw the Bread Tax was an exaction
from the poor to keep alive the destitute’ (Hilberg 2002: 240). The
Judenräte became an instrument of oppression who conscripted the weaker
classes for forced labour for the Nazis. ‘The Germans are killing us, and the
Community (the Judenräte) is torturing us’ (Kermiz 1979: 80–82, citing
the Bund paper, Unzer Veg, December 1941).
In Warsaw the Jewish Police carried out manhunts during the first
Aktion and forced the Jews to go to the collection point. On 29 September
1942 ZOB, the Jewish Fighting Organisation, assassinated Jacob Lejkin,
vice-commander of the Jewish Police and a month later Israel Furst, the
Judenrat representative on the deportation staff (Kermisz 1979: 87). Even
Yehuda Bauer admits that as long as the Judenrat continued to operate,
then there was no possibility of resistance (Bauer (1979: 395).
In a few cases, mainly the smaller ghettos and those which were near
to the forests and Soviet-organised partisans, the Judenräte supported the
Resistance, and in Rohatyn and Pilica they armed the Resistance (1979:
Trunk 465, 517, 523, citing Kehillat Rohatyn Vehasviva p.294, Levin
1979: 137). In Szarkowszczyna the head of the Judenrat, Hirsh Berkan,
warned the community of the impending deportations and many Jews
escaped to the forests. In Zhetl, the head of the Judenrat, Alter Dvoretski,
created an armed underground and on 8 June 1942 800 Jews escaped to
the Lipiczanka forests. Many survived the war (Levin 1979: 136,137, 142,
144). In Minsk ‘the Judenrat began to function as the executive arm of the
underground’ for which Moshkin, the head of the Judenrat, was hanged in
March 1942’ (Cholowsky 1979: 119–123). But these were the exception.
The Lodz Judenrat, under Chaim Rumkowski, was the object of ‘rage and
contempt. . . universal loathing’ (Beit-Zvi (1991:331). In the summer of
1940 there were ‘stormy street demonstrations’ against the Judenrat. The
same was true in Lublin, Czestochowa and other ghettos (Trunk 1979:
28).
With their welfare activities ‘The Councils served the Nazis with their
“good” qualities as well as the “bad”’ (Hilberg (1979: 32). What Michman
termed the Trunk position emphasised the positive aspect of the Judenrat
(Linn 2004: 92). When Isaiah Trunk exonerated the Judenrat, Brenner
describes him as a ‘careful scholar’, ignoring his wider political purpose
(Brenner 1983: 205). In the Netherlands the Amsterdam Judenrat,the
Joodse Raad, was headed by two Zionists, Abraham Ascher and David
Cohen, which compiled registers of Dutch Jewry and ‘let itself be used
for the liquidation of Dutch Jewry’ (Presser 2010: 264).
In France Danneker, a member of Eichman’s staff, attempted to form
aJudenrat in Paris. He was met with a flat refusal by the Jews. It was
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 195
because of this that 75 percent of French Jews survived (Yahil 1979: 320).
In Belgium the Nazis set up a Judenrat,theAssociation des Juifs en Belgique,
which began compiling lists of the Jewish population in March-April
1942, which were then handed over to the Gestapo. Thousands of Belgian
Jews refused to have anything to do with the Judenrat and went into
hiding. On 29 August 1942, the Jewish Communists executed Holcinger,
the head of the Judenrat (Steinberg 1979: 367), In another case involving
members of the Judenrat of Bedzin, Poland, Chief Justice Olshan declared
on 22 May 1964 that ‘no matter how the Judenrat acted, it served the
Nazis. . . Even those who served the interests of the Jewish communities
assisted the Nazis’ (Braham 1979: 283–84).
Rabbi Weissmandel and the Slovakian Judenrat: The Europa Plan
Rabbi Chaim Michael Weissmandel (1903–1957) was in the tradition of
shtadlanut, who interceded with the powerful on behalf of the Jewish
community.13 Although he was a religious opponent of Zionism, he
worked with the Zionist leader Gizi Fleischmann as members of the
Slovakian Working Group (WG) which bribed German and Slovakian
officials and paid negotiated ransom to the Germans. The only problem
was that the Nazis were not susceptible to bribes. They would take the
money and continue along the same path. Brenner adopts Weissmandel’s
analysis about the role of the Slovakian Judenrat. In 1939 the Nazis granted
Slovakia its ‘independence’. Slovakia was the first country to deport its
Jews. From 26 March to 20 October 1942 57,000 Jews were deported
to the extermination camps. Hungary became a refuge for about 7,000
Slovakian Jews (Hilberg 2002:769; Bauer 1994: 73–74). As the Nazis
occupied Hungary the WG concentrated on saving members of the
Zionist youth groups (Rothkirchen 1979: 219–27).
From 1942 onwards, Slovakia’s Judenrat, the Jewish Centre or Ustredna
Zidov (UZ), a Jewish institution established by the Slovak government
in 1940 to run Jewish affairs, was drawn into the deportation process’
(Hilberg (2002:779; Conway 1995: 270). Headed by Arpad Sebestyen
and Gestapo agent Karel Hochberg, the Ustredna Zidov issued ID cards,
supplied lists of Jews to the Gestapo and helped to round up the Jews
(Hilberg 1992: 779). Gizi Fleischmann was responsible for its emigration
department. From January to September 1944 it was headed by Oskar
Neumann, former head of the Zionist Organisation of Slovakia. Although
the WG was ostensibly a resistance organisation, in practice it was an
extension of the collaborative Ustredna Zidov (Rothkirchen 1979: 219,
221).
13 ‘Shtadlan’ at: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_
0018_0_18412.html.
196 Holy Land Studies
Conway and Vrba argue that from 1942 onwards the WG collaborated
with the Nazis (Conway 1995: 269). ‘In September 1944 the last period
of the WG ‘casts a dark shadow over all of them, and on Gizi as their
leader. They could have no illusions by then but they acted just like many
of the Jewish Councils in Poland. They could have warned the Jews, but
they didn’t, they could have refused the demands of the Nazis. . . but
they didn’t’ (Linn 2004). In 2001 a group of historians at Yad Vashem,
including Bauer, stung by the accusation that the Slovakian and Hungarian
Judenrat had kept Auschwitz and the gas chambers secret from the Jewish
population, compiled ‘Leadership under Duress: The Working Group in
Slovakia, 1942–1944’ which was mainly an ad hominem attack on Vrba.
Weissmandel and Fleischmann were fooled into believing that
Wisliceny was corrupt and open to bribes (Lob 2008: 229). According
to Conway, it was pressure from the Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Burzio
that led the Pope to issue a strong message concerning the deportation
of Slovakia’s Jews. The Apostolic special delegate, Monsignor Martilotti,
pressurised Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest, into ending the deportations (Beit
Zvi 1991: 69). Tiso was unwilling to defy the papal authorities. Pope Pius
XII had personally intervened because a Catholic priest, President of a
Nazi satellite state, was permitting the deportations.
Two notes were handed to the Prime Minister, Tuka, from the Vatican
which explained that the Jews weren’t being sent to Poland for labour
service; ‘the truth was that they were being annihilated there’ (2002
Hilberg 786–7). In April 1943 Burzio informed Tuka that the Jews
deported in 1942 were no longer alive (Hilberg 2002: 786–8). It was a
coincidence that the deportations were halted soon after the paying of a
bribe.
Brenner adopts Weissmandel’s criticism of the Zionists for not paying
further bribes even though bribery could not possibly have prevented
the extermination of the Jews. Extermination was integral to Nazi Party
ideology and policies. Weissmandel, in fact, was arguing for the traditional
Jewish policy of Shtadlanut. In breach of the moratorium on deportations,
agreed between Wisliceny and the Working Group, a transport of Jews left
on September 18th and a second transport left on September 21st. The
next day $20,000 arrived in Slovakia, donated by Gyula Link, a Hungarian
Orthodox Jewish philanthropist of Slovakian origin. There was another
deportation on 20th October 1942 of physically and mentally handicapped
Jews (Fatran 1994: 171). Yehuda Bauer writes of Wisliceny that ‘What is
amazing is that the highly intelligent Slovak Jewish leaders believed him
and trusted him, none more so than Weissmandel’ (Bauer 1994: 100).
When the Nazis invaded Hungary, Wisliceny brought with him a
letter from Weissmandel to Chief Rabbi Freudiger saying that Wisliceny
could be trusted (Braham 1981: 427; Vrba 1997: 378). The letter was
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 197
addressed to the ‘trustworthy’ people’ who had ‘enough guts and devotion
to negotiate with the SS as the Slovak group had done ...’ (Bauer 1994:
154). The conclusion drawn by Freudiger, was that he should establish
relationships with Wisliceny (Arendt 1997: 196; Beit Zvi 2006: 311, 314;
Porat 1997). The difference in Hungary was that Eichmann was personally
in charge. Wisliceny was sent to the provinces to organise ghettos. It was
Hermann Krumey who was Eichman’s deputy, responsible for organising
the Hungarian Holocaust. Randolph Braham described Weissmandel’s
letter as the ‘fatal advice of the Slovak Jewish leaders’ (Braham 2004:
188). Krumey himself was one of those for whom Kasztner testified for at
Nuremberg.
On the basis of a coincidence, Weissmandel and Fleischman then
focused almost entirely on the Europa plan which envisaged stopping
the final solution in Europe in return for two million US dollars (Beit
Zvi 1991: 292). Vrba described it as ‘truly hair-brained’. John Conway
described it as ‘far fetched and illusionary’. In June 1944 Vrba met with
Weissmandel at his Yeshiva, operating openly in the midst of Bratislava
under the protection of the authorities. Vrba described it as ‘a circus with
Rabbi Weissmandel as its main, albeit tragicomic, clown’ (Vrba and Bestic
1997: 370–371).
Brenner described Weissmandel’s post-war Min HaMaitzer (‘From the
Depths’) as ‘one of the most powerful indictments of Zionism and
the Jewish establishment’. It was nothing of the sort. Min HaMaitzer is
undoubtedly a passionate reflection of the politics of Jewish Orthodoxy,
but it is not an ideological critique of Zionism (Brenner 1983: 236–8;
Weissmandel 1960: 13). Because of his Orthodox religious beliefs
Weissmandel was incapable of a socio-economic or political analysis
of the Holocaust. Min HaMaitzer is also unreliable and disingenuous.
Weissmandel described how he visited Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio and
‘this wicked man’ said ‘All Jewish blood is guilty and they must die’. This
is highly unlikely since it was Burzio whose was responsible for the Vatican
pressure which had been decisive in ending the deportations in Slovakia
in 1942 (Hilberg 1992: 786–7).
This is equally true of the Holocaust Victims Accuse (Reb Moshe Shonfeld
1977) which substantiates and provide depth for Min HaMaitzer. Whilst
containing interesting documents and quotes, for example a letter to
The Times from the late Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, the Chairman
of the Chief Rabbis Rescue Committee in Britain, which detailed the
obstructive tactics of the Zionists, it is also wildly inaccurate and at
times simply dishonest. It mentions Gizi Fleischman whilst ‘forgetting’ to
mention her close working relationship with Weissmandel in the Working
Group. It attacks Jewish Communists in Russia, omitting to mention that
up to 1.5 million Jews escaped to the Soviet Union (Hilberg 2002: 295).
198 Holy Land Studies
It quotes from Rudolph Vrba, the Auschwitz escapee, who was a stringent
critic of Weissmandel, who he called ‘a clown’. Shonfeld attacks the ‘cruel’
enemy of the Catholic Church, seemingly oblivious to representatives such
as the Apostolic Nuncio in Istanbul Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, who in
1958 became Pope John XXIII and willingness to lobby Pope Pius XII was
very well known. Vatican Legate Archbishop Monsignore Martilotti of the
Nuncio’s office in Bern or the Apostolic Nuncio in Bratislava, Monsignor
Giuseppe Burzio, who first sent a copy of the Auschwitz Protocols to
the Vatican. Martilotti interviewed the Auschwitz escapees, Rudolf Vrba
and Czeslaw Mordowicz (who escaped from Auschwitz shortly after Vrba)
for six hours, on 20 June. Before he left for Switzerland, he promised to
do everything in his power to stop the killings in Auschwitz. Martilotti
supplied the Auschwitz Protocols to Pope Pius XII, who had already
received them at the end of April (Braham 1981: 1067, 1127). Erich
Kulka believes that the decisive factor in the Pope’s telegram to Horthy
was Mario Martilotti. Horthy was ‘bombarded with telegrams from all
sides, from the Vatican and the King of Sweden, from Switzerland and the
Red Cross’. The Pope was sending telegrams and the Apostolic Nuncio
in Budapest Angelo Rotta was calling “several times” a day. The Turkish,
Spanish and Swiss governments had also intervened. The government
was now frightened especially when Szotjay read three decoded telegrams
from the US and British missions in Bern with a ‘detailed description’ of
the fate of the deported Jews and the threat of bombings of Hungarian
and German agencies, including exact addresses. An exception to the
willingness to apply pressure was Hungary’s Cardinal Sered who was
bluntly asked by Angelo Rotta why he was remaining silent (Braham 1981:
1034).
Shonfeld employs a scattergun approach attacking Reform Jewry on
account of Stephen Wise and Nahum Goldmann. He states that Hitler
only embarked on the extermination of European Jewry when Stephen
Wise declared war on Nazi Germany (it was in fact Chaim Weizmann
‘not Wise who declared war’, states that Brand left Germany in order
to get the Allies to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz, whereas his
sole concern was to bring end the final solution through the Blood for
Trucks proposal that Eichmann was forced to endorse. Shonfeld recounts
the time when Schwalb sent Weissmandel a letter stating that all nations
must make sacrifices, as the Jews who are being exterminated are making.
Shonfeld tells the story of how the Zionists’ Boycott Committee’, having
destroyed the boycott of Nazi Germany, now started picketing Agudas
Yisrael’s preparation and distribution of food parcels for ghetto inhabitants.
Shonfeld agreed that the bribing of Wisliceny had halted the
deportations, and argued that, for a whole month in 1943, deportations
to Auschwitz stopped. If indeed they stopped it was in order to maintain
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 199
the extermination equipment. The cynical behaviour of the Zionists’
approach to rescuing Jews was the selection of the few from the many
(selectivity).14 Shonfeld also states that ‘just as the bribed Nazis had been
true to their agreement in Slovakia, so they kept their promise as to this
new pact, from which emanated the Europa plan’. Shonfeld seems to have
forgotten that the final solution never stopped, at any point (Shonfeld
1977 22, 40, 60, 66, 14, 18, 117, 43, 65, 45–49, 85–87, 87–9).
Nathan Schwalb, head of the Zionist World Hehalutz Bureau in
Geneva, sought to protect Kasztner’s negotiations with Eichmann from
anything likely to destroy them, such as the Auschwitz Protocols, wrote
to Weissmandel a letter which expressed the Zionist view that the dead of
the Holocaust would be the Zionists’ main card at the negotiating table
for a Jewish state. When this letter was quoted in Jim Allen’s play Perdition
(1987) Schwalb sued for libel, but he was forced to withdraw the action
when he refused to open his archive, as he knew it wouldn’t stand scrutiny
(Allen 1987) even though both Lenni Brenner (Brenner 1983: 237–8) and
Moshe Shonfeld had already cited the letter and attributed it to Nathan
Schwalb (Shonfeld 1977: 26–28).15 The Zionist leaders, including Saly
Meyer of the Joint Distribution Committee in Switzerland, refused to
countenance handing over $2m for the Europa plan.
Rudolf Kasztner and the Nazis
Rudolf Kasztner was the leader of Hungarian Zionism and the Jewish
Agency’s Rescue Committee (Va’ada) in Budapest during the Nazi
occupation. In return for his silence and co-operation during the
deportations, the Zionists were allowed to organise a train of the
Prominents which left Hungary on the night of 30 June 1944 with 1,684
of the Zionist and Jewish elite including 388 from Kasztner’s home town
of Kolosvar, who were taken to Budapest by the SS (Braham 1981 972–3).
Most of the Judenräte joined the train. Rudolf Vrba, the Auschwitz escapee
wrote (Linn 2004: 45):
I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war.
This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in
Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence.
Among them was Dr Kasztner.
. . . I was able to give Hungar ian Zionist leaders three weeks notice
that [Adolf] Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas
14 As Kasztner’s representative in the defamation case against Malchiel Greenwald,
Attorney-General Chaim Cohen explained: ‘If in Kasztner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly,
he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform
them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few’.
15 At: http://www.weissmandl.org/Book_Text/Uri_Davis/CrossingTheBorder_pt1.
htm. http://www.weissmandl.org/Book_Text/Uri_Davis/CrossingTheBorder_pt2.htm.
http://www.weissmandl.org/Book_Text/Uri_Davis/Crossing_footnotes.htm.
200 Holy Land Studies
chambers. . . Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your
plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet. (Hecht 1961:
note 68, 261–2)16
When he was accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Rudolf Kasztner
was forced by the Israeli state into initiating a libel trial (1953–8) in the
Jerusalem District Court. Instead he effectively became the defendant and
Judge Benyamin Halevi ruled that he had ‘sold his soul to the German
Satan’ (Hecht 1961: 180). The Supreme Court accepted Halevi’s findings
of fact. Kasztner was cleared on a legal technicality. If you are sued for
defamation you have to prove all your allegations. One allegation, of
becoming rich with the money from members of the Prominents train was
not upheld by Judge Halevi. Therefore the whole libel action succeeded.
The Supreme Court later found, on a split decision on legal grounds, that
Kasztner had proved libel, though by then he had been assassinated. This
procedure is appropriate for run-of-the-mill actions but when it comes to
a trial involving the death of nearly half-a-million Hungarian Jews and the
collaboration of the leader of Hungarian Zionism in the Nazi murders,
one would expect the Supreme Court to rise to the occasion and devise
a different procedure. Clearly they were not capable of this, Judge Silberg
excepted. However all five Judges were in agreement in upholding Judge
Halevi’s decision that Kasztner, ‘in a perjurious and criminal way’, saved
Kurt Becher, a major German war criminal, from the punishment awaiting
him in Nuremberg. Judge Silberg summed up the Supreme Court finding
on this point: “Greenwald has proven beyond any reasonable doubt this
grave charge’. The Judges voted 3-2 in agreement. But Greenwald was
still found guilty by 3-2 of accusing Kasztner of collaboration.17 It is little
wonder that even today, people cannot agree whether the Judges voted by
4-1 or 3-2 that Kasztner’s libel action succeeded.
Yad Vashem has long been eager to vindicate Kasztner and the
documents on the Internet used to justify this are politically self serving
and strewn with errors. One example is the claim ‘the Israeli Supreme
Court cleared Kasztner of all wrongdoing. It did no such thing.
Kasztner claimed responsibility for saving 70,000 Jews in the Jewish
ghetto (Lob 2008: 209) and numerous other Jews with SS Col. Becher,
a representative of Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in
Nazi Germany and the person most directly responsible for the Holocaust.
16 The Daily Herald, February 1961.
17 At: http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206428.pdf.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/pressroom/pressreleases/pr_details.asp?cid=235. Yad
Vashem archive of Hungarian Jew accused of collaborating with Nazis-Israel Kasztner shot
dead in 1957 after Israeli court said he had ‘sold his soul to the German Satan’ during
Wo r l d Wa r Two , Haaretz. 22 July 2007, at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/yad-vashem-
given-archive-of-hungarian-jew-accused-of-collaborating-with-nazis-1.226020.
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 201
Yet Becher had to be reminded by Kasztner at Nuremberg that he had
saved Budapest’s Ghetto (he was in Berlin at the time). If anyone was
responsible for saving the ghetto Jews it was the Nyilas liaison with the
Budapest Police, Pal Szalai (Braham 2004: 40), a fact recognised by the
post-war Peoples’ Tribunals (Braham 1981: 986). Another example of
Kasztner’s false claims concerned the 18,000 Jews who were ‘put on ice’ at
Strasshoff, the Vienna concentration camp. They were in fact transferred
to Vienna at the specific request of SS Brigade Fuhrer Blaschke, to dig
tank trenches. On 30 June 1944 Ernst Kaltenbrunner wrote to Blaschke
agreeing to his request. The Judges in the Eichmann trial ruled that
Kasztner had fallen for a ‘simulated concession’ and paid $1,000 for each
of the 18,000 persons in the transports (Steinberg 1968:329–330; Braham
1981 650, 954; Lob 2008: 93–95). 12,000 Jews survived.
Rudolf Kasztner’s Testimony at Nuremburg on Behalf of Nazis
Brenner puts the blame for the swift implementation of the Hungarian
Holocaust on Kasztner as an individual, whereas the evidence suggests
that the Jewish Agency was responsible for Kasztner’s role in Hungary,
including his testifying at Nuremberg, on behalf of a number of Nazi war
criminals, including Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s deputy in Hungary,
and Dieter Wisliceny, butcher of Slovakian and Greek Jewry.18 The
Kasztner trial in Jerusalem was unaware of this testimony. Kasztner’s
testimony on behalf of Becher was the basis upon which Shmuel Tamir
built his case for the defendant Malchiel Greenwald.19 As a result, Krumey
spent his post-war years in Germany as a free man (Barri 1997:145).
Eventually, after Vrba testified, he was condemned to five years hard
labour’ (Linn 2004: 47).
In September 1945 Kasztner made two statements before the American
Committee for the Investigation of War Crimes The first mentioned
Krumey as the SS officer responsible for the Holocaust in Hungary and
Austria. The second statement described Becher and Wisliceny as war
criminals whose only reason for benevolent activity during the final
months of the war had been to provide themselves with alibis (Barri
1997: 142).
In Rudolf Kasztner’s 1946 Report to the Jewish Agency, Krumey,
Wisliceny and Becher were described as actors in the Nazi killing machine.
Yet on 4 August 1947 Kasztner testified at Nuremberg that Becher helped
prevent the destruction of the survivors in the concentration camps (Barri
1997: 144). There is no evidence for this. In May 1948, Kasztner gave
18 At: http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206524.pdf.
19 Barri Kasztner’s cable of 12 May 1945, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem,
S26/1569.
202 Holy Land Studies
a statement to Benno H. Selettef (Office of Chief Counsel for War
Crimes Nuremberg 5 May 1948), stating that Krumey ‘performed his
tasks displaying remarkable good will towards those whose life or death
depended to a great extent upon the way’ (Barri 1997: 144).20
A memorandum of July 1947 indicates that Kasztner attempted to save
Wisliceny from execution by transferring him from Slovak to American
custody. In February 1948, Gideon Raphael (Ruffer), who subsequently
became an Israeli diplomat, wrote to Murray Gurfein, assistant to Prose-
cutor Robert Jackson, asking if it was possible to accept Wisliceny’s offer
to provide information regarding Eichman’s whereabouts (Barri 1997:
155). American prosecutors Rapp and Kempner claimed that Kasztner
was eager to make many statements on behalf of Nazi war criminals.21
Despite the denial of Eliyahu Dobkin head of the Jewish Agency’s
Immigration Department during the war, the Jewish Agency clearly
did know of the testimony as it is contained in a letter from Kasztner
to Eliezer Kaplan of the Jewish Agency Executive, of 26 July 1948.
Kasztner’s statement is appended to the report on the destruction of the
Jews of Hungary of 4 August 1947, Prosecution Exhibit 73, Trial Boxes
515) throughout the entire period 1945 and 1948, covering Kasztner’s
testimony on behalf of the Nazi war criminals, his travel and expenses
were funded primarily by Zionist organizations, albeit not continuously.
Rudolf Kasztner claimed during his libel trial in Jerusalem that he
testified solely in favour of Becher and that he had been permitted to
testify by Dobkin, of the Jewish Agency and Chaim Barlas of Mossad.
However Dobkin denied ever having heard Becher’s name, which Ruffer
contradicted (Barri 1997: 151). Kasztner felt that the Jewish Agency
were making him a scapegoat. Dobkin was familiar with all the reports
on rescue activities, including Kasztner’s. Kasztner claimed that it was
impossible that Dobkin should not be familiar with Becher’s name. Barri
believes that Kasztner’s claim ‘sounds plausible’ (Barri 1997: 144, 149,
150–155, 163).
Ruffer claimed that he had turned down an offer by Wisliceny to help
locate Adolf Eichmann.22 Kasztner informed Dobkin and Ruffer that he
had given sworn statements for Herbert Kettliz.23 The Jewish Agency’s
primary concern after the war was the ‘Becher deposit’ which was alleged
to consist of large amounts of the wealth of Hungarian Jewry (Barri 1997:
156–8).
20 Statements by Kastner and Dr Nikolaus (Moshe) Schweiger, 20 January 1946,
Eliezer Kaplan’s files CZA (Jerusalem).
21 Statement by Walter Rapp given in Tel Aviv before attorney Zvi Kalmantinowsky,
6 February 1957, Israel State Archives (Jerusalem).
22 Barri (1997: 154); Orit Galili, ‘Interview with Gideon Raphael’, Haaretz,
2 December 1994.
23 Hamburg, 3 June 1948 and Wilhelm Eggen, Nuremberg, 17 August 1948, in Barri
(1997: 159).
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 203
Barlas instructed the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee (Va’ada)to
make the Nazi war criminals aware that ‘we offer them not only money’
(Barri 1997: 162). The alibi that the Jewish Agency could provide was a
desired commodity in the final stages of the war. It was also the only thing
they had to offer at the time’ (Barri 1997: 162) Did Rudolf Kasztner
receive the prior authorisation of the Jewish Agency? Kasztner certainly
considered himself authorised to testify in the Jewish Agency’s name
(Barri 1946: 164). The matter was never in fact fully investigated. The
Jewish Agency in the aftermath of the war could not admit that it had
approved testimony on behalf of Nazi war criminals. Yet that is what it
had almost certainly done. Shoshana Barri, who is the only person to
have investigated the sources concludes that ‘Certainly the Jewish Agency
knew of some of them, while with regard to the others the picture is less
clear. Yet archival sources suggest the probability that the Jewish Agency
was aware of them all’ (Barri 1997: 145).
The Auschwitz Protocols: The Holocaust in Hungary
On 10 April 1944 Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who worked in the
Canada section of Birkenau, escaped from Auschwitz. They had escaped
in order to warn the world that the last major concentration of Jews in
Europe was about to be exterminated. Two weeks later, on 24 April, Vrba
and Wetzler reached Slovakia and told their story to the Slovakian Judenrat
(Ustredna Zidov). They sat down, in separate rooms, to write what they
knew about Auschwitz. Both reports coincided with each other. The
Auschwitz Protocols were transcribed into both Hungarian and German
on April 26th 1944. The Protocols detailed the layout of its gas chambers
and crematoria as well as the procedures of mass murder and were filed as
documents, NG-206Int, at the Nuremberg trials (Linn 2004: 13).
The Auschwitz Protocols revealed that Auschwitz/Birkenau was the
Nazis’ main extermination camp. They played a crucial role in warning
and saving the remainder of Hungary’s Jews yet Brenner does not mention
them. Vrba and Wetzler insisted that the Auschwitz Protocols should
be revealed at once.24 They were assured by the Slovakian leaders that
the report would be in the hands of the Hungarian Jewish leaders ‘first
thing tomorrow’.25 The following day Vrba was told that Kasztner, leader
of Hungarian Zionism, was examining the report at that very minute’
(Baron 2000: 15). Kasztner did not though inform Hungary’s Jews of
24 Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, Vol.53, No.3 (2005): 461–472, Escaping
Auschwitz: Sixty years later, John S Conway, University of British Columbia Vancouver,
B.C., Canada.
25 Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 53, no. 3, 2005, pp. 461–472, Escaping
Auschwitz: Sixty years later, John S Conway, University of British Columbia Vancouver,
B.C., Canada.
204 Holy Land Studies
the fate that awaited them. The circulation of the report threatened
to undermine his negotiations with the Nazis. Eichmann referred to a
‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Kasztner, who ‘agreed to help keep the Jews
from resisting deportation’ in exchange for the opportunity to rescue the
Zionist and Jewish elite. ‘To sum it all up, I regret nothing’.26
When and to whom were the Auschwitz Protocols distributed?
The answer to this question has been obscured by the fog that Kasztner
and the Zionist movement has created. Vrba was explicit that ‘. . . the
leaders of Hungarian Jewry were in full possession of these facts by the
end of April 1944 at the latest’. The Auschwitz Protocols were handed to
Kasztner on 25 or 28 April 1944 (Linn 2004: 27; Braham 1968–9: 712;
Vrba and Bestic 1977: 248). Another version believed that the Protocols
were sent to Budapest, Nathan Schwalb in Geneva and the Zionist
liaison committee in Istanbul. However ‘Schwalb’s primary interest. . .
was to prevent the Vrba-Wetzler report from being published so as not
to disrupt Kasztner’s negotiation with Eichmann’ (Linn 2004:28; Baron
2000:171–208). Instead Yehuda Bauer credits Saly Meyer with saving the
Jews of Budapest, a claim which Randolph Braham described as ‘highly
unlikely’ (Braham 1981: 967).
Pope Pius XII received a copy from Burzio at the end of April and also
Monsignor Martilotti in late June (Braham 1981:1067; Baron 2000:14).
On 20 June 1944 Martilotti came to Slovakia to interview Vrba and
Mordowicz (Baron 2000: 22–3). On 15 May 1944, when the deportations
started, the Pope submitted the first official protest against the deportation
of the Jews (Braham 1981: 1068). On 25 June the Pope appealed ‘in an
open telegram’ to Horthy, calling on him to ‘spare so many unfortunate
people further sufferings’, without explicitly mentioning the Jews (Linn
2004: 28). On 6 July the Pope ‘gave vent to his outrage’ to Sztojay
(Braham 1981: 1072).
One of the copies of the Auschwitz Protocols was given to Dr Géza
Soos, a dissident official of the Hungarian Foreign Office and a member
of the Hungarian Independence Movement, a small resistance group. Soos
gave his copy for translation and duplication to Rev. Jozsef Elias during the
first few days of May, who distributed them to the leaders of the Christian
churches and the Hungarian state shortly before the start of the mass
deportations (Linn 2004: 31–33; Braham 1981:754, 1120). Among those
who received a copy were Horthy’s daughter-in-law, Catholic cardinals,
Lutheran bishops and Erno Peto, a prominent Judenrat member. Professor
Thomas Sakmyster claims that Horthy’s decision to halt the deportation
26 Eichmann in Life Magazine, 5 December 1960, in Brenner (2002: 280).
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 205
of the Budapest Jews was a direct result of his reading of the Vrba-
Wetzler Report (Kulka 1964). A copy of the Auschwitz Protocols was
also brought to Switzerland around the 10 June 1944 by a courier of the
Czech underground.27 The Protocols were given to Dr Jaromir Kopecky
of the Czech government-in-exile who immediately contacted Gerhard
Riegner of the World Jewish Council. When Alan Dulles read the entire
report he wired it to the USA on 23 June 1944. The veil of secrecy
had been lifted. In the following days no less than 383 articles about the
Auschwitz death camp appeared in the Swiss press (Baron 2000: 22).
Yehuda Bauer’s claim that ‘the Vrba-Wetzler report had received
widespread, albeit unofficial, publicity within Jewish Hungary is
problematic’ (Linn 2004: 45; Bauer (1997:297–307). Yet Bauer accepts
that one and a half months later, ‘the details of the Vrba-Wetzler report
were still generally unknown’ (Linn 2004: 46; Bauer 2001:196; Kulka
1964). However those on the train of the ‘prominents’ were given specific
information about Auschwitz (Linn 2004: 46). Bauer now concedes
that ‘the so-called’ Protocols. . . must have arrived in Budapest, perhaps
through Kasztner’ at the end of April and been handed over to the
leading members of the Judenrat’ (Bauer 1994: 156–7). Gutman too
accepted that ‘Kasztner had been given a copy of the report on April
29 1944 but. . . he had already made a decision, together with other Jewish
leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the
negotiations with the Nazis’.28 Non-Israeli historians such as Conway are
criticised for accepting Vrba’s testimony or for being misled by him yet
it was Yad Vashem’s establishment historians who, kicking and screaming,
finally accepted the truth of what happened (Linn 2004: 67; Fatran 1995:
164–201).
On 16 May 1944 Weissmandel sent ‘extraordinarily precise’ details of
Auschwitz, including accurate maps, to Swiss Orthodox Jewish leaders
and on May 31 to the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in New York, who
passed them onto the War Refugee Board. He begged that the Allies
bomb Auschwitz and the rail lines leading up to it. This information was
based on the Auschwitz Protocols (Friedlander 2005: 405–6). Freudiger
testified at Eichman’s trial that the Auschwitz Protocols were translated
into English and on 19 June 1944 they were sent out of Hungary by
Moshe Krausz (Erez 1997: 123–134). He emphasised how relevant this
information had been as prior to this date ‘no one had any idea about
27 Haaretz, 7 April 2013, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Tabeau, This day
in Jewish history - Escape from Auschwitz takes shape http://www.haaretz.com/news/
features/this-day-in-jewish-history/this-day-in-jewish-history-escape-from-auschwitz-
takes-shape.premium-1.514020.
28 Linn (2004: 46, 72), citing Gutman’s Shoah Vezikaron.
206 Holy Land Studies
Auschwitz’ In Hungary Cohen writes how ‘It is beyond question that
the Auschwitz Protocols reached the Jewish Council and Zionist activists
including the Hehalutz underground, yet they did not transmit this
information to the Jewish public when the deportation began’. Hehalutz
concentrated primarily on saving their own Zionist comrades, including
smuggling several hundred across the border to Romania and Slovakia
(Cohen 1996: 381). Yehuda Bauer admits that ‘the protocols were an
important factor in stopping the deportations’ (Linn 2004:113, citing
Bauer 2002: 238). Bauer, in a last desperate attempt to minimise the
importance of the Auschwitz Protocols and Vrba’s role, suggested they had
not included details of the proposed Hungarian Holocaust in them. This is
Bauer’s and the Yad Vashem historical methodology, speculation designed
to undermine those they oppose. Only on 3 July 1944 did information
from the Vrba-Wetzler report receive attention in the New York Times.
Only at a very late stage, after a period of more than four months, did the
WRB make reports about Auschwitz public.
The Erasing and Discrediting of Rudolph Vrba
and Alfred Wetzler
In 1998, thirty-five years after its original publication in virtually every
language, the Auschwitz Protocols were published in Hebrew. Their very
publication was an affront to the Zionist historical establishment. Anita
Shapira, the ‘Princess of Zionism’, held that the Nazi Holocaust could
only be understood on Jewish national soil. Hannah Arendt rejected
Zionism’s reduction of Jewish history to the desire to ‘return’ to Palestine.
‘She was incapable of sensing the Jewish experience because she was
from ‘there’, as if ‘there’ was not where the Holocaust had occurred. . . ’
(Piterberg 2008: 149).
Yehuda Bauer held that disclosing the Auschwitz Protocols to
Hungary’s Jews would have served no purpose. Bauer launched a furious
ad hominem attack on Vrba as ‘(a) bitter Auschwitz survivor’, ‘embittered
and furious’, and ‘(his) despair and bitterness are overdone’ (Linn 2004:
114 citing Bauer (2001: 230, 235, 237). Like all state-sponsored historians,
Bauer, who is in the business of creating an acceptable (Zionist) history,
was incapable of dealing with criticism. It was not until 1997 that Bauer
accepted that Vrba was a reliable eyewitness (Linn 2004: 66 citing Bauer
1997:297). In the 1990 edition of the Israeli Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust,
the escapees are referred to by name but in the 2001 edition they are
refer red to as ‘two Jewish prisoners’.
As a result of Linn’s efforts, Yad Vashem’s historians, in particular
Yisrael Gutman, reluctantly accepted that Kasztner was given a copy of
the Auschwitz Protocols on 29 April 1944 but chose not to disseminate
T. Greenstein Zionist-Nazi Collaboration 207
them in order not to harm negotiations with the Nazis (Linn 2004:
72). It was not until 1999 that Vrba and Wexler’s escape was finally
published in Gutman’s Hebrew writings for school students. Yehuda Bauer
eventually accepted that the Protocols were responsible for three major
breakthroughs: changing the Allied belief that Auschwitz was a huge
labour camp for Poles, it was the first detailed and reliable report of
the gas chambers and thirdly ‘it jolted the Swiss into undertaking wide
publication’ of the exterminations at Auschwitz’(Linn 2004: 30; Bauer
1979: 209).
The actual experiences of the Holocaust survivors were marginalised
(Conway 2005: 270–271). In 1994, at a conference at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, Vrba argued
that the survivors’ experience was superior to that of the Zionist
historical establishment (Linn 2004: 108). He asked: ‘Who is the better
historian – those of us who saw the Nazis in action in Auschwitz’ or ‘those
who did not have direct experience with the Nazis’? Linn 2004: 108).
When questioned at the 1968 Yad Vashem conference on Jewish resistance
as to why Vrba and Wexler’s part in informing the Ustredna Zidov
about Auschwitz was missing from her presentation, Livia Rothkirchen
answered, ‘I was speaking of the organised escapes. The escapes from
Auschwitz were acts of individual heroism’. Non-Zionist resistance to the
Nazis was disregarded a priori (Linn 2004: 85–86, citing Garlinski 1975).
As a non-Zionist, Vrba could never be considered credible (Linn 2004:
88–9). He had no right to accuse the Working Group of collaboration
with the Nazis (Fatran 1992).
Vrba was first given academic legitimacy by the German
periodical Vierteljahrsheft fuer Zeitgeschichte, published by the Institute
of Contemporary History in Munich. Yehuda Bauer now agreed that
Hungary’s Jews were ignorant of their impending fate but credits
Rudolf Kasztner with playing a pivotal role in rescuing the Jews of
Budapest. Randolph Braham accused Yehuda Bauer of using ‘questionable
psychological arguments’ when he argues that the Hungarian Jewish
community was informed about the realities of the Final Solution but
had not ‘internalised’ the information, failing to turn it into ‘knowledge’.
Bauer cites ‘selectively the recollections of survivors, including some
young Zionist couriers and local community leaders’ (Braham 2004:
21–57).
The memoirs of the survivors of Kolosvar attest that the Jews were
not only kept ignorant about Auschwitz, but were misinformed. But in
a Yad Vashem historical consensus, Gila Fatran argued that even if the
Auschwitz Protocols had not been suppressed, Hungary’s Jews knew that
deportation meant death. Knowledge of the Auschwitz Protocols could
not have changed anything, though Zionist activists, including Freudiger,
208 Holy Land Studies
used this knowledge as a means of escape (Fatran 1995, Response to John
Conway). Tivador Soros disagreed. Someone had succeeded in getting
out of the death camp at Auschwitz and had told the whole story. . . .
We talked a lot about how we might escape’. George Soros confirmed
this (Linn 2004: 101). The Jewish deportees were told they were being
relocated to Kenyermezö, a fictitious area in western Hungary. If only one
per cent of Hungary’s Jewish victims had known about the Protocols and
had not boarded the trains to Auschwitz, almost three times the numbers
on the train of the Prominents would have survived. According to Prof.
George Klein ‘It was this report that prompted me to escape’ (Linn 2004:
47–48).
Randolph Braham asked why, if the Jewish leadership was so sure
that deportation to Kenyermezo in Hungary was genuine they did not
remain with the masses? (Braham 2004: 51 fn.53). Braham remarked that
‘It is a pity that Bauer fails to refer to this, let alone cite the views of
many survivors (Braham 2004: note 28, 39). Elie Wiesel confirmed that
‘We were taken just 2 weeks before D-Day, and we did not know that
Auschwitz existed . . . everyone knew except the victims’ (Baron 1994:
10). Braham was highly critical of Yehuda Bauer and his selective accounts,
accusing him of fabricating the claim that Oszef Meir, of Hashomer
Hatzair, had been involved in ‘sabotage and derailing of trains’ (Bauer
1994:235). ‘No corroboration for this claim has been found to date’
(Braham 1994: 39 note 28). Bauer concludes that it was the Zionists who
made the ‘Blood for Trucks’ offer to the SS (Bauer 1994:163–4). The
evidence that it came from Adolf Eichmann is overwhelming.
Eichmann, on Heinrich Himmler’s orders, offered the Allies one
million Jews for 10,000 trucks to be used on the Eastern front.
On 17 May 1944, two days after the deportations began, Brand and a
German double agent, Bandi Grosz, were sent to Istanbul. The Brand
mission was a cover for the real mission, that of Grosz, an attempt to
secure a diplomatic opening with the West (Porter 2008:186, 200, 340,
421). The Zionists took it seriously, even though it had no possibility of
succeeding. Brenner too was deceived by Brand’s criticisms at Kasztner’s
trial that the Zionists had sabotaged it. Shortly before his death though, in
1964, Brand confessed that he had made a terrible mistake (Braham 2004:
1015, fn. 80; The New York Times, 21 May 1964).
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