Zionist-Nazi Collaboration - Debate

Zionist-Nazi Collaboration – Debate

Tony Greenstein | 09 September 2014 | Post Views:

The Record of the Zionist Movement During the Holocaust

Himmler and Hitler

Below is a ‘debate’ which I had on Zionist-Nazis collaboration
with 2 Zionist falsifiers, Paul Bogdanor and ‘Mad’ Mikey Ezra. I leave it to readers to judge the methods
and style of the defenders of the Zionist record during the war years.

Tony Greenstein

·
For decades Tony Greenstein has brought up the Kasztner case as a key
part of his erroneous claim that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis. The
truth is that Kasztner did indeed collaborate with the Nazis but that does not
mean to say that “the Zionists collaborated with Nazis.” What Kasztner did was
betray the Zionists. He kept silent when many Jews, including numerous
Zionists, in Hungary were being sent to their deaths. The Nazis did not
separate Jews when it came to Auschwitz and direct Zionists one way and
anti-Zionists the other. They did not care, they sent them all to their deaths.

Elsewhere,
Greenstein has claimed that the Zionists who fought the Nazis did so in spite
of their Zionism and not because of it. This is a gross falsehood. One can look
at the actions of Moshe Krausz, a different Zionist leader in Hungary who was
completely opposed to Kasztner’s method of trying to do a deal with the Nazis
and went out of his way to try and rescue Jews. Secondly, one can look at the
many Zionists who have been highly critical of Kasztner. An example is Ben
Hecht who wrote what is probably the most famous attack on Kasztner in his
book, Perfidy. As well as an author, Hecht was a leading activist for
the Zionist cause in America during WWII. One could list in some detail the
acts of Hecht and the “Bergson Boys” to bring the plight of the Jews in the
Europe to the wider attention in America. Much of it is detailed in David S.
Wyman’s book, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust
1941-1945. At any rate, when Hecht died in 1964, none other than Menachem
Begin, someone who went on to become Israel’s prime minister, attended his

Coin struck to celebrate visit of the head of the Jewish desk, Baron von Mildestein, to Palestine in 1933

funeral.

If one
read the work of Greenstein one might not know that the Zionists were opposed
to the Nazis. One might not know that the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE) in
Palestine that was headed by Ben Gurion who went on to be Israel’s first prime
minister, said when war broke out in 1939: ” We will fight the White Paper as
if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper.” This war
effort of fighting the Nazis on the side of the British included sending many
parachutists into occupied Europe. The most famous of these was Hannah Szenes
who was killed on her mission and, as Szenes’s mother testified, was someone
Kasztner refused to help. This was yet another Zionist betrayed by Kasztner.

These
facts do not fit comfortably with Greenstein’s thesis. But then again,
Greenstein is not one to let mere facts bother him.

Mikey

June 27,
2014 at 10:07 am

·
I am no fan of the works of John Rose, someone who should have long ago
been ignored by the left, but as it seems there are relics of people in the SWP
etc who value his opinions, I will say that not even he believes the nonsense
of Zionist-Nazi collaboration. I copy the following from Rose’s The Myths of
Zionism (Pluto Press, 2004), p.212n5.

it is
very foolish to draw the conclusion that ‘Zionist collaboration with the Nazis’
was typical or somehow automatically built into the Zionist project, an interpretation
which could be put on the subtitle of Brenner’s 51 Documents book.
Zionism was perfectly capable of inspiring resistance to the Nazis, as ‘Antek’
Zuckerman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, makes clear in his massive
autobiography,A Surplus of Memory…. See also Levi’s superb, and partly
autobiographical, novel, If Not Now, When? (1987) about the Jewish
partisans fighting the Nazis in the forests.

Himmler, responsible as head of the SS for implementing the final solution, with Hitler, who ordered it

Mikey

June 27,
2014 at 3:44 pm

·
Mikey Ezra admits now that Kasztner collaborated with the Nazis but
pretends that he betrayed Hungary’s Zionists! He is singing from a different
song sheet than that which he used to use. To cite some examples from a debate
on Socialist Unity: Perhaps he would be so kind as to tell us what or who it
was that convinced him that he had been supporting a collaborator with the
Nazis?

Tony
Greenstein claims that “there’s no doubt” that Kasztner was “a collaborator of
the worst sort.” This is a deliberate lie. Greenstein is well aware that the
accusation that Kasztner was a collaborator reached the Supreme Court in Israel
who ruled, “one cannot find moral defects in [Kastzner’s] behaviour, one cannot
find any causation between it and the expediting of the deportation and the
extermination and one cannot see it amounting to the degree of collaboration
with the Nazis.” (Ben Hecht, Perfidy Jerusalem: Milah press, 1999 p. 275)

7. To
suggest what Kastzner did with the Auschwitz Protocols, Greenstein relies upon
Vrba, but Vrba was not in Hungary and as such would not have known.

10.
Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of
certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others. Kasztner made
other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals.

http://socialistunity.com/green-party-conference-fringe-anti-zionism-a-jewish-perspective/#comments

The fact
that Kasztner, who was leader of Hungarian Zionism and played a pivotal role in
not informing Hungary’s Jews about their fate (it would have been relatively
easy for many to escape to Rumania, which was now a refuge). As a result of the
persistent efforts of a real Jewish hero, Rudolph Vrba, one of only 5 Jewish
escapees from Auschwitz, the cover ups and lies of Yad Vashem have crumbled.

Even
Yisrael Guttman, their leading historian after Yehuda Bauer finally admitted
that: “Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but at that
time 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.’ Ruth Linn, Escaping Auschwitz – A Culture of Not Forgetting,
Cornell University Press, 2004, p.72 citing Shoah Vezikaron (which of course
makes nonsense of point 7 of Mad Mikey’s defence of Kasztner above!

I don’t
intend to go into Nazi-Zionist collaboration, be it over the Transfer/Trading
Agreement (Ha’varah) or the well known fact that between 1933 and 1939 the
Nazis favoured Zionist organisations. I simply cite the order of Heydrich,
described as the engineer of the final solution by Gerald Reitlinger in The
Final Solution:

‘On
January 28 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich, who was head of the RSHA [German State and
Nazi SS police units] until his assassination in 1942 by Czech partisans, and
the “real engineer of the final solution” issued a directive stating: “The
activity of the Zionist-orientated youth organisations… lies in the interest of
the National Socialist state’s leadership [these organisations] are not to be
treated with the strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the
so-called German Jewish organisations (assimilationists).”

Schwarze
Korps, paper of the SS, agreed: ‘The Zionists adhere to a strict racial
position and by emigrating to Palestine are helping to build their own Jewish
state.’ whereas ‘The assimilation minded Jews deny their race and insist on
their loyalty to Germany… in order to subvert National Socialist principles.’

Both
these quotes can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews, pp. 116,
118. Dawidowicz was an ardent Zionist.

But maybe
the final word on this should be left to Ben Gurion’s official biographer or
hagriographer, Shabtai Teveth:

‘The
genocide of Europe’s Jews ‘prompted no change in the position of the Jewish
leadership in the United States… (Ben-Gurion) concentrated all his efforts on
the [Zionist] program, not to the tragedy of European Jewry Teveth p.842.

Teveth
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.’
(my emphasis) Ben-Gurion’s attitude to the holocaust :

Disaster
is strength if channeled to a productive course. The whole trick of Zionism is
that it knows how to channel our disaster not into despondency or degradation,
as is the case in the Diaspora, but into a source of creativity and
exploitation. Teveth pp. 851, 853.

These
citations are contained in a chapter of Ben Gurion’s biography ‘The Burning
Ground 1886-1948 entitled ‘Disaster Means Strength’. This was exactly the
attitude of the Zionist movement towards the holocaust.

tony greenstein

August 3,
2014 at 2:21 am

7. To
suggest what Kastzner did with the Auschwitz Protocols, Greenstein relies upon
Vrba, but Vrba was not in Hungary and as such would not have known.

http://socialistunity.com/green-party-conference-fringe-anti-zionism-a-jewish-perspective/#comments

Both
these quotes can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews, pp. 116,
118. Dawidowicz was an ardent Zionist.

But maybe
the final word on this should be left to Ben Gurion’s official biographer or
hagriographer, Shabtai Teveth:

‘The genocide
of Europe’s Jews ‘prompted no change in the position of the Jewish leadership
in the United States… (Ben-Gurion) concentrated all his efforts on the
[Zionist] program, not to the tragedy of European Jewry Teveth p.842.

I also
forgot to add that quoting from Israel’s declaration of independence is
useless. It was not incorporated into Israeli law unlike a host of overtly
racist legislation that we have seen in the past few years (for example Access
to Communities Act 2013).

Mikey
Ezra admits now that Kasztner collaborated with the Nazis but pretends that he
betrayed Hungary’s Zionists! He is singing from a different song sheet than
that which he used to use. To cite some examples from a debate on Socialist
Unity: Perhaps he would be so kind as to tell us what or who it was that
convinced him that he had been supporting a collaborator with the Nazis?

Tony
Greenstein claims that “there’s no doubt” that Kasztner was “a collaborator of
the worst sort.” This is a deliberate lie. Greenstein is well aware that the
accusation that Kasztner was a collaborator reached the Supreme Court in Israel
who ruled, “one cannot find moral defects in [Kastzner’s] behaviour, one cannot
find any causation between it and the expediting of the deportation and the
extermination and one cannot see it amounting to the degree of collaboration with
the Nazis.” (Ben Hecht, Perfidy Jerusalem: Milah press, 1999 p. 275)

7. To
suggest what Kastzner did with the Auschwitz Protocols, Greenstein relies upon
Vrba, but Vrba was not in Hungary and as such would not have known.

http://socialistunity.com/green-party-conference-fringe-anti-zionism-a-jewish-perspective/#comments

In so far
as the case of Rudolf Kasztner, it is true that I have changed my view. I used
to think that he was not Nazi collaborator, but evidence I located led me to
change my opinion. This is quite important. Karl Popper’s attack on Marxism in
his Open Society and its Enemies was in part because when something has
been shown to be false a theory should be discredited. Time and time again
Marx’s predictions have been shown to be false but die hard Marxists cling to
them. Falsification is rejected. I, on the other hand, accept this idea. If
something is shown to be false then the theory should be rejected. Hence my
theory that Kasztner was not a collaborator was rejected by evidence I located,
in amongst other places, Israeli archives. As Greenstein boycotts Israel he
will not go to the Israeli archives so he relies on secondary information. At
any rate, what is clear is that despite the fact that Kasztner collaborated
with the Nazis, it is not evidence that “Zionism collaborated with the Nazis.”
Despite notionally belonging to a Zionist party, with his behaviour Kasztner
betrayed the Zionists. Moshe Krausz, also active in Hungary is a far better
case study for looking at what Zionists wanted to do in the Holocaust. One can
also look up the actions of the Zionist youth, some of which is documented by
Asher Cohen, in his book. The Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 1942-1944.
In fact Kasztner also betrayed the Zionist youth. Greenstein repeated charge
that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis has been completely dismissed by
Francis R. Nicosia. In his 2008 book. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi
Germany published by Cambridge University Press, (which Greenstein has read
– but chooses to ignore) he states clearly (pp2-3) in relation to such a charge
that the “research, analysis, and conclusions contained in these pages do not
in any way support such notions.”

Greenstein
repeatedly refers to his so-called anti-fascist work. But he ignores the fact
that there were those in the movement that despised him. In 1986, NUS President
Vicky Phillips spoke at the UJS conference. She was asked about Tony Greenstein
and replied that his involvement in Anti-Fascist Action “brings the whole
organisation into disrepute.” She urged delegates to write to AFA expressing
concern. (Jewish Chronicle, December 26, 1986).

Greenstein
also has a geography problem. He states, as an example.”. I identify, unlike
all others here, with the people of Palestine and Gaza.” Greenstein clearly
thinks that Gaza is somewhere else.

And Ilan
Pappe? He is a laughing stock. Nobody with credibility takes him seriously
academically. And nor does anyone with credibility take Lenni Brenner
seriously, despite the fact that that Greenstein would wish they did.

Michael
Ezra

August
17, 2014 at 5:23 pm

There’s
nothing wrong with being wrong but Ezra defended Kasztner with all the
vehemence that he defends Zionism’s record in general. He accused me and others
of the same sins of historical ignorance that he now confesses he was guilty
of. You don’t need to go to Israeli archives to know that Kasztner was a
collaborator, just read Ben Hecht’s Perfidy (a Zionist) or indeed Randolph
Braham’s Politics of Genocide and draw your own conclusions. Kasztner was a
representative of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish govt in waiting. He toured
Europe post-1945 giving testimony for a variety of Nazi war criminals including
Herman Krumey, Eichmann’s second-in-command in Hungary who was responsible for
the round-up of Croation Jews and the deportation of over 100 children from
Lidice to Lodz. When the Americans arrested Krumey in 1945 in Italy it was
Kasztner’s specific intervention that got him released rather than executed.

He even
tried to save the neck (and failed) of Dieter Wisliceny, who organised the
first deportation of Jews from Slovakia to Auschwitz and Maidenek. Ezra
defended these and at least 5 other such testimonies. Does he recant his
support for Kasztner and the Jewish Agency’s campaign to exonerate leading
Nazis at Nuremburg. Kasztner was supported by the State of Israel and its
Attorney General Haim Cohen in his prosecution of Malchiel Greenwald, an
elderly Hungarian Jew, in Israel, for defamation. The evidence was in abundance
but like one of the Soviet puppets he descries Ezra decided to defend Kasztner
come what may until Paul Bogdanor told him that he was suspect.

Apparently,
Kasztner’s behaviour ‘is not evidence that “Zionism collaborated with the
Nazis.’ Apparently he only ‘notionally’ belonged to a Zionist party. How
interesting. Most people hold him to have been the leader of Hungarian Zionism,
a minority (Ihud) within a minority. There is, with Krausz’s exception, which I
have often quoted, no sign that there was widespread disapproval within the
Hungarian Zionist movement of the train he organised to rescue 1,600 leading
Zionists and bourgeois elements whilst keeping the rest of the 450,000 Jews
ignorant of their fate. The evidence was there, Ezra chose to ignore it.

Quoting
Francis Nicosia is useless. His evidence is invaluable, his conclusions less
so. He is scared of drawing the obvious conclusions, viz. that Zionism was a
movement of collaboration and he engages in verbal gymnastics. But contrary to
Ezra’s claim I often cite Nicosia.

I also
cite the official biographer/hagiographer of David Ben-Gurion, Shabtai Teveth,
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.’ [Shabtai
Teveth: The Burning Ground, 1987, 850]. The chapter from which this is taken,
Disaster Means Strength, tells us everything we need to know about the attitude
of the Jewish Agency leaders during the holocaust.

Lenni
Brenner is a very excellent polemical historian and his book, Zionism in the
Age of the Dictators, remains unanswered to this day. But regardless, I do have
criticisms of his analysis and they will appear in the forthcoming issue of the
Journal of Holy Land Studies.

Tony
Greenstein

August
25, 2014 at 12:29 am

·
Some brief comments about Kasztner:

1. Having
discussed the Kasztner issue regularly with Michael Ezra over about 10 years, I
can testify that he changed his mind on the subject before I did (and for
different reasons).

2. If
Greenstein were more familiar with the Kasztner issue he would not be surprised
at the suggestion that Kasztner’s conduct in Hungary was unrepresentative of
Zionism. Judge Benjamin Halevi himself stated in his verdict:

“Calls
from leaders of the Yishuv (Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Moshe Shertok, Yitzhak Gruenbaum)
for self-defence and resistance by Diaspora Jews were sent to the rescue
committee in Budapest. After the Nazi occupation, the [Zionist] pioneer
movements established their own ‘headquarters’ in Budapest and organised
information, escape and bunker actions as well as preparations for resistance.”
(Section 33)

And:

“Experience
had taught the Nazis that everywhere the Zionists were the ‘activist’ element
in the Jewish population and were able to supply the leadership for resistance
and anti-Nazi operations.” (Section 34)

3. In his
initial affidavit for the Allied war crimes investigators in September 1945,
Kasztner identified Becher, Wisliceny and the rest as Nazi war criminals. It
was only later that he started to praise them as rescuers. So these later
affidavits, taken alone, do not prove Kasztner’s wartime collaboration. Nor is
there any good evidence (in Shoshana Barri’s article or elsewhere) that
Kasztner’s affidavits praising Nazi war criminals were submitted on the Jewish
Agency’s instructions.

4.
Greenstein has only himself to blame if others do not find his writings on the
Kasztner issue persuasive. The centrepiece of Greenstein’s case has always been
Eichmann’s interview in Life Magazine. In that interview Eichmann also stated:

(a)
Auschwitz “was not primarily a death camp.”

(b)
post-war, “the Auschwitzers [sic] sprouted like mushrooms out of the forest
floor after a rain. Hundreds of thousands of them are today in the best of
health.”

Does
Greenstein expect his arguments to be taken seriously when he relies on such
“evidence”?

Paul Bogdanor

August
26, 2014 at 3:50 pm

·
In his response to my criticism of his fellow Zionist traducer, Michael
Ezra, Paul Bogdanor demonstrates why he is a propagandist for whom the
historical method of weighing up evidence is alien. There is an absolute
abundance of evidence that the Zionist movement, in particular its leadership,
collaborated with the Nazis and prioritised building their ‘Jewish’ state at
the expense of rescuing Jews. Even honest and open Zionists accept that the
historical record of Zionism is flawed but not so Bogdanor who will go to the
grave denying the obvious.

SB
Beit-Zvi, in a painstakingly detailed analysis of the leadership of the Jewish
Agency, [Post-Ugandan Zionism On Trial] the Yishuv (Jewish community in
Palestine’s response to the holocaust) government-in-waiting, notes how the
Zionist press poured cold water on reports of the holocaust, to the extent that
they quoted Nazi sources that things weren’t as bad as were being made out. As
the leader of US Jewry wrote:

I
succeeded, together with the heads of other Jewish organizations, in keeping
them [the cables about the systematic mass murder] out of the press.’ [The
Terrible Secret p.160 Walter Lacquer]

On March
23, 1943, Davar (paper of the Histadrut the semi-official paper of the Jewish
Agency] was reprimanded by Yosef Gravitzky, managing editor of the Jewish
Agency’s Palcor news agency, for copying from a Nazi paper, Ostland, a “report”
that two million Jews remained in Poland, after the paper had reported one day
earlier on the same page that no more than two hundred thousand Jews were still
alive in all of Poland. ‘The Germans’ objective is clear,” Gravitzky wrote.
‘They themselves announce the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto but at the same
time circulate reports that two million Jews are Still alive in Poland. But why
should we assist them in this work?” [p.78, Beit-Zvi]

On 23rd
November the Jewish Agency had been forced to release the cable of Gerhard
Riegner in Geneva that the holocaust was underway (they had had possession of
this cable but deferred to the wishes of Welles of the US State Department to
keep quiet) but barely a month later, on December 27, 1942, the Yishuv was
informed that the mass destruction of Polish Jewry had ceased. This news was
contained in a statement issued on behalf of the Rescue Committee by Yitzhak
Ben-Zvi, chairman of the National Council. The whole statement was couched in a
tone of concern and alarm. It spoke about mass murders at Belzec and Treblinka.
It expressed apprehension that half of Polish Jewry had already been
annihilated. But at the same time, it was stated explicitly that the mass
destruction had been halted. Davar 27.12.42.

Beit-Zvi
asks how this report of the cessation of the holocaust had been obtained. His
answer is that the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee ‘had the good fortune to
receive from the offices in Istanbul and Geneva copies of a certain Nazi
document–and from it they gleaned what they wished to glean.’ In addition the
editions of the “Official Gazette” of the General Government in Occupied Poland
in Cracow from November 1-10, 1942, published the names of 53 (according to
Gruenbaum, 55 places which were designated for Jewish residence. A date was set
for concentrating the Jews in these places and for the uprooting of their
non-Jewish residents. The orders said nothing either about the destruction or
about its cessation. However, the interpretation of the Jewish Agency was that
so long as the concentration process went on, no destruction would be carried
out It was decided to inform the public of this development, citing the key
details. It was especially noted “that the German orders even allow every Jew
to choose which of the 53 locales he wishes to live in, the condition being
that he will not be able to change his mind afterward. “ [ Hatzofeh, December
28, 1942, S Beit Zvi p. 79]

Even
Walter Lacquer, as dedicated a Zionist as any, admitted that ‘Zionists,
including leaders of the World Jewish Congress, were absorbed in ‘post-war
planning’ and were paying little more than ceremonious attention to what was
happening in Europe in stark contrast to the outcries from Geneva and Istanbul
demanding immediate action to save the remnants.’ Walter Lacquer, p.194, The
Terrible Secret, p.65, Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1980 citing Y
Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Seattle, 1978), p.28.

But to
Bogdanor, the loyal Zionist propagandist, nothing the Zionist movement did was
wrong. He can hear, speak nor see any evil. He understands nothing and attacks
all critics, on the flimsiest of grounds.

Frankly
it doesn’t matter one jot whether it was he or Ezra who first changed their
minds. What I do know is that Ezra defended every action of Kasztner including
testifying on behalf of the Nazi war criminals.

Benjamin
Halevi was an uber-Zionist. He made findings of fact regarding Kasztner’s
behaviour, much to the squeals of the Labour Zionists but he was a supporter of
the Zionist right-wing and of course he sought to exonerate Zionism as a whole.
The point is whether someone like myself, an impartial outsider, should go
along with this. Again Bogdanor is not in such a position.

Halevi is
wrong to suggest that the Zionists ‘were able to supply the leadership for
resistance and anti-Nazi operations.”. On the contrary, everywhere there were
collaborators, leaders of the Jewish police, Judenrat Chairman, there were
Zionists. As Isaiah Trunk, a committed Zionist wrote, 67.1% of members of the
Judenrat were Zionists. Over two-thirds of the Judenräte (67.1%) consisted of
Zionist supporters of all factions. . [Judenrat: the Jewish councils in eastern
Europe under Nazi occupation, New York 1972, p.32.].

Yes in
his initial affidavit for the US war crime investigators, Kasztner labelled
Kurt Becher, Wisliceny et al. as war criminals. So the question any serious
historian would ask is blindingly obvious (but not to Bogdanor). What made him
change his mind?

Which is
why I have revised my opinion of Kasztner. Yes he was undoubtedly a
collaborator but in his post-war work he was acting under direction. A strong
indication is given by Shoshana Barri [Bari (Ishoni), Shoshana (1997) ‘The
question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on behalf of Nazi war Criminals’, Journal of
Israeli History]

Bogdanor
writes that there is no ‘good evidence (in Shoshana Barri’s article or
elsewhere) that Kasztner’s affidavits praising Nazi war criminals were
submitted on the Jewish Agency’s instructions.’ To Bogdanor there is no
evidence which is good enough (unless he agrees with it!). I will paraphrase
and cite, in some detail, what Barri actually says in order that others can
make a judgement.

‘Kasztner
testified repeatedly on behalf of Nazi war criminals through to his final
testimony at Nuremberg in May 1948. The most well known testimony was given on
behalf of Becher in August 1947. [143]… In May 1948, a statement given by
Kasztner at Nuremberg stated that Krumey “performed his tasks displaying
remarkable good will towards those whose life or death depended to a great
extent upon the way.” This was the person who personally implemented the murder
of 437,000 Jews in the final solution in Hungary. A memorandum of July 1947
indicates that Kasztner appealed to have Wisliceny transferred from Slovak to
American custody. The Jewish Agency knew about this too…. Kasztner felt that a
plot was brewing against him from within his own movement, and accused Eliahu
Dobkin of the JAE of being part of it. In December 1945, Kasztner wrote Dobkin
a furious letter. Kasztner had been fearful of even coming to Palestine. He
first arrived (after the initial testimonies in Geneva and Nuremberg) in
December 1947. He left two months later at the request of the American
prosecution at Nuremberg, and returned to Palestine in May 1948.

Throughout
the entire period of Kasztner’s testimonies, Kasztner received travel expenses
and financial assistance from the Jewish Agency’s Palestine Office in Geneva
and later, during his travels to and stays in Nuremberg, he was funded in part
by the court which had invited him, but also by the Jewish Agency and the WJC.
Between 1945 and 1948, the period of Kasztner’s various testimonies on behalf
of Nazi war criminals, his travels and expenses were funded primarily, albeit
not continuously, by Zionist organizations. [149]

When
asked about his testimony on Becher’s behalf, Kasztner claimed that he had been
permitted to testify by Dobkin, who represented the Jewish Agency in Istanbul
and Chaim Barlas, a member of Mossad. [150] However, when Dobkin was called to
the witness stand, he denied ever having heard Becher’s name.

In a
December 1994 interview with Ha’aretz Gideon Raphael, … one of the founders of
the Israeli Foreign Ministry, claimed that he had turned down an offer by
Wisliceny to help the Jewish Agency locate Eichmann in return for Wisliceny’s
own life. [154] However, he did not detail the extent of the Jewish Agency’s
involvement in respect of Wisliceny. Ruffer and Dr. Steiner wanted Wisliceny,
the butcher of Slovakian and Greek Jewry, transferred back to American custody,
fearing that the Slovaks would hang him. Wisliceny however, who was responsible
for the deportation to Auschwitz and Maidenek of most of Slovakian Jewry, ended
up on the scaffold. In February 1948, Ruffer wrote to Murray Gurfein (assistant
to Robert Jackson,) in New York asking that Wisliceny give them information
regarding Eichmann’s whereabouts, wondering whether it is feasible for the
United States authorities in charge of war crimes to accept Wisliceny’s offer,
as I feel that no opportunity should be lost which may lead to the eventual
apprehension of Eichmann. [155]

The
question was asked whether Dobkin had approved Kasztner’s testimonies. The
question was not asked, however, with regard to the other people mentioned by
Kasztner: Barlas, Riegner and Perlzweig. … No document has come to light to
indicate that Barlas gave Kasztner authorisation to testify. It is interesting
to note, however, that a letter was written to the Rescue Committee in Budapest
during the war (August 1944) from Istanbul, where Barlas was stationed. (August
1944) from Istanbul, instructing the Committee to offer the Germans “money and
only money for certain purposes” Chaim Barlas was responsible for Aliya Bet,
whose purpose was to defy the British, secure the entry of Zionist refugees and
their use as manpower in the war of 1947-9.

Barlas
also mentioned that “the other side should be made aware that we offer them not
only money. We will not forget those who stand beside us today, and that is
more important than money.” The alibi that the Jewish Agency could provide Nazi
criminals was a desired commodity in the final stages of the war; it was, in
fact, the only thing they had to offer at the time.’

Sworn
statements for the Nazi war criminals that Kasztner testified for, including
Herbert Kettliz, (Hamburg) dated June 3, 1948, and Wilhelm Eggen (Nuremberg)
dated August 17, 1948. [fn. 64, 159]

Gideon
Raphael confirmed [to Ha’aretz] that Dobkin had in fact known Becher’s name.
According to Raphael, Kasztner informed Dobkin and Raphael himself that he was
going to be testifying on behalf of Wisliceny, Becher and Krumey, and Dobkin
and Raphael expressed their opposition. According to Raphael, in other words,
not only had Dobkin heard Becher’s name, but both he and Raphael in fact had
prior knowledge of Kasztner’s intention to testify on Becher’s behalf.

Barri
believes that Kasztner’s claim ‘sounds plausible.’ Dobkin was about to meet
Becher during the war. Becher’s name appeared innumerable times in Kasztner’s
report and in all of the correspondence dealing with the “Becher deposit” –
correspondence with which Dobkin was surely familiar, at least in part, as one
who had been active in rescue matters and as a member of the JAE.’

Barri
suggests that the Jewish Agency denied all knowledge of the testimony Kasztner
gave at Nuremberg, because at the time it was easier to do so. ‘Testimony on
behalf of Becher was not given in a political vacuum…. It was rather the result
of his connections as a representative of Jewish organizations in the
negotiations for obtaining the “Becher deposit.” [140] This deposit, which
consisted of large amounts of the wealth of Hungarian Jewry, disappeared.

Barri
concludes that ‘The testimonies become more comprehensible only when all three
factors are examined: Kasztner, the Americans, and the Jewish Agency. [234] One
can, in this context, better understand Kasztner’s motive in testifying on
their behalf, whether he had received the explicit prior authorisation of the
Jewish Agency, or whether such authorisation was only partial and retroactive.
Kasztner acted in Nuremberg as representative of the Jewish Agency and the
World Jewish Congress. [164] He considered himself authorised to testify in
their name in a matter that did not seem to him to deviate from the general
framework in which he was operating. If we accept the ideas raised above, the
question arises as to why Kasztner did not claim during the trial that this was
the situation into which he had fallen. And why, furthermore, did the relevant
protagonists in Israel not admit this? The truth of the matter is that
throughout the entire period (between 1952 and 1957) the matter was never in
fact fully investigated. The new ‘Jewish’ State could not admit that it had
established contacts with Nazi officers (such as Becher and Wisliceny), and had
approved testimonies and appeals on their behalf. [165]

So
Bogdanor’s assertion that there is no good evidence in Barri’s article or
elsewhere that the Jewish Agency had approved, including financing Kasztner’s
expedition in Europe, just don’t stand up.

In his
silliest point, I am told that people like Bogdanor don’t find my writings
persuasive because I make Eichmann’s interview with Life Magazine the
‘centrepiece of my case. In fact I rarely quote them but what if I did? Rudolph
Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz’s book, is often cited by historians, usually
critically. Even Francis Nicosia, who Ezra cites, in this Third Reich and the
Palestine Question cites Hitler’s Mein Kampf! Most historians cite the Nazis
and in fact Eichmann’s interview is extremely useful.

As the
site ‘holocaust history’ answers in response to a question as to whether there
are any serious doubts about its reliability http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/eichmann-adolf.shtml
‘No. Almost everything he says has been corroborated.’

The
questioner notes that holocaust denial sites have removed references to it,
citing it as a forgery. The response? Not surprising. It’s no surprise that the
holocaust deniers and Bogdanor line up in unison either.

In a post
‘Misreading ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/misreading-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Roger Berkowitz states [July 7, 2013] that ‘The best treatment of Eichmann’s
writing in Argentina is by the German scholar Bettina Stangneth. In her 2011
book “Eichmann vor Jerusalem” Stangneth showed that Sassen was a Holocaust
denier who attempted to get Eichmann to deny the Holocaust, which Eichmann did
not. On the contrary, Eichmann boasted of his accomplishments, worried that he
hadn’t done enough, and justified his role. http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/german/einsatzgruppen/esg/trials/profiles/confession.html

The
Nizkor Project is an ambitious programme to document the Holocaust in response
to the holocaust deniers. It reprints the whole of Eichmann’s interview.
Clearly Bogdanor is desperate if he attacks my use of this among many other
sources (and not that in the original post I did not mention even my
‘centrepiece’!

As I
noted about, even Ben Gurion’s hagiographer/biographer Shabitai Teveth
concludes that Ben Gurion’s attitude to the holocaust was that it was a
beneficial opportuhity. Not so the devoted Bogdanor whose lack of any criticism
of Zionism’s record during the holocaust marks him down as a cheap
propagandist.

Tony
Greenstein

August
27, 2014 at 4:46 am

·
Tony Greenstein’s tediously long-winded response is as comical as
expected. I must admit that I laughed long and hard when I reached Greenstein’s
self-description as “an impartial outsider.” Greenstein, is, of course, a
self-declared Marxist-Leninist, allegedly of the Trotskyist variety, although
in the case of the Holocaust he relentlessly regurgitates the Stalinist hate
propaganda against Zionism.

To
proceed to his concrete claims (most of which have nothing to do with my
original comments):

1. The
idea that the Yishuv didn’t give publicity to the Holocaust, which Greenstein
parrots from Shabtai Beit-Zvi (a Revisionist Zionist) is easily demolished by
quoting the Zionist press. On Dec.1, 1942, for example, The Palestine Post
reported:

“The
Elected Assembly… of Palestine Jews in an extraordinary session at the Jewish
Agency Hall in Jerusalem yesterday morning appealed to the United Nations to
exert every effort to put a stop to the slaughter of Jews in Europe and rescue
those threatened with death, especially the children.”

The
report goes on to quote public declarations from numerous Zionist leaders,
including Ben-Zvi, Szold, the Chief Rabbis of Palestine and Ben-Gurion. The
latter appealed to the Allies:

“There
are German nationals in the United States, in England, in Russia, and other
countries. Demand that they be exchanged for the Jews of Poland and Lithuania
and other countries under Nazi rule. Allow those who are able to, to escape. Do
not close your gates to them. First and foremost, rescue the Jewish children.
Bring them into neutral countries. Bring them to your own countries. Bring them
here.”

The
Assembly then read a resolution appealing to “the United Nations, neutrals,
heads of Churches and the leaders of all progressive movements to warn the Nazi
Government that reprisals will be exacted unless the murder of defenceless
people by armed brigands ceases. The resolution also reiterates the appeal to
rescue the survivors of the atrocities, and urges greater freedom for the
Jewish forces to take part in the fight against the Nazis.”

I could
easily quote dozens of reports in a similar vein. So much for Greenstein’s
Stalinist inventions about “Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.”

2.
Greenstein’s statistics about Zionists in the Jewish Councils are irrelevant,
as many – possibly most – of the Jewish Councils did not collaborate and did
their best to help the Jews for whom they were responsible. Arendt’s claims to
the contrary, which Greenstein has always repeated as gospel truth, are
rejected by the historical profession, including Greenstein’s source Trunk.
Likewise, Greenstein’s claims about German Zionists are contradicted by his own
source, the historian Nicosia. But then Greenstein has never worried about
contradicting his sources. In the past he has even claimed Zionist inspiration
for the introduction to the Nuremberg Laws, citing a passage from Nicosia
stating nothing of the kind.

3.
Turning to Kasztner – the sole subject of my comments – Greenstein now
dismisses as an “uber-Zionist” the judge Halevi, who famously condemned
Kasztner for selling his soul to the Devil. And in doing so, Greenstein refutes
his own fantasy that Kasztner’s behaviour was somehow representative of
Zionism. For if Kasztner was acting on behalf of the Zionists, then why did a
Zionist court condemn him? Likewise, why did the Zionists of Kolozsvar (Cluj)
try to prosecute him before a People’s Tribunal (1945)? Why was he investigated
by the first post-war Zionist Congress (1946)? Why did Israel pass the Nazis
and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law (1950)? Why was Kasztner interrogated
by the Israeli police (1951)?

4.
Greenstein’s melange of quotations and paraphrase from Barri’s article
backfires completely, confirming my position: the Jewish Agency gave no
instructions to Kasztner to testify for Nazi war criminals. There is not one
word anywhere in Greenstein’s diatribe proving Jewish Agency instructions to
testify on behalf on Becher, Krumey or Juttner. The memorandum on Wisliceny’s
transfer from Slovak to US custody, which may or may not have been known in
advance to the Jewish Agency, contained nothing exonerating Wisliceny and
merely aimed to secure information for the capture of Eichmann. I defy
Greenstein to quote – clearly and succinctly – any documentary evidence in
Barri’s article or anywhere else establishing that the Jewish Agency ordered
Kasztner to give affidavits exonerating any Nazi war criminal.

5. Finally,
Greenstein turns to defending EIchmann’s interview denying the Holocaust – and
has the chutzpah to accuse his critic of acting “in unison” with those who deny
the Holocaust. In this interview, which Greenstein considers “extremely useful”
because Eichmann confirms his prejudices, Eichmann declared that Auschwitz “was
not primarily a death camp,” that “the Auschwitzers [sic] sprouted like
mushrooms out of the forest floor after a rain,” that “hundreds of thousands of
them are today in the best of health,” and that “the majority of the deportees
[from Hungary] were not gassed at all.” It is easy to see which of us, Bogdanor
or Greenstein, is reinforcing the claims of Holocaust deniers.

And the
same applies to Greenstein’s endorsement of Brenner’s propaganda tract, which
delighted the Holocaust deniers so much that it was reprinted by the neo-Nazi
Institute for Historical Review and is today available on neo-Nazi websites.

Falsifying
evidence, regurgitating Stalinist hate propaganda, citing interviews by
Eichmann and sources praised by Holocaust deniers: does Greenstein have no
shame?

Paul Bogdanor

August
27, 2014 at 4:56 pm

·
Bogdanor is incapable of dealing with any criticism without labelling it
Stalinist. Thereby he hopes to remove himself from the hook of his own
contradictions. Yes I thought Bogdanor would find my description of myself as
an impartial outsider amusing, however a sense of humour sometimes doesn’t go
amiss.

The late
Noah Lucas, a perceptive Zionist historian, noted that ‘As the European
holocaust expanded, Ben Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism…
Ben Gurion above all others sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the
dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe… the forces unleashed by Hitler in
all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. [Noah Lucas, The
Modern History of Zionism’ pp. 187-8]. But whereas Lucas, like many Zionist
historians, was capable of evaluating Zionist history critically and comparing
it with the ideas formulated by Herzl, Bogdanor is a one-trick pony, slavish in
his adoration of Zionist state worship. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
What is his response to even Ben-Gurion’s biographer, Shabtai Teveth? Nothing,
he has no answers. What is his response to Ben-Gurion’s opposition to
refugeeism, saving Jews whatever the destination? Nothing. And when Ben-Gurion
is cited by numerous sources that ‘If I knew that it would be possible to save
all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of
them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second
alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also
the history of the People of Israel’. [Yoav Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate
of European Jewry (1939-42), Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, p.199]. what is
Bogdanor’s response? Nothing because there cannot be one. Instead he shrieks
Stalinist!

Francis
Nicosia isn’t my source but Ezra’s! But it was Nicosia who observed that
‘Zionism (was) a volkisch Jewish nationalist ideology and movement that started
from some of the same philosophical premises as German nationalism…’ It is
Nicosia who points out that Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s favourite theoretician
(The Third Reich & Palestine p25). that “Zionism must be vigorously
supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave
for Palestine or other destinations” (TRP p.25). Rosenberg was fond of citing
the Zionists’ own arguments that the Jews were a separate people. Rosenberg
took this as “a clear affirmation that all Jews were aliens in Germany” (Zionism
And Nazi Germany p.70).

Even Lucy
Dawidowicz, a Zionist historian, notes in War Against Hitler, ‘On the 28th
January 1935, Heydrich issued an order stating that: ‘The activity of the
Zionist orientated youth organisations are not to be treated with the
strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German
Jewish organisations (assimilationists). (p.118)

Let us
see how Bogdanor ducks and dives rather than answer a simple question – why
should the official family biographer of Ben Gurion, cite Ben-Gurion that ‘The
harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism’ (Teveth 1987:
850). Does he not find this shocking, especially in the context of the
holocaust? Or the statement that ‘In spite of the certainty that genocide was
being carried out, the JAE did not deviate appreciably from its routine…’
(Teveth 1987 844). How about “distress” could also serve as ‘political
leverage’: ‘the destruction’ was a factor in ‘expediting our enterprise [and]
it is in our interest to use Hitler, [who] has not reduced our strength, for
the building of our country.’ [p.850] Or is the simple truth the fact that
Bogdanor’s loyalty to Zionism outweighs any concern for Zionism’s record in
relation to millions of Jews who died in the holocaust?

Isn’t the
truth, as Ben-Gurion himself wrote, that ‘Disaster is strength if channelled to
a productive course; the whole trick of Zionism is that it knows how to channel
our disaster, not into despondence or degradation, as is the case in the
Diaspora, but into a source of creativity and exploitation.’

It would
of course be interesting to hear Bogdanor’s views on the above, but being a
historical coward he prefers to plough the same clichés.

If
Bogdanor had read what I wrote I didn’t say that the Yishuv hadn’t given any
publicity to the Holocaust. Of course Zionism was rather good at staging
demonstrative rallies and the outpourings of grief. But then? It completely failed
to follow this up. It became merely a token. Bogdanor states that:

Yes the
Vaad Leumi and other Zionist bodies went through ritual appeals and
declarations before getting back to business. No one doubts that. But the drip,
drop of poison by the Zionist press (which Bogdanor daren’t tackle) had a much
more corrosive effect. They continually played down the very fact of and the
extent of the holocaust and warned against ‘atrocity propaganda’ as was the
case in World War I. I cited a couple of instances, there are dozens of such
examples where denials of extermination were made despite refugees from Nazi
occupation coming to Palestine as exchange prisoners.

How does
Bogdanor explain away the fact that Davar reported, from Nazi sources, that the
holocaust had come to an end in December 1942? He doesn’t, it’s that simple.
When faced with an insoluble quandary, he witters at length and moves on.

As Shmuel
Zyglebojm, one of two Bund representatives in the Polish-Government-in-exile,
was doing his best to spread news of the Holocaust and despairing over the
response (he committed suicide as a forlorn protest) Zionist leaders in
Palestine were thinking about the advantages they would accrue as a result of
the holocaust.

Bogdanor
is in deep water when he claims that statistics about Zionists in the Jewish
Councils are irrelevant and that most of them did not collaborate and did their
best to help the Jews for whom they were responsible. Trunk is not my source,
he is Yad Vashem’s, as Bogdanor would know if he was acquainted with the
subject. Virtually all leaders of the Judenrat were Zionists – from the Dutch
Joodische Road to the Belgian AJB, whose leader Holcinger was executed by the
Belgian resistance.

Judenrat
which did have the interests of the Jews at their heart were a distinct
minority, usually located near the Soviet Partisans and forests where there was
an opportunity for escape. One such was Moshkin in Minsk and there were a
number of smaller ghettos where the same applied, but they were very much the
minority.

Bogdanor
cites Hannah Arendt’s claims regarding the Judenrat. It is backed up by the
most eminent of all holocaust historians, Raul Hilberg. Bogdanor by way of
contrast merely parrots second rate Zionist historians.

3.
Bogdanor complains that I dismiss as an “uber-Zionist” Judge Halevi. I do no
such thing, I merely point out that his observations on Zionism as a whole
weren’t part of the evidence so much as his own opinions. But Bogdanor has no
hesitation in dismissing the evidence of SB Beit Zvi because he was
(apparently) a revisionist!

Bogdanor
asks ‘why did the Zionists of Kolosvar (Cluj) try to prosecute him before a
People’s Tribunal (1945)?’ But it wasn’t the Zionists of Kolosvar but all those
who returned from Auschwitz or who had escaped who tried him. The Peoples’
Tribunals did not accept references from Zionists. As David Rozner, a steel
mill owner from Kluj at the Kasztner trial, testified: (Hecht, pp.94/5 Perfidy)

Tamir:
When you returned to Kluj after the war, what was the general opinion there of
Dr. Kasztner?

Rozner:
There was a violent feeling against Dr. Kasztner. If he had showed himself in
the street he would have been killed…. Because he was the man who misled the
Jews to believe in the good intentions of the Germans [Testimony of Mr. Levy
Blum of Kluj in C.C. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem].

Bogdanor
asks ‘Why was he [Kasztner] investigated by the first post-war Zionist Congress
(1946)? Why did Israel pass the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law
(1950)? Why was Kasztner interrogated by the Israeli police (1951)?

The
answer is simplicity itself. Because of the allegations swirling around
Kasztner the Israeli state had no alternative but to investigate him. More to
the point is why they investigated and found he had no case to answer. Perhaps
Bogdanor can explain?

When
Hannah Arendt’s reports of the Eichmann trial were published in The Observer
(September 15 1963), Jacob Talmon, a professor at the Hebrew University
Jerusalem attacked her for raising the issue of Zionist collaboration with the
Nazis. In reply Rudolf Vrba (the Jewish hero who had escaped from Auschwitz
with Alfred Wetzler) to warn Hungarian Jews of their fate, recalled how in
April 1944 Oskar Neumann of the Zionist Judenrat in Slovakia was handed his
report into the extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.

‘Did the
Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting
them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders – for
example, Kasztner – bartered their own lives and the lives of 1,684 other
“prominent” Jews directly from Eichmann.’ [yes I know Vrba mistook the
Judenrat for Vaada].

After
publication of Vrba’s memoirs and the Auschwitz Protocols in Hebrew in 1998,
Yisrael Guttman [a senior Yad Vashem historian finally acknowledged that
“Kasztner was given a copy of the report on April 29 1944” ‘together with other
Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the
negotiations with the Nazis.” This is the culpability of Zionism’s
representative in Hungary.

4.
Bogdanor claims that there is not one word anywhere in Greenstein’s diatribe
proving Jewish Agency instructions to testify on behalf on Becher, Krumey or
Juttner. Bogdanor challenges me to quote – clearly and succinctly – any
documentary evidence in Barri’s article or anywhere else establishing that the
Jewish Agency ordered Kasztner to give affidavits exonerating any Nazi war
criminal.

Bogdanor’s
challenge is typical of his ahistorical approach. Of course the Jewish Agency
didn’t produce a document saying ‘we authorised our representative Kasztner to
intercede on behalf of the worst Nazis war criminals’ any more than the Hitler
order for the final solution was written down. We work from an accumulation of
circumstantial evidence as did Barri, who is explicitly clear, so much so that
if Bogdanor really doesn’t understand it is more a consequence of his own
stupidity than anything else:

Barri
writes that: ‘One can, in this context, better understand Kasztner’s motive in
testifying on their behalf, whether he had received the explicit prior
authorisation of the Jewish Agency, or whether such authorisation was only
partial and retroactive. Kasztner acted in Nuremberg as representative of the
Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. [164] He considered himself
authorised to testify in their name in a matter that did not seem to him to
deviate from the general framework in which he was operating.’ Bogdanor however
prefers to avert his eyes.

And as a
last gasp of desperation, I am a ‘defender’ of Eichmann’s interview! I don’t
defend interviews, I look at them, like most people for evidence. Hence I
quoted the Nizkor Project and the Holocaust Project. But for Bogdanor, quoting
something is ‘defending’ it. So presumably quoting any Nazi tract is to defend
it! Ludicrous even by his shoddy standards.

Tony
Greenstein

August
27, 2014 at 9:45 pm

I am not
sure why Greenstein continues to harp on about Kasztner when I informed him
that I changed my view. To suggest I changed my view because of what Paul
Bogdanor told me is a nonsense. I changed my opinion on Kasztner before
Paul did. Contrary to Greenstein’s claims there was widespread criticism by
Zionists of Greenstein’s actions in Hungary in 1944 and his postwar
testimonies. An example is Ben hecht’s Perfidy, the author Greenstein
admits is a Zionist. Then, even in the courts – in total six Israeli judges
(all, to my knowledge) Zionist, looked at the Kasztner/Grunwald case. All six
of them felt the attack on Kasztner for post war testifying for Nazi war
criminal by Grunwald was not libellous. Moreover, while of the those six, three
exonerated Kasztner from major charges, of collaboration, 2 accused him of
collaboration with the Nazis and one felt that the charges had to be taken as a
whole but because he(as well as the other judges) said that Grunwald’s claim that
Kasztner financially benefited from Nazi plunder was unjustified. That final
judge voted that Grunwald’s document as a whole was libellous. Away from that,
there was substantial attacks by Menachem Begin’s Herut Party on Kasztner.
(Begin, of course, went on to be the Prime Minister of Israel). In truth, the
leading critics of Kasztner: Judges Halevi and Silberg, author Ben Hecht and
many in Herut Party memberswere all Zionist. They came way before Lenni Brenner
and Jim Allen!

Greenstein
has no argument against what Francis Nicosia has said. It is just that
Nicosia’s conclusions, in a book published by the very reputable Cambridge
University Press, are not ones with which Greenstein agrees so he simply says
the conclusions are worthless. Greenstein would probably say the conclusion of
Pythagoras is worthless if he didn’t agree with Pythagoras about the the length
of sides in a right angled triangle.

Michael Ezra
(@MichaelEzra)

August
28, 2014 at 11:09 am

·
It must be said that Tony Greenstein has a gift for self-parody. In his
previous message, this Marxist-Leninst who echoes Stalinist hate propaganda
described himself as “impartial.” In his latest effusion, he accuses me of
“state worship” – this from a disciple of Trotsky, who observed that “the road
to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of
the principle of the state” and whose vision of communism was memorably
summarised by Leszek Kolakowski as one of a “huge permanent concentration camp
in which the government exercises absolute power over every aspect of the
citizens’ lives.”

Then he
accuses me of failing to respond to Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion’s biographer –
neglecting to mention that Teveth devoted an entire volume, Ben-Gurion and
the Holocaust, to the Zionist leader’s campaign to save Jews from the
Nazis. And he refers to “Ben-Gurion’s opposition to refugeeism, saving Jews
whatever the destination,” when I have already quoted one of Ben-Gurion’s many
calls for Jews to be brought to neutral countries and the West. He even drags
out Ben-Gurion’s statement about bringing half of Germany’s Jewish children to
the Land of Israel – a statement made before the Holocaust – after I had
already quoted Ben-Gurion demanding the rescue of all of Europe’s Jewish
children to countries other than the Land of Israel during the
Holocaust. Twist and turn as he will, Greenstein cannot evade the facts:
Ben-Gurion favoured the rescue of Jews no matter they were sent.

Greenstein’s
effort to construe Teveth’s quotations of Ben-Gurion in the worst possible
light cannot be taken seriously. Of course the harshness of the
affliction strengthened Zionism, because it showed that the Zionist diagnosis
and remedy for antisemitism were the correct ones. But then it is typical of
Greenstein to interpret a statement to mean the opposite of what the speaker
had in mind, just as it is characteristic of him to fabricate statements not in
his sources – such as his previous concoction, purportedly based on Nicosia,
about Zionist inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws.

As for
Greenstein’s hopeless attempt to cast Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg as a
supporter of Zionism, this is what Rosenberg actually had to say on the
subject: “Some of the locusts which have been sucking the marrow of Europe are
returning to the promised land and are already looking for greener pastures…
Zionism… helps ambitious speculators as a new field in which to practice usury
on a worldwide scale.” (Rosenberg, Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus,
Hamburg, 1922, pp. 62-3) Rosenberg went on to demand the legal prohibition of
Zionism in Germany and the prosecution of all Zionists for high treason. Once
again Greenstein has been caught red-handed falsifying his facts.

Greenstein
is forced to retract his previous “evidence” that Zionists did not give any
publicity to the Final Solution. Instead he now claims that they “played down
the very fact of and the extent of the holocaust” – when it was the Zionists
who were at the forefront of all attempts to lobby for rescue. Who set up the
rescue committees in Palestine and Turkey? Who set up the Joint Emergency
Committee for European Jewish Affairs in the US? Who set up the Emergency
Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry? Who prepared and translated the
Vrba-Wetzler report? Who smuggled it out to the West? Who were among the first
to demand the bombing of Auschwitz? In all cases, the Zionists. And what did
Greenstein’s Trotskyists ever say or do for the Jews of Europe – other than
opposing the Allied war effort against Nazism?

On the
Jewish Councils, Greenstein once again concedes defeat while crowing about
victory. He has no evidence that the majority of Jewish Councils collaborated.
While some members did, others warned the Jews in advance of Nazi actions while
still others resigned rather than obey Nazi orders, were removed for the same
reason, or committed suicide. But Greenstein already knows this.

On the
Kasztner affair, Greenstein offers another case study in deceit:

1. Having
dismissed Halevi as an “uber-Zionist,” he now denies ever using the term. I
encourage readers to check Greenstein’s previous post, in which he did dismiss
Halevi in precisely these words. And Halevi’s observations on Zionism were
factual conclusions, not opinions as he claims: one of Halevi’s key findings
was that the Zionist leaders had urged Europe’s Jews, including those in
Hungary, to prepare resistance to the Nazis.

2.
Greenstein’s comments on the People’s Tribunal in Kolozsvar/Cluj are another
case in point. David Rosner, whom he quotes, was a Zionist. And Yosef Krausz
testified at the Kasztner Trial: “it wasn’t the Communist Party who started
[the People’s Tribunal case against Kasztner]. The Zionists started it, saying
that Kasztner took the [Palestine] certificates, divided them among his friends
and sent the Zionists to Auschwitz.”

3. I
challenged Greenstein to quote anything in Barri’s article or anywhere else
proving that the Jewish Agency ordered Kasztner to exonerate Nazi war
criminals. After a desperate search, he is empty-handed. The passage he cites
states that Kasztner considered himself “authorised” to testify on
behalf of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress – not that they
authorised him to help Nazis. Elsewhere in her article Barri quotes Gerhard Riegner
of the WJC stating that Kasztner “never got any authority from me nor you nor
from the [Jewish] Agency to intervene on our behalf for Becher.” (Riegner to
Perlzweig, December 30, 1955, CZA, Z6/1117)

Finally
there is Greenstein’s attempt to wriggle out of his reliance on a Holocaust
denial source, Eichmann’s interview in Life magazine. Greenstein calls
the interview “extremely useful” even though Eichmann denied that Auschwitz was
a death camp and that Hungary’s Jews had been gassed. For Greenstein, any
source furthering his hate campaign against Zionism will do – even if it is
Eichmann himself, even if it is a denial of the Holocaust, even if it says the
opposite of what he claims. One could hardly sink any lower; but then all this
is only to be expected from one whose political movement opposed the war
against Nazism.

Paul Bogdanor

August
28, 2014 at 12:46 pm

·
I have posted a full response to the lies, deceptions and
misattributions of Ezra and in particular Bogdanor, a vicious anti-Communist
whose political position places him on the fascist map. Any further response
from these 2 clowns will be ignored.

Tony
Greenstein

1. Yet
again more lies and deception, smoke and mirrors. But Mikey is too modest. It
was he who posted the following on David Aaronovitch’s blog.

‘Dear
David,

An
excellent article. It is not without point that the likes of Tony Greenstein
have been intimidating Jewish Students at NUS conferences for virtually 30
years. He claims to be acting in the name of “anti-Zionism” but spends his time
harassing Jews.’

I
therefore initiated a claim for libel against The Times and secured both
damages, costs and an apology from Aaronovitch:

‘At the
beginning of July, an item was posted on my weblog which stated that Tony
Greenstein had been ‘intimidating or harassing’ Jews at NUS conferences for 30
years. Tony Greenstein believed that this accused him of committing an offence
of incitement to racial hatred under s.3A of the Race Relations Act 1976 and
that it also implied that he is anti-Semitic.

While
Tony Greenstein and I have had our differences, notably at NUS conferences,
neither I nor The Times meant to suggest that he has been breaking the law for
thirty years or that he is anti-Semitic. Our apologies for any embarrassment
caused.

http://socialistunity.com/aaronovitch-apologises-to-tony-greenstein/

3. In
fact if anyone is a collaborator with open anti-Semites it is Mikey himself!
One of my most vehement enemies is Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman. None
of this prevented Mikey acting as his researcher into my background.

‘Mikey,
can you provide us with the criminal record of this Bugger-Rance. Is he on
spent conviction like greenie l or is he just an ordinary liar?

Gilad
Atzmon | 03.12.07 – 8:00 pm | #

——————————————————————————–

I have
been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein – Roland Rance will have to
wait for another day.

Mikey |
03.12.07 – 8:53 pm | #

‘Mikey, I
hope you do not mind me saying that, but your contribution for the pls
solidarity movement is priceless. It is crucial that we all know about the
racist record of this Greenpiss, a man who was banned time after time for being
a racist and an anti Semite!

I really
want to believe that this revolting violent man will feel some shame and take
some time off to think about it all. But I doubt it.’

Gilad
Atzmon | 03.04.07 – 10:46 am | #

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/117192641046077827/

So there
we have it! Mikey acts as an informant for someone just about everyone else
recognises as a vicious anti-Semite and summarises Atzmon’s politics in a way
to avoid the charge of anti-Semitism. http://hurryupharry.org/2007/03/19/gilad-atzmon-and-jewishness/

‘Gilad
Atzmon, who defines himself as an “ex-Jew” and an “ex-Israeli” has become
fascinated with the term “Jewishness.” He believes “Jewishness is an
ideology.”… Many people have called Atzmon an antisemite and a racist, but
Atzmon does not like these accusations. He insists that he differentiates
between “Judaism (the religion), Jews (the people) and Jewishness (the
ideology).” He explicitly states “I firmly refrain from referring to racial or
ethnic categories.” He believes “Jewish groups in the left and in the right”
have obscured “the demarcation between Judaism, Jews and Jewishness” and by
doing so “Israel is safe from criticism.” Consequently Atzmon does not want to
attack “Judaism” or “Jews” but it is open season for him to attack “Jewishness”
since if Jewishness is an ideology, then according to Atzmon, “it cannot just
position itself beyond criticism.” It is essentially this “Jewishness” that
Atzmon has a real problem with.’

6. Mikey
is not sure why I continue ‘to harp on about Kasztner’ when he has already
admitted to changing his view. There is a simple reason. The dogmatic
boastfulness and sense of righteousness he displayed when defending Kasztner is
now displayed when he accepts that he was previously wrong.

7.
Whereas he was previously proclaiming that I refused to accept the facts, as he
interpreted them, because he was the expert, he now revises his opinions to
fall in line with mine, even though he doesn’t admit to this change. A good
example of Mikey’s dishonesty is the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold
the appeal against Judge Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court. Mikey now
tells us that:

‘ even in
the courts – in total six Israeli judges (all, to my knowledge) Zionist, looked
at the Kasztner/Grunwald case. All six of them felt the attack on Kasztner for
post war testifying for Nazi war criminal by Grunwald was not libellous.
Moreover, while of the those six, three exonerated Kasztner from major charges,
of collaboration, 2 accused him of collaboration with the Nazis and one felt
that the charges had to be taken as a whole but because he(as well as the other
judges) said that Grunwald’s claim that Kasztner financially benefited from
Nazi plunder was unjustified. That final judge voted that Grunwald’s document
as a whole was libellous.

Which is,
of course what I have said all along. But what was the ever boastful and
righteous Mike saying then? Did he conduct the debate in a scholarly way
without resorting to ad hominem attacks? Like hell he did. Instead he played
fast and loose with the truth, a method he has continued to employ, alongside
Bogdanor. He wrote for Harry’s place an article entitled ‘More Errors than
Paragraphs’(24.1.07.)

5.
Greenstein states that in the Supreme Court verdict of the Kasztner trial. “2
of the 5 judges found the arguments of Kasztner’s opponents quite persuasive,
but the other 3 Judges found for the State.” In fact, 4 out of the 5 judges
voted to overturn the charge that Kastzner was a collaborator. I have told him
this numerous times.

http://hurryupharry.org/2007/01/24/tony-greenstein-more-errors-than-paragraphs/

This
‘rebuttal’ is an example of Mikey’s dishonesty. I repeatedly pointed out that
the decision of the Supreme Court by 4-1 to overturn charges of collaboration
were deceptive, as one of the judges, Goiten, had voted thus on narrow legal
grounds. Now Mikey adopts my argument (without of course admitting as such!).

8.
Mikey’s argument deliberately conflates individual Zionists, including
dissident Zionists like Peter Bergson, Shmuel Merlin and Ben Hecht of the Emergency
Committee to Save Jewry. I have never said that individual Zionists did not
take part in Resistance activities. People like Mordechai Anielwicz, Commander
of ZOB, the Jewish Fighting Organisation in Warsaw. But these opponents of the
Nazis were themselves abandoned by the Zionist movement and the major debate
over saving Jews in the Jewish Agency Executive concerned the saving of the
Zionist cadre in Europe.

Mikey
writes that ‘the leading critics of Kasztner: Judges Halevi and Silberg, author
Ben Hecht and many in Herut Party members were all Zionist. They came way
before Lenni Brenner and Jim Allen!’ Again Mikey (& his partner-in-crime)
Bogdanor) sing a different song from previously. Then Mikey wrote that

‘4. The
lower court’s verdict against Kasztner – regarded by many as a…. a political
VENDETTA by the judge – was posthumously overturned by the Supreme Court.

http://hurryupharry.org/2007/01/24/tony-greenstein-more-errors-than-paragraphs/

Now Judge
Benjamin Halevi is a good Zionist! You couldn’t make it up.

12.
Bogdanor’s only distinguishing difference from Mikey is his vicious
anti-Communism. Unlike his cautious and restrained father, Vernon, the Oxford
constitutional historian, his son believes that shouting at the top of his
voice is persuasive. Zionism, like Nazism, is noteworthy for a slavish
nationalist worship of the State. Trotskyism (of which I’m not an adherent!)
rejects nationalism but believes, along with many socialists, that the state is
necessary to introduce socialist measures of equality, non-discrimination etc.
Bogdanor clearly doesn’t understand the two different attitudes towards the
state.

13. A
good example is Bogdanor’s citing of Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion and the
Holocaust. As if Teveth’s acid comments in The Burning Ground 1886-1948 can be
dismissed. Although nominally anti-Stalinist Bogdanor’s approach to history is
identical. An explanation for this apparent contradiction is contained in that
fine work on Israelis and the Holocaust ‘The Seventh Million’ by Israeli
journalist and historian, Tom Segev, who notes that: ‘Shabtai Teveth,
Ben-Gurion’s biographer, made a great effort to put this statement in a
different light. Two years previously, Ben-Gurion had said the opposite and he
was in the habit of phrasing his positions with gross overstatement, the loyal
biographer explained.’ (fn. p. 28). Bogdanor dismisses Ben-Gurion’s statement
about bringing half of Germany’s Jewish children to Palestine because it was
made before the Holocaust. What is more important is the apparent demand for
the rescue of Europe’s Jewish children to countries other than the Land of
Israel during the Holocaust.

Apparently
I cannot evade the facts because Ben-Gurion favoured the rescue of Jews no
matter they were sent. He even dismisses Ben-Gurion’s opposition to refugeeism,
saving Jews whatever the destination because Ben-Gurion also called for Jews to
be brought to neutral countries and the West.

If
Bogdanor is correct, then there is a dilemma. But of course it exists only in
his head. Segev quotes Saul Friedlander, a somewhat greater historian than
Bogdanor that ‘The rescue of the Jews in Europe was not at the top of the
Yishuv leadership’s list of priorities. For them the most important thing was
the effort to establish the state.’ Friedlander made it clear that he was
speaking of Ben-Gurion’s approach. We asked Ben-Gurion whether this was true.
He preferred not to discuss the subject.’ Ben-Gurion’s shocking comment was
‘What is there to understand? They died and that’s it.’ (p.469) Ben-Gurion then
read to Segev and his other 2 student interviewers what he said at the 1934
Histadrut Convention: ‘Hitler’s regime puts the entire Jewish people in danger,
and not just the Jewish people.’ Segev also cites Hanzi Brand, Joel Brand’s
wife and Kasztner’s lover that ‘the Jewish Agency leaders did not understand
that the mass murder of the Jews required them to step beyond their routine
thinking.’ Yet it’s the routine and self-serving statements that Bogdanor cites
in justification. (p.473)

Even
Nahum Goldmann, Chair of the World Jewish Congress, later admitted that ‘we
didn’t go beyond routine petitions and requests. I received a cable from the
Warsaw Ghetto asking why the Jewish leaders in the US hadn’t resolved to hold a
day and night vigil on the steps of the White House until the President decided
to give the order to bomb the extermination camps or the death trains. We
refrained from doing this because most of the Jewish leadership was then of the
opinion that we mustn’t disturb the war efforts of the Free World against the
Nazis with stormy protests. [‘Jewish Heroism in Siege, In the Diaspora, Winter
1963. Also Davar 22.4.64]. But it is these routine protests that Bogdanor
summons in defence of Zionism!

So it
turns out that when Ben-Gurion made his statement about rescuing only half of
Germany’s Jews if it was to England, he was fully aware of the fate that the
Nazis intended for Germany’s Jews.

And since
Bogdanor cites Gerhard Riegner it is worth revisiting his views according to
which Auschwitz ‘was an important political asset. Among other things, it
served the diplomatic efforts of both the WJC and Israel.’ (Segev, p.474)

Wriggle
as he might Bogdanor, cannot explain away even Teveth’s views that ‘’In spite
of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not deviate
appreciably from its routine and Ben Gurion the chairman, left all its rescue
efforts completely in the hands of Gruenbaum, Sharett and Kaplan, not even
taking part in the Rescue Committee. Two facts can be definitely stated:
Ben-Gurion did not put the rescue effort above Zionist politics and he did not
regard it as a principal task demanding his personal leadership; he never saw
fit to explain why, then or later. Instead he devoted his effort to rallying
the Yishuv and Zionism around the Biltmore Program and to the preparations for
its implementation.’ (p.848 The Burning Ground)

Segev
cites Ben-Gurion’s real position on saving Jews during the holocaust: ‘Although
I was then chairman of the Jewish Agency executive, the enlistment of the
Jewish people in the demand for a Jewish state was at the center of my
activity.’ ‘the disaster facing European Jewry is not directly my business.’
‘Ben-Gurion identified rescue almost exclusively with immigration to Palestine
and realized that there was no chance of saving many this way.’ [98] Likewise
Ben-Gurion’s statement that:

‘are we
again, in moments of desperation, going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism,
which is likely to defeat Zionism … Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is
not a product of the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no
displaced Jews in Europe … Zionism would still be an imperative
necessity.”[49th annual convention of Zionist Organisation of America, New
York Times, October 27 1946. Eliezer Livneh declared during a symposium
organised by Maariv in 1966 that “For the Zionist leadership, the rescue of
Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means” (Communist Party of Israel,
Information Bulletin, 1969, p.l97)].

Did Ben
Gurion attend the Jewish Agency meeting of 22 November when the issuance of
Riegner’s telegram of August, confirming that the holocaust was taking place,
was discussed? no, he had a ‘light cold’. (Teveth 848)

Tony
Greenstein

August
31, 2014 at 4:22 pm

·
Everything, including the physical extermination of European Jewry was
seen by Ben-Gurion through the prism of Zionism. S Beit Zvi notes how, in
almost all his speeches, Ben-Gurion ‘speaks about the prospects the Holocaust
may open up for Zionism.’ Ben-Gurion, speaking in Rehovot in 1941 pointed to
the fact that ‘all the significant steps in the progress of Zionism were always
related to the intensification of Jewish distress.’

Ben-Gurion
made it clear that ‘In these terrible days … I am still more worried about the
elections of the (Mapai) branch in Tel Aviv’ (Segev 105).

Ben-Gurion
made his position crystal clear. In a letter (December 17 1938) to the Jewish
Agency Executive Ben-Gurion explained that “if the Jews are faced with a choice
between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the
one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish
sense of pity will prevail and our people’s entire strength will be directed at
aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the
agenda and “¦ also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism’s very
existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine
problem.” Y. Elam, Introduction to Zionist history, Tel Aviv 1972, pp125-26.
See also Ot, paper of youth cadre of Mapai, No.2, winter 1967.

Bogdanor
deliberately lies in trying to exonerate Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership.
It isn’t that Ben-Gurion was reflecting on the fact that the worse things were
for the Jews, the stronger Zionism became. He positively revelled in it.
Ben-Gurion asserted that “distress could also serve as “political leverage”… it
is in our interest to use Hitler, [who] has not reduced our strength, for the
building of our country.” [Teveth] This is the context of his statement to the
Jewish Agency Executive that ‘The harsher the affliction, the greater the
strength of Zionism.’ Hence Teveth’s statement regarding the ‘fine line’
between ‘the beneficial disaster’ and the ‘all destroying catastrophe’ [851]
Bogdanor’s assertion that when the holocaust began Ben-Gurion was in favour of
rescue anywhere. That in the event of a ‘conflict of interest between saving
individual Jews and the good of the Zionism enterprise, we shall say the
enterprise comes first.’ [855] Ben-Gurion made his views very clear: ‘The
Jewish Agency is an all-Jewish organisation for the upbuilding of Palestine..
the tasks of assistance, of saving one more Jew, of doing all to prevent
deportations, are very important… and must be assumed by another organization,
to be set up and funded from other sources.’ [858]

I have
given a sample of Ben-Gurion’s real position towards rescue, but he wasn’t
alone. It wasn’t just Ben-Gurion’s position. Robert Silverberg, a devoted
Zionist, described how ‘Within the Zionist movement itself there were actually
some ultramilitants who argued that it was a good strategy to make no attempt
to liberalize the United States immigration laws.’ They were ‘virtually
fanatics, to whom the building of a Jewish homeland in Palestine took priority over
all other claims, even the claim of saving lives.’ [Robert Silverberg, If I
Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p. 138, Pyramid Book, New York, 1972].

Rabbi
Abba Hillel Silver, President of the Zionist Organisation of America
(1945-1947) was also quite open about Zionist ‘selectivity’:

I am
happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are
all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish state.. But I ask… are we again, in
moments of desperation going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely
to defeat Zionism… Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of
the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe…
Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.” [Rabbi Hillel Silver to 49th
Annual Convention of the ZO of America, New York Times, 27. 10. 1946].

Eliezer
Livneh declared during a symposium organised by ‘Maariv’ in 1966 “that for the
Zionist leadership, the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a
means.” (Information Bulletin, Communist Party of Israel, 1969, p.197). Cited
in Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p. 335. Pyramid Book, New
York, 1972].

How does
Bogdanor explain the fact that throughout 1939 and 1940, the situation of
Europe’s Jews was not discussed once by Mapai’s Central Committee.’ [Anna
Porter, p.66 Kasztner’s Train, Constable 2007]. The answer is that he doesn’t!
As Teveth notes ‘‘In spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried
out, the JAE did not deviate appreciably from its routine…’ (Teveth 1987 844)

Bogdanor
demonstrates that despite his purported denunciation of Stalinism, he is a most
able practitioner of its methodology of systematically distorting what his
opponents are saying. How else can one explain his absurd statement that regarding
Rosenberg’s support for Zionism ‘Greenstein has been caught red-handed
falsifying his facts’. Clearly Bogdanor has difficulty even reading what I
write without lying (or maybe he has literacy difficulties?). I wrote that:

‘It is
Nicosia [note not me] who points out that Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s favourite
theoretician (The Third Reich & Palestine p25) who wrote that “Zionism must
be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German
Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations” (TRP p.25). Rosenberg was
fond of citing the Zionists’ own arguments that the Jews were a separate
people. Rosenberg took this as “a clear affirmation that all Jews were aliens
in Germany” (Zionism and Nazi Germany p.70).

“Rosenberg’s
argument that the Zionist movement could be utilised to promote the political,
social and cultural segregation of Jews in Germany, as well as their
emigration, was eventually transformed into policy by the Hitler regime after
1933.” This was written in 1920 in Die Spur. Even the most ignorant fool can
see that I am quoting Nicosia, who Ezra initially introduced to the debate NOT
me. What is the explanation of the apparent discrepancy between what I quoted
and Bogdanor cited? Such a complex argument, to say nothing of subtlety is
completely beyond Bogdanor. In fact there is no contradiction.

If he had
actually read what Nicosia actually wrote Bogdanor would see that Rosenberg
calls for using and taking advantage of what Zionism says about Jews being a
separate volk/people whose place is in Palestine in order to deprive them of
their legitimate rights in Germany. But at the same time he, along with Hitler
it should be said, were no supporters of the idea of a Jewish state per se
(although this too mellowed with power). Palestine was considered simply as a
State whose purpose was to centralise the swindling of non-Jews.

The
number of anti-Semites who took Zionism to their bosoms, including Eichmann,
makes what I wrote about Rosenberg was almost commonplace. For example Heinrich
Class, President of the Pan German League, which was banned after the
assassination of Walter Rathenau in 1922 and who on Hitler’s elevation to power
was made an honorary member of the Reichstag, wrote that:

‘Those
who regard the Jews as a foreign race… must honour the fact that among the Jews
themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more
adherents. One must take one’s hat off to the Zionists, they admit – openly and
honestly- that their people are a folk of its own kind whose basic
characteristics are immutable.. They also declare openly that a true
assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible
according to the natural laws of race… THE ZIONISTS CONFIRM WHAT THE ENEMIES OF
THE JEWS, THE ADHERENTS OF THE RACIAL THEORY HAVE ALWAYS ASSERTED… German and
Jewish nationalists are of one opinion in regard to the indestructibility of
the Jewish race. [If I Were the Kaiser’, 1912. D. Frymann (pseudonym)].

Bogdanor
lies, almost as if it is second nature, when he writes that ‘Greenstein is
forced to retract his previous “evidence” that Zionists did not give any
publicity to the Final Solution. Instead he now claims that they “played down
the very fact of and the extent of the holocaust”. Suffice to say I made no
such retraction. SB Bet Zvi wrote that ‘Probably not even Goebbels in his
wildest plans could have elicited the kind of treatment the Hebrew press
accorded to information about the Holocaust.’ p.45, Post-Ugandan Zionism

Bogdanor
asks who set up the rescue committees in Palestine and Turkey? But the ‘rescue
committee’ in Palestine was a useless body – without a full-time Chair, no
budget or even office whose purpose it seems was ward of demands to engage in
Rescue activities. Beit Zvi wrote that ‘Melech Neustadt, in an Executive
Committee meeting of May 1943, complained that “because of the heavy burden of
work imposed on the key people, this matter [the rescue activity] does not come
up for serious discussion or serious action.” [p.99] In December 1942 Yitzhak
Gruenbaum was installed as chairman of the Zionist “Rescue Committee’ .

The
Rescue Committee was not even attached to the Jewish Agency, but was a separate

entity
devoid of any organizational base, and lacking its own bureaucratic machinery
and budget. For a long time it lacked even an official permanent name. As for
the Istanbul Committee it was more a liaison office.

Bogdanor
asks who set up the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry? We
know it was the small group around Peter Bergson, the dissident revisionists.
But they did it in the teeth of opposition of the mainstream Zionist movement
and Stephen Wise and Nahum Goldmann. ‘“In one of their meetings with Mr Pehle,
[of the State Department] Rabbi Wise had gone so far as to inform. Pehle that
he regarded Bergson as equally as great enemy of the Jews as Hitler.”
[Department of State Memorandum of Conversation, 19th May 1944 cited in Lenni
Brenner, 51 Documents – Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis’ pp. 197-200,
Barricade Books 2002]. This conversation was held just 4 days after the
deportation of Hungarian Jews started. Bogdanor, like Ezra, is incapable of
understanding the distinction I make between Zionists AS INDIVIDUALS and the
Zionist movement.

Bogdanor
asks who prepared and translated the Vrba-Wetzler report? Yes it was the
Slovakian Jewish Council. No one has suggested that they wished to see the
deaths of their fellow Slovakian Jews, even if their methods led to a far
greater number of Jewish fatalities.

Bogdanor
asks ‘Who smuggled it [the Auschwitz Protocols] out to the West? Well it
certainly wasn’t the leader of Hungarian Zionism, Kasztner, received it on
April 29th, over 2 weeks before the deportations of Hungarian Jews began and
sat on it. In fact it was a variety of people. The only Zionist who did so was
the dissident Moshe Krausz. The Vatican, the Czech underground, Ernest Peto of
the Hungarian Judenrat to name but a few and of course Rabbi Weissmandel.
Nathan Schwalb, of HeHalutz in Geneva, also deliberately sat on the Auschwitz
Protocols in order not to hinder Kasztner’s negotiations with Eichmann.

Bogdanor
asks who were among the first to demand the bombing of Auschwitz? He answers
‘In all cases, the Zionists.’ Which just shows that Bogdanor is completely
unfamiliar with this aspect of history. In fact it was Rabbi Weissmandel the
Orthodox anti-Zionist Rabbi based in Bratislava, certainly not the Jewish
Agency which was initially opposed to the demand until June 11 1944. [David
Wymann, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 11 290 1997, Letter to the Editor,
277-280]

Bogdanor’s
question what did the Trotskyists do for the Jews of Europe. They opposed the
Nazis at the level of the working-class and some, like Abram Leon, ended up
dying in Auschwitz. Others like Ernest Mandel, led the Resistance. They
certainly didn’t collaborate.

Bogdanor
suggests that I ‘concedes defeat’ re the Jewish Councils. Again this is a lie
or wishful thinking or both. Apparently I have ‘no evidence that the majority
of Jewish Councils collaborated. In fact there is an abundance of evidence.
What Bogdanor means is that he is ignorant about it.

The
Judenräte were reviled by the Jewish population and with good reason. “the most
important concentration measure prior to the formation of the ghettos was the
establishment of Jewish councils (Judenräte).” The most authoritative holocaust
historian, Raul Hilberg, wrote that ‘”the most important concentration measure
prior to the formation of the ghettos was the establishment of Jewish
councils.” [R. Hilberg, The destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.75].
Eichmann commented that: “The assimilated Jew was, of course, very unhappy
about being moved to a ghetto. But the orthodox were pleased with the
arrangement, as were the Zionists.” [L. Brenner, 51 documents, New Jersey 2002,
p.274.] The Nazis insisted that “the authority of the Jewish council be upheld
and strengthened under all circumstances” [R. Hilberg, p.1111 citing Mohns
(Deputy Chief of resettlement division, Warsaw District) to Leist
(Plenipotentiary for the City of Warsaw) 11.1.41. Yad Vashem microfilm
JM-1113].

Dieter
Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovakian Jewry explained: ‘Our system is to
exterminate the Jews through the Jews. We concentrate the Jews in the ghettos –
through Jews; we deport the Jews – by the Jews; and we gas the Jews – by the
Jews.’ [B. Hecht, Perfidy, New York 1961, fn 68, p.261].

Bogdanor
suggests that I he now denies ever using the term, “uber-Zionist”. I do no such
thing, rather I denied that I had dismissed Halevi on these grounds. I merely
stated that his views on Zionist participation in Resistance owed more to his
personal political opinions as a Zionist than any evidence in the Kasztner
trial. I stand by this but I certainly don’t ‘dismiss him’. Bogdanor is
incapable of understanding such subtleties.

Other
equally stupid points by Bogdanor are that David Rosner, who gave evidence
against Kasztner, was a Zionist. So what?

Bogdanor
challenges me to quote anything in Barri’s article or anywhere else proving
that the Jewish Agency ordered Kasztner to exonerate Nazi war criminals.
Apparently after a desperate search, I am empty-handed. The passage he cites
states that Kasztner considered himself “authorised” to testify on behalf of
the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress – not that they authorised him
to help Nazis. Again Bogdanor can’t help the deceit. I cited evidence that
Dobkin of the Jewish Agency lied on the witness stand in claiming he’d never
even heard the name Becher. So Mikey’s point that ‘5. Although Kasztner claimed
that he testified for Becher as a Jewish Agency official, he had absolutely no
authorisation to do so. This was made clear at the Kasztner trial by Jewish
Agency witness Eliahu Dobkin.’ is besides the point. http://hurryupharry.org/2007/01/24/tony-greenstein-more-errors-than-paragraphs/

I repeat,
since Bogdanor clearly hasn’t understood first time around that there is no
document to that effect, but one wouldn’t expect there to be anymore than there
was a written Hitler order to begin the Holocaust. However the accumulation of
evidence suggests that Kasztner was authorised by the Jewish Agency.

Barri
concludes that ‘The testimonies [of Kasztner in favour of various Nazis] become
more comprehensible only when all three factors are examined: Kasztner, the
Americans, and the Jewish Agency. [234] One can, in this context, better
understand Kasztner’s motive in testifying on their behalf, WHETHER HE HAD
RECEIVED THE EXPLICIT PRIOR AUTHORISATION OF THE JEWISH AGENCY, OR WHETHER SUCH
AUTHORISATION WAS ONLY PARTIAL AND RETROACTIVE. Kasztner acted in Nuremberg as
representative of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. [164] He
considered himself authorised to testify in their name in a matter that did not
seem to him to deviate from the general framework in which he was operating. …
The new ‘Jewish’ State could not admit that it had established contacts with
Nazi officers (such as Becher and Wisliceny), and had approved testimonies and
appeals on their behalf.’ [165]

Kasztner
even received the major part of his expenses from the Jewish Agency, so clearly
they must have been aware of what Kasztner was doing. So Bogdanor’s assertion
that there is no good evidence in Barri’s article or elsewhere that the Jewish
Agency had approved just doesn’t stand up. But not being a historian Bogdanor
still probably doesn’t understand.

Finally
Bogdanor accuses me of trying to ‘wriggle out of’ my reliance on Eichmann’s
denial of the Holocaust. But the point is, as I’ve already said, is that
Eichmann doesn’t deny, indeed he boasts of the holocaust. Which is one reason
why like Bogdanor, holocaust deniers don’t use the interview and the Nizkor
Project does.

Tony Greenstein

August
31, 2014 at 4:23 pm

·
Previously I charged Tony Greenstein with adherence to Trotskyism.
Greenstein now protests that he is not a Trotskyist. Yet in an earlier exchange
Greenstein wrote: “I just happen to hold to that old Trotskyist
view that despite the counter-revolutionary nature of the Soviet leadership the
system itself was nonetheless not capitalist and indeed progressive in certain
ways.”

Hardly
less pathetic than Greenstein’s denial that he is a Trotskyist is his fistful
of falsified and out-of-context quotations purporting to prove that Zionists
“revelled” in the Holocaust. A few examples will illustrate Greenstein’s
methods:

(i)
Greenstein quotes Gerhard Riegner (“Auschwitz ‘was an important political
asset. Among other things, it served the diplomatic efforts of both the WJC and
Israel.’”) I checked his reference, which Greenstein places in quotation marks,
and in fact it is not a comment by Riegner but Segev’s paraphrase of Riegner’s
alleged statements in an unverifiable private interview, and is therefore
useless as evidence. Greenstein recasts as a quotation what is actually nothing
of the kind.

(ii)
Greenstein twice adduces a quotation (“are we again, in moments of
desperation, going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to
defeat Zionism…”) from the “49th annual convention of Zionist Organisation of
America, New York Times, October 27 1946.” There is no such quotation anywhere
in the NYT report on that date. The Greenstein “quotation” is simply a fabrication.

(iii)
Greenstein offers us a quotation from Eliezer Livneh (“For the Zionist
leadership, the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means”);
his source is the “Information Bulletin” of the Communist Party of Israel. Not
only is the source worthless, the very fact that Greenstein would cite it
vindicates my claim that Greenstein merely parrots Stalinist hate propaganda.

(iv)
Greenstein purports to quote from Teveth’s biography (“In spite of the
certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not deviate
appreciably from its routine…”) Checking his page reference, the words placed
in quotation marks by Greenstein simply do not appear. What Teveth does say
there is that “Ben-Gurion, ignorant of the death camps, spoke only of concentration
camps… His lack of knowledge illustrates the tragic impotence of the Jewish
people and their leaders… They were victims of the diversionary tactics and
deceptions of the Nazis and the withholding of the truth by the British…” (Ben-Gurion:
The Burning Ground, 1886-1948, Houghton Mifflin, 1987, p. 844).

(v)
Greenstein quotes liberally from Teveth to prove that Ben-Gurion opposed forms
of rescue other than Zionism, but on one of the very pages he cites, Teveth
quotes Ben-Gurion as follows: “Were there a possibility of transferring Polish
Jewry to America or Argentina we would have done so, regardless of our Zionist
ideology. But the whole world is closed to us. Had we not room in Palestine,
our people would have no choice but suicide.” (Ben-Gurion: The Burning
Ground, 1886-1948, p. 855).

And since
Greenstein is such a fan of Teveth and Segev, there is no excuse for ignoring
their quotations of Ben-Gurion’s actual reaction upon learning of the
Holocaust: “The extermination of European Jewry [meant] the end of Zionism, for
there will be no-one to build Palestine” (Teveth, The Seventh Million

, Owl Books, 2000, p. 97). So much for
Zionists “revelling” in the murder of Europe’s Jews.

That
Greenstein is a pathological dissembler is shown by the very sources he
mentions, sometimes by material appearing on the very same page he cites.
Greenstein simply cannot be trusted to give an accurate quotation or an
unfalsified source. His methods of distortion are worthy of a Noam Chomsky or a
David Irving. None of his “evidence” can be believed.

Some of
Greenstein’s falsehoods are the result not of dishonesty but of rank ignorance.
Thus, by Zionist rescue committees in Palestine and Turkey, Greenstein takes me
to be referring to the ineffectual entity led by Gruenbaum. But Tuvia Friling
has long since demonstrated, in his 2-volume study Arrows in the Dark: David
Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership and Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust
(University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), that in addition to Gruenbaum’s public
committee, Ben-Gurion established a parallel and covert rescue operation that
did the real work in saving Jews from the Nazis. Greenstein does not mention
this evidence because he is simply ignorant of its existence.

On
Zionist support for the bombing of Auschwitz, Greenstein is again caught
red-handed. The fact is that the Zionists were among the first to demand the
bombing, and this is proved, again, by the very meeting he mentions. The June
11, 1944 session of the JAE was a debate on Gruenbaum’s proposal to the United
States for the bombing of Auschwitz. The JAE initially voted against the
proposal because it did not want to cause Jewish deaths and had not yet
received the Vrba-Wetzler report illuminating the scale of the slaughter there.
But as historian Rafael Medoff points out:

“Upon
receiving this information, the Jewish Agency leadership promptly launched a
concerted lobbying effort to persuade the Allies to bomb Auschwitz. Moshe
Shertok, chief of the Jewish Agency’s political department, and Chaim Weizmann,
president of the World Zionist Organization, who were stationed in London,
lobbied the British. Yitzhak Gruenbaum, chairman of the JA’s Rescue Committee
in Jerusalem, repeatedly pressed his colleagues in the United States to lobby
Washington, which they did, and Agency representatives in Europe lobbied
locally stationed American diplomats on the subject.”

Medoff
also lists the Zionists in the United States who pressed for the bombing:

“Between
June and October 1944, such bombing proposals were put forth by, among others…
the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe; the Labor Zionists
of America… and columnists for… Opinion, the Jewish monthly edited by American
Jewish Congress president Stephen Wise. The American Jewish Conference, a
coalition of all leading U.S. Jewish organizations, called for ‘all measures’
to be taken by the Allies to destroy the death camps.”

Compare
these facts with Greenstein’s claims that the Zionists “revelled” in the
extermination of Europe’s Jews.

On the
Jewish Councils, Greenstein produces another set of quotations, none of which
prove his claim that the Jewish Councils invariably collaborated. The Councils
were indeed set up by the Nazis to control Jewish communities, but many of them
refused to obey orders, and some members, notably Czerniakow in Warsaw,
committed suicide rather than assist in deportations. Greenstein, his bluster
aside, cannot prove any of his claims. But once again I draw attention to his
standards of proof: quotations from Eichmann and Wilsiceny, the chief
exterminators, whom he treats as unimpeachable truth-tellers.

On
Kasztner, Greenstein has now admitted that he uses Zionist sources – Halevi,
Rosner, Krausz – and so it was the Zionists who condemned Kasztner. This means
that Kasztner’s conduct in Hungary was not representative of Zionism. To
repeat: it was the Zionists of Kolozsvar/Cluj who tried to prosecute him before
a People’s Tribunal (1945), the first post-war Zionist Congress that held a
formal investigation of him (1946), the State of Israel that passed the Nazis
and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law (1950), and the Israeli police who
interrogated him (1951).

After
what must have been another desperate search, Greenstein is still unable to
produce any evidence that Kasztner’s aid to Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg was
ordered or approved by the Jewish Agency. He even has the gall to admit it,
while complaining that nothing was written down – just as Hitler gave no
written order to initiate the Holocaust! This may convince those who share
Greenstein’s fantasies of Zionist mimicry of Nazis, but it will not satisfy
anyone else. And Greenstein is clutching at straws, for not only is there no
evidence of Jewish Agency authorisation, there is documentary evidence – from
Riegner (quoted by Barri and in my previous post) – that the Zionists did not
authorise Kasztner to help Nazi war criminals.

In his
latest post, Greenstein not only relies upon Eichmann’s Holocaust-denying
interview with Life magazine, he also quotes Eichmann’s assistant
Wisliceny to the effect that the Holocaust was perpetrated by Jews. I had hoped
that he could not sink any lower than his previous messages, but I was wrong:
Greenstein has confounded my expectations yet again.

Paul Bogdanor

September
1, 2014 at 4:05 pm

·
Tony Greenstein, Marxist-Leninist, is a champion of utilising and
threatening to utilise the bourgeois courts. An apology and a payment to a
charity of £1,000 from someone that he threatened to sue is not necessarily
vindication of his position. It could well be a simple business decision. With
barristers costing hundreds of pounds per hour, the time and effort in
defending the claim is not worthwhile particularly if costs cannot be recovered
not least because the initiator of the defamation case does not have much in
the way of assets. One suspects that Greenstein knows this and that is why he
is so willing to commence legal proceedings. I wonder how many libel actions he
has initiated or threatened to initiate. Silencing critics with such lawfair
tactics is Stalinist to the extreme.

Greenstein
continues to harp on about his antifascism, conveniently ignoring that he held
a senior position in an organisation, BAZO, that was backed by Saddam Hussein!
If it were not so sad it would be comical.

Repeating
a false allegation that he has made a number of times previously, Greenstein
alleges that I acted as an informant for Atzmon. He quotes an extract from a
thread that shows nothing of the kind. I was researching Greenstein and, at the
same time, attacking Atzmon’s chum, Paul Eisen. In fact, contrary to
Greenstein’s false allegation, I have attacked Atzmon’s views.

Greenstein
simply cannot get anything right when it comes to Kasztner. He either can’t
remember what he has previously said or is lying. Greenstein has specifically stated “It is quite clear from their
speeches that the Supreme (or High) Court of Israel voted 3-2 in overturning
the decision of the lower court.” Now he is claiming he never said that but
that he “repeatedly pointed out that the decision of the Supreme Court by 4-1
to overturn charges of collaboration were deceptive.” One should not be
surprised by the fact that the now Times columnist and leader writer
said in that thread: “Tony Greenstein is among the thickest people I’ve ever
met. ”

Greenstein’s
argument on Zionists fighting Nazis has continually been that if any did so
that they did it in spite of their Zionism as opposed because of it. However,
this is a nonsense and is easily demonstrated as such. With the support of the
Zionist leadership in Palestine a number of Zionist volunteers parachutists managed
to reach Nazi occupied Europe intending on assisting in the resistance against
the Nazis. (Sadly, some of these, including Hannah Szenes, were betrayed by
Kasztner.) – See Judith Tydor Baumel’s essay on this subject in Yad Vashem
Studies XXV (Jerusalem, 1996). Greenstein will probably not bother looking
up this source as he is boycotting Israel.

Greenstein
claims that Nicosia was ” scared of drawing the obvious conclusions, viz. that
Zionism was a movement of collaboration.” Contrary to Greenstein, the reason
Nicosia did not argue that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis was because
it was false. Below I quote directly from Nicosia’s book Zionism and
Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

lest the
reader imagine that the purpose of study such as this to somehow equate Zionism
with National Socialism, Zionists with Nazis, or to portray their relationship
as a willing and collaborative one between moral and political equals. The
research, analysis and conclusions, do not in any way support such notions. The
existence of certain common assumptions on the part of Zionists on the one
hand, and nationalist and anti-Semitic Germans on the other, does not in any
way connote moral and/or political equivalency.

(pp. 2-3)

Nicosia
continues:

The
dominant Zionist approach, like that of most non-Jews at the time, shared a
reliance on the idea of an ethno-nationalist state, an idea that was the
societal norm in Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Their embrace of that norm does not make the Zionists the moral equivalent of
the Nazis. Nor does the willingness of the Zionist or any other Jewish
organisation in the Third Reich to cooperate with the state make them willing
collaborators in the Nazi destruction of Jewish life in Germany; to suppose
that any Jewish organisation in Hitler’s Germany prior to the ‘final solution’
had the option of refusing to work on some level with the state is fantasy.

(p. 3)

the
Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Zionist movement in general recognized the
critical link between its own survival and the survival and well-being of all
Jews in the Diaspora. Even on a practical level, the Zionist view was that if
the Nazis succeeded in murdering the great majority of Jews in Europe, a Jewish
majority and state in Palestine might never be achieved.

(pp.8-9n15)

Greenstein
demonstrates that he specialises in fabrications. It is one more thing that he
has in common with the Stalinists.

Michael
Ezra

September
1, 2014 at 6:15 pm

·
Reply to Bogdanor 8.9.14.

I had
previously said that I wouldn’t respond to further replies from Bogdanor and
his side-kick Ezra. However, now that I have some time, it would be churlish to
avoid pointing out how our kosher fascist, in the absence of any coherent
argument, insists on continuing to behave like a jaded holocaust denier.

My only
response to Ezra is that he should stop denying what is a matter of fact. That
he is was a pitiful little informer for Gilad Atzmon is a matter of record,
despite his denials of what is written down.

1. When
Atzmon says to him ‘‘Mikey, can you provide us with the criminal record of this
Bugger-Rance. Is he on spent conviction like greenie l or is he just an
ordinary liar?’ If allegations of being a dirty little informer are wrong, then
he would have replied with something like ‘I don’t know what you are talking
about/I don’t deal with anti-Semites etc.’ But in his response he accepted what
Atzmon had said but simply says that because he is investigating me (how would
Atzmon know?) ‘Roland Rance will have to wait for another day.’ Condemned from
the horse’s mouth!

2. Ezra
speculates that The Times capitulated to my libel action because it was cheaper
to do so. Only I know why they did as only I have the relevant documents. In
fact The Times was determined to defend the action, on principle (not a word
Ezra knows much about) but they obtained a legal opinion from Richard Rampton,
Britain’s leading libel QC which made it very clear that Ezra’s testimony
wasn’t worth a candle. That he was psychologically damaged goods. Hence they
settled.

3. As for
Bogdanor he is a good example of why Zionist attempts to deny their record of
collaboration with the Nazis and their obstruction of rescue to everywhere but
Palestine are doomed to failure.

Because I
agree with the Trotskyist analysis that the Soviet Union’s lack of a market
economy was politically progressive, despite Stalin, that this makes me a
Trotskyist. No doubt Isaac Deutscher was also a Trotskyist for the same reason.
Bogdanor, as befits a red-baiting Jewish fascist can’t understand that you can
agree with somebody without becoming their adherent.

Bogdanor
is similar to Ernst Nolte who relativised the position of the Nazis and the
opposition, holding Stalin culpable. Bogdanor also reserves what passes for his
barbs for Stalin’s Russia. He can’t stand the simple fact that up to 2 million
Jews escaped from Hitler’s clutches by escaping into the USSR. In another
debate with me he wriggled and twisted, amidst much abuse, but the evidence was
overwhelming.

4.
Bogdanor denies that Gerhard Riegner was of the opinion that Auschwitz was an
important political asset. But a respected Israeli historian Tom Segev
interviewed him and cited his views in his book. It is that which I’m quoting.
All one needs to do is go back to the original quote. A quote from Bogdanor is
‘useless evidence’ but not from Segev, who had no reason to lie or fabricate.
The complete citation reads:

‘Riegner
said that Auschwitz was not only a national memory belonging to the Jewish
people that should not be taken by anyone else; it was also an important
political asset. Among other things, it served the diplomatic efforts of both
the WJC and Israel’ (p.474)

But this
was not exceptional. Even more terrible was the proposal to set up Yad Vashem
as a memorial to the 6 million was first mooted when most European Jews were
still alive: ‘The first proposal to establish Yad Vashem came in September
1942, from Mordechai Shenhavi of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek at a board meeting of
the JNF. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad_Vashem citing
The Ethics of Memory, Avishai Margalit, 2003, USA, Harvard. Tom Segev, The
Seventh Million, p. 428]. The holocaust had begun just over a year ago at the
time this suggestion was made. The proposal ‘reflected the tendency to remove
the Holocaust from present reality, to treat it as though it were already a
chapter in the history of the nation.’ Shenhavi had to make his proposals in
practicable terms, i.e. in terms of the money it would raise. ‘It was the very
last opportunity to score any financial success.’ [Segev, p.430]. This was at a
time when the Jewish Agency had not even acknowledged that the Nazis were
exterminating the Jews.

5.
Bogdanor states that the quotation ‘Are we again, in moments of desperation
going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism’.
is a fabrication. Not so, it can be found in Robert Silverberg’s book ‘If I
forget Thee O’ Jerusalem’. Silverberg is an ardent Zionist with no reason to
fabricate quotations, unlike Bogdanor.

6.
Bogdanor states that a quotation from Eliezer Livneh, ‘For the Zionist
leadership, the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means’ of
the Israeli Communist Party is ‘worthless’ [as is any quote he doesn’t like!]
and evidence I’m a wicked Stalinist! But this was also the opinion of many
reputable Zionist historians (unlike our kosher fascist Bogdanor):

7. For
example Noah Lucas ‘As the European holocaust erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a
decisive opportunity for Zionism… Ben-Gurion above all others sensed the
tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in
Europe.…. The forces unleashed by Hitler … must therefore be harnessed to the
advantage of Zionism… By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish state
became the primary concern of the movement. [Noah Lucas, The Modern History of
Israel, pp. 187/188.].

J B Agus
asked whether ‘the Zionist programme and philosophy contribute (d) decisively
to the enormous catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis
by popularising the notion that Jews were forever aliens in Europe. [ J B Agus,
Meaning of Jewish History, New York, 1963 Vol.2 p.447].

Richard
Crossman, an ex-Labour Cabinet Minister and vehemently pro-Zionist, noted that:
‘The Zionists… main preoccupation is not to save Jews alive out of Europe but
to get Jews into Palestine. [R H Crossman, Washington Diary, 1946]

Moshe
Sharrett, Israel’s second Prime Minister after Ben Gurion, emphasised that:
‘The fate of Zionism is to be sometimes cruel towards the Jewish Diaspora, that
is when the building up of this country required it.’ [Machover, ‘Why We Oppose
Zionism’].

8.
Bogdanor says that ‘Greenstein purports to quote from Teveth’s biography (“In
spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not
deviate appreciably from its routine…”) Checking his page reference, the words
placed in quotation marks by Greenstein simply do not appear.’ I suggest that
Bogdanor checks his eyesight.

On the
9th line down (start of 2nd para) of p.848 the reference appears. If I could
attach a scan to this post I would. This is merely a repetition of a repeated
theme in Teveth’s authorised biography of Ben-Gurion and what SB Beit Zvi and
others concluded: the Holocaust was a low priority on the Zionist agenda. For
example on p.844 Teveth writes that:

‘Whether
Gruenbaum reported the rumors to him before the [Mapai] convention or
Ben-Gurion read of them in the minutes on his return to Jerusalem, it seems
that they did not constitute sufficient reason to alter the JAE routine, and
the meetings Ben-Gurion chaired on November 1,8 and 15 had nothing to do with
the ongoing massacre in Europe.’ [p.844]

The
routine of Zionist meetings were, in other words, more important than the
multiplicity of reports, for example the Riegner memorandum, concerning the
holocaust. In case that was not clear, then the passage leading up to the quote
that Bogdanor cannot see reads:

‘In
December 1942, therefore, Ben-Gurion knew the truth about the extermination and
had made the connection between the deportations and the death camps. But his
rescue efforts in 1943 and 1944 amounted to no more than speeches, wires,
discussions and participation in passing resolutions. His direct contribution
was essentially limited to arousing the conscience of the world and preaching
to the Allied governments, and activity that repetition eventually reduced to
clichés. He who had argued that the time for raising a clamor had passed and that
the time had come for action – the originator of combative Zionism – reverted
now to that vintage Jewish weapon, the cry for help. THIS IS THE ONLY
CONCLUSION POSSIBLE.’ [my emphasis, pp. 847-8]

Bogdanor
cites a quotation from Ben-Gurion from Teveth: ‘“Were there a possibility of
transferring Polish Jewry to America or Argentina we would have done so,
regardless of our Zionist ideology. But the whole world is closed to us. Had we
not room in Palestine, our people would have no choice but suicide.” (Ben-Gurion:
The Burning Ground, 1886-1948, p. 855).

Another
example of quoting out of context. Even this quote makes it clear that rescue
of Jews from the holocaust is centred on Palestine only with the bogus
assertion that ‘the rest of the world is closed to us’ but what Bogdanor
doesn’t do is cite, the follow-up on the same page:

‘Zionism
in the stage of development is not primarily engaged in saving individuals. If
along the way it saves a few thousand, tens of thousands, or hundreds of
thousands of individuals, so much the better.” but in the event of “a conflict
of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist
enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.” p.855 That should be
clear, even to the falsifier Bogdanor and his historically revisionist method
of historical analysis (drawing conclusions first, then fitting the evidence to
it).

Ben-Gurion’s
pious comments that the holocaust meant the end of Zionism is mere hyperbole
and does nothing to contradict the refusal of the Zionist leadership to engage
in rescue and stop its obstruction of those who were so determined.

Bogdanor
states that my ‘falsehood’ [a favourite Stalinist term!] is a result not of
dishonesty but ignorance. In the case of our kosher fascist they are primarily
the result of dishonesty. He knows what the record actually was.

9.
Bogdanor refers to Tuvia Friling’s ‘Arrows in the Dark’ about Ben-Gurion’s
covert rescue committee. There is no evidence that this committee achieved
anything, or had any impact or negated the official do, see and say nothing
policy.

Tony Greenstein

September
8, 2014 at 9:20 pm

·
10. As even Bogdanor is forced to admit, the first reaction of the
Jewish Agency Executive was to oppose the bombing of Auschwitz. He states that
the Zionists ‘were amongst the first’ to do so. This is meaningless. It was
Rabbi Weissmandel who was the first to make such a demand, based on
Verba-Wetzler’s Auschwitz Protocols that the Zionists did their best to
suppress.

11. In
another example of an outrageous lie, Bogdanor quotes me as saying ‘the
Zionists “revelled 2 in the extermination of Europe’s Jews.’ I challenge
Bogdanor to produce anything I have said which says the Zionists ‘revelled’ in
the extermination. What he is doing is quoting his own lies and falsifications.
Typical of Bogdanor’s holocaust denial method of historical analysis.

12. Yes
Adam Czerniakow, Chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council committed suicide rather
than help in the round-up of Jews in the first Aktion. But the Judenrat and the
Jewish police participated in the round-ups, dragging Jews to the Umschlagplatz
collection point in the ghetto. Czerniakow was as bad as all the other Judenrat
leaders. It’s just that he had a conscience. For example Czerniakow refused to
cancel the appointment of the hated Josef Szerynski as head of the Jewish
police. On 21 August 1942 ZOB [the Jewish Resistance] shot Szerynski wounding
him in the face. [Hilberg, p. 532., Destruction of Europe’s Jews] Czerniakow,
with his appointment of Szerynski, against the opposition of the Bund, could be
and was, just as autocratic. [Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe
1933-1945,.p. 21-22, Isaiah Trunk, Typology of the Judenrate’]. The reign of
Szerynski was ‘one of the bleakest chapters’ in the history of the Warsaw
ghetto. [Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933-1945, p.210].

The
evidence I present concerning the role of the Jewish Councils does not come
just from Nazis such as Eichmann and Wisliceny, though it is important to note
the views of the Nazis, since they were responsible for their establishment. I
also cite what Raul Hilberg, the greatest of the holocaust historians (and a
Zionist) wrote: ‘‘the most important concentration measure prior to the
formation of the ghettos was the establishment of Jewish councils.” [The
destruction of European Jews, New York 1985, p.75]. In other words a typical
Bogdanor distortion.

Hannah
Arendt wrote:

‘To a Jew
this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is
undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story. It had been known
about before, but it has now been exposed for the first time in all its
pathetic and sordid detail by Raul Hilberg… In Amsterdam as in Warsaw, in
Berlin as in Budapest, Jewish officials could be trusted to compile the lists
of persons and of their property, to secure money from the deportees to defray the
expenses of their deportation and extermination, to keep track of vacated
apartments, to supply police forces to help seize Jews and get them on trains,
until, as a last gesture, they handed over the assets of the Jewish community
in good order for final confiscation. They distributed the Yellow Star badges,
and sometimes, as in Warsaw, ‘the sale of the armbands became a regular
business; there were ordinary armbands of cloth and fancy plastic armbands
which were washable’. In the Nazi-inspired, but not Nazi-dictated, manifestoes
they issued, we still can sense how they enjoyed their new power – ‘The.
Central Jewish Council has been granted the right of absolute disposal over all
Jewish spiritual and material wealth and over all Jewish manpower’, as the first
announcement of the Budapest Council phrased it. [Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in
Jerusalem, pp. 117-118]

13. In
desperation Bogdanor accuses me of quoting ‘Zionists’ therefore the Zionist
movement’s role was fine: ‘On Kasztner, Greenstein has now admitted that he
uses Zionist sources – Halevi, Rosner, Krausz – and so it was the Zionists who
condemned Kasztner. This means that Kasztner’s conduct in Hungary was not
representative of Zionism.’ It would seem that Bogdanor is also an idiot as
well as a liar. I’ve already stressed, although it has not percolated in the
dim recesses of his mind, that individual Zionists cannot be equated to the
Zionist movement as a whole. So of course I cite Zionist sources. It is that
which is so damning. The evidence that the Zionist leaders that Bogdanor is so
eager to defend were collaborators comes from members of his own movement!

14.
Bogdanor complains that I don’t prove that Kasztner’s testimony in favour of
Nazis war criminals at Nuremberg was approved by the Jewish Agency. But I cite
the article of Barri which sifts all the evidence and says that this is clearly
the most likely explanation. After all, why would the Jewish Agency pay for
much of Kasztner’s travel and living expenses when going to Nuremberg? I repeat
the passage I quoted since Bogdanor finds it difficult to comprehend:

‘The
testimonies [of Kasztner in favour of various Nazis] become more comprehensible
only when all three factors are examined: Kasztner, the Americans, and the
Jewish Agency. [164] One can, in this context, better understand Kasztner’s
motive in testifying on their behalf, WHETHER HE HAD RECEIVED THE EXPLICIT
PRIOR AUTHORISATION OF THE JEWISH AGENCY, OR WHETHER SUCH AUTHORISATION WAS
ONLY PARTIAL AND RETROACTIVE. Kasztner acted in Nuremberg as representative of
the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. [164] He considered himself
authorised to testify in their name in a matter that did not seem to him to
deviate from the general framework in which he was operating. … The new
‘Jewish’ State could not admit that it had established contacts with Nazi
officers (such as Becher and Wisliceny), and had approved testimonies and
appeals on their behalf.’ [165] [Barri (Ishoni), Shoshana(1997) ‘The question
of Kastner’s Testimonies on behalf of Nazi war Criminals’, Journal of Israeli
History, 18: 2, 139 — 165]

15.
Bogdanor’s final lies are that ‘Greenstein not only relies upon Eichmann’s
Holocaust-denying interview with Life magazine, he also quotes Eichmann’s
assistant Wisliceny to the effect that the Holocaust was perpetrated by Jews.’
Let us see who is lying. I’ve already pointed out that sites dedicating to
refuting holocaust deniers [and falsifiers like Bogdanor] such as Nizkor, cite
Eichmann because he is a Nazis who admits that the Nazis carried out the
holocaust but let us quote the interview in Life magazine of 28.11.60:

‘Where I
was implicated in the physical annihilation of the Jews, I admit my
participation freely and without pressure. After all, I was the one who
transported the Jews to the camps. If I had not transported them, they would
not have been delivered to the butcher.’ In a chapter headed ‘The order for
annihilation Eichmann writes; ‘After the onetime German Fuhrer gave the order
for the physical annihilation of the Jews, our duties shifted.’ Eichmann also
writes of his 1937 visit to Palestine: ‘I did see enough to be very impressed
by what the Jewish colonists were building up their land. I admired their
desperate will to live, the more so since I was myself an idealist.’ It is quite
clear that Eichmann is not denying the holocaust. That is what makes his
testimony invaluable and why holocaust denial sites don’t carry the interview.
Wisliceny doesn’t incidentally say that the holocaust was carried out by the
Jews but the Nazi created Jewish Councils helped in its facilitation. A
distinction Bogdanor clearly doesn’t, like much else understand.

I’m also
putting this debate on my blog so that people can see how Zionist propagandists
find it so difficult to defend their record.

Tony Greenstein

September
8, 2014 at 9:20 pm

·
Tony Greenstein’s methods are illustrated to clinical perfection by his
latest ill-advised response. Consider a few examples:

1. I
called Tony Greenstein a Trotskyist. Tony Greenstein denied being a Trotskyist.
I produced a quotation by Greenstein expressing agreement with the Trotskyist
analysis of the USSR. Greenstein still denies that he is a Trotskyist. How then
will he explain his own statement (in a previous exchange with me): “I come from the
Trotskyist tradition”? Greenstein’s efforts to weasel his way out of the fact
that he is a Trotskyist – and thus a supporter of a movement opposed to the
Allied war against Nazism – are as hilarious as they are pathetic.

2.
Greenstein compounds his lie by repeating his previous revisionist nonsense –
refuted at the time – portraying Stalin, progenitor of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, as
the humanitarian saviour of millions of people. He even has the chutzpah to
mention Ernst Nolte, when I have long since documented his own striking similarity to the
German revisionist. Readers may want to check for themselves.

3. I
accused Greenstein of attributing a quotation to Riegner when it was actually
Segev’s paraphrase of something he claimed Riegner said to him. Greenstein now
reproduces Segev’s text, thus confirming that the statements he placed in
quotation marks were not quotations at all. (Greenstein’s pretence that Segev
“had no reason to lie or fabricate” is laughable when the entire purpose of
Segev’s book is to incriminate Zionism. If Segev’s paraphrase is an accurate
rendition of what Riegner actually said, then why did he not present the
original remarks verbatim?)

4.
Greenstein twice used a quotation (“are we again, in moments of desperation,
going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism…”)
from the “49th annual convention of Zionist Organisation of America, New York
Times, October 27 1946.” I pointed out that there is no such quotation anywhere
in the NYT report on that date. Now Greenstein does not even claim that it can
be found in the NYT. Instead he protests that he found it elsewhere and did not
try to verify it. Which means, at best, that Greenstein is willing to use
whatever fabricated quotations he can find in a secondary source.

5.
Greenstein cited a publication of the Israeli Communist Party, which was and is
openly Stalinist. I called such a “quotation” worthless, and drew attention,
yet again, to Greenstein’s reliance on Stalinist hate propaganda. Now
Greenstein does not even pretend that the quotation is genuine or that it can
be found in any other source.

6. On one
point alone I concede error – thanks to Greenstein’s error. Greenstein
repeatedly quoted Teveth, p. 844, and I checked that page, where Greenstein’s
quotation does not appear. But the words quoted by Greenstein do appear on p.
848, not p. 844. However, even here Greenstein has wrenched the passage out of
context, for on pp. 848-9, Teveth produces a series of predictions by
Ben-Gurion of the Nazi extermination of the Jews and states that Ben-Gurion’s
reason for giving priority to Palestine was his fear of “the destruction the
Yishuv could expect in the event of a German invasion of Palestine” (p. 849).
Not indifference to the Jews of Europe but the potential extermination of the
Jews of Palestine explains Ben-Gurion’s attitude, according to Teveth.

7. I
accused Greenstein of ignorance of Ben-Gurion’s covert rescue operation for the
Jews of Europe, and cited Friling, where the information is to be found.
Greenstein has not read Friling, but he hastens to proclaim that there is “no
evidence that this committee achieved anything,” when Friling supplied 2
volumes of evidence. For the record, thousands of Jews were smuggled out of
Europe, primarily Romania and the Balkans, by Zionists. As opposed to
Greenstein’s Trotskyists, who did not bring Jews out of Nazi Europe, and who
were content to oppose the war against Nazism – a position Greenstein (quite
rightly) finds so shameful that he now pretends not to be a Trotskyist in spite
of his own statements proving that he is one.

8.
Greenstein denies that the Zionists were among the first to demand the bombing
of Auschwitz. The fact is that Gruenbaum lobbied the Americans to adopt
Weissmandel’s proposal to bomb the death camp and the rail lines leading to it.
The JAE’s debate on June 11, 1944 was a debate on Gruenbaum’s lobbying effort.
The JAE voted against the proposal to bomb the camp (not the rail lines) solely
because they did not want to cause the death of Jews. But having learned of the
scale of the killing at Auschwitz from the Vrba-Wetzler report, they reversed
that decision, and Weizmann and Shertok were the first to put the bombing
proposal to the British. As opposed to Greenstein’s Trotskyists, who could not
make such a demand since they opposed the whole Allied war effort against
Nazism.

9.
Greenstein previously wrote that Ben-Gurion “positively revelled in it,” where
“it” refers to the affliction of the Nazis. Greenstein now protests that it is
an “outrageous lie” that he accused Zionists of revelling in the Holocaust. I
urge readers to check Greenstein’s own words above. Contrary to what he says I
have represented him accurately.

10. On
the Jewish Councils, Greenstein is still unable to produce a single line from
any historian proving that all of them collaborated. Some of them did (notably
the anti-Zionist Jewish Council in Budapest), but many did not. To quote Martin
Gilbert (in his privately circulated critique of Perdition):

Hundreds
of acts of defiance and revolt were organised by Jewish Councils. Take, for
example, a 7-day period in May 1942.

— On May
1, in Bilgoraj, the Jewish Council was ordered to compile a list of candidates
for deportation. The Vice-Chairman of the Council, Hillel Janova, and three
other members of the Council refused to do so. All four were shot dead on May
3.

— Two
days later, in Dabrowa, the Chairman of the Jewish Council, Adolf Weinberg, refused
to deliver a list of so called “resettlement” candidates, or to reveal where
those threatened with deportation were hiding. He and his entire family were
deported to their deaths.

— At
Markusow, on May 7, the Jewish Council warned the Jews of the village of an
impending “action” and advised the community that “every Jew who is able to
save himself should do so.”

— At
Szczebzeszyn, a Council member, Hersh Getzel Hoichbaum, on learning that none
of those sent away for “resettlement” were ever heard of again, told his
Council colleagues that he did not wish to be the despatcher of fellow Jews to
their deaths, and hanged himself in his attic.

— At
Iwje, two council members, Shalom Zak and Bezalel Milkowski, were among those
selected by the Germans not to be deported. They at once insisted on joining
the deportees, and were killed, together with their families and 2,500 other
Jews, on May 8.

11.
Greenstein is forced to admit that it was the Zionists who condemned Kasztner,
but pretends not to understand my point that in such a case Kasztner was not
representative of Zionism. Moreover he has no answer to my quotation from
Halevi’s verdict explicitly stating that the Zionists ordered Kasztner’s rescue
committee (and other Zionists) to resist the Nazis – orders that Kasztner
disobeyed.

12. On
Kasztner’s testimonies in Nuremberg, Greenstein continues to confuse Barri’s
conclusions with evidence for those conclusions. Barri, in order to exonerate
Kasztner, wants to show that the Jewish Agency authorised him to help Nazi war
criminals. But the evidence cited by Barri shows the opposite. She quotes
Riegner, who expressly stated that Kasztner never received permission from the
WJC or the Jewish Agency to testify for Nazis.

Greenstein
asks why the Jewish Agency paid Kasztner’s expenses while he was at Nuremberg.
The reason is that Kasztner’s activities at Nuremberg included testifying against
Nazis. Among others, he helped to prosecute Veesenmayer (who received a long
sentence, later commuted) and Kaltenbrunner (who was executed). This is why
historians do not regard Kasztner’s conduct at Nuremberg as proof of
collaboration. For that, one must examine his activities in Hungary.

13. As
for Eichmann’s interview in Life magazine, Greenstein writes: “It is
quite clear that Eichmann is not denying the holocaust.” Here is what Eichmann
says in that interview:

—
Auschwitz “was not primarily a death camp.”

—
post-war, “the Auschwitzers [sic] sprouted like mushrooms out of the forest
floor after a rain. Hundreds of thousands of them are today in the best of
health.”

— “the
majority of the deportees were not gassed at all.”

And
Greenstein does not consider this to be Holocaust denial. But then that is only
to be expected from one who distributed a work claiming that Anne Frank’s diary
was a forgery, and whose own writings are respectfully reproduced on Holocaust denial websites.

14. Finally,
there is Greenstein’s addition of a new term, “kosher fascist,” to his lexicon
of antisemitic abuse. Greenstein enjoys comparing various Jews to fascists and
Nazis. He has referred to “Judaeo-Nazi views in the Halachah (oral Jewish
law).” He has written of the “Nazi pronouncements of Jewish orthodoxy.” And he
has peddled other antisemitic lies:

That
AIPAC acts as the very kind of anti-Semitic caricature in terms of its buying
of politicians, its naked conspiracies against those who don’t toe the line
doesn’t need to be emphasised. Those who run this despicable outfit seem
determined to act out the lines prepared in the Protocols of Elders of Zion.

And so
on. In vomiting out his antisemitic bile, as in his use of fabricated
quotations, this Trotskyist who pretends not to be a Trotskyist proves himself
a worthy student of Stalinist hate propaganda.

Paul Bogdanor

September
9, 2014 at 2:19 pm

·
For Greenstein to suggest I am an informer for Atzmon is a nonsense. And
there is nothing in the quote he has provided to suggest this is so. In fact,
As Greenstein is well aware, I write for the blog Harry’s Place which has been
one of the most vocal opponents of Atzmon. This can be compared to Greenstein
who sent Atzmon a friendly note saying that he would be “more
than happy” to hear him play the sax. Moreover, in that email, Greenstein
praised Atzmon’s remarks on the very subject that this thread is dicussing:
Greenstein’s allegations of Zionist-Nazi collaboration. For all I know, Atzmon
might have been Greenstein’s source for some of the nonsense he has written in
this thread.

As for
the litigation against The Times, Greenstein disputes my claim that the
amount paid out to a charity (£1,000) and an apology which was only left on The
Times website for a week could well have been a business decision. If
Greenstein was so right, and given he has been prepared to utilise the
bourgeois courts previously, why did he agree to the small sum of £1,000 (and
that is very small in libel terms) and to a charity? The truthful answer is far
more likely that Greenstein was frightened off with a Burstein plea by The
Times.

Given the
distortions, lies and simple falsehoods in all Bogdanor’s posts it would be a
waste of time to spend any more time on
him.

Tony
Greenstein

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