Exchange: Tony Greenstein – More Errors Than Paragraphs, Cont. Previous: Tony Greenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I apologize that this is such a long post, but I wish to deal with all Greenstein’s points. Yet again he makes numerous errors. i. Greenstein is wrong – Polkehn’s article comes from the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1976. Greenstein is also wrong that it was the Haganah that invited Mildenstein to Palestine; but it was a Zionist – Kurt Tuchler of the German ZVfD. What Greenstein fails to accept or acknowledge is that that trip was made in 1933, numerous years before the Final Solution commenced; and moreover, had the Jews done what the Zionists wanted and emigrated to Palestine, they would not have been murdered by the Nazi regime. This clear fact does not fit in with his logic. ii. If Greenstein is aware when the Kasztner trial started, then why did he get the dates wrong in his post? Clearly, the truth is not something he feels the need to report on. Regarding the Zionist policy of selecting the few out of the many, this relates to immigration to Palestine in the period up and until the mid-1930s – Greenstein confuses policy in the mid 1930s – before the Holocaust with that in the 1940s... By 1939, Ben-Gurion had done away with the policy of selective immigration and changed it to a policy of “immigration revolt.” He wanted Jews to move to Palestine en masse. This change of attitude was confirmed by Golda Meir in 1943, when she said:           [W]e cannot talk about immigration in the same way that we spoke about it ten years ago. We cannot deal           with immigration and pioneering training as we did in the past. Now it is the question of bringing every           Jew, not because he is a farmer, but because he is a Jew and in the ghetto… The comments by Golda Meir also show what was actually meant by selective immigration – they wanted farmers – in short workers for the land – these are what Greenstein refers to as the “Zionist elite,” when discussing selective immigration. Greenstein’s use of selective quotation when quoting the Attorney General shows when he leaves out the following statement from the same Attorney General : “There is not one iota of proof that Rudolf Kasztner became such a collaborator. His honourable intentions never left him to the end.” iii. Greenstein is wrong on this point. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision on the point of collaboration by 4:1 and on the point of preparing the ground for murder by 5:0. Kasztner did testify on behalf of Becher – that is true. He also testified on behalf of Krumey and Juttner. He did not testify on behalf of Wisliceny but did provide a memorandum requesting that Wisliceny be transferred from Slovak to American custody. He did not testify on behalf of anyone else, but he did testify against other Nazis. It is not known exactly why Kasztner made those testimonies although there are numerous theories – but what we do know is what exactly Kasztner said in his testimonies. On behalf of Becher, Kasztner credited him Becher with allowing the 1,685 Jews on the rescue train to escape, saving 75 Jews hiding in Bratislava, preventing the deportation of 85,000 Jews in the Budapest Ghetto and rescuing some 50,000 survivors at concentration camps – notably at Mauthausen and Flossenberg. Kasztner believed that at the end of the war Becher had done all that he could to prevent the killing of innocent civilians, including an intervention with Himmler aimed at preventing Slovakian Jews near the city of Serad being concentrated prior to deportation. Kasztner thought it “equitable” that these facts should be taken into consideration by the Allied authorities. Kasztner argued on behalf of Krumey that he had acted “in a comparatively humane way” to the 15,000 Jews sent to Austria and deserved some credit that the majority of them survived the war. Kastzner also argued that Krumey had rescued 29 Jews in Bratislava and 30,000 Jews in Theresienstadt by undermining orders to destroy them. On behalf of Juttner he argued that Juttner’s and Becher’s interventions with Himmler had stopped the “death march.” On behalf of Becher – the most famous of these testimonies – Yehuda Bauer comments:           He [Becher] was a convinced if superficial and opportunist Nazi, the stuff so many mass murderers were           made of. Becher was a killer probably, a mass murderer probably, a robber and a blackmailer most           certainly – and a saviour of maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. He saved those lives to benefit himself. iv. Regarding Dobkin’s claim – Greenstein is correct – it does not mean it is true, Dobkin could have lied in court – but it does not mean that it was false either. Regarding the Israeli Labour Party – he is correct – they did not prosecute him – the overriding point was that many saw Kasztner as a hero – a rescuer of Jews. How many others saved as many as Kasztner? v. I have no idea where Greenstein gets some of this information from – he must have made it up. Kastzner testified against many Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. For example, Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive. Kasztner was at Nuremberg because he was the head of Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest during the war. vi. Greenstein is denying what he said, when it is there in print for everyone to see: “all the allegations in Perdition are made by the 2/3rd Jewish escapee from Auschwitz, the non-Zionist Rudolph Vrba.” Vrba does deal with some of the same issues, but he does not come to the same conclusions as Jim Allen did in his play. It seems that Greenstein is the only person I have seen suggest that Vrba was or might be an antisemite. Vrba did not argue that the Zionists positively desired the slaughter of Jews in order to establish a state – a claim that Jim Allen made. vii. The case of Vrba and his Auschwitz Protocols has been discussed by numerous scholars of the Holocaust inside and outside of Israel – for example Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies or Yehuda Bauer in Jews for Sale? Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was correctly attacked. As Jacob Robinson showed in his excellent And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight, all of her major contentions were wrong and a great many of her minor ones also needed to be tossed out. viii. Greenstein fails to answer my claim that Bauer called Vrba a “hero.” He just chooses to ignore it. Bauer also sent a letter of recommendation to Haifa University for Vrba to receive an honorary doctorate. Greenstein clearly fails to acknowledge this. ix. As I have said – Bauer has praised Vrba – in fact Bauer responds very well to the allegations of Vrba and Linn in his article “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz,’” published in Yalkut Moroshet, No. 3, Winter 2005, pp. 125-136. x. Jim Allen in his play that Tony Greenstein supported did deny that that the Zionists fought Hitler’s army. I am glad Greenstein recognizes some did – but here he tries to argue that they were fighting independent of any Zionist ideology. As to the main point or argument by Greenstein, that the Zionists were not interested in fighting Hitler, even if we ignore the Warsaw Ghetto uprising for a moment, we can see what the Zionist leaders wanted to do. In May 1942, at the Biltmore Conference, the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs approved a programme, much of which had been laid down previously by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, where amongst other points they called for the formation of a “Jewish military fighting force under their own flag and under the high command of the United Nations” against Hitler. Indeed, that particular point in the Biltmore Programme was actually written by Ben-Gurion. Greenstein is either not aware of, or fails to acknowledge, the socialist Zionists, some of whom were strongly influenced by Marxist movements. An example is Yitzhak Tabenkin, the leader of Hakibbutz Hamme’uhad, (the Labour Movement’s kibbutz organization) whose reservations about the willingness of the Allied powers to act led him to comment: “the whole world is our enemy. Our only hope lies with the world’s revolutionary forces, in China, India. World Revolution – this is our ally…” He argued that the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] had to follow a policy that was not only Zionist, but also Jewish: “Jews must fight for the rescue of other Jews.” This socialist tradition was strong in the Zionist leadership at the time. Ben-Gurion said in March 1944: “We are one hundred percent Zionists and one hundred percent socialists.” Greenstein, of course, does not mention that by the end of 1942, 20,000 Jews in Palestine had joined the British Army, and by the end of the war that number had increased to close to 30,000, representing approximately fifteen percent of all Jewish bread-winners in Palestine. Consequently, it can be seen that the whole Zionist ethos as espoused by Greenstein – that when the Zionists did fight they did not fight as Zionists – has no basis in fact. xi. The original bribe to Wisliceny was $50,000, not £50,000 – I tend to agree based on the work of scholars, including Yehuda Bauer, Dina Porat and Hannah Yablonka, that the Europa Plan was unworkable and Weissmandel was incorrect in his belief that it would have worked. Greenstein is correct – Vrba does not specifically call either Weissmandel or Kasztner a collaborator, and let me thank him for pointing that out. Vrba did not write Holocaust Victims Accuse; it was written by Schonfeld. Regarding Min Hametzar: as it was published posthumously, it is unclear what parts of the book were written by Weissmandel and what parts were written by his followers. Notably the allegation in the book – that of the text of a letter by Nathan Schwalb subsequently destroyed in the war – is hotly disputed by numerous scholars. xii. Here we should be clear as to what Vrba did, what he claimed and what he has guessed. Vrba did not go to Hungary – the claim that Kasztner dressed in a SS uniform is denied. Vrba was not in a position to know first hand if it was true – he may have been relying on rumours put out by the anti-Kasztner types such as Tamir. The claims of what Kasztner said to Eichmann again seem to be guesswork by Vrba – he was not at the meetings with Eichmann. Bauer does not claim that the Auschwitz Protocol was not disseminated in order to save negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. The Auschwitz Protocol was completed on April 27, 1944. There is clear contradictory evidence as to when Kasztner received the Protocol. Vrba and Wetzler claimed Kasztner received it on April 26, 1944, but we know it were not finished until April 27 1944. In Palestine Krasniansky claimed Kasztner received them on April 28, 1944 * – however Hanzi Brand (Joel’s wife) who was very close to Kasztner at the time claimed that Kasztner did not travel to Bratislava until August 1944 – according to Bauer the Protocol actually reached Hungary on the same day it reached Switzerland – June 10, 1944 – what exactly happened between April 27 and June 10 is not clear. There does seem to be a question mark around this matter. [* Correction from “Mikey”: According to testimony by Vrba and Wetzler, Krasnianski wrote the Protocol and he claimed Kasztner received it on April 26, 1944, but we know it was not finished until April 27, 1944. In a subsequent testimony Krasniansky claimed Kasztner received it on April 28, 1944.] Yad Vashem is not an “Israeli propaganda institute.” It is a Holocaust memorial centre. Re: Yad Vashem and Raul Hilberg’s book, Greenstein is wrong. Yad Vashem did not want to publish the book, but they were happy to print it. It was rejected for publication due to deficiencies notably because it “rested almost entirely on the authority of German sources and [did] not utilize primary sources in the languages of the occupied states, or in Yiddish and Hebrew.” However, despite this, Yad Vashem noted, the book “possessed numerous merits,” and as such they stated: “we are prepared to act as mediator between the University of Columbia and the printer here in order to make possible the book’s appearance under the auspices of the Columbia University.” xiii. Tony Greenstein is well aware from his Jewish upbringing that the prayers for the festival of Passover which predate the First Zionist Congress by numerous centuries plea for “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Greenstein is also aware that one of the most important prayers for Jews commences “Hear O Israel.” Greenstein is very aware of the centrality of Eretz Yisrael [the land of Israel] to Jewish life, but he chooses to ignore it. xiv. The United Nations is an internationally recognized body – whether or not Greenstein accepts is another matter entirely. Greenstein here is using an argument that he published around 1982 (maybe earlier) in a pamphlet entitled Zionism – Anti-Semitism’s Twin in Jewish Garb. This has false logic – it is based on the claim that Zionists wanted Jews out Europe and so did antisemites so Zionists are antisemites or even Nazis. The logic is as false as the old claim – Socrates is mortal, all cats are mortal, hence Socrates is cat. It makes no sense whatsoever, but making sense is not a requirement for Greenstein – as someone else has referred to him, rather aptly I think – “the Tommy Cooper of the anti-Zionist lobby.” xv. I am not an apologist for the settler movement – by this I am clear by settlers I refer to those Jews in the West Bank. Greenstein is unclear – given he does not recognize the State of Israel – he thinks all Jews in Israel are settlers so I am not sure to what he is referring. In any event I am not in favour of harassment of the Palestinians. xvi. To argue that there is an ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel is not only hogwash but it also offensive and I do not care if it comes from Tony Greenstein or Israel Shahak. Rabbis use Talmudic methods to determine who is a Jew not Nazi methods. As Greenstein well knows – someone is Jewish by religious law if they have a Jewish mother. I do not know of Zionist organizations that tried to “ban” the play – there were many not happy with it being performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987 – but not ban it – in fact in the spirit of democracy and demonstration – they would have organized a picket against the play as they did in Edinburgh in 1987 and London in 1988 and 1999 – but not “ban” it. The late Jim Allen politically identified with Gerry Healy, who went on to form the Workers Revolutionary Party that ultimately decided to take money from Libya to spy on British Jews. Posted by: Mikey at January 26, 2007 01:02 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next: Paul Bogdanor