Exchange: Tony Greenstein – More Errors Than Paragraphs, Cont. Previous: “Mikey” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are just a few of the ludicrous falsehoods in Tony Greenstein’s outburst:- Lenni Brenner’s research is “not from Stalinist sources” because Klaus Polkehn’s article “appeared in History Today around 1980...” As Greenstein has now admitted, Brenner cited Polkehn’s article in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1976. There Polkehn was clearly identified as “a prominent journalist in the German Democratic Republic,” i.e., a paid Stalinist propagandist. And the Journal of Palestine Studies is a PLO-sponsored propaganda organ. This is the kind of source that Greenstein uses when blaming Zionist Jews for the Holocaust. Kastner was at Nuremberg solely “to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals.” Kastner’s testimony was a key source of the evidence on the Holocaust used at Nuremberg. Kastner’s testimony, combined with that of the second-tier criminals he had exonerated, was directly responsible for the hanging of Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann’s superior and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. The American lawyers criticised Kastner to divert attention from their own refusal to pursue second-tier murderers such as Becher, who should have been put to death. By testifying for criminals who had no prospect of being punished, Kastner secured their evidence against Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann and their cooperation in finding the stolen assets of Holocaust victims. Source: Shlomo Aronson, Hitler, the Allies and the Jews (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 322-6. When Zionists fought the Nazis, “they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups.” As Bernard Wasserstein documents, “The most elaborate scheme for promoting a distinctive Jewish military role during the Second World War was the project for the establishment of a Jewish Army. The idea was one which had a natural attraction for the Zionists.” This demand was raised “immediately upon the outbreak of war” by both the Jewish Agency and the Revisionists. Other demands included Allied broadcasts to warn Europe’s Jews and threaten retaliation against the Nazis and their collaborators; Allied bombing of German cities in reprisal for the murder of Jews; and Allied bombing of the Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps. Source: Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 271-320. “Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel...” Quoting Vrba, “Further evidence of the collaboration between the Nazis and certain favoured groups of Jews” includes the fact that through Becher’s efforts a small group of Jews escaped to Switzerland: “One of them was Rabbi Weissmandel. The Becher referred to is the same SS Colonel Becher mentioned above. Res ipsa loquitur [The thing speaks for itself].” Source: Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped From Auschwitz (Robson Books, 2006), p. 419. Either Greenstein has not read Vrba and does not know what he is talking about, or he is simply lying. Vrba “has always been crystal clear” in his view that Kastner “went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet. Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.” As Vrba’s baseless accusation of the anti-Zionist Weissmandel demonstrates, he is not reliable on matters he did not personally witness. Vrba had no way of knowing what Kastner did or did not say to Eichmann and his story about the SS uniform has no foundation whatsoever. Kastner’s rescue efforts included:- — an attempt to bribe the SS to stop ghettoisation of Hungary’s Jews; — negotiations for the Brand mission to save a million Jewish lives; — a plan to bribe the SS not to deport 100,000 Jews from Budapest; — a rescue scheme for 30,000 Jews who were incapable of working; — the Marton/Kastner proposal to exchange Hungary’s Jewish survivors for Germans in Romania; — using Becher and his SS colleagues to secure the peaceful surrender of the Belsen, Neuengamme and Theresienstadt concentration camps. Source: Aronson, pp. 241-3, 258-61, 318. Greenstein’s critics are on the side of “the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends” whereas his sympathies are “with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere.” Recall that while the Zionist leaders were demanding the formation of a Jewish Army, reprisals against Germany and the bombing of the death camps, and while countless Zionists were sacrificing their lives to defeat Nazism, Greenstein’s beloved Trotskyists were busy denouncing the “imperialist” war effort and inciting the overthrow of the democratic governments that were the only line of defence against the Final Solution. And then they appropriated Stalinist propaganda accusing the Zionists of murdering millions of Jews. Posted by: Paul Bogdanor at January 26, 2007 05:12 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next: Tony Greenstein