By Tony Greenstein
New Generation Publishing—2022
Reviewed by Steven Halpern
Zionism is the idea that Jewish people from all over the world need a homeland in the nation that was once called Palestine. That idea has been used to murder, steal land, and systematically discriminate against the Palestinian people who have lived on that land for centuries.
Today the myths of Zionism are exploding in the unimaginable Israeli acts of genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip. So, in order to strip away all the mythology of Zionism, Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust goes back into the roots of how and why Zionism developed into a military force that is the fourth most powerful in the world.
The myths
For me, in order to put this book in perspective, we first need to think about some of the arguments Zionists have advanced over the years. We can begin with the idea that anti-Semitism has been around for quite a long time in nations all over the world. The Zionists argue that the German Nazi organized murder of about six million Jews is evidence that anti-Semitism is unique in the world.
They argue that after the Holocaust, no nation wanted to accept Jewish refugees. So according to their logic, that reality made the establishment of the state of Israel a necessity to combat anti-Semitism.
They argue that during the establishment of the state of Israel there may have been some war crimes, but Jewish people needed to defend themselves, and the overall goals of the 1948 war to establish Israel were justified. Today they argue that the Israeli Defense Force is invading Gaza because Zionists feel this is necessary to defend the seven million Jewish citizens of Israel.
From their perspective, efforts to hide Jews from the Nazi Holocaust were isolated. The 1993 film Schindler’s List was portrayed as a relatively isolated event where a capitalist made a heroic effort to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
The reality
Ok, those are the myths. There is a kernel of truth in the argument that anti-Semitism has been around for a long time. There were pogroms, or racist raids that murdered thousands of Jews in Czarist Russia. Anti-Semitism to one extent or another existed in many countries in the world.
Then there is the other side. Initially only a tiny minority of Jews supported Zionism. The Zionist idea that Jewish people could only thrive by living in Palestine was seen by many Jews as anti-Semitic. The pogroms against Jews supported the idea that Jews were an obstacle to non-Jews. The Jewish idea of leaving Europe and moving to Palestine was in fundamental agreement with the anti-Semites.
If the establishment of the state of Israel was about protecting Jews from anti-Semitism, we might ask the question: Why did the Zionists make a number of deals with the Nazis that facilitated the Holocaust? What are the facts?
The Transfer Agreement
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the German economy was in dire straits. The world became aware that the Nazis routinely brutalized Jews in Germany. There had been successful boycotts spearheaded by Jews against the anti-Semitic practices of the Ford Motor Company and Czarist Russia. So, when the Nazis came to power, there was tremendous sentiment for an economic boycott of Germany.
Because of the dire straits of the German economy, this boycott had the real potential to create an atmosphere hostile to the Nazis that could have removed them from power. The Zionists who represented a tiny percentage of Jews at that time, saw their opportunity to make a lot of money.
So, the Zionists arranged to have a meeting with a viciously anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, Hermann Goring. Goring understood that while he hated the Jews, the Zionists had something he wanted. So, they came together in what became known as the Transfer Agreement.
The Nazis would allow some Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The Nazis had already confiscated much of the wealth of those Jews. Goring agreed send some of that money to Palestine. In return, the Zionists would work to put an effective end to the boycott against Germany.
As it turned out, the thousands of Jews that the Nazis allowed to emigrate to Palestine were the most affluent. They had the ability to leave Germany whenever they wanted. So, the Nazis got exactly what they wanted and the Zionists, in effect, got nothing.
So, the Zionists contributed to compromising the effectiveness of the boycott. This was also because corporations in capitalist nations wanted to do business with fascist Germany. Most corporations were indifferent to the horrors inflicted on the Jews and were primarily concerned with their profits.
Along those lines, there was the Zionist—Nazi organization called Judenrate. Wherever the Nazis took power they organized the Judenrate or Jewish police in the Jewish communities. The following passage is from a Nazi observer in Krakow in 1940 who,
“was struck by the contrast between poverty and filth in the Jewish quarter and the business-like luxury of the Jewish community headquarters, which was filled with beautiful charts, comfortable leather chairs, and heavy carpets.”
Rudolf Kraztner
The Nazi leader Aldolf Eichmann came to Hungary to facilitate the transport of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the collection camps to the concentration camps. The Nazis wanted to avoid the Jewish resistance they encountered with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So, Eichmann had a meeting with Jewish political officials in the Zionist Jewish Agency. This is what Eichmann had to say about that meeting.
“One man stood out among them. Dr. Rudolf Kraztner. . .an ice-cold lawyer and fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation—and even keep order in the collection camps—if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 or 20,000 Jews. . .was not too high for me. . .there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders.”
Kraztner and others were fully aware that the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were being deported would be sent to the extermination camps. Because of his deal with Eichmann, he kept that information from the Jewish community and encouraged them not to worry about their deportations.
About 4,000 Hungarian Jews escaped to Romania and avoided the Holocaust. Had Kraztner informed Jews of the Holocaust, thousands more might have been saved.
Kurt Becher, Dieter Wisliceny and Krumey were leading Nazis who organized for the execution of thousands of Jews in the concentration camps. Towards the end of the war, these Nazis understood that their cause was lost, so they began organizing efforts to save a few Jews.
As a result, Rudolf Kraztner defended Becher, Wislinceny, and Krumey when they were on trial in Nuremburg. They were found not guilty because of Kraztner’s testimony.
Then, Malkiel Gruenwald exposed information that Kraztner knowingly kept information about the extermination camps from the Jewish community. This facilitated their deportation to the concentration camps. Kraztner responded by suing Gruenwald for libel. The Israeli government supported the libel suit against Gruenwald.
At the 1955 trial, Gruenwald’s lawyer presented evidence confirming that Kraztner was a collaborator with the Nazis. The judge in the trial agreed and dismissed the charge of libel.
Then, in 1957, members of the Israeli terrorist organization Lehi assassinated Rudolf Kraztner.
The Israeli Supreme Court didn’t like the ruling confirming that Kraztner was a Nazi collaborator. That verdict compromised the core reasons why the state of Israel was established in 1948. So, in 1958 the Israeli Supreme Court reversed the decision by the lower court in the libel case against Malkiel Gruenwald.
Marek Edelman
We can contrast the Zionist defense of Rudolf Kraztner to their indifference and hostility to Marek Edelman.
Marek Edelman was a cardiologist and a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He managed to escape the Nazi defeat of the uprising and survived the war. Edelman eventually became critical of the Zionist repression of Palestinians. He remained in Poland and was honored by the Polish government at his funeral. No one from the Israeli embassy in Poland attended his funeral and Edelman was treated as a nonperson by the Israeli government.
Zionist indifference to the Holocaust
Why did the Nazis give support to the Judenrate? The Nazis made the extermination camps that murdered millions of Jews a top secret. However, there were prisoners who escaped those camps and the members of the Judenrate became aware of the mass murders.
Yet, the Judenrate made decisions to keep this information from the Jewish community. They actually escorted Jews to the trains that would take them to the concentration camps. They oftentimes told the passengers of those trains that they would be welcomed by the Jewish community when they reached their destination, “with open arms.”
Had the Jews known of their eventual fate, thousands or possibly millions of Jews might have found refuge and escaped the mass murder. Two-thirds of the Jews who made up the Judenrate were Zionists.
A central theme of Greenstein’s book was how the Zionists were indifferent to the Holocaust when it was happening. Their primary goal was the establishment of the state of Israel. While there were Zionists who fought against the Nazis, this wasn’t the policy of the leadership of the Zionist movement.
Why does Greenstein believe that it was indeed possible for many Jews to be rescued and avoid death in the concentration camps? Greenstein lists about 18 countries the Nazis occupied. In each of these countries there were organized efforts to find refuge for Jews and many others who were being victimized by the Nazis.
Many Jews refused to be boarded on the trains going to the camps. They oftentimes went to rural areas where farmers gave them refuge.
The Soviet Union and the church
The actions of the government of the Soviet Union during those years need a bit of background. The Russian Revolution was a watershed moment in human history. The Revolution put in power a government that did its best to serve the interests of the vast majority of the people who lived in Czarist Russia.
The combined effect of the First World War, the Civil War after the revolution, the disruption of the economy, and the effects of famine had a severe toll on the Soviet Union. As a result, Joseph Stalin became the central leader of the country and betrayed everything the Revolution tried to accomplish. Stalin actually organized to murder most of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution.
With the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks outlawed anti-Semitism. When Stalin betrayed the revolution, anti-Semitic attitudes returned. When Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Nazis, he didn’t protest the vicious anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis.
Stalin’s primary international goal was to coexist with the imperial powers. This was to ensure that his personal dominance of the USSR would continue. Because of Stalin’s pact with the Nazis, he instructed the Communist Parties throughout the world to oppose war against Germany.
Because of this pact, the USSR supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. The Nazis took control of half of Poland and the USSR took control of the other half. The Nazis also received political, economic, and military support from the USSR as a result of that pact. Stalin did nothing to protest the Nazi repression against the Jews who had been forced into the Warsaw Ghetto.
Stalin was taken completely by surprise when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Millions of Russian people died unnecessarily because Stalin refused to prepare for the German invasion.
Tony Greenstein estimates that between 1.5 and 2 million Jews escaped the concentration camps because they had refuge in the Soviet Union. In other words, had the Nazis defeated the USSR in the war, it is probable that many more than six million Jews would have been murdered in the Holocaust.
Operation Barbarossa the name used for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941. The first extermination camp was Chelmno that was set up around December 4 1941. The Nazis established the other concentration camps in the spring of 1942.
Initially the Nazis murdered 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war at Auschwitz. While the Soviet Union eventually defeated the Nazis, over twenty million people from the USSR died in the war. This was the overall context of the Nazi decision to change from merely brutalizing Jews to ordering their mass murder.
We might also consider that while many Jews found refuge in the Soviet Union, the Christian Church also played a significant role in saving the lives of many Jews. This was in spite of the fact that the leadership of the Church barely protested against the Nazi organized brutality against the Jewish community. Rank and file Christians did the bulk of the work in hiding Jews from Nazi persecution.
So, while the Soviet Union and Christians saved the lives of many Jews, Zionist members of the Judenrate aided the Nazis in escorting Jews to the trains that took them to the concentration camps. The Nazis would eventually murder most of the members of the Judenrate.
Zionists use the Holocaust to defend their brutalization of Jews and Palestinians
While the Zionist leadership did little or nothing to defend the millions of Jews the Nazis murdered, they made the Holocaust the primary reason for the establishment of the state of Israel. However, the Zionist drive to murder and steal the homes of Palestinians came into conflict with a bit of history.
For the most part, anti-Semitism didn’t exist in Palestine before the drive to create the state of Israel. At the time of the formation of Israel, about 60% of the population was Palestinian. Terrorist gangs coerced about 750,000 Palestinians to leave their homes. Yet the Palestinian population in no way contributed to the anti-Semitism that Jewish people experienced in other parts of the world.
Most of the Jews who came to Palestine spoke several languages that included Yiddish. Many Jews came from the Arabic speaking world and Arabic was their primary language.
Only about one percent of the Jews who initially came to Israel spoke Hebrew. The Zionist terrorist gangs of the Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the Hagenah worked to coerce Jews to stop speaking their native language and speak Hebrew. As a result, the Zionists effectively erased the entire history of the Yiddish language.
Those gangs also repressed any Jews who protested against the Zionist terrorists who murdered Palestinians and forced them to leave their homes. Jews who came to Israel from the Arabic speaking countries were systematically discriminated against. Clearly, these were all anti-Semitic acts carried out by the Israeli government.
The Zionists also worked to discourage governments from around the world from accepting Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The Zionist priority was to populate Israel with as many Jews as they could manage.
So, when we look at this history, I believe we gain a fresh perspective about the Israeli organized genocide that is unfolding in the Gaza Strip today. The Zionist Israeli government has always been a repressive political force.
There is a clear solution to the crisis in the Middle East. This is to give all the Palestinians living in the occupied territories equal rights to Israeli citizens. The core policy of the Zionists movement and the Israeli government has been to deny Palestinians equal rights.
The Zionists argue that anyone who protests against the Israeli organized genocide in Gaza are anti-Semitic. That argument can be effectively answered with the question; Why not give Palestinians the same rights as Israeli citizens?
Tony Greenstein has given us a thorough unvarnished history of Zionism that puts the current Israeli organized genocide into a clear perspective.
