Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis

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Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis

      

NOTICE: Please Read!

By Lenni Brenner, ed. Barricade Books, Reviewed by Sara Powell

It's no secret that Zionism embraced political expediency to advance the cause of carving Eretz-Israel from the land of its native inhabitants. In his 1983 book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lenni Brenner shows that 20th century Zionists observed shockingly few limits to that expediency. Not surprisingly, the book received little coverage in the American media. Now, in 51 Documents, Brenner has compiled a wide variety of letters, statements, articles, and judgements-some of which appeared in his earlier book-by a broad array of activists and authors, that documents Zionist cooperation with the Nazis. On the face of it, the notion seems absurd. However, Brenner presents the case-made in many Zionists' own words-that the Nazi agenda of expelling the Jews from Germany fit nicely with the Zionist plan for enticing those Jews into settling in Palestine and creating a new Jewish nation.

In addition to introductory and concluding chapters, the book is organized into five sections which lead the reader through early, pre-Zionist documents; pre-Holocaust ideological factions; the Holocaust era itself; and a chapter on the Stern Gang and the Nazis. Readers should note that a few documents are not indicative of collaboration in and of themselves, but provide the background to others written in response. These latter do indicate levels of collaboration between Zionists and fascists, both the Nazis in Germany, and those in Mussolini's Italy. Brenner's brief explanatory notes at the beginning of each document are helpful, as are the glossary and index.

51 Documents assumes a certain knowledge of Zionist history, and requires a close reading and some deconstructive efforts on the part of the reader. Those willing to commit the time and effort, however, are rewarded with some stunning revelations. The reason some Zionists eschewed the boycott against Hitler's Germany, for instance, is that they had a financial deal-Ha'avara-with Germany allowing Jews to exchange their wealth for goods to be exported to Palestine at less of a loss, as an incentive to emigrate. Those wondering why Zionists today are so organized and experienced in their public relations efforts discover that these battles have been fought before. Moreover, the section on Nazi and Zionist understandings of "nationality" versus citizenship reveals how German and Israeli practices are based on the same concept.

51 Documents also sheds a whole new light on the term "Holocaust guilt," frequently understood to mean Western, non-Jewish guilt for not acting against the Holocaust earlier. However, these documents make it clear that Holocaust guilt began with those Zionists who made the undoubtedly difficult, but politically expedient choice to place Eretz-Israel at the top of their priorities, above the lives of their threatened European brethren.

From a Zionist Executive Meeting speech by Yitzhak Gruenbaum on Feb. 18, 1943:

    And when some asked me: "Can't you give money from Keren Ha Yesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) to save Jews in the Diaspora?" I said: "No!" And again I say no....And, because of these things, people called me an anti-Semite, and concluded that I'm guilty, for the fact that we don't give ourselves completely to rescue actions. (p. 211)

However difficult it may be, the reader must confront some rather disturbing conclusions. The most unsettling realization for this reviewer is that pre-Holocaust Zionists were able to politically align themselves with the Nazis because both groups fundamentally saw race as an important dividing line-and, moreover, were determined to keep it that way. From Vladimir Jabotinsky to Albert Einstein, "assimilation" of Jews into the societies in which they lived was not an acceptable option. Rather, Jewish nationalism required equality on a national level, not a personal one. As Jabotinsky explained, "It is impossible for a man to become assimilated with people whose blood is different from his own" (p. 10); in Einstein's words, "Palestine is first and foremost not a refuge for East European Jews, but the incarnation of a reawakening sense of national solidarity" (p. 29). Finally, David Yisraeli, a member of the Stern Gang, wrote the following in late 1940, as part of a proposal to Hitler. It was delivered in 1941 to two German diplomats in Lebanon.

    3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East (p. 301).

Such beliefs, of course, were not limited to Nazis and Zionists. Scientific and philosophical constructs of the day considered such differentiation legitimate, and ideas of racial difference-and, therefore, racial supremacy-were practiced around the world.

Another disturbing conclusion a reader must inevitably face is that Zionists learned both tactical and political lessons from the Nazis and that, even today, these lessons are applied to further the Zionist cause. Although most likely known to potential readers of this book, another disturbing element is the cover-up of the less than savory roles of current Israeli leaders, including former prime ministers, in the terrorist Irgun and Stern Gang just before, during, and after the Holocaust. Likewise, the succumbing of various U.S. officials to Zionist pressure is a familiar, but distressing, story.

51 Documents seems to represent a renewed attempt by Brenner to bring information regarding Zionist collaboration with the Nazis to U.S. supporters of Israel, as well as to Jews and Muslims, in order to expand dialogue with knowledge, and save lives-both Palestinian and Israeli-in the process. Readers of 51 Documents will find it difficult not to remove the rose colored glasses that so many seem to wear when examining Zionism.

Sara Powell is AET's administrative and public relations director.
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
A Reappraisal (1983)

Lenni Brenner: Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.
Copyright © 1983 Lenni Brenner. All Rights Reserved. Reposted here by permission
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner is presented online for personal use only.
No portions of this book may be reprinted, reposted or published without written permission from the author.
Transcribed by Lenni Brenner.
Marked up by Einde O'Callaghan for REDS - Die Roten.

    In lieu of a new introduction
    Edward Mortimer: Contradiction, collusion and controversy
    (A review from the London Times)

    Preface

    1. Zionism and Anti-Semitism Prior to the Holocaust
    2. Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil): The Roots of Racist Zionism
    3. German Zionism and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic
    4. Zionism and Italian Fascism, 1922-1933
    5. German Zionism Offers to Collaborate with Nazism
    6. The Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott and the Zionist-Nazi Trade Agreement
    7. Hitler Looks at Zionism
    8. Palestine - The Arabs, Zionists, British and Nazis
    9. The World Jewish Congress
    10. Zionist-Revisionism and Italian Fascism
    11. Revisionism and Nazism
    12. Georg Kareski, Hitler's Zionist Quisling Before Quisling
    13. Choosing the Chosen People - The Doctrine of "Zionist Cruelty"
    14. The World Zionist Organisation and Italian Fascism, 1933-1937
    15. Austria and the "Gentile Friends of Zionism"
    16. The Jewish Parties of Eastern Europe
    17. Spain - The Nazis Fight, the Zionists Do Not
    18. Zionism's Failure to Fight Nazism in the Liberal Democracies
    19. Zionism and the Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
    20. Poland, 1918-1939
    21. Zionism in Holocaust Poland
    22. Zionist Collusion with the Polish Government-in-Exile
    23. Illegal Immigration
    24. The Wartime Failure to Rescue
    25. Hungary, the Crime Within a Crime
    26. The Stern Gang

    Appendix
    Stern Gang: Proposal of Irgun Zvai Leumi
    Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question
    and Participation in the War on the Side of Germany
    (1941)
    (The German original)

    Glossary of Jewish and Zionist Organisations

    Abbreviations

Zionism as Jewish National Socialism
Rothschilds Conduct "Red Symphony"
The Protocols of Zion Updated
Defining anti-Semitism and Israel
Thinking About Neo-conservatism
Is the Intifada Over?
The Marxists and the Lobby
Benjamin Freedman on Zionism
The Hidden Tyranny: Rosenthal Interview
The Brutality and Savagery of Zionism
His New Career: A. Schickelgruber writes again
Five to Midnight: the Dangerous Neighbors
Zionist-Israeli Roots of Hamas exposed



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I found this chapter of interest...

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Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

 
12. Georg Kareski, Hitler's Zionist Quisling Before Quisling

The fact that Jabotinsky opposed Hitler, and was able to convince Abba Achimeir to stop praising him, did not mean that all Revisionists accepted this position. Some Revisionists were still convinced that collaboration was the way forward for Zionism. The most notorious of these was Georg Kareski, whom (as we have seen) Jabotinsky tried to curb in 1933.

By 1919-20 Kareski had already disregarded the ZVfD's preoccupation with Palestine work and concentrated on Jewish community politics. In an age of declining faith, when many German Jews were opting for mixed marriages and atheism, those who clung to the sectarian Jewish community became even more inward-looking. In 1926 Kareski's introverted Zionist Jüdische Volkspartei, in alliance with other religious isolationists, was able to upset the reformed "Liberal" German-nationalist leadership, and in January 1929, he became Chairman of the Berlin Jewish community. But his success was short-lived, and the liberals defeated him in November 1930. Kareski had entered German politics in the September 1930 Reichstag elections as a candidate of the Catholic Centre, which was attractive to him both for its concern for religious education and its social conservatism. With Hitler's coming to power, Kareski joined the Revisionists, which he now saw as the potential Jewish equivalent of the successful Nazis. They had been an insignificant faction within the ZVfD, gaining only 1,189 of the 8,494 votes in the delegate election for the 1931 World Zionist Congress. By 1933 the Revisionists were reduced to further futility by their division into rival cliques. Kareski, with his prestige as a notable member of the community, had no difficulty in becoming the leader of these dispirited forces and merging them into a new Staatzionistische Organisation.

In May 1933 he attempted his ludicrous putsch at the Berlin Jewish community centre and was expelled from the ZVfD. His career and his association with the Nazis developed further after the Revisionist split from the WZO, following the defeat of the anti-Nazi boycott at the Prague Congress. As the Revisionists were no longer de facto a part of the WZO, the Palestine Office in Berlin was ordered to exclude Betarim from consideration for immigration certificates. The Revisionists responded by starting brawls at ZVfD meetings, shouting: "You Marxist swine! You are all sympathisers of the Histadrut which belongs to the Second International!" [1] As a result of this the ZVfD headquarters were temporarily closed in June 1934. By 6 August, one of the State Zionist leaders, Dr Friedrich Stern, sent the Nazis a letter explaining that the growth of their anti-Marxist youth group, the Nationale Jugend Herzlia, was stunted by their exclusion from emigration by the Palestine Office staffed by allegedly pro-Marxist Histadrut supporters from the ZVfD. Stern proposed that the Palestine Office be turned over to them. The ZVfD found out about the plot through Hechalutz spies in the Herzlia and through their own contacts in the regime and hence the scheme failed. [2] The Nazis quickly realised that if they gave the Palestine Office to the State Zionists the WZO would not give out any certificates in Germany. As long as the Nazis needed the WZO and the Jewish charities to organise the emigration, they could not impose a collaborator on the Jewish community. Kareski's campaign put Jabotinsky in an impossible position: while he was denouncing the WZO for the Ha'avara, his own movement in Germany was working for the Nazis, and he soon had to announce that from then on "the wing of Zionism who share our Herzlian views also know that 'Marxist' is a word never to be used in polemics". [3]

The Nazis had decided on a general policy of favouring Zionists over non-Zionist Jews, and within that line they decided that open encouragement of the State Zionists rather than suppression of the "Marxists" of the ZVfD would have to be their strategy. On 13 April 1935, the Gestapo notified the regular police that, henceforward, the State Zionists would receive:

    exceptionally and always revocably, permission to let its members belonging to the "National Youth Herzlia" and "Brith Hashomrim" wear uniforms indoors ... because the State Zionists have proven to be the organisation which had tried in any way, even illegally, to bring its members to Palestine, and which, by its sincere activity directed towards emigration, meets half-way the intention of the Reich Government to remove the Jews from Germany. The permission to wear a uniform should spur members of the German-Jewish organisations to join the State Zionist youth groups where they will be more effectively urged to emigrate to Palestine. [4]

Despite the relationship between the State Zionists and the Gestapo, Kareski was still welcome at the NZO Congress in Vienna in 1935. When the Revisionists had decided to support the anti-Nazi boycott, they had formally disaffiliated their German unit in an effort to protect it; thus it was obvious that Kareski was there with the encouragement of the Gestapo to lobby against the boycott. The uneasy ranks wished to distance themselves from the State Zionists and they compelled a resolution that, under the circumstances, there was not and could not be a Revisionist movement in Germany. [5] Kareski made the mistake of travelling to the following Betar Congress in Cracow in the company of a known Jewish Gestapo agent, and some German Betarim reported them to Jabotinsky. [6] He was asked to leave, and Jabotinsky was compelled to call on him to defend himself publicly and deny any connection to the Nazis. [7] However, later, in 1936, he used Kareski as his go-between with the German publishing house holding the copyright to one of his books. Jabotinsky assumed no further responsibility for Kareski after Cracow, but as long as he remained in Germany Kareski was in contact with the minority within the world Revisionist movement, notably those around von Weisl in Vienna, who continued to agree with his pro-Nazi line.

 
"The Zionists as the 'Racial Jews' have at least Given us a Formal Guarantee"

Kareski's repeated failure to get the German Jews to accept his approach never discouraged the Nazis from trying to impose him on the community. In late 1935, they forced him on the Reichsverband jüdischer Kulturbunde. These Culture Leagues had been set up to provide jobs for Jewish musicians, writers and artists who had been thrown out of their positions, and the Gestapo had decided that a genuine Zionist spirit would do the Leagues some good. [8] Benno Cohen of the ZVfD had been appointed assistant to their director, conductor Kurt Singer, but that was not enough: the performers were still really cultural assimilationists, and in October 1935 Kareski, who had nothing to do with the arts, was appointed to a more senior position than Singer, and Cohen was dismissed. The conductor told the Nazis that he would resign rather than work with Kareski, and the Leagues were closed down in an attempt to force them to accept Kareski. The refusal of the Jews to concur with Nazi policy gained attention in the Nazi press, and Hans Hinkel, the bureaucrat in charge of the Leagues, publicly explained his choice of a new director.

    I have consciously allowed the Zionist movement to exert the strongest influence upon the cultural and spiritual activities of the Kulturbund because the Zionists as the "Racial Jews" have at least given us formal guarantees of cooperation in acceptable form. [9]

The Zionists to whom Hinkel referred were the State Zionists, even less popular at that time than in 1931; realistically they did not number much more than a few score adult party members and 500 youth. [10] However, the Nazis made much of Kareski in their propaganda. As the former head of the Berlin Jewish community, the head of the State Zionists, and now the head of the Culture Leagues, he sounded a very impressive figure. Der Angriff interviewed him on 23 December:

    I have for many years regarded a complete separation between the cultural activities of the two peoples as a condition for a peaceful collaboration ... provided it is founded on the respect for the alien nationality ... The Nuremberg Laws ... seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, entirely to conform with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect. This is especially so when one takes into account the order for separate school systems which has been issued previously. The Jewish schools fill an old political demand of my friends, because they consider that the education of the Jew in accordance with his traditions and his mode of life is absolutely essential. [11]

However, the Culture Leagues were too important to the Nazis as a model of cultural separatism to be abandoned because of Kareski, and eventually the Nazis allowed them to be reorganised without him. By 1937 Kareski and the Gestapo were ready for another manoeuvre. This time their target was the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden (the Reich Representation of German Jews). Kareski formed an alliance with discontented conservative assimilationists within the Berlin community, and they proposed a programme whereby the State Zionists would take over the political work of the organisation and the religious congregations would run the charitable functions. Max Nussbaum, rabbi of the Great Jewish Congregation of Berlin, later told of the Nazi pressure for the Revisionist line. The Gestapo's Judenkommissar, Kuchmann, took it into his head to become an expert on the Jewish question, reading every available book on modern Jewry. Now determined to do the right thing by his charges, he summoned Nussbaum.

    As a result of his diligence, he suddenly fell in love with Revisionism, asserting to each of us who had the misfortune to be summoned to his office, that this was the only solution of the Palestine problem and constantly blaming official Zionism for being "red" and "left". One day in the Spring of 1937, he called me to his office and told me bluntly that I had to take over the leadership of the Revisionist group, to make Revisionism more popular with German Jewry, to drop my propaganda for the "Meineckestrasse-Zionism" [ZVfD] ... When I refused ... he "punished" me by a speaking and writing prohibition for one year. [12]

Again the attempt failed; foreign Jews could not be made to subsidise a German Jewish central organisation run by a traitor, and the Nazis backed down. As a consolation prize the Nazis, in spring 1937, made the Staatzionistische Organisation the only authorised Jewish representative for dealing with the German public-relief agencies. [13]

Kareski's usefulness to the Nazis came to an end in July 1937, when a scandal was uncovered in his Iwria bank. He had been making illegal loans to members of its board and his personal friends, and he tried to cover himself with a cheque on the account of the Berlin Jewish community, making one of his clerks accept it with only his signature in violation of the requirement that it be countersigned. The cashier took the cheque under protest and notified the Berlin congregation. There is no evidence that Kareski personally profited from his manipulations – he used the loans as chits to gain allies within the Jewish community – but in the end the bank failed and Kareski decided to visit Palestine. [14]

His visit was not a success. On 6 October 1937, the German Jewish community in Haifa discovered that he was there and a large mob turned out to greet him, chasing him through the streets. He finally had to barricade himself into a house until he was rescued by the police. [15] The German Immigrants Association (the HOG) publicly accused him of seeking to be appointed leader of German Jewry with the aid of the Nazis, of trying to incite the murder of the ZVfD's chairman, of trying to destroy the Zionist organisation, and of corruption in his bank. Kareski made the mistake of denying the charges and insisting on a trial in the rabbinical courts. In June 1938 the court, headed by the chief rabbi, found the HOG's charges to be fully borne out by the evidence. [16] The decision effectively ended his active political career.

 
"A Jewish Legion to Protect the Jews in Palestine from Attack"

Despite Jabotinsky's disowning him, Kareski always had his apologists within the Revisionist movement. There had always been those who disagreed with Jabotinsky's anti-Nazism. If it was permissible for Jabotinsky to try to deal with Simon Petliura in the Slavinsky agreement when the Ukrainian Army had already butchered 30,000 Jews, why was a deal with Hitler unacceptable? Prior to Kristallnacht Hitler had killed no Jews as Jews. These Revisionists were convinced that Hitler's victory foretold a Fascist age and that the Jews simply had to understand that and come to terms with it. The circle around von Weisl, who was Jabotinsky's negotiator with the other authoritarian dictatorships in Eastern Europe, agreed with Kareski's approach. In 1936, von Weisl, apparently acting on his own, contacted the British Fascists and proposed a fantastic wartime alliance between Britain, Japan, Poland and Germany, together with a future Revisionist state, against the Soviets and the Arab and Asian colonial revolutions. [17]

It would be pleasant to report that the rabbinical court's decision finally ended Kareski's career, and that he died alone and hated, but on 2 August 1947, the 68 year-old Kareski was the chairman of a Revisionist health fund in Palestine. Some friends even tried to have a street named after him in Ramat Gan. [18] He even has his latter-day apologists who suggest that, given what we know of the abandonment of the Jews by the rest of the world, as soon as Hitler took over rapid emigration was the only solution.

Kareski, a classic Revisionist, albeit of an extreme brand, was a traitor to the German Jewish community. His vision ran to nothing more prophetic than a Revisionist state stretching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates with Mussolini as its Mandatory protector. [19] He certainly did not foresee the Holocaust. In 1935 he was proposing a 25-year evacuation plan from Germany with 20,000 emigrants per year. His concern was to use the Jugend Herzlia as "a Jewish Legion to protect the Jews in Palestine from attack" (my emphasis). [20]

It is not surprising that the Nazis used Kareski as their collaborator in Germany. His rival amongst the assimilationists, Max Naumann, was totally unacceptable for his insistence on full Jewish participation in the Third Reich. Kareski appeared before the Nazis as if sent by central casting: the caricature of the stage Jew, a crooked usurer, as zealous as any medieval rabbi to keep the Jews apart from unbelieving humankind, and at the head of a brownshirted emigrationist movement.

 

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Notes

1. Revisionists Cause Crisis in German Zionism, Palestine Post (25 June 1934), p.1.

2. Herbert Levine, A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany: The Strange Career of Georg Kareski, 1933-37, Central European History (September 1975), p.262.

3. Vladimir Jabotinsky, Jews and Fascism, Jewish Daily Bulletin (11 April 1935), p.2.

4. Kurt Grossmann, Zionists and non-Zionists under Nazi Rule in the 1930s, Herzl Yearbook, vol. IV (1961-2), pp.341-2.

5. Author's interview with Shmuel Merlin, 16 September 1980.

6. Author's interview with Paul Riebenfeld, 17 January 1978.

7. See Kareski's Hand in Leader's Ousting, Congress Bulletin (24 January 1936), p.4.

8. Levine, Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany, pp.266-7.

9. Kareski Again, American Hebrew (21 February 1936), p.406.

10. Solomon Colodner, Jewish Education under the Nazis, p.111.

11. Georg Kareski Approves of Ghetto Laws – Interview in Dr Goebbel's Angriff, Jewish Chronicle (London, 3 January 1936), p.16.

12. Max Nussbaum, Zionism under Hitler, Congress Weekly (11 September 1942), p.13.

13. A.M.H., The Jewish Year in the Diaspora, Palestine Post (S September 1937), p.5.

14. Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain, p.213.

15. Mr Kareski Abused by Haifa Crowd, Palestine Post (7 October 1937), p

16. Kareski's Charge Dismissed, Palestine Post (10 June 1938), p.8.

17. Levine, Jewish Collaboration in Nazi Germany, p.272.

18. Ibid., p.253.

19. Ibid., p.272.

20. Jacob de Haas, The Sharp End of the Axe, Chicago Jewish Chronicle (15 November 1935), p.9.


http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch12.htm