“The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Holocaust denial
In my previous Blog entry I quoted Jan Karski who
stated, “It was easy for the Nazis to kill Jews, because ...the Jews were
abandoned by all governments, church hierarchies and societies..."
In my previous blog entry I also mention that President Bill Clinton from his keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22,1993. In his address President
Clinton became the first American president to ever explicitly
acknowledge that the construction of the museum would, “redeem in some
small measure the deaths of millions whom our nations did not, or would not, or
could not save.”
President Clinton's acknowledgment reflects only partially the depth of the western worlds guilt and lethargic response in the “complicity” of the Nazi actions to exterminate the Jewish people. The President’s acknowledgment, that the Holocaust dealt with a genocide that lasted for several years on an unimaginable scale with hundreds of thousands of culprits and their helpers in large areas of Europe under the eyes of a huge number of spectators, was emphasized in his statement that there are,
In my previous blog entry I also mention that President Bill Clinton from his keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22,
President Clinton's acknowledgment reflects only partially the depth of the western worlds guilt and lethargic response in the “complicity” of the Nazi actions to exterminate the Jewish people. The President’s acknowledgment, that the Holocaust dealt with a genocide that lasted for several years on an unimaginable scale with hundreds of thousands of culprits and their helpers in large areas of Europe under the eyes of a huge number of spectators, was emphasized in his statement that there are,
“those of us here today representing the nations of the West,”(who) …” must live forever with this knowledge--even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done.”
The most important statement in this view of “complicity”
that the President made was, “Before the war even started, doors to
liberty were shut”. These words by President Clinton’reveal a more
sinister and deeper meaning in the use of the word “Complicity” in "Who
will take them?" when one realizes where this statement was originally
mentioned.
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich refers to the world's “tactic
complicity” in his overview of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi
regime to date at the opening of the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 . SS-Obergruppenführer
ReinhardHeydrich emphasizied; “that the main aim of the
'Jewish policy', he said, was, firstly, forced migration.”
The men who sat at the table were among the elite of the "Third Reich". These were not your typical vision of anti-Semites for more than half of those present held doctorates from German universities. They were well informed about the policy toward Jews. Each understood that the cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious, unprecedented and comprehensive policy was to succeed.
Among the agencies represented were the Department of Justice, the Foreign Ministry, the Gestapo, the SS, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property. Also at the meeting was a representative of the General Government, the Polish occupation administration, whose territory included more than 2 million Jews. The head of Heydrich’s office for Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, prepared the conference notes. We learn of this from the one remaining copy, out of 30 top-secret copies of the meeting's minutes, that Adolf Eichmann had prepared and was found in 1948 and confirmed as authentic by Adolf Eichmann at his trial inJerusalem .
The real "burning" question is since ALL communiques sent to Hitler were monitored by the "Enigma" team at Bletchley Park was the copy of the meetings sent to Hitler intercepted by them and known to Churchill and Roosevelt?
The men who sat at the table were among the elite of the "Third Reich". These were not your typical vision of anti-Semites for more than half of those present held doctorates from German universities. They were well informed about the policy toward Jews. Each understood that the cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious, unprecedented and comprehensive policy was to succeed.
Among the agencies represented were the Department of Justice, the Foreign Ministry, the Gestapo, the SS, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property. Also at the meeting was a representative of the General Government, the Polish occupation administration, whose territory included more than 2 million Jews. The head of Heydrich’s office for Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, prepared the conference notes. We learn of this from the one remaining copy, out of 30 top-secret copies of the meeting's minutes, that Adolf Eichmann had prepared and was found in 1948 and confirmed as authentic by Adolf Eichmann at his trial in
The real "burning" question is since ALL communiques sent to Hitler were monitored by the "Enigma" team at Bletchley Park was the copy of the meetings sent to Hitler intercepted by them and known to Churchill and Roosevelt?
In an HBO/BBC TV feature film co-production,
"Conspiracy", General Heydrich (played by Kenneth Branagh) leads the
meeting. He explains that Germany is
facing the one drawback of world conquest: it continually increases its Jewish
population as it annexes more and more neighboring lands.
"Germany
acquired 2.5 million Jews when we conquered Poland ,
and we will get 5 million more when we take Russia ,"
he says. "Emigration of the Jews is not a solution, because: "Who
will take them? Even in the US ,
as Jews are whispering in Roosevelt 's ear, they
turn them away." Then, with studied rhetoric, he announces: "From Lapland to Libya ,
from Vladivostok to Belfast ,
no Jews. Not one." This statement elicits an approving table-thumping
by those present at the conference.
A plaintive Yiddish ballad written in the 1930s by the Polish Yiddish actor Igor S. Korntayer, describes in stark terms the dilemma faced by German Jews desperate to escape from their homeland after Hitler came to power.
Vu Ahin Zol Ikh Geyn?
Tell me where shall I go,
Who can answer my plea?
Tell me where shall I go,
Every door is locked to me?
Though the world’s large enough,
There’s no room for me I know,
What I see is not for me,
Each road is closed, I am not free—
Tell me where shall I go.
Just “How” complicit were the members of the US Department
of State and the British Foreign Ministry-Whitehall - in thwarting Roosevelt plan
and there by allowing the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe?
In 1933 just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected
and began his administration Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party also came to power
in Germany .
When Hitler’s Nazi party took control they began a systematic campaign of
persecution aimed at its Jewish population. Under the'Jewish policy' of
the Nuremberg
Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935. Jews were excluded from
German public life, deprived of their citizenship and forbidden to marry
“authentic” Germans. The Nazis had succeeded in expelling much of the
Jewish minority in Germany and
in exiling those Jews still living in the country to an existence on the fringe
of society. At the same time, the Nazis began to incrementally terrorize
the Jews with the use of violence, which culminated in the nationwide pogrom
known as Kristallnacht
(“Crystal Night”) that took place in Germany and
annexed Austria in
November 1938.
The National Socialists had re-adjusted and manipulated the
public opinion of Germany into the 'Third Reich' with it's dominance of racism:
There was hardly any area in which the 'Jewish question' did not now play a
major role in everyday life. With the official institution
of 'dejudification' as a central part of German society 'racial
legislation' and the 'Aryanisation' process had far-reaching effects upon the
economy and in foreign policy, even before the war. The 'Third Reich' had
succeeded in raising a 'Jewish question'. By means of compulsory emigration and
expulsion, but also by repeated 'acts of revenge' and threats against the
German Jews The Jews of Germany were held 'responsible' for the behavior of
'international Judaism' -"Communism" The extremity of the Nazi
regimes persecution of the Jews in German controlled areas was made
into an international problem that increasingly preoccupied the community of
nations.
From 1933 -1941 the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration was
largely inactive in response to these events. The Roosevelt administration’s
effort to accommodate Jewish refugees from Germany and
from Austria grew
steadily in face of the escalation of their persecution in the years leading to
World War II. Modest efforts were made and just as the war broke out and more
and more of Europe ’s Jews were caught in the Nazi
grip, the U.S. State Department began cutting back at the bequest of the British who were fearful of the backlash from Arabs.
The Nazi policies were carried over into the period after
the outbreak of World War II in Europe in
1939, with the aim of driving the Jews out of Germany and
the territories taken over by the Wehrmacht. In the meantime,
Jews were being concentrated in ghettos and concentration camps. A change in Nazi
policy toward the Jews occurred only after the German invasion into the Soviet
Union with “Operation
Barbarossa” in June of 1941. Following quickly on the heels of the
Wehrmacht were killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen (“emergency
squads”) which systematically rounded up and murdered Jews in the newly
occupied Soviet territories.
By November 1941 the Nazis had reversed their previous
policy of promoting mass Jewish emigration, forbidding all Jews to leave German
or German-occupied territory. Since the beginnings of Hitler’s invasion of Russia in
Operation Barbarossa it was becoming known in the upper reaches of the Nazi
leadership and government offices that Hitler intended all the Jews of Europe
to be deported to the eastern territories and, by some means, to be executed
toward the beginning of 1942.
For that purpose in mind the first experiment with hydrogen cyanide in the form of Zyklon B. was carried out at Auschwitz in a shed turned into a gas the chamber on September 3, 1941. This method was instituted for the mass-murdered of the Jews and the bodies then incinerated in crematoria. Able-bodied Jews were enslaved as forced laborers, only to share the same destiny somewhat later.
For that purpose in mind the first experiment with hydrogen cyanide in the form of Zyklon B. was carried out at Auschwitz in a shed turned into a gas the chamber on September 3, 1941. This method was instituted for the mass-murdered of the Jews and the bodies then incinerated in crematoria. Able-bodied Jews were enslaved as forced laborers, only to share the same destiny somewhat later.
At the Wannssee Conference, of January 20, 1942, a calculated, industrialized campaign for the total annihilation or “the final solution
of the Jewish problem” was instituted. Though the final protocol of the Wannsee Conference never explicitly mentioned extermination it was "understood" that “evacuation to the east” - a euphemism for concentration camps and that the “final solution”,was to be the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.
At the core of the “evacuation to the east” was the creation of extermination camps in occupiedPoland ,
where Jews were to be sent by train from all Nazi-occupied territories.
At the core of the “evacuation to the east” was the creation of extermination camps in occupied
Roosevelt ’s Plan For Palestine
With the rise of Nazi Germany during
the years 1933 -1938 the Nazi regime free immigration
of the Jews of Europe was of the utmost issue for Jewish circles. The critical period of 1938-1941 was the period of the beginnings of war in Europe .
It was also the period of British appeasement to the
Arabs of the severe restrictions of Jewish immigration
in the White
Paper of 1939.
President Roosevelt's interest in transferring Arabs from Palestine began
in October 1938 after a meeting with Justice Louis Brandeis. Brandeis reported on this meeting to Felix Frankfurter who
in turn passed on the report to Stephen
Wise and to presidential adviser and script-writer Ben Cohen. Brandeis
pointed out in his report of this meeting how Roosevelt appreciated
the significance of Palestine , “the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish".
He was tremendously interested - and
wholly surprised - on learning of the great increase in Arab population since the First World
War; and on learning of the plenitude of land for Arabs in Arab countries, about which he made
specific inquiries.”
The Historian Zaha Bustami commented that it was, “…difficult
to tell who brought up this subject during the
meeting, but the information on Arab demography was provided by Frankfurter.” Who had met with FDR a few days earlier
a meeting to discuss the Palestine situation;
however there are no records of what Roosevelt said
at this meeting.
On 25th of October 1938, Roosevelt had
a meeting with the British Ambassador to the U.S.
Sir Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the
fact that the Arab population had increased by
400,000 since the establishment of the [League Of
Nations] Mandate.”
FDR also contemplated the creation of a program of
well-digging across the Jordan . Roosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to
find that money for the purpose”. FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made available for irrigation and the
cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it;
“should be set apart for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ought to be enough to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be compelled to emigrate to it. Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.
FDR also added that it would “be
necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be allowed to immigrate into Palestine, and no Jew into the Arab lands.”
The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled
that,” The President was full of Palestine” and
that FDR called on Ronald
Lindsay to call a conference of Arab princes.
FDR was adamant in having them lay down; “say $200,000,000 buying a farm for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine ,
the money chiefly to be used in digging wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz .” Here, it is quite clear that Roosevelt intended the Arabs to "foot the bill" for the transfer of the Arabs of Palestine.
British Ambassador Lindsay therefore asked Lancelot Oliphant
of the British Foreign Office to have someone
prepare a “short answer to this scheme” to have in readiness, although he stressed that he would not take the initiative in
sending a reply to the President. Lindsay’s request
was first dealt with by Lacy Baggalay of the Foreign Office. He first quoted experts, who held
that the possibilities of finding water in quantity by boring
in Transjordan were, “quite restricted”. He then
continued, “But even assuming that water could be found in large quantities, it is now out of the
question that any Arabs should be 'compelled' to emigrate to the lands thus brought into
cultivation."
"Whatever else may remain uncertain about the problem of Palestine ,
the impossibility of compulsion on this scale is now beyond dispute."
There are those who blame the genesis of Roosevelt 's
idea of a forcible or voluntary eviction of
Palestinian Arabs to Trans-Jordan or other
neighboring lands on Roosevelt ’s contacts with Zionist circles in the summer of 1938 perhaps in
discussions with Brandeis and Frankfurter.
So "Who" actually had given Roosevelt the
idea that irrigation of the Transjordan desert
would create a suitable location for the Arab
transferees? The indications are that it came from the State Department where at that period Edward Norman was in contact
with government officials to advance his own
transfer plans. Although Norman was at the time in contact with
the State Department, his plans were in fact to irrigate Iraq by means of the
dams it had recently constructed.
"The British should explain to them that they, the
Arabs, had within their control large territories
ample to sustain their people.” He also pointed out that Jewish immigration to Palestine and Transjordan would
not harm the Arabs since there was plenty of room
for everyone. Roosevelt then went on to propose transfer of Arabs, “Some of the Arabs on poor land in Palestine could be given much better
land in adjoining Arab countries."
British Ambassador Lindsay
answered Roosevelt by saying that there was
opposition in both the Arab and Moslem world but
the President “belittled this opposition and thought it due largely to British indecision and
conflicting policy.”
Towards the end of December the British Charge d'Affaires in
Washington met with Sumner Welles and handed him a
memorandum on transfer received from the British Government,
adding that Roosevelt would probably be interested in it. After
pointing out that the latest available evidence did not bear out the belief that
any considerable quantity of water could be
obtained in Transjordan at shallow levels by boring
wells, the memorandum continued,
“Suggestions have also been made
that if the free offer of cultivable land in Transjordan did not
suffice to attract the Arabs from Palestine; they might be compelled to emigrate from it, with
the object of vacating land in Palestine
for settlement by Jews.”
Until the Wannssee conference of January 1942 there was
still hope in Jewish / Zionistic circles that the
Nazis would allow mass Jewish immigration. With the inevitable invasion of Poland by
the Nazis in September 1939 the doors of Europe began
to close and the fate of European Jewry was sealed.
The British Government “Complicity” can be found in Whitehall ’s
fear of the repercussions in Britain , India and
the Moslem world if they should back Roosevelt 's
plan of Arab "resettlement". They saw the threat to the sources of
raw materials and oil for the Empire in agreeing to Roosevelt ’s
proposals. Their Empire would be in jeopardy due to their promises
made to the Jews.
Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign Office brought, in his words, the “fallacy” which Roosevelt was using to try and solve the Palestine problem
in a reply sent to Lindsay saying that the British government
would not even contemplate such an idea. That His
Majesty's Government would be accused of such a thing. That it would be “thoroughly unjust” to compel the "long-established community" the Arabs
to transfer from Palestine “to
make room for immigrants [Jews] of a totally
different race who have had no connection with [Palestine ]
for at least 2,000 years.”
The British Government also felt that the problem of “redistribution of the
Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine and
across the Jordan ”, was not one of finance but rather of politics.On
two occasions, Roosevelt raised his plan with
British representatives but he was “firmly told
that no amount of financial inducement would move the Palestinian Arabs.” Roosevelt however, was
unconvinced by this British reply.
Chaim Weizmann had his first
meeting with Roosevelt in February 1940. At
this meeting, Roosevelt put
forward the idea of bribing the Arabs, asking
Weizmann “What about the Arabs? Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?” Weizmann replied that “it wasn't as simple as all that. Of course
the Jewish people would compensate the Arabs in a reasonable
way for anything they got, but there were other
factors appertaining to a settlement.”
In December 1942 two and a half years later, Roosevelt told
Treasury Secretary,
Henry Morgenthau, “I actually would put a barbed wire
around Palestine , and I would
begin to move the Arabs out of Palestine ....
I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part of
the Middle East .... Each time we move out an Arab
we would bring in another Jewish family.... But I
don't want to bring in more than they can economically support.... It would be an independent nation just like any other nation....
Naturally, if there are 90 per cent Jews, the Jews
would dominate the government.... There are lots of places to which you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well
because there is a large underground water supply,
and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really live.”
In October 1943, the question of “barbed-wire” around Palestine came
up again in a conversation between Roosevelt and
Judge Samuel Rosenman, Justice of the New York Supreme Court and speechwriter and counselor to Roosevelt . Roosevelt had
spoken of the “possibility of settling the Palestine question
by letting the Jews in to the limit that the country
will support them - "with a barbed-wire fence around the Holy
Land .” Rosenman thought that this
would work but only “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the Arabs out.”
What should be mentioned here is that Roosevelt already
knew full well of the extent Nazi program of mass
genocide. He had been informed by Churchill in the Casablanca
Conference January 14 to 24, 1943, of the entire text of the Protocols
of the Wannssee conference gleaned from the transmission of
the file through the Abwehr G312 “Enigma” program at Bletchley Park. Roosevelt had also read the Polish Foreign Minister Count
Edward Raczynski's note which had been addressed to the Governments of the
United Nations on 10 December 1942 entitled, "The mass extermination
of Jews in German occupied Poland", which provided the Allies with the
earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.
In 1942 Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish
Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to gather
information about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland .
In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist
Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the
Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him first hand what was happening to
the Polish Jews. Karski had visited Bełżec death
camp disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard and had gained first hand eyewitness
to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Karski reported to the Polish,
British and U.S. governments
in 1942 on the situation in Poland and
especially on the the extermination of the Jews. He had done so by smuggling
out a microfilm with further textual information in German as proof from the
Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in occupied Poland .
When Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Wise were told by Karski’s
of the,“the unprecedented' extent of the genocide”, Felix Frankfurter stated
that he was unable to "conceive the inconceivable" of the
full extent of the methodical extermination of the Jewish people.
that became known as the “Auschwitz Protocols”. This was the first absolute and conclusive proof the Allies received that mass murder was taking place at
Limited information about the camp had reached the West
before this date, but the Auschwitz Protocols removed any reasonable doubt
about the scale and nature of the crime, and the Western media were quick to
report the news. On 18 June the BBC broadcast a radio story about Auschwitz ,
and on 20 June the New York Times carried a report which explicitly mentioned
the ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz/Birkenau.
At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was
elected President for an unprecedented fourth term.
A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. Roosevelt had
developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine as
time progressed as he heard from State Department officials
and Military Intelligence reports of the events happening in Eastern
Europe against the Jews. Some believe that Roosevelt's views had become more extreme in
his criticism of British policy in Palestine, which was ruled by
Whitehall’s pro-Arab Middle Eastern stance as Arab "complicity"
with the Nazi regime became more apparent.
After telling Roosevelt of
their difficulties regarding Palestine ,
Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius wrote in his diary, “He thinks Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it”. Roosevelt felt
confident that he would be able to “iron out” the
whole Arab-Jewish issue. Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred
thousand Arabs, Roosevelt eventually stated
unequivocally that “Palestine should
be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it.” and
that as stated in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate that, "The
Mandated area of Palestine should be exclusive Jewish territory.”
Almost all the statements that are quoted on this subject
were not written by Roosevelt himself,
but by the various people he worked and met with.
There are no recordings nor written notes either.
This however, is characteristic of Franklin D. Roosevelt
since he was a man who always had one eye cocked on
historians who would someday assess his role in
history. He tried to cover his historical tracks,
using unrecorded telephone conversations and unrecorded private interviews but we do have the recorded
comments from those present with Roosevelt and their diary entries.
Franklin D. Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12 at
the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia and with his death so did his
Plan for a Jewish Palestine with out the Arab "Problem". Once again
the infamous historic statement “What If” resounds through history…
