ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

Jerusalem.

Available online at:

http://www.kaiwan.com/codoh/newsdesk/890519.HTML

I disagree with the opinion of Haim Baram that the Israeli education system

has managed to instil a 'Holocaust awareness' in its pupils (Kol Ha'Ir

12.5.89). It's not an awareness of the Holocaust but rather the myth of the

Holocaust or even a falsification of the Holocaust (in the sense that 'a

half-truth is worse than a lie') which has been instilled here.

As one who himself lived through the Holocaust, first in Warsaw then in

Bergen-Belsen, I will give an immediate example of the total ignorance of daily

life during the Holocaust. In the Warsaw ghetto, even during the period of the

first massive extermination (June to October 1943), one saw almost no German

soldiers. Nearly all the work of administration, and later the work of

transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, was carried out by

Jewish collaborators. Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the

planning of which only started after the extermination of the majority of Jews

in Warsaw), the Jewish underground killed, with perfect justification, every

Jewish collaborator they could find. If they had not done so the Uprising

could never have started. The majority of the population of the Ghetto hated

the collaborators far more than the German Nazis. Every Jewish child was

taught, and this saved the lives of some them "if you enter a square from which

there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and

one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, and

then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew".

One of my own strongest memories is that, when the Jewish underground

killed a despicable collaborator close to my home at the end of February 1943,

I danced and sang around the still bleeding corpse together with the other

children. I still do not regret this, quite the contrary.

It is clear that such events were not exclusive to the Jews, the entire

Nazi success in easy and continued rule over millions of people stemmed from

the subtle and diabolical use of collaborators, who did most of the dirty work

for them. But does anybody now know about this? This, and not what is

'instilled' was the reality. Of the Yad Vashem (official state Holocaust

museum in Jerusalem - Ed.) theatre, I do not wish to speak at all. It, and its

vile exploiting, such as honouring South Africa collaborators with the Nazis

are truly beneath contempt.

Therefore, if we knew a little of the truth about the Holocaust, we would

at least understand (with or without agreeing) why the Palestinians are now

eliminating their collaborators. That is the only means they have if they wish

to continue to struggle against our limb-breaking regime.

Kind regards,

[Israel Shahak]

To bring closer to home and closer to the present day the inadvisability of attributing

collective guilt, we may note that more than one out of every hundred Americans is presently

sitting in jail, and yet we do not from this condemn Americans as a nation of criminals. And so

if we extract from this the conclusion that a participation rate as high as one out of every

hundred is insufficient to depict the entire population as participants, then Ukrainians should

be allowed a total of 360,000 criminal collaborators - a number never yet broached - without

Ukrainians being collectively condemned as Nazis.

The plea to avoid ascribing collective guilt is not new to Ukrainian-Jewish relations, and has

been put forward by both sides. It is time that the plea was heeded:

Even as we Jews justly disclaim responsibility for the acts of the Jewish

Bolshevist commissars and for the disgraceful actions of those Jews who

participated in the work of the Bolshevist chekas (Secret Police), the

Ukrainian people has a full right to disclaim any responsibility for those who

have besmirched themselves by pogrom activities. (Arnold Margolin, The Jews of

Eastern Europe, 1926, p. 124, in Andrew Gregorovich, Jews and Ukrainians, Forum

No. 91, Fall-Winter, 1994, p. 30)

Additional material on Jewish collaboration with the Nazis can be found in my discussion of the

Jewish Ghetto Police in my Letter 17 to Anne McLellan, Canada's Minister of Justice.

CONTENTS:

Preface

The Galicia Division

Quality of Translation

Ukrainian Homogeneity

Were Ukrainians Nazis?

Simon Wiesenthal

What Happened in Lviv?

Nazi Propaganda Film

Collective Guilt

Paralysis of the Comparative

Function

60 Minutes' Cheap Shots

Ukrainian Anti-Semitism

Jewish Ukrainophobia

Mailbag

A Sense of Responsibility

What 60 Minutes Should Do

PostScript

Paralysis of the Comparative Function

Positions taken by Morley Safer acquire meaning - can only be evaluated - following relevant

comparisons, but Mr. Safer fails to make these comparisons. For example, Ukrainian assistance

to Jews during the Jewish Holocaust acquires significance - indeed, may be thrown into a wholly

new light - when compared to Jewish assistance to Jews during the Jewish Holocaust, but Mr.

Safer does not make such a comparison. Ukrainian cruelty on behalf of the Nazis acquires

significance when compared to Jewish cruelty on behalf of the Nazis, but Mr. Safer does not make

this comparison. Ukrainians saving Jews (a possibility totally ignored by Mr. Safer) is given a

new significance when compared with Jews saving Ukrainians at times when such aid was possible

and of course Mr. Safer never reaches a point where he could make such a comparison.

Comparison 1: Ukrainians Helping Jews Compared to Jews Helping Jews

We have seen above that countless Ukrainians risked their lives and gave their lives to save

Jews. And what, let us now ask, were those who today level accusations of genetic anti-Semitism

against Ukrainians doing at the same time? What, for example, were American Jews doing? The

generous view is that they were doing little:

No American Jew appeared to have altered his life style once news of the

Holocaust was revealed. Even at the time, some observers were repelled by the

often festive atmosphere of Jewish social life in a period of wartime

prosperity. (Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, 1992, p. 550)

Over the centuries the dispersion of the Jews had a functional utility:

whenever some part of the Jewish community was under attack, it depended on

help from the other Jews. In the period of the Nazi regime, this help did not

come. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1052)

This question has haunted me ever since the war: Why did the Jews of the free

world act as they did? Hadn't our people survived persecution and exile

throughout the centuries because of its spirit of solidarity? ... When one

community suffered, the others supported it, throughout the Diaspora. Why was

it different this time? (Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea,

1995, p. 63)

A less indulgent view, however, is that Jews not under Nazi occupation - particularly American

and British Jews - knowingly, willfully, calculatedly sacrificed their trapped European

coreligionists:

In his book, "In Days of Holocaust and Destruction," Yitzchak Greenbaum

writes, "when they asked me, couldn't you give money out of the United Jewish

Appeal funds for the rescue of Jews in Europe, I said, 'NO!' and I say again,

'NO!' ... one should resist this wave which pushes the Zionist activities to

secondary importance."

In January, 1943, the leadership of the absorption and enlisting fund

decided to bar all appeals on behalf of rescuing Jews. It is explicitly stated

in the "Sefer Hamagbis" (Book of Appeals) that the reasons for this prohibition

were because of other obligations in Eretz Yisroel.

In the beginning of February, 1943, Yitzchak Greenbaum addressed a meeting

in Tel Aviv on the subject, "the Diaspora and the Redemption," in which he

stated:

"For the rescue of the Jews in the Diaspora, we should consolidate our

excess strength and the surplus of powers that we have. When they come to us

with two plans - the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption

of the land [in Palestine] - I vote, without a second thought, for the

redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the

greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the

Hebraization of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying

packages of food [for Jews in Nazi captivity] with the money of the "Keren

Hayesod" (United Jewish Appeal) to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a

thing? No! And once again No!" (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims

Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 26, emphasis

added)

Mr. Schwalb expressed the complete Zionist ideology and stated clearly and

openly the politics of the Zionist leaders in the area of rescue: the shedding

of Jewish blood in the Diaspora is necessary in order for us to demand the

establishment of a "Jewish" state before a peace commission. Money will be

sent to save a group of "chalutzim" (pioneers), while the remainder of Czech

Jewry must resign itself to annihilation in the Auschwitz crematoria. (Reb

Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish

War Criminals, 1977, p. 28, emphasis added)

We have previously quoted the words of Yitzchak Greenbaum, chairman of the

"rescue committee" of the Jewish Agency in Eretz Yosroel, who refused to

allocate even one dollar of United Jewish Appeal funds for food to those who

were fighting off the pangs of hunger. This approach was totally in consonance

with his famous slogan, to the effect that, "one goat in Eretz Yisroel is more

important than an entire community in the Diaspora." How could he thus

withhold a package of straw from a Holy Land goat in order to send food to a

starving infant? But if that is not enough, the Zionists acted like the fiend

who declared that he not only would not give, but he also would not let others

give (whom our Sages called a "rosho" - a wicked person). The Zionist leaders

weren't satisfied merely with the crime of sitting idly by and doing nothing.

They labored with all their might to forcefully prevent others from helping the

sufferers in the ghetto. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:

Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, pp. 44-45)

One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland. (Yitzchak

Greenbaum in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and

Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 116)

The Antonescu Offer. Reb Moshe Shonfeld's book documents several instances of offers being

made, sometimes by the Nazis, to release Jews for a fixed price, and of the offers being

declined by Zionist leaders. The Romanian government, for example, offered 70,000 Jews at $50

apiece. These Jews could have been transported to Palestine via Turkey - a few days' ride by

truck. The Romanian offer was confirmed by the U.S. State Department. The offer would become

void once Romania was occupied by the Germans - an occupation that was imminent. Ben Hecht in

his book Perfidy relates placing the following ad in New York newspapers:

FOR SALE

70,000 JEWS

AT

$50 APIECE

GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS

Zionist leaders, however, denied the existence of such an offer and sabotaged fund-raising

efforts. As a result, the 70,000 Romanian Jews perished. Ben Hecht's indignation is

unrestrained:

But in 1943, we, who called out the plight of the Romanian Jews to the

world, were discredited by the Zionist unions, the established Zionist

leadership and their associated philanthropies, as scandalmongers. Our attempt

to get the Jews out of Romania before the Germans came was scotched.

The 70,000 Jews who might have been saved were herded into barns by the

Germanized Romanians under General Antonescu, hosed with gasoline, ignited, and

shot down when they came blazing and screaming out of their cauldrons.

Was it for this the conspirators of Silence had been holding their

high-level meetings, fraternizing with presidents and prime ministers and

keeping intact Weizmann's ... policy of an 'exclusive' ... Palestine? This

Silence, this wretched business of Jewish leaders lying about the slaughter of

Europe's Jewry - trying to hide it, soft-pedal it - for what?

These organizations, these philanthropists, these timorous Jewish lodge

members in Zion, in London and America - these Zionist leaders who let their

six million kinsmen burn, choke, hang, without protest, with indifference, and

even with a glint of anti-Semitic cunning in their political plannings - I sum

up against them. These factotums, these policy-makers, the custodians of the

Jewish future in Palestine ... these Zionist men and women - I haul into the

prisoner's dock of this book. (Ben Hecht, Perfidy, in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The

Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals,

1977, p. 102)

The Eichmann Offer. The war afforded more than one opportunity to save Jews. Here is another

significant opportunity, the offer this time coming directly from Adolph Eichmann:

So I am ready to sell you - a million Jews. ... What do you want to save?

Virile men? Grown women? Old people? Children? Sit down - and talk. ...

Now I am going to prove to you that I trust you more than you trust me. When

you ... tell me that the offer has been accepted, I will [as an initial

demonstration of good faith, even before you make any payment] dissolve

Auschwitz and move 10 percent of the promised million to the border. You take

over the 100,000 Jews and deliver for them afterwards one thousand trucks. And