we can only hope that Greenstein tries to read even half of the books suggested by Mikey, it certainly would be an improvement on his current form.

Belated Message To Uri: what do you mean ‘had it not been for the holocaust’??? There was a fucking holocaust, and that’s why your mates need to blame it on Zionism…You must grieve over the fact that Britain didn’t establish Israel far earlier: then it really would have been an imperialist project, rather than one voted for by the UN, inclduing the USSR. But of course…then there really would have been no holocaust, and no Perdition either.

You’d love that, wouldn’t you Uri. Direct imperialist responsibility for Israel, and no six million murdered Jews to justify its existence. Never mind imagining Zionism if there had been no holocaust: imagine anti-Zionism if there had been no holocaust. Now there’s a thought…

Oh yeah?

The ‘conspiracy’ between Zionists and Nazis is that that exists between all victims and victimizers -the ‘understanding’ that the former are best off as far from the latter as possible.

The Zionists, arguably, best of all groups, were most pessimistic about the viability of Jewish life in Europe. At the time of the Nazis, they preferred to make their stand in Palestine, where they stood a chance, rather than in Europe, where they stood none.

Once a Yishuv existed it had a dual obligation: to preserve itself and do what it could for Jews elsewhere. During the Holocaust, not a lot.

Greenstein criticizes Zionists for not ‘fighting’ the Nazis in Germany. Which Jews did? The Communists?

The only other militant Jewish group, the Jewish nationalist Socialist Bund (how exactly did they find Jewish nationalism and Socialism incompatible, Greenstein?) was no more successful in protecting, defending or finding refuge for Jews.

It was they who last of all deigned to fight alongside Zionists in the Warsaw ghetto, not vice versa. They are now extinct -Anglo-Jewish aristocratic Trotskiites like Greenstein notwithstanding. Most of their descendants are either dead or Israeli.

Long term Jewish life was not viable in the former European Jewish heartlands. The Zionists were entirely right about that, the Bund entirely wrong. Why Greenstein still finds it necessary to rewrite history is the province of psycho-analysis.

The surviving Jews of Poland, where once had lived the largest Jewish community in the world, after the war, were effectively ethnically cleansed by the ‘anti-Zionist’ Soviet regime. Let Greenstein preach to them about anti-Zionism. I suspect they (along with most Arab Jews and their now largely Israeli descendants) would tell him (in the privileged, imperial seat of English liberal democracy) what he could do with it.

Zionism in Britain was, from the beginning, a popular grassroots affair, at first vigorously resisted by the Anglo-Jewish court elite.

Greenstein is nothing if not true to form.

So, Zionists were prepared to negotiate with anti-Semites. So what? What were they supposed to do? Overthrow them with non-existent armies?

Join the international revolution? The Bund tried to do that, as Jewish (as opposed to Trotskiite non-Jewish) Jews. They were effectively dismantled for their troubles -as the Zionists predicted, correctly, they would be.

And now, as I said, they are extinct.

So, 80% of Judenrat were Zionist, were they? Well, Greenstein, I have news for you. Over 10 percent of all European Jews in 1939 were subscribing members of Zionist organizations -in Eastern Europe, obviously, much higher. The largest single grouping of Jewish political subscription in Jewish history heretofore.

Has it never occurred to Greenstein that Zionists were simply the better organized, precisely because they were nationalist?

As to Kasner. In my view, he may (I repeat, may) have failed to warn Hungarian Jewry of its fate, and, if that is the case, is culpable, at least, of failing to give them the opportunity to take measures to defend themselves.

There are other issues: the timing of the report, ongoing negotiations etc.

But, in the end, he acted to save his own skin, his family and those close to him. Eichman stipulated, of course, that no Jews go to Palestine -so as not to upset, inter alios, the Mufti of Jerusalem.

If Kasner claimed he was doing this for Zion, he was rationalising his own self-preservation.

As to Zionist policy before the nature of the Holocaust was known: sure, they wanted young Jews, and capital.

Not unreasonable, given they were trying to build a Jewish state that could preserve itself. An in monstrous times, sometimes monstrous decisions have to be made.

So Zionists broke the Jewish embargo? So what? They were buying Jewish lives.

They entertained a SS officer in Palestine? So, what? Again, to save Jewish lives, such a crime? At least they didn’t endorse the final solution, unlike Haj Amin Al Husseini.

As to Zionists and Jewish refuge in the rest of the world. No one wanted to take in Jews. The tiny programs Zionists allegedly thwarted were just that, tiny.

The Jews who found ‘refuge’ in Mauritius were first of all deported from Palestine.

The Yishuv had a duty to protect itself. And to ensure its long term viability, especially with the prospect of the extinction of European Jewry.

It did that in the only way it could: by siding with Great Britain, which was also the only way to defeat the Nazis.

There would be inevitably difficult choices for Zionists to make in such monstrous circumstances. Some were cynical about Jewish survival in Europe -unsurprising, really, since they were the only ones who had predicted anything like it.

But Allen is doing more than that. He is systematising that conundrum into an old fashioned, Christian blood libel, in much the same way you, Greenstein, systematise individual opponents into conspiratorial movements.

You have a lot in common with the Church Fathers, did you know that?

But that is not the realm of rational argument. It the psychopathology of the paranoiac.

As to Zionists and imperialism. I have news for you, Greenstein: by Roman imperialism were Jews originally dispossessed, and Palestine created.

By Roman Christian, then Arab and other Islamic empire was that dispossession enshrined in both Christianity and Islam as Jews’ just punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.

It was only in 1917, when, for the first in 2000 years, a power, necessarily imperial, since only empires have the power to do that kind of thing, conquered The Land that was sympathetic to a Jewish restoration at precisely the time, it turned out, when Jews would have most need of a refuge.

Jews could never have returned to The Land in any large numbers as they had neither the convergence of opportunity or such desperate need.

The last time Jews had been invited to return to The Land en masse was under Julian the Apostate in 361-3, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. According to the source, Jews flocked from across the Diaspora. But Julian’s early death and the vigorous ‘resistance’ of Palestinian Christians soon scotched that.

As to the moronic criticism of Zionists’ siding with imperial powers. They sided with the only power that would win the war they could. And only that power, with the US, could stop the Nazis.

Yes the Soviets ‘tore the guts out the werhmacht’ etc. But, without the Allies’ bombing the heart out of German industry, and opening the second from in southern and western Europe, the Soviets would have taken a year longer, at least, and may have ended up right where they started, in the middle of Poland. Nor is there any evidence they would have been especially keen to intervene before Nazis had finished the business of killing Jews.

With all due respect, Greenstein, you don’t sound too bright.

As to the ‘poet’ Jim Allen. I haven’t read the play, but I’d like to. I have never been able to find a copy. If you’d like to send, or email, me a copy, Greenstein, I’ll happily provide an address or email. Or just click on the link beneath my ‘handle’,

The first version undoubtedly contained antisemitisms: ‘The road to Golgotha runs past Park avenue’.

‘The Zionist knife in the Nazi fist’ is redolent of traditional European Christian motifs. Firstly it generalizes from the specific, as if even Kasner’s actions represented all, or most Zionists. The imagery of Jewish sacrifice of the innocent, Jewish cooperation with evil, even to slaughter their own, is derived from the blackest chambers of the heart of mediaeval Christian darkness. If you think this is poetry, Greenstein, they didn’t teach you much in literary appreciation at school (or were they imperialists too?).

That is who you have chosen to associate with, promote and represent, Greenstein.

More fool you.

Rather than copying all of his previous message and added quotes, I have just copied his additions which can be seen in italics below and added some facts in normal font below them.

Firstly I have already acknowledged that Polkenh’s article, an excellent one I might add, is from the Journal of Palestinian Studies and I was confusing it with Jacob Boas’s ‘A Nazi Travels to Palestine’ in History Today of January 1980. That’s what happens when you reply off the cuff. But I am pleased to see that there is no continuation of the cold war McCarthyism of – ‘oh it’s all the fault of the Soviets’. Less guilt by association and more dealing with the argument. The personnel involved in Mildestein’s trip is unimportant. Tuchler from the German Zionist Federation organised or commissioned the trip, but the invitation to stay and tour in Palestine was from the Labour Zionists, which is why Mildenstein stayed primarily on kibbutzim and kvutzah such as Givat Brenner. The idea that all the Jews had to do was to colonise Palestine for the Zionist movement, all 6-8 million of them is absurd. Leave aside the question why Palestine, the fact is that the indigenous population didn’t want to be colonised, not surprisingly. It would not have been possible, still less desirable. What was possible was mass emigration to the West, as after the Russian pogroms, but the Zionists in the USA were implacably opposed to such immigration. The Zionist answer was no answer at all. The tragedy was that Zionism acted as an obstacle

Regarding Mildenstein’s trip and the Zionists aim Greenstein is very confused. Firstly he does not want Jews to emigrate to Palestine, because he claims the indigenous population did not want them. He assumes that a) places in the West were open and b) that the Zionists were opposed to such emigration. He is wrong on both counts. Firstly . The official view of the Jewish Agency in so far as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was defined, in the 19th January 1939 edition of London’s Zionist Review, “Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape.” Ben-Gurion himself In April 1936, Gurion told the high commissioner, General Sir Arthur Wauchope:

“Our weightiest concern is the ‘no-exit’ situation of our people … the Jewish situation that was never good has now become desperate…. Had there been the possibility of bringing Poland’s Jews to the United States or Argentina, we would have done so regardless of our Zionist beliefs. But the world was closed to us.”

Source Shabtai Teveth Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust (Harcourt Brace & Co, New York, 1996)

Regarding his comments that it was possible for “mass immigration to the West,” this is a sheer fantasy of Greenstein. The following facts can be mentioned: At the 1938 Evian conference international delegates discussed the future of Jewish refugees. The Australian delegate, as an example, told the conference, “that as we have no racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” Whilst the conference agreed to set up an intergovernmental agency to see what could be done, the restrictions against immigration of Jews grew. Britain, Palestine, and the United States tightened their rules of admission. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico severely restricted the number of Jews that could enter; in the case of Mexico to one hundred a year. In this context on August 13th 1938, fifty-three Austrian Jews who had reached Finland by sea were refused permission to disembark and the boat was ordered to return to Germany. Three of the rejected refugees were so desperate that they threw themselves overboard and were drowned.

Source Martin Gilbert The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (Collins, London 1986) pp. 64-5

Yes, it’s 1953-8. Is this an issue?
Here Greenstein continues to get dates wrong despite the fact that he claimed he knew them. He first commented that the dates of the Kasztner trial was 1953-1956 and I pointed out that he was wrong, it was 1954-1958 yet he still cannot get even the simplest thing as a date correct.
There is no confusion at all my dear Mikey, except in your own mind. Selectivity was an unchanged policy, up to and including the war. Of course I haven’t quoted the whole of Chaim Cohen’s speeches to the lower and higher courts. Naturally I haven’t included his opinions as to the essential goodness of Kastner (which I actually think irrelevant). But let me cite just a few passages: ‘Kastner did nothing more and nothing less than was done by us in rescuing the Jews and bringing them to Palestine…. You are allowed – in fact it is your duty – to risk losing the many in order to save the few.’ ‘If in Kastner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millioins. In fact if that’s how he saw it, righly or wrongly, that was his duty…. It has always been our Zionist tradition to selected the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine.’ (Hecht pp. 194-5) In fact this had been one of the key differences between Labour Zionism and Revisionism, the latter of which did believe that Palestine could accommodate the millions in Europe. So oh yes, Golda Meir in a fine, rhetorical speech in Palestine, whilst doing nothing concrete re the saving of Europe’s Jews (she had been particularly insistent at Evian that Palestine must not be lost sight of when talk of rescuing Jews was on the agenda to the point that the Zionists actively. All serious commentators like Christopher Sykes agree that the Zionists were pleased at the failure of Evian and S Beit Zvi (a Zionist and Israeli historian) argues in great detail that they took active steps to prevent the offer of 100,000 places in Santo Domingo coming to fruition.

As stated in my previous post the policy selective immigration to Palestine was done away with by the time of the war. Greenstein ignores all of this. To comment further on this matter we can see what the exact situation is by looking at the ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in the case of Hirsh Bernblat v. The Attorney General. In this case, the Supreme Court declared that it was justified to sacrifice the few in order to save the many. The Supreme Court argued that it would have been justified to choose to save the few from immediate death at the price of subjecting the many to possible death in the future.

Source: Asher Maoz “Historical Adjudication: Courts of Law, Commissions of Enquiry and ‘Historical Truth’” Law and History Review Vol 18 No. 3 Fall 2000 pp. 559-607

Judge Ha’levi even summarised ancient law on the matter in the actual Kasztner trial:- “It is … forbidden to save one man or even many by turning another innocent man over to a murderer….Even to save the majority of the community, it is forbidden to hand over an innocent minority…to murderers.”

Quoted by Tom Segev The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Owl Books, Henrey Holt and Co. New York, 2000) p283

In the appeal of the Kasztner case Judge Agranat argued that a leader owes a duty to the community as a whole. He specifically stated “if a leader is to choose between two opposing ways of action, one likely to save the majority, but not all, of the community, the other geared to save each and every one but likely to only save a few – then his public office requires – and this is also his moral duty -…. that he follow the first way”

Quoted by Pnina Lahav Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (University of California Press, 1997) p.140

Disagree. It is quite clear from their speeches that the Supreme (or High) Court of Israel voted 3-2 in overturning the decision of the lower court. And as Judge Shlomo Chesin, for the majority, wrote: ‘As I said, I am not arguing with the basic factual findings of the learned President of the Jewish Disstrict Court.’ He goes on to say that the findings do not, of necessity, therefore mean Kastner was guilty of collaboration. Moshe Silberg for the minority was quite explicit. Kastner was ‘a collaborator with the angel of death.’. The 5 judges were unanimous in holding that Kastner ‘in a perjurious and criminal way’ saved Becher, a major German war criminal.

Here Greenstein is referring to the Appeal of the Kastzner trial and what the majority decision was.Greenstein is very wrong indeed and does not accept straight facts even when pointed out to him. Let it be known that serious commentators on the Kasztner trial are very aware that the decision was overturned by a 4:1 majority on the point of collaboration and 5:0 on preparing the ground for murder. Without even bothering to locate what Greenstein might dismiss as a “Zionist source” he need only look at the anti-Zionist Akiva Orr’s book Israel: Politics Myths and Identity Crisis (Pluto Press 1994) p.108
In fact to this day the Jewish Agency has not withdrawn its name from Becher’s affidavits testimony and lobbying on behalf of the cream of the Jewish Department of the SS and Waffen SS. You ask how many others saved as many as Kastner. It’s rather a strange question. You could equally ask how many people died because of Kastner who might otherwise have survived?

It is not the job of the Jewish Agency to alter historical documents!!! Regarding Kasztner the opinion of the majority in the Supreme Court was as follows:

“1 During that period Kasztner was motivated by the sole motive of saving Hungary’s Jews as a whole, that is, the largest possible number under the circumstances of time and place as he estimated could be saved; 2 This motive fitted the moral duty of rescue to which he was subordinated as a leader of the relief and rescue committee in Budapest; 3 Influenced by this motive he adopted the method of financial or economic negotiation with the Nazis; 4 Kasztner’s behaviour stands the test of plausibility and reasonableness; 5 His behaviour during his visit to Cluj (On May 3rd) and afterwards, both its active aspect (the plan of the ‘prominents’) and its passive aspect (withholding the ‘Auschwitz news’ and lack of encouragement for acts of resistance and escape on a large scale) – is in line with his loyalty to the method which he considered, at all important times, to be the only chance of rescue; 6 Therefore one cannot find a moral fault in his behaviour, one cannot discover a casual connection between it and the easing of the concentration and deportation, one cannot see it as becoming a collaboration with the Nazis.”

Source Akiva Orr ibid. pp.109-10

Let me quote Supreme Court Justice Moshe Silberg again, albeit not someone known as an anti-Zionist (nor Ben Hecht who cites him in Perfidy p.274). ‘The charge emanating from the testimony of the witnesses against Kastner is that had they known of the Auschwitz secret, then thousands or tens of thousands would have been able to save their lives by local, partial, specific or indirect rescue operations…. How can he examine the tens of thousands of possibilities? Does he decide instead of God? The point is that Kastner acted, not as an individual but as a Jewish Agency representative throughout. And if SS General Walter Schellenburg, Chief of Himmler’s Intelligence is correct, he also acted as an SS agent as well.

Here Greenstein is providing the minority opinion of 1 out of 5 judges at the Supreme Court. The accusation as implied is that the Jews did not know about Auschwitz. I enclose some facts to counteract that charge:

5,000 Hungarian Jews, who had been deported in the labour battalions to the Ukraine, returned to Hungary in the summer of 1943 and presumably told their stories back to their families and their communities. A number of Polish Jews who escaped to Hungary also are likely to have told Jews in their new communities about the horrors they had witnessed. There were also thousands of Slovakian Jews in Hungary who are likely to have told their Jewish Hungarian friends news from their own families. In June, July and December 1942, the Hungarian language service of BBC radio, which was widely listened to in Hungary, broadcast information about the mass murder of Jews. As the anti-Nazi German author Thomas Mann put it, “No Hungarian Jews, not even in the remote village, could be unaware of the menace.”

Source Yehuda Bauer Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations 1933-1945 (Yale University Press, 1994) pp. 150-1

The view of Professor J. L. Talmon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was that by the time those associated the Jewish Councils “grasped the real aim of the Nazis was they were no more than helpless and benumbed hostages.”

Quoted by Randolph Brahman The Politics of Genocide-The Holocaust in Hungary Vol 2. Revised edition (Columbia University Press, 1994) p.836

When Joel Brand was in Aleppo, his meeting with Shertok for about 2 days from 11th June 1944 was recorded. Brand specifically stated “Hungarian Jews are now aware of the meaning of ‘expulsion’. It is clear to them that it means annihilation.”

Source: Dina Porat “Historical Document: The Protocol of the Meeting between Represntatives of the Yishuv and Joel Brand in Aleppo, Syria, June 1944” Yalkut Moreshet 3 Winter 2005 pp. 147-160

Yes but Eichmann wasn’t at Nuremburg so it would have been very easy to testify against him! The point is that he testified in favour of those who were there. Not that Kastner’s own Report should be accepted uncritically or at all. But as Mikey says, he was there on behalf of the Vadah, the Jewish Agency Relief and Rescue Committee, the Hungarian Judenverrat and much else besides. Vrba himself writes, in his book ‘I Escaped From Auschwitz’ that ‘It is of interest to know that Eichmann’s cronies from Budapest, SS officers Krumey and Hunsche, were protected from prosecution after the war because Dr. Kasztner, in the name of the World Zionist Congress, issued them protective affidavits. Citing K Muller-Tupath’s Richsfuhrers etc. 1982. In 1969-70 Vrba testified at their trial in Frankfurt and is therefore in a better position to know the truth than Mikey. Or as Robert Kempner, a senior US official at Nuremburg described it: Kasztner was running around at Nuremburg looking for Nazis he could save.’ (Linn 51).

I certainly did not say that Kastzner was a member of the Hungarian Judenrat as he was not. This confusion between the Judenrat and the Relief and Rescue Committee (Vaada) is made not just by Greenstein but also by Jim Allen in his play Perdition. It is simply false. I have dealt with Kasztner’s testimonies in previous post, Greenstein simply ignores the facts. I have never implied that Kasztner’s own report should be accepted uncritically. It does contain some inconsistencies. For full details on the testimonies see the following reference where I took my information from
Shoshana Barri (Ishoni) “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals” The Journal of Israeli History Vol 18. No 2 and 3 1997 pp. 139-165

Yes you are correct. Grammatically! I should have made it explicit by putting ‘also’ in i.e ‘are ALSO made by the 2/3rd…’ Oh I think that Vrba comes to much the same conclusons, to wit: ‘Did the Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders – for instance Dr. R. Kasztner – bartrered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other “prominent” Jews directly from Eichmann.’ (Linn p.12, citing a debate with Prof. Talmon in The Observer 22.9.63). conclusions as Jim Allen. Of course there will be differences. And it is childish to say that I consider Vrba an anti-Semite. I say, and it is quite clear, that by the guilt by association technique of Mikey (everything is a Soviet plot) and his Zionist friends, then Vrba is an anti-Semite. A difference that is quite easy to understand.

Here Greenstein makes a classic error in relation to the Kasztner rescue train by stating that Kasztner “bartered.” This suggests that a deal was done. This whole matter was dealt with eloquently by the Supreme Court. Kasztner was in no position to “barter” anything. As was made clear in the Supreme Court, Justice Agranat cited the words of Eichmann to Kasztner during one of their meetings: “You seem extremely tense, Kasztner. I am sending you to Teresienstadt for recovery; or would you prefer Auschwitz?” (Quoted by Pnina Lahav op. cit. P. 135) Consequently Kasztner could hardly be in position to barter anything.

For a more detailed explanation of this see Leora Bilsky Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial (University of Michigan Press, 2004) pp 41-66

Regarding Vrba being an antisemite, I have never said it and nor would I. In fact, as stated above, you are the first person I have ever seen comment that anyone might think Vrba is an antisemite.

Mikey tells us that Arendt’s book was ‘correctly attacked’, but doesn’t say why. Like any book it has its deficiencies, not least a lack of footnoting, but its general conclusions, viz. that the existence of the Judenrat could not but be of help to the Nazi exterminators cannot be faulted, nor her observations on why there was a differential rate of survival in the different countries, i.e. that not all countries were anti-Semitic to the same extent and opposition to anti-Semitism in countries like Bulgaria and France were far more important than the pie in the sky schemes of the Zionists. Arendet courted the wrath of the Zionist establishment and the Mikeys of the day because she stumbled on some of the issues that the Eichmann trial had been intent on avoiding, such as Hungary and Kastner. That was why neither Vrba nor Marek Edelman (the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance) were called. They were not Zionists and did not sing to the tune of the establishment in Israel and its intention to mould the story of the Holocaust to their political purposes, not least by whitewashing their own role. But unlike the servile account of Mikey, who is in a long tradition of bowing and scraping at the feet of the Jewish establishment, Ruth Linn’s questions are more profound. She writes of Vrba ‘Could a narrative of an individualistic escape, by a non-Zionist Jew, critical of his Jewish leaders, ever be made to harmonize with the “collective aura” that dominated the state of Israel.” The same of course is true of the 4th and 5th escapees, Rosin and Mordowicz. Given that the first escapee was barely such, though he did bring out the first news of Auschwitz (he was passported out by a renegade SS officer who was murdered on his return), one has to make the point that the escapees were typical of the non/anti-Zionist East European Jews. Zionism likes to claim these Jews but only in so far as they keep their distance. In reality, the life of ghetto Jewry in Eastern Europe is as distant as it is impossible to imagine from Israel, the US’s murderous client state.

Regarding Arendt and Greensteins view that her general conclusions in Eichmann in Jerusalem “cannot be faulted.” This is laughable. The main argument of Arendt was that Eichmann was just an ordinary man caught up in the totalitarian regime – hence the subtitle of her book “A report on the Banality of Evil” makes clear. The author and director of the Yad Vashem archives, Yaacov Lozowick, comments:

“When I embarked upon my own research of Eichmann and his colleagues, I had no doubts about the validity of Arendt’s position…. As I delved ever deeper into the documents, however, my unease grew, until at last I reluctantly had no choice but admit that Hannah Arendt was wrong. There was very little that was banal about Eichmann or any of his accomplices, and the little that could be found was not relevant to what they had done. Arendt’s point of departure was wrong. Although she was primarily a philosopher, she had written a historical analysis – and without checking her facts. Moreover, she had refrained from taking into account much potentially relevant information. Above all, her position was the result of ideological considerations, not careful scholarship. This was even more true of most of her followers.”

Source: Yaacov Lozowick “Malicious Clerks” contained in ed. Steven E. Aschheim Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem (University of California Press, 2001) pp. 214-23

Arendt did not believe that Eichmann was a fanatical antisemite. This is absurd. At the trial, one of the judges asked Eichmann if it was true that “at the time it was considered a glorious act to destroy the Jews? The Jews were looked upon as a germ that had to be destroyed, just like any other disease? And pitilessness was considered a virtue?” The response from Eichmann was, “Yes, that is correct, that I must admit.”

Source: The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, (Jerusalem, 1992-1995) Vol 4. P. 1,816 as quoted by David Cesarani Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (Vintage, 2005) P. 157

The person that Arendt did not think was a fanatical anti-Semite, as late as 1957 in an interview said he was only sorry that he had succeeded in exterminating all eleven million European Jews.

Source: Jacob Robinson And the crooked shall be made straight: The Eichmann trial, the Jewish catastrophe and Hannah Arrendt’s narrative (Macmillan, 1965) p.52

Arendt’s view on the Jewish Councils was deeply flawed. As Steven Katz comments in his introduction to a later edition of Trunk’s book – Judenrat

“What Trunk’s detailed researches show is, first, the inescapability, of Jewish ‘cooperation’ with the Nazi overlord. Subjugated, separated from the general population, and ghettoized in quick order following the defeat of Poland – without help from either local Poles or the distant Allied nations – there was, ultimately, no alternative to such interaction – all Arendt-like fantasies of an anarchic Jewish response to the contrary. Second, all solutions that the Jewish Councils might have pursued or did pursue in their attempt to save Jewish lives, given the Nazi created situation in which they found themselves and from which there was no general escape, involved profound moral (and practical) uncertainties and ambiguities.”

Source Steven T. Katz “Introduction to the Bison Books Edition” of Isaiah Trunk Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation ( Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1996) p. xii

In fact Arendt was wrong on many things. As Gertrude Ezorsky summed up “She [Arendt] was wrong about Eichmann, she was wrong about international law, she was wrong about Jewish leaders, she was wrong about Jewish resistance, she was wrong about Jewish “cooperation” with the Nazis…. She was wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Source: Gertrude Ezorsky “Hannah Arendt Answered” Dissent March-April 1966 pp. 172-182

To make a further point about Greenstein’s inconsistencies, whilst praising Arendt he is complaining that Marek Edelman was not called to the witness stand – yet Arendt specifically argued against the ghetto fighters being called. She thought the temptation should be resisted. Inconsistencies is nothing new with Greenstein.

Oh yes, I certainly failed to answer Mikey’s comment about Bauer calling Vrba a ‘hero’. I assumed I didn’t need to. It was so obviously a sham, like me calling Mikey a discerning and astute critic! In his Rethinking the Holocaust Bauer calls him a ‘bitter Auschwitz survivor’ ‘not credible’ ‘embittered and furious’ his ‘despair and bitterness are overdone’. And referring to Vrba’s Haifa honorary doctorate (nothing to do with Bauer incidentally) , in ‘Leadership under Duress: The Working Group in Slovakia, 1942-44, Bauer and other of the Zionist Establishment Historians (Fatran, Rothkirken etc.) write of the criticism of the Slovakian Judenrat that ‘Regretfully, it was given legitimacy [lit. “was made kosher”] when Haifa University awarded a honorary doctorate to the head of these mockers Peter ]sic] Vrba…. Just because he was an Auschwitz prisoner endowed with personal heroism, he has crowned himself as knowledgeable to judge all those….’ [Linn 109/110] Yes I realise I shouldn’t have left out the reference to heroism, but in the circumstances…. As Linn asks, what if Hungarian Jews had read the Vrba-Wetzler report and believed it? What if Israeli high-school students had been given a chance to read Vrba’s memoirs and drawn their own conclusions? Quite. But Bauer too had his regrets. ‘I truly regret that Yad Vashem did not publish the book [Vrba’s memoirs] in Hebrew. On the other hand Vrba’s wild attacks on Kastner and on the Slovak underground are all a-historical…’ So there we have it. Bauer regrets, basically having been found out. Vrba’s main point in his debate with Bauer etc. is that he and those who experienced what happened are the better historians, not those who write about it later from a particular partisan and political perspective in Israel. In fact we can judge Bauer from what he wrote in his ‘The Holocaust: Some Historical asepcts’ his best known Hebrew book. The only reference to Vrba is a sentence ‘Detailed reports about the death camp in Auschwitz and the gas chambers there were received in Slovakia from 2 Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on April 7.’ True to form even the names of the escapees were not mentioned in any, bar one, Israeli account until a hue and cry was raised by Linn among others. In 1998 Vrba’s memoirs were published in Hebrew and finally included in Gutman’s Hebrew writings on the Holocaust for high school studnets. ‘Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but tat that time he had already made a decision, together with other Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.’ Quite. (Linn p.72)

I really fail to see what Linn’s attack on Bauer has to do with Perdition however as Greenstein discusses it – I have already mentioned that Bauer refers to Vrba as a hero and as a matter of fact Bauer does discuss Vrba quite frequently. For example in 2005 as mentioned previously in Yalkut Moroshet in 2005 Bauer had a whole paper devoted to the Auschwitz Protocol and in his 1994 book Jews for Sale?. – see pages 70, 72, 156-157 for further discussions. Regarding Vrba’s honorary doctorate that you state had nothing to do with Bauer – Again you are wrong – Bauer was told that his letter of recommendation influenced the decision to award the honorary doctorate. (see Bauer “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz’” Yalkut Moroshet 3 Winter 2005

As I have stated there is a substantial amount of contradictory evidence as the date that Kasztner received the Auschwitz Protocol. You fail to accept it .

I think I have covered this nonsense. Bauer praises when he has no options left. But when he could have praised Vrba and mentioned and published him he chose to do nothing other than refer to him obliquely. Bauer’s and Gutman’s 1994 publications in English do mention the escape, it is not given the same treatment in the Hebrew editions. As Linn observes, Erich Kuka ‘after he joined the Israeli establishment’ also joined in this ‘long-term tradition of discrediting’ Vrba, to the extent of changing his name to Rosenberg-Vrba! His student, Ruth Davis, wrote to Vrba that ‘Kulka never mentioned to me that you are still living, or that you are in Canada.’ (Linn p.68)

More of the same from Greenstein – He continues arguing that Bauer and/or Zionist historians do not recognize Vrba – Greenstein should be aware that for example on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2004, a study day was held under the joint auspices of Tel Aviv university, Moroshet, the Diaspora Museum, the Museum of Heritage of Hungarian Jewry and the Society of Research of the Zionist Youth Movements in Hungary. This day devoted to commemorating 60 years since the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. There were numerous speakers including Yehuda Bauer, Dina Porat, Shlomo Aronson and Yitzhak Kashti amongst them. Vrba and the Auschwitz Protocol was discussed in detail.

Oh yes, I am aware of Tabenkin. I believe he ended up politically in Tehiha, the far-right settlers party with Geula Cohen, wanting to ‘transfer’ the Palestinians. I don’t doubt that Ben Gurion said something once about socialism. But the problem with being 100% Zionist and socialist is that this is a contradiction. Ben Gurion sought to harness the capital of the Jewish bourgeoisie to financing his proto-state. He didn’t challenge capital or the alliance with the West, he sought it out. What was no part of Ben Gurion’s strategy was an alliance with the Arab workers. How could he when Histadrut campaigned on Jewish Labour, Land & Produce – i.e. a boycott of Arab Labour, Land & Produce. An apartheid state within a state? Class unity? Hardly, this was Zionism. What is more relevant is the admission of Prinz, in his interview with Brenner (51 documents) that Zionism never fought Hitler in Germany. Which is the same conclusion as Niewycks’s in his book on German Jews in Weimar Germany.

Ben-Gurion said something much more than “once” about Socialism. Being 100% Socialist and Zionist is not a contradiction. Consider organizations such as Mapai, Poalei Zion etc etc – they all fit into that category. If you also note the setting up of the State of Israel ands the Kibbutz movement – The whole concept of the Kibbutz and community was a very socialist idea. Greenstein chooses to ignore the fact that Moses Hess an early Socialist Zionist thinker wrote the first draft of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto!!

Regarding the German Zionists not fighting Hitler. Firstly they were a minority of Jews there and secondly but more importantly the Nazi permanently harassed Jews – They were hardly in a position to obtain arms and overthrow the might of Hitler’s army. In fact on that point where was the left???

As Conan Fischer points out by September 1930, the communist KPD dropped its campaign of Anti-Fascist Action and replaced it with United Action. Fischer states “Before long, United Action posters appeared, showing Communist, Nazi and Socialist workers standing shoulder to shoulder against the bourgeoisie.” To borrow the same apt Latin phrase that Paul Bogdanor quotes from Vrba above Res ipsa loquitur [The thing speaks for itself]

Source: Conan Fischer “Class Enemies or Class Brothers? Communist-Nazi Relations in Germany 1929-33” European History Quarterly Vol 15 1985 pp. 259-79

I’m aware Vrba didn’t write HVA. It was based on Min Hamitzair however, but it has to be treated with caution where it doesn’t document facts by explicit reference or photostat and omits all mention of the fact that Weismmandel was a member of the Jewish Council in Slovakia and Bratislava.

I am relived that you realize that Shonfeld’s Holocaust Victims Accuse is not a reliable book.

It cannot be proved beyond doubt that Kastner dressed up in SS uniform. He admitted at the trial that he went with Becher to Bergen-Belsen, so it stands to reason that he wore a uniform. Likewise he stayed in the dying embers of the Nazi regime as a guest of the SS and Becher in Berlin. I don’t know why you try and defend this person, who by any stretch of imagination was a collaborator. Of course Vrba cannot know what was actually said to Eichmann but he had a pretty good idea of their relationship, something Eichmann confirmed in his interview with a Dutch Nazi journalist printed in Life Magazine of 28.11.60 and 5.12.60. In this entirely unforced interview, sometime in 1955, Eichmann describes Kastner so: ‘As a matter of fact there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist ldaers… I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thouisand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood…’ (Brenner, 51 Documents pp. 280/1). Mikey is simply wrong when he claims that Vrba claims that the Protocols were given to Kastner on 26 April. Vrba states that ‘the final version was typed by Thursday, April 27, 1944.’ (Vrba, I Escaped p. 403). He too is unclear when Kastner received it but he was told by May 1st that Kastner had already been given a copy. Krasniansky of the Slovak Council is clear that Kastner had the Report before the end of the month, as is Bauer incidentally. (Linn 27).

More absurdity from Greenstein on Kasztner dressing in a SS uniform. Paul Bogdanor above put it perfectly “By Greenstein’s standards of evidence, since Red Cross workers visited concentration camps with Nazi permission, ‘it stands to reason’ that they too wore SS uniforms. Or since Greenstein’s anti-Zionist agitprop regularly appears in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, ‘it stands to reason’ that he likes to dress up as a Cheka torturer or a Gulag camp guard.”

On the use of the Eichmann quote. This shows exactly how morally bankrupt Greenstein and others such as Brenner and Allen who use the same tactic really are. What next from these people – will they quote Myra Hindley on children’s behaviour? What about quoting the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe on why woman liked to be raped? The depths Greenstein is prepared to seek to knows no bounds.

As I have now repeatedly said there is contradictory evidence as to the date Kasztner received the Auschwitz Protocols. Krasnianski who wrote the protocol did claim in a testimony that Kasztner received the Protocol on April 26 – In another testimony he said Kasztner saw it on April 28 – Hansi Brand however claims that Kasztner was not in Bratislava in April and as such there is confusion. Greenstein being irresponsible makes bold statements as facts without checking contradictions between different accounts.

Source: Yehuda Bauer “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz’” op. cit.

Yes well as Israel Shahak, noted, a Holocaust memorial centre that can welcome Nazi supporter and South African Premier, John Vorster, isn’t worth a candle politically. The ‘explanation’ for not publishing it is without merit as is the distinction without a difference between publishing and printing. In fact Yad Vashem withdrew a promise to co-publish with Columbia and the reason given is absurd. Anyone who wishes to understand the mechanics of the Holocaust has to base themselves on German documentation for obvious reasons. Hebrew was not a language spoken by most of the Jews in Europe incidentally! And if there’s any doubt about Hilberg Bauer admits himself, in his Rethinking the Holocaust, that Hilberg’s book was a ‘monumental, brilliant and, in my view, unsurpassed analysis of the Nazi bureaucracy.’ Wen can understand the decision not to publish because it focussed on the destruction, those who died, rather than the attempt by the Zionist Historians to seek out those who resisted and magnify and glorify those relatively few incidents in order to maintain the myth that there is some kind of continuity between resistance in the ghettos and what Israel does militarily today. Hence why Hilberg’s book is translated into virtually every language bar Hebrew! Remember that the question asked of the Holocaust survivors above all by Prosecutor Hausner at the Eichmann trial was ‘why did you not resist’. An unfair question put by a nationalist to those whose circumstances he could not even conceive of.

Regarding Greenstein’s comments on Yad Vashem, I am inclined to believe that he should visit the place himself. If he did, he might be less willing to come back and distort so many facts.
On Hilberg – It is generally accepted that his book is monumental – and whilst German sources are completely necessary when writing about the Holocaust, so is the language of countries such as Poland, Hungary, Holland etc etc as well as Yiddish which was spoken by large segments of the European Jewish community. Greenstein ignores these points – like he ignores many other points that do not fit in with his thesis.

I am indeed aware of all the above prayers. Strange that these prayers, which of course predate, as Mikey says, the 1st Zionist Congress, did not lead to mass emigration to Palestine. Even stranger that the Orthodox were so bitterly opposed to the Zionist political project, so much so that the 1st Zionist Congress that Mikey refers to had to be transferred to Basle because Rabbi Gudeman and others were so opposed to it. What became then of their prayers? The reality is that they had no political significance. Zion was the idea of the Messiah’s return and of course that couldn’t be rushed or hurried along.

Greenstein fails to mention that there has been a Jewish community in Palestine dating back centuries and Jews did emigrate there prior to the founding of modern day Zionism. Regarding Greenstein’s comment “Zion was the idea of the Messiah’s return and of course that couldn’t be rushed or hurried along.” Greenstein knows that that is one view and that there are other views. In fact Greenstein would have been taught a different view as he was previously a member of B’nei Akiva – a religious Zionist youth movement.

Well I’m not aware that Socrates got most of his ideas from his cat. But Zionism did more than share a taste for pets or whatever with anti-Semitism. We are not talking about coincidences but joint work, praise, quoting by people like Heinrich Class from the Zionists. Of Herzl seeking out Drumont to get a favourable review for Der Judenstaat in his anti-Semitic daily, La Libre Parole. About the witterings of Nordau, Herzl’s deputy about racial theories and eugenics. About Herzl’s promise to the Czar’s anti-Semitic ministers that Zionism was an anti-dote to Socialism (thus how ‘socialist’ Zionism came about – an attempt to bridge the gap between reality and rhetoric). The fact is that unlike Socrates’ cat, both Zionists and anti-Semites had a common objective. Herzl saw, in his own metaphor, anti-Semitism as the equivalent of steam in an engine. His task was to channel it in the right direction.

I have tried to use an analogy of Socrates, but this is clearly above Greenstein so I will resort to a simpler analogy he may understand. Nazis hate Stalinists and Trotskyists hate Stalinists ergo Trotskyists and Nazis are similar. This argument has a similar logic to the one Greenstein makes above.

I guess we should be grateful for small mercies. Mikey is wrong. I recognise the existence of the Israeli State, but like the Apartheid State I want to see it destroyed or deZionised, changed from a racial state seeking to privilege one section of the populace to a State that makes no distinction between those of different nationality or religion.

Readers should be under no illusions – the whole point of Greenstein’s focus on the Holocaust and his distortions of facts are for the reason he states above – He wants to see the state of Israel “destroyed.” Well he has that in common with the president of Iran who also distorts the Holocaust – although via other methods.

The truth is often offensive. In Israel there are essentially group rights, not equal individual rights. That was the purpose of the 1935 Nuremburg Laws. Arab villages are not recognised, Arabs cannot access 93% of Israeli land. Where does this come from if not European anti-Semitism? Yes a Jew is by virtue of the mother but who determines whether the mother is Jewish and how? The information includes that derived from Nazi sources. I mention Shahak because of course he was a childhood survivor of the Belsen camp and the Warsaw Ghetto. If the comparison was offensive he nonetheless found it accurate.

More anti-Zionist falsities from Greenstein here. “Arabs cannot access 93% of Israeli land.” A load of nonsense. What this refers to is that 93% of the land is owned by the State trust – Neither Jews nor Arabs can purchase it. The argument makes as much sense as saying that a black person cannot in England purchase land belonging to the National Trust in England hence the UK is racist. National Trust Land of course cannot be purchased by white people either and so it is with the land in Israel that Greenstein refers to.

Greenstein continues to falsely and offensively claim that who is a Jew is determined by Nazi sources. I am going to let Greenstein in a little known secret. The Jewish religion is rather old – In fact in the Jewish calendar it is now the year 5,767. The question of who is a Jew and how it is determined and how it is determined how someone’s mother is Jew and how it is answered somewhat predates the Nuremberg laws of 1935 A.D. To use the phrase again: Res ipsa loquitur

Well the Union of Jewish Students has tried to ban anything anti-Zionist. I have reams of their leaflets trying to ban me from speaking on campuses! When news of Perdition spread the leaders of the Zionist groups in Britain, including the Zionist Federation, lobbied for it to be banned. I welcome these attempts because they always rebound. I always found that the Zionists would build the meetings I spoke at in their attempts to deny the basic right of free speech. No Healey’s WRP took money from Iraq to spy on Iraqi dissidents. I haven’t heard of spying on British Jews. Surely that is Israel? And I wouldn’t trust Harry’s Place for anything to do with information. Allen broke from the WRP and was a brilliant socialist playwright. It is that rather than these absurd guilt by association techniques that matter. And I note that Mikey hasn’t attempted to defend the ludicrous Stalinist charge against Jim Allen. Quite right too!

I am not particularly in favour of the policy, but the National Union of Students had a policy of no platform for racists and fascists. If that policy is to be upheld then it is quite clear that it should be applied to Holocaust deniers such as David Irving and Holocaust falsifiers such as Greenstein.

Regarding the WRP and spying on British Jews, I suggest Greenstein looks up the article by Richard Ellis, John Craig and Andrew Weir “ Far left party paid to spy by Gadaffi” Sunday Times February 7 1988. A WRP source told the newspaper, that the list of those “spied on” by the party included members of parliament such as Leon Brittan and Sir Keith Joseph, Lord Young, then head of the Manpower Services Commission, his brother, Stuart Young, the former chairman of the BBC, and several other unidentified businessmen.

Regarding Jim Allen breaking with the WRP, according to Brian Behan, a former chairman of the SLL, a forerunner to the WRP, Allen’s views on Zionism were influenced by the Gerry Healy’s WRP.

Source: Brian Behan: “Obituary: Jim Allen” The Independent July 16 1999

Thewn you should lay off the crack for a few weeks. Srsly.