Trudy Gold
1945-1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 2

Trudy Gold - 1945-1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 2

- Well, good evening everyone from Cornwall today. Wonderful, wild, windy Cornwall. And I’ve been discussing, this particular week and last week and next week, the subject matter with my colleagues. And as you realise, we’re now into a very, very contentious area of history. And we all try very hard to be as objective as possible, but as I’m sure you all know, there is no such thing as objective history. And the area we’re going to look at today is, again, concentrating on the survivors in post-war Europe. And also, I’m going to have to deal with the British. I know William has done it, but the reason William, myself, Hagai, we’re much, we’re looking at quite often at the same sort of material, but because it’s one of the most intractable problems in the world today, we thought that it was very important that you all have a chance to discuss it with us. And the other point I want to make is, as many of you know, I’m very, very involved in, I’ve been involved in education for over 40 years, and the thing that really worries me is the dissonance between the plethora of films, documentaries, books on the Shoah, and yet the rise of antisemitism. And I should mention, it’s actually Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s 99th birthday today. And this is a subject we often discuss, and I think it’s because, certainly in Britain, the one area kids do not study are what I call the missing years, between 1945 and 1948. That’s another reason I wanted to spend a lot of time on it with you. And I really hope that you will ensure that your children and your grandchildren have enough basic knowledge. Because if you look at the various school syllabus, the Shoah ends in 1945. Does it? Israel comes into being in 1948. There’s no linkage in the school syllabus, there’s no, there’s no notion of the whole history of Zionism, and also the history of Arab nationalism.

It all starts in 1948 when colonial Israel takes power. So the point I want to make is this is an incredibly important area of study. And if we can unlock that, maybe just maybe we could make a difference. And I just wanted to say that in September I’m going into conversation with Sa'ad Khaldi whose family, of course, were the judges of Jerusalem. And he is very unusual in so far as he is the only Palestinian educator accredited by Yad Vashem. He’s an inspector of schools in England, and we want to talk together about Holocaust education. So, what can I say? The impact of the Shoah are absolutely incalculable. If you take Adorno, “There can be nothing but silence.” There are many writers who think post-Shoah, what on earth can come out of Europe? And it’s not just the impact, of course the main impact is on the families who lost, on the rest of world jury, but also on the world itself. Because what was it? It was modern bureaucracy and technology harnessed to mass murder. And we took the so-called benefits of the modern world and we made them into efficient killing machines. Now, how on earth can a civilization recover from that? But what I want to concentrate on today, last week we talked about Bricha. At the end of the war, two-thirds of world Jewry survive, but one-third were wiped out. And that in itself, you say those words, and what exactly does it mean? If a third of Britain had been wiped out or a third of America, what would it have done to the other members of that civilization, members of that society? It’s beyond traumatic. But there were survivors.

Before the war, don’t forget that Europe was the heartland of the Jewish world. Let’s take Warsaw, and you may remember I showed you that incredible bit of footage of Warsaw in 1939. There were 40 Jewish newspapers in Warsaw alone for a population of 350,000. There were over 3 ¼ million Jews in Poland, and if you think about the range from the Zionists through the Bundists, through the communists, through whatever, there was Jewish theatre, there was Jewish schools of every kind of persuasion. And it was a vibrant society. It was coming to an end, tragically, not just because of the Nazis, because Poland itself had adopted an appalling anti-Semitic regime. But having said that, there was still this vibrancy of Jewish life. And at the end of the war, this is something else we have to take on, it’s over. Europe will never again be the heartland of the Jewish world. There are now twin centres, the main centres are in, Israel has overtaken America, but it’s Israel and America. And another question we have to ask ourselves, the content of the Jewish world, you know, the group that suffered most were the ultra-Orthodox, were the Orthodox. Something like 94% of Hasids were wiped off the face of the Earth. Whole lines of descent. Who would believe today, they are a very important part of Jewish life? And also the trauma of what happened to them.

I can remember when I was a student in the late ‘60s, rabbis used to come around the universities and tell us to marry and have lots of children so we could make up for the loss, as though one could ever make up for that loss. So the first point is, it’s incalculable. And the other point is, what on earth were you going to do with the survivors? Many of them finished up in DP camps, which were established as the camps, as the Nazi camps were liberated. Don’t forget, there were over 5,000 camps in the Nazi sphere of influence. And I don’t like the word liberated, I mustn’t use it, because there wasn’t a deliberate policy to liberate the Jews. And also there were a million, there were 11 million people on the move at the end of the First World War, Second World War. Just think about it. The Nazis and their slave labour, communism encroaching from the East, life had been cheapened forever. And of course, what is going to be established is the Bricha Movement, and we discussed this last week. Who was Bricha? It was the Jewish Brigade finally allowed to function in 1944, meeting up with partisans, people like Abba Kovner and Zuckerman, meeting up also with survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. So ghetto fighters, hardened fighters, trained soldiers, Haganah, Irgun, all of them are going to be involved in this. And they stay behind in Europe, because the other question, and this is so important, when did Zionism become a majority movement in the Jewish world. It’s got to be some time in the war years. Weizmann, who’d played along with the British for so long, homeland, homeland, he believed in the honour of the British, but it’s in the war that Ben Gurion, and they all come together at the Biltmore Hotel and they say, “We need a state now.” Because the Zionist prescription, and it’s important to understand when we talk about the establishment of Israel, the Zionist prescription always was, if there had been a Jewish state, there would not have been a Shoah. And the other issue, which is so, so complicated.

The world, to what extent was the world complicit? To what extent was the world by-standing? Now, if you look at it from the point of view of the British or the Americans, or many, many other people who suffered in the war, they won’t take that equation. But for many Jews, particularly those who veer to the right, that was very much the prognosis. But what I, can we see the next slide, please? Of course, the leader of, one of the great leaders of the resistance was Abba Kovner, the hero of the Vilna Ghetto. And at the end of the war, and I mentioned this last week, but I didn’t go into any details, he and a group of other survivors stayed behind in Europe. They were either , which means judgement , or , which means revenge. You make your own minds up about this. This is the group of survivors who stayed behind to exact justice on the Nazi perpetrators, who were responsible not only for killing their people, but also usually members of their own family. Now, what sort of response would one make in these kind of situations? Can we see the next slide, please? There you see, it’s Zuckerman. He lived a long life, another one of the heroes of the fighters. And to the right and to the left, they were incredible heroes, these characters, but there were many heroes within the Shoah, and not just those who resisted physically, but also those who resisted spiritually and intellectually and also never let us forget the Righteous Gentiles, and there were hundreds, I would, there were thousands and thousands of them. And if only we could un-bottle that kind of bravery, maybe we could create a better world. Can we go on please?

All the efforts of Bricha were actually funded by the Joint, that American organisation that had been founded at the beginning of the First World War by, first of all, by the money of the extraordinary Jacob Schiff. And the Joint was funding many of these rescue operations. They had agents all over. and the other point to make about Bricha, Bricha got an awful lot of help from people in the countries they operated in, in Italy, in France, et cetera, where people were, when the films were, when the films were shown of the liberation of the camps, there was an incredible amount of sympathy for the Jews. Now what about the Arabs of Palestine? Now, they were, their tragedy was their leadership, because the leader of the Palestinian Arabs was still Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the mufti. Even though he could have been tried as a war criminal, it was in the interest of the Allies to keep him around. And he was sending representatives to Washington and London, putting the Arab case. Now, could there have been a deal then, all these missed opportunities. If there had been different leadership, who knows? Sa'ad always says if the Musta'arabi or the Khalidi or any of these other clans had been in charge, you would’ve had a very, very different outcome. I’d like to turn to the next slide, please, because now we need to look at a completely different issue. And that of course is post-war Poland. Now, important to remember that in Poland, 90% of Polish Jewry were murdered. But about 300,000, sorry, about 350,000 actually survived the war. They survived either because they were hidden by righteous people, some for money and some out of pure altruism.

But the bulk of them had actually fled into Russia. They’d been deported into Russia, and ironically, between '39 and '41. I shouldn’t have used the word fled, wipe that word out. They’d gone into Russia, they’d been deported into Russia, and ironically, many of them were starved, many of them were put in gulags, but it saved their lives. I mean, Robert Wistrich, the great historian, when the Nazis were on the way to Krakow, he put his wife in a car and drove into Russia. He’d always been very left wing, but he was put in a gulag. The wife stayed behind, he survived the war, and Robert was born in a DP camp after the war. Another story, and there are hundreds of them, my friend Felek Scharf, who’d come to London in 1938, because there was innumerous classes at the Jagiellonian University, which meant that he couldn’t do his PhD there. So he came to London, he did his PhD at LSE. He had a very interesting life. He actually came to the station when Freud arrived, because he realised this was the great man. And he also, 'cause like, you know, you must get a taste of the other side of Jewish history. And he also interviewed Stefan Zweig about his Jewishness, and Zweig said, “All I know now is it’s Jewish destiny.” That’s what being a Jew means, it’s Jewish destiny.

But anyway, Felek is in London, he works in the London Cage. Helen Fry has actually lectured about this. And at the end of the war, he’s in Finland declassifying Nazis for the British, in British army uniform, when he realises his mother has survived the war. Tragically, both his father and brother perish. In fact, his great-grandfather was the Rabbi of Oswiecim, which of course is Auschwitz. Now Felek was unusual because he was, he walked both worlds, both cultures, the culture of the Jew and the culture of the Pole. He loved Polish literature. But anyway, he borrowed, in inverted commas, a British car, an army car, and he drove to Krakow where he found his mother alive. And according to him, she survived for three reasons. Number one, she was very pretty and blonde. Number two, there was a Righteous Gentile involved. They were wealthy, one of the servants had smuggled her from Krakow to Warsaw, and she was hidden. And she was then betrayed to the Gestapo, and this is really strange, when she went into Gestapo headquarters, she started speaking to the officer about goetta, and he said, “This woman can’t be a Jew. No, can’t be a Jew. No Jew would know about goetta.” And as Felek always said, only a Jewish woman in Poland would’ve known about goetta. In fact, his mother had been born in Vienna. So consequently, there are so many human stories about all of this. So you have a large number of Polish Jewry surviving because the numbers were so huge. 90% die, over three million, but you still have 350,000, which is still, if you think about it, the Anglo population, the Anglo-Jewish population is about 250,000 today.

So by the 1st of July, 1946, there were 240,000 Jews in Poland. By the way, there were an additional 30,000 who remained in Russia and didn’t go back till 1957. So, between July and October '45, 50,000 of them are going to leave Poland. Between May and September, a hundred thousand of them are going to flee. So what on earth is going on? Well, the first points to make is, you all know the political situation at the end of the Second World War. Uncle Joe Stalin, he’s watching and waiting, even during the Polish uprising. His troops were the other side of the river. He wanted the Nazis and the free Poles to fight it out, because obviously Stalin’s dream was the creation of the Soviet Empire. So gradually you have, the Soviets are taking control in Poland, and it has to be said, about 50% of the leaders of the Polish Communist Party were born Jewish. I can say this until I go purple, it was never the majority response, but a very large number of the Jewish, a large number of the communist leaders all over Eastern Europe were Jews. And don’t forget that this, the communists are going to go for power. In Czecho they’re going to go for power, all over Eastern Europe. Slovakia, that was such a terrible place in the war. Don’t forget that Tiso, who was a priest ran the state, and he actually sold, he actually paid the Nazis to deport Jews, because of all the property they could have taken. Now the other point to make is that war really does dehumanise.

And the, are we going to take Hugo Gryn’s analysis of, he of course was in Auschwitz. He said, what the, and it sticks in mind so much and I often use this phrase. He said, “If you want to understand what happens, they reversed the Ten Commandments.” If the Ten Commandments are the rule for a moral world, just think what they did. You can kill, you can steal, you can covet. But on a basic level, what had happened to Jewish property? Who had taken it? Look, we know that the great Poznanski Mansions, et cetera, would’ve been taken over by the Nazis. But think about ordinary folk. The majority of Jews in Poland before the war were poor. They lived in towns, they lived in villages, they lived in tenement blocks, they had Polish neighbours. I remember when I first started going to Poland in the 1980s before communism fell. We became obsessed with seeing the holes in the doorframes where the mezuzah would’ve been pulled out, because Poland was still a poor country. And you could still see. And you could go to blocks of flats in Warsaw that had once been 80% Jewish. This property, the pots, the pans, the bedding, it was all taken by Poles. And also one of the other problems was that the anti-Semitism did not die with the Shoah. And a man called Joseph Tenenbaum, who was president of the America based World Federation of Polish Jews, meets with Cardinal August Hlond, who’s head of the Polish Catholic Church. Now, the point about Hlond, and this is why we have such a tragedy between the Poles and the Jews. He is a great hero of Poland, and I’m going to explain why, but this is what he said after meeting Tenenbaum. “Jews were being killed in retaliation at the murder of the Christian population by the Jewish communist run Polish government.”

So Hlond is totally anti-communist. And as far as he’s concerned, as Jews are returning home, and it’s not just in Poland, it’s in Slovakia, it’s when they go home to find out who in their towns and villages survive, so many of them are, they meet terrible antisemitism, they can’t get their properties back. That’s exactly what happened to the Wistrich family, when they returned to Krakow. The antisemitism was such that they just had to flee. And they only had one relative left alive in Paris. They fled to Paris and then of course later to London. And I’m sure in your families, so many of you will know exactly what I’m talking about and will have your own personal stories of family members. Now, but you see, why is Hlond a hero to Poland? And this is where you get the terrible conundrum. The Poles see themselves as the real victims of Nazism. And to be fair, they were treated as a complete slave population. If you look at the syllabus for Polish schools under the Nazis, they had to count up to 500 and write their names. They were going to be the slaves of the Reich. And thousands of Polish prisoners were taken into camps, and many thousands of Poles were murdered by the Nazis. And don’t also forget that the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz were on Russian prisoners of war. So a lot of other people did suffer. But the point about the Jew, and this is where we have a real issue, the Jews were the only group where birth was sentence of death.

I’m using Yehuda Bauer’s phrase. But let’s talk a bit about Hlond. Where does he come from? Because this is the kind of issue that I think is so important today. He was the only member of the College of Cardinals to be arrested by the Gestapo. His canonization process actually begins in 1992. And in 19th of May, 2018, he’s named venerable, after Pope Francis confirms his heroic virtue. So he’s a real hero of the Catholic Church. You can say the same about Edith Stein. I don’t know if you remember the controversy of Edith Stein. She was a nun who died in Auschwitz. The Poles said, the Catholic Poles said she is a victim of Nazi persecution of Catholics. The Jews said, no. She died in Auschwitz because she had Jewish parents. You see the terrible slicing. Anyway, it was he, on the 18th of September, 1939, he left Poland at the request of the Polish government, to reach Rome. This is just as the Poles are being defeated by the Nazis. And he was to report on Nazi atrocities. And this is what he said. “Many priests are imprisoned, suffering humiliations, blows, maltreatment. A certain number were being deported to Germany. Others have been detained in concentration camps. Many are subjected to barbarous tortures. The Canon Casimir Stepczynski was forced in the company of a Jew, to carry away human excrement. A curate who wished to take the place of the venerable priest was brutally beaten.” So he is reporting to the Pope. And in his final observation to Pius XXII, he said, “Hitlerism aims at the total destruction of the Catholic Church.

It is known for certain that 35 priests have been shot. In many districts the church has been crushed, the church and cemeteries are in the hands of the invaders. All have been pillaged.” And the Vatican radio broadcast his report. After the war, Pius XXII appointed him Bishop of Warsaw. And of course, he spoke out against the communist persecutions of the church. He spoke out that the communists were nationalising Catholic schools. Following his death in 1948, the Catholic newspaper, “Tablet”, “The nations of Eastern Europe, which lie today beneath the police regimes from Moscow, lost their most powerful spokesman.” But what about his relations with the Jews, and here you see the tragedy. This is a letter he wrote in 1936. And remember, after the death of Pilsudski, the Regime of the Colonels was becoming more anti-Semitic. Ironically, they were thinking of getting rid of their Jewish problem by helping Jews make it to Palestine. Don’t forget that Jabotinsky was there very much working with the Polish government, “The enemy of my enemy is sometimes my friend,” to get as many people to Palestine as possible. Because before, in '36, '37 and '38, nobody quite knew what games were going to be played, and the Poles were thinking of an alliance with the Germans against the Russians. We always have to look at real politique as well. So this is the letter that he writes in 1936 about relations with the Jews. “So long as a Jew remains a Jew, a Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist. It is a fact that Jews are waging war against the Catholic Church. They are steeped in free thinking and constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement, and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that they have a corruptive influence on morals and that their publishing houses are spreading pornography.

It’s true that they are perpetrating fraud, usury, and deal in prostitution. Jewish youth have a negative effect on Catholic youth.” And of course, when Pius XXII made his great speech about the horrors of the war, this is on the 25th of June, 1944, when Hungarian Jewry is being murdered in Auschwitz, we are being beseeched in various quarters to do everything in our power, that in this noble and chivalrous nation, he’s talking about the Poles, the suffering already so heavy endured by a large number of unfortunate people because of their nationality or race, may not be extended or aggravated. It’s interesting, even then, when Auschwitz was an open secret, there’s no mention of the word Jew. So it all culminates in a town in southern Poland called Kielce. And remember, the civil war is still going on, where there’s a lot of right wing forces in the countryside. And it also has to be said that the Polish government in exile, because I’m trying to balance this, was the first in bringing the story of what was happening to the Jews to the attention of the Allies. It was quite, it was quite incredible actually. And of course you have heroes like Jan Karski. So Poland is complicated. Now the Kielce pogrom of 1946, it’s really seen as the catalyst that led to a hundred thousand Jews desperate to get out of Poland. And it’s also a mixture of the horrifying old blood libel, with fear of communism, the brutalization of war. And what happens is, on the 1st of July, an eight-year-old boy called Henryk Blaszczyk was reported missing by his father.

According to his father, later on the boy claimed he’d been kidnapped by an unknown man, alleging that he was a Jew. Two days later, the boy and his father and a neighbour went to the local communist controlled police force. While passing the Jewish house, the pointed to a man he claimed kidnapped him in the house. The boy claimed the Jews were involved in his kidnapping. So the police searched and the boy withdrew the kidnapping claim. Now what had happened was survivors going back to Kielce were being held in a hostel, because the atmosphere in the town was very, very dangerous. Now, later, this man was interviewed, the boy Henry was interviewed in 1998 by a Polish journalist, and he said that he was never ever kidnapped, but was living with another family in a nearby village, was being very well treated. So obviously he was worried about being in trouble, so he says he’s been kidnapped by the Jews. And the rumour spread. More kidnapping of other children and people began to go to the Jewish house and pelt it with stones. The civic militia broke into the building. There were no abducted children, but they made the inhabitants of the house surrender their weapons, which they had proper permits for, and also they had to give up all their valuables. And then someone started firing, nobody knows who, it escalated. There were killings on both sides. The head of the Jewish committee was fatally wounded. A number of priests attempted to enter the building to try and help the Jews. Numerous Jews driven out of the building by soldiers. They’re later attacked by stones, by civilians.

By noon, 800 workers from a local steel mill arrived and Jews, and they are pushing the Jews into the river, and they are battering them and stoning them to death. And no one attempted to really stop the pogrom. The dead involved, of course, women and children. Also the mob killed a Polish woman who was attempting to aid Jews. Two more Jews who were not in the house were murdered in a separate incident. A woman and her three-week-old child and her male companion were robbed. The woman and the baby were shot. Now this is post-war. This is a year after the liberation of the camps. There were three non-Jewish Poles amongst the dead. Two state servicemen were killed by Jews who managed to defend themselves. And it doesn’t stop until the communist authorities send troops down from Warsaw. Trains passing through Kielce were scrutinised for Jews by civilians and railway workers. Two passengers were murdered. The train murders are going to continue after the pogroms. 30 murdered after the pogroms cease. And it was used very much in the infighting between the communists and the Polish government in the West. It was incredibly controversial. What caused it? Was it communist propaganda to discredit the opposition? Was it spontaneous saying that all Jews are communists? Was it spontaneous antisemitism, too many Jews in the government? Or was it also the good old-fashioned blood libel, and the fact that the Polish church did not speak out?

The communists, after the Kielce pogrom, the communist authorities, there was a day of mourning. Between the 9th and 11th of July, 12 civilians were arrested as perpetrators. There was a show trial, nine were sentenced to death. And the commander of the militia was sentenced to a year in prison for failing to stop the crowd. Now this was really the impetus for Bricha. If you think about it, Bricha is already starting to get Jews out of the DP camps, where according to American officials, and I’ll be talking about that later, they were being treated almost as bad as the Nazis. The conditions in the DP camps were appalling. As bad as the Nazis is a quote, by the way, from Grant L. Harrison, and I’ll talk about that later. It’s not my quote, believe me. So. The British are putting pressure on the Poles to try and stop the exodus, because, of course, where are the Polish Jews going to go? And of course, with Bricha, there’s only one destination, and that destination is going to be Palestine. And, you know, six months before the pogrom, a hand grenade had been thrown into the headquarters of the local Jewish community in Kielce. And this is what the Bishop of Kielce said. “As long as Jews concentrated on their private business, Poland is interested in them. But at the point Jews interfere in Polish politics and public life, they insult the Poles’ national sensibilities.” And you had similar comments from the Bishop of Lublin.

So you’ve got the widespread belief that all Jews are communists. Also, it gave credence, again you’ve got the horrible story of the blood libel, the disappearance of a boy. And, so, it’s that very strange blend. It’s taking the old-fashioned ancient tropes and adding to a modern disease. It was criticised in America and in Britain, the liberal press in Britain went absolutely crazy. The American ambassador insisted that Cardinal Hlond explain the position of the Church. And all Hlond would do is condemn violence, but blamed Jewish collaboration with communists. They occupy leading positions in Poland in state life. So how do we deal, how do we deal with Hlond? How do we deal with Polish heroes? Because this is one of, this is really one of the issues that will not go away. And I think I mentioned to you, my daughter’s just, right, it’s coming out in September, 6,000 words on what’s going on in Auschwitz. And I think we will be having a discussion, it’s in “Harper’s Magazine”. I think we will, I’m going to bring her in to have a discussion on all of this, because with a nationalist Polish government again, you have a real problem. But do you see, this is, where else are they going to go? So this is why the Shoah does not finish in 1945. The fact that people going home, going back to their homes, they couldn’t go back to their homes because in Kielce they’d been taken over. So they’re put up in a hostel, and what happens to them? Yes, the communist government and many people in the village and towns were furious. They didn’t want this to happen. It’s just a, it’s a tragic story. The same thing happened in many other countries.

It certainly happened a lot in Slovakia. Property taken and people died. Even the man who led the Sobibor uprising, he was murdered in Poland 15 months after the Shoah. After his escape from Sobibor, not after the Shoah. So what are we dealing with here? We are dealing with the fact, you see, if you had a sense of logic, one of the main reasons behind antisemitism is, I think, the notion of Jewish power. There is no greater example of Jewish powerlessness than the Shoah. And yet the blood libel, it’s all back. So, this is the impetus behind the Bricha movement, and this, and don’t forget that at the Biltmore Hotel, back in May, 1942, the Zionist organisation had us go for statehood now. Go back to what I said before. If there had been a Jewish state, this is Zionist thinking, would there have been a Shoah? Bearing in mind that Hitler had a Judenrein policy right up until the invasion of Russia. Yes, he wanted to rob them. Yes, he would kill them if necessary. But there’s no plan. There’s no plan for the complete liquidation of the Jews from the face of the earth until the invasion of Russia. But now we need to turn from this, and we’re going to have to keep on doing this. This is why I’ve asked for three separate sessions on ‘45 to '47, because it’s so important. And as I said, this is the missing years. Many of you, and I know particularly our, I mean we’ve got a very well-informed group of students. Many of you will know an awful lot about this.

But what I’m concerned about is that these, whatever angle you take on it, I think it’s very important that people know about what happened between '45 and '48. And now, can we have the next slide, please? Postwar Britain. Please don’t forget that at the end of the war, Britain was absolutely bankrupt. And from a British point of view, Britain, and this is something that come, Britain had fought alone, and courageously. Until America entered the war and until the invasion of Russia, Britain fought alone. And you could make the case that Britain saved democracy. As a child in Britain, I can remember the bomb sites. I had to have my eyes tested, I’m half blind, and my father used to take me to Great Ormond Street Hospital, those of you in England will know about it. It’s a wonderful children’s hospital. And I remember all the bomb sites, I remember my mother’s rationing book. And at the end of the war, Churchill was still in power. Now Churchill had been completely disillusioned by the murder of Lord Moyne. Not only was he his cousin, not only was he his wife’s cousin, but he was also a very, very close friend. He was one of those great British heroes, in inverted commas, you know, the adventurer, the discoverer, very much. Don’t forget that Churchill was a Victorian, he was born in 1874, and he was, in my view, was a very, very great man. But Weizmann at the end of the war tried to visit Churchill. But Randolph, who was always a Zionist, Randolph his son, but he wouldn’t see Weizmann, and Randolph said he’s too old and he’s too tired. But the point was, I think it took Churchill a long time to get over the actions of Lehi. How does one respond in these kind of situations?

And as far as many Brits were concerned, and if you had a look at the newspapers in Britain, you would find from the left to the right, there was absolute horror that the extremists in Palestine had murdered Lord Moyne. And consequently, as a backdrop to everything I’m going to talk about, there was a feeling that the Jews in Palestine should have been, you see, this is where I’ve got to use every word so carefully. What was it Karl Popper said, “The 20th century is always going to be about the meaning of words.” From a British point of view, we fought the war to save democracy. Some went as far as to say we fought the war to save Jews. Now, I don’t think we can make that case, by the way, because from the Jewish point of view, now this was, from the Zionist point of view of the various persuasions within Zionism, too little too late. So this is where, as with Poland, you’ve got this complete hiatus you have in Britain. Now the great war leader was thrown out by the British people. They wanted a new kind of Britain, a home for heroes. Don’t forget the Beveridge Plan for the health service, et cetera, et cetera. And who comes into power, but Clement Attlee. Now he’s an interesting character, I’m not going to, I mean William adores Attlee and he’s quite a man.

And I suppose we could actually look in detail at some of these prime ministers, but that’s not the purpose of today. But I’m going to give you a little bio in terms of his relationship with the Jews. So can we have a look at Clement Attlee? He’s born in Putney. He’s the son of a wealthy solicitor, goes to Oxford, becomes a barrister. It’s very much, he did volunteer work in the East End, exposed him to the horror of politics. He joins the Labour Party, he lectures at LSE, he becomes Mayor of Stepney. He was the MP for Limehouse. He had a huge social conscience. He served in the first Labour minority government of Ramsey McDonald. And he joined the cabinet in his second minority government. But he took Labour into Churchill’s wartime coalition. He was Lord Privy Seal and then Deputy Prime Minister from '42. And he’s the one who’s going to lead Labour to an absolute majority government. Now the point about Attlee. The Labour Party back in 1939, at the time of the White Paper, you remember the White Paper of 1939 that restricted Jewish immigration to 15,000 a year, then whoever had the majority had the state. This was very much the policy of Chamberlain thinking, we’ve got to appease the Arabs, war could be coming, we cannot afford to offend them. And the Labour Party came out completely strongly against the White Paper, and made quite a few Zionist statements in the war years. And what he, so he takes power. And what he wants is full employment. He wants a mixed economy, the social services. He wants to create a Brave New Britain.

Huge ranging social reforms, including the formation of the National Health Service. He is one of the great British prime ministers, according to the majority of British historians. He enlarged the subsidies for council house building. He reformed the trade union, working practises, the services and the state for children, national parks, new towns. If you think about a man out of horror, trying to create a brave new society, but the point was, Britain was absolutely bankrupt. Now, Maggie Thatcher, who was a great friend of the Jews, this is what she later wrote of him. “Of Clement Attlee, I was an admirer. He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show.” He was a very quiet man. Now. He also, we also know that he hosted a child refugee in his home for four months in the run up to World War II, and never publicly spoke about it. He sponsored a German-Jewish woman and her two children. One of them, Paul Willer, 10-years-old, was actually invited to stay with him in his home in northwest London. And in 2018, 90-year-old Willer, this German-Jewish boy, now 90, he said, “Attlee was a modest man. He didn’t try to glorify himself in any way. He did it for the right reasons.” He, Willer tells some wonderful stories, because he didn’t have any English. But luckily, Attlee’s daughter, Felicity, and both he, Willer had studied Latin, so they used to communicate with each other, when he was living in the Attlee home, in Latin. But his attitude towards Jews, he was very much influenced by events in Palestine. And of course it’s going to ratchet up, when Ernest Bevin is colonial secretary.

For example, the Irgun did try and blow up the Foreign Office. This is Christopher Andrew, who has written the great history of MI5, and in fact we have had him in to speak on Lockdown. He’s a friend of Helen Fry. This is what he said. “Discrimination practised by the security service of potential recruits, has to be seen within the context of low-level antisemitism, which, even after Auschwitz, was still common in British public life. Attlee, during a discussion on new ministerial appointments in 1951, there were two who were always being recommended as knowing about industry, Mikardo and Austen Albu, but they both belonged to the chosen people.” And I’m quoting and, I’m quoting Christopher Andrew. “And he didn’t think he wanted any more of them. Neither, alas, did the security service.” It was very difficult for Jews to get any positions at the Ministry of Labour in 1946, they weren’t taking Jews. A lot of questions in the House from the brilliant MP Sydney Silverman, Jewish MP, who, of course, was the man at the time of the minute’s silence, the time of the December the 17th, 1942 declaration, Allied Declaration, and talking about the murder of Jews of Europe. He was the one who asked for a minute’s silence. And this is in 1946. This is an MI5 briefing, also in Christopher Andrew’s book. “Present trends in Zionism, the Stern Group in '44,” of course after the assassination of Lord Moyne, and this is what the, this is an MI5 briefing. “Has at least 600 followers, most of whom are desperate men and women who count their own life cheap. They’ve been selecting members overseas for the purpose of assassinating a prominent British personality, Bevin.

Our Jerusalem representative has received information that the Irgun and the Stern have decided to send five cells to London to work along IRA lines, beat the dog in his own kennel.” So, as I said, I’m trying to be as even as possible. And now we come to the Foreign and Colonial Secretary Ernest Bevin. Can we see the next slide? It was Richard Crossman who said, “Bevin’s outlook corresponded roughly to the protocols of the elders of Zion.” And he’s going to surround himself by a group of advisors who were, to put it very mildly, very unsympathetic to the Jewish position. So I’m going to give you a bit of background because, ironically, he was also a bit of a British hero. He came from a very, very poor background. He was born in the West Country. His mother described herself as a widow. Was he illegitimate? Remember this is Britain, he’s born in 1881. After his mother’s death, his mother died when he was only eight, he moved to live with his half sister’s family in Devon. He had very little education. He left school in 1892, so he was 11. He had an incredibly hard life. He went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol. He joined the Bristol Socialist Society. And he’s quite a charismatic character. In 1910, he becomes Secretary of the British branch of the Dock Wharf Riverside and General Workers’ Union. He’s the national organiser of the union by 1914. 1922, one of the founders of Britain’s largest trade union, the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He becomes general secretary. He becomes one of the most important Labour leaders in the country. Now, one of the reasons we need to do a bit of work on these characters is because you’re going to see a complete clash between them and the Zionists in Palestine. He was a strong advocate, but he was at the right wing of the party.

He was very anti-communist, which he saw as a Jewish plot. He took part in the 1926 General Strike, but wasn’t very enthusiastic. He becomes a member of parliament. He’s in huge opposition to fascism and appeasement. And in 1940 he becomes part of Churchill’s coalition government, and he becomes Minister of Labour and National Service. In 1945, Attlee appoints him foreign secretary and, foreign and colonial secretary, and at that time, all the diplomats were Eton and Oxford. So who would, now, in 1945, all major decisions on Arab anti-Zionism came from Cairo. In 1945, the League of Arab states came into being with the headquarters in Egypt. The British had sponsored the League as an anti-Soviet and anti-French body, but the Arab members wanted to use it to control Zionism. Now this is very important. So the British actually set up this League. The Grand Mufti, even though the Grand Mufti to many was a war criminal, they allowed him because of inter-Arab politics. So he dispatched his people to London and to Washington to pressurise against the alteration of the White Paper. Because what the Zionists have asked of Churchill, what’s once been asked of Churchill, and then of course of the Labour government, rescind the white paper, allow our people into Palestine immediately. You know, we need to do something with these people in the DP camps. Let them into Palestine. And here of course you have the Arabs under the Mufti are working against it. And the genius of the Mufti, he had managed to make the issue of Palestine, the issue of the Arab world and an issue of the Muslim world. And the other point is that all the, if you look at the various states in the Middle East, they were all at loggerheads with each other.

Now, so he relies heavily on his advisors. And they had convinced Bevin that a stable Near East was vital for Britain’s strategic interests. And despite the fact that the Arabs had collaborated, if you think about the uprising, which the, the Rashid Ali uprising in Iraq, which I know Lyn Julius will be talking about when she talks about that terrible exodus of the Jews from the Arab world. So they convince Bevin, you must have a stable Middle East, and it’s in your interest to cultivate Arab goodwill, especially that three letter word, oil. It’s going to be, Britain’s bankrupt. Britain’s on its knees. You are going to need the support of the Arabs. The goodwill of the five Arab states and 40 million Arab citizens could not be jeopardised. That was a memo from one of his advisors. Bevin became convinced that Britain could not accept the view that Jews should be driven out of Europe. Because remember, back in 1939, Attlee had said a base betrayal of, the 1939 White Paper was a base betrayal of one of the lowest ebbs in political and moral, it shows political and moral bankruptcy. So the Zionist leaders, Weizmann is still very useful, although he’s lost a lot of his credit with people like Ben Gurion and the Yishuv, because of his pro-British stand, he still knows everybody. He could still be incredibly useful. If Jews, and this is what Bevin said as a response, they beg him to reconsider.

“If Jews, with all their suffering, want to get too much to the head of the queue, you have the danger of another anti-Semitic reaction through it all.” And later on, of course, pressure’s going to come from America. And this is another thing he said. “Jews should not overemphasise their racial position, and again, should not get too much to the head of the queue.” He believed that the Jews should remain in Europe. There was even, back in February 1945, really as a response to Lord Moyne’s assassination, there was a notion that German and Austrian Jews living in Britain should actually be repatriated. Let’s have a look at one of the advisors, Harold Beeley. Can you see the next slide? I’m going to show you some of them and I’m going to talk about them when we meet next week. So we’re going to see Harold Beeley, Arnold Toynbee. Next one. Sir Christopher Mayhew.

He was a sweetheart, I met him many times. Sir Frank Roberts. Sir Frank, can we see, Sir Frank Roberts had actually been in the Foreign Office, and one of his memorandum is actually the, he was interviewed by Martin Gilbert in the ‘80s. And basically he said the Jews always exaggerated. Unbelievable. So let’s stop there and we will come back to this in one more week, and then I’m finally, my final talk before we move into a much lighter programme in August is going to be about the split through the various Zionist factions in how they deal with all of this. Because there was a period in, there was a period where they come together, the joint Hebrew Resistance. I have tried very hard to hold the line. Let’s see whether you think I have. Let’s have a look.

Q&A and Comments:

It means Bricha, I believe, the nearest is escape. Oh, happy, yes, yes. Yes, people are wishing Anita a happy, happy birthday.

Judith, “Their theme of Holocaust Memorial Day is for a better future. I’m concerned this might lead to glib generalisations and diminution of the Shoah.” Judith, I know your work, and I very much respect it. You know my views on all of it, and in fact, I’m bringing Sa'ad Khaldi in and we are going to discuss, I’m afraid, the failure of Holocaust education.

Q: Yehuda, “What was Wiesenthal’s view of Kovner’s avengers?”

A: Let me check that out for you. I’m not giving you a glib answer, that’s a very interesting question.

This is Bernice. “My father smuggled across Belarus four times and saved us. He died in Kazakhstan from typhus when he was 30-years-old. My mother’s cousin, who survived Auschwitz, returned to his town and was murdered at night by Poles.” Oh goodness. You know, Bernice, I’m going to keep all these emails, because Wendy and I are talking about putting them in a book, because, as I said, one of the extraordinary aspects of Lockdown University is so many of you are so involved in so many of these events. What can we say? What can we say? And people expect Jews to be normal.

Yes, Freda, thank you Freda, I’ll see you next week. “Bricha was helped by Czechoslovak and even Poland. Poland even led to the Palmach to have their schooling fields.” Yes, exactly, exactly, Poland, and this is so important. This is so important, isn’t it, Freda? That till 1948, Poland was supporting the Zionist movement. There was still some organisation working there.

“Of about 350,000, 250 survived in Russia, in Poland just about 30,000, less than a hundred thousand survived on the Aryan side. Professor Jan Grabowski claims and does fantastic good research, that many escaped from transports to the camps during the liquidation of the ghettos. He asked where they are and the answer is very sad. They were killed by their fellow citizens.” Freda, the news is that Jan Grabowski is coming in, I can’t remember the date, I think it’s the end of this month, and Tanya Gold is interviewing him. We’re doing a joint event with book week. So, and I will, I’ll come around and talk to you, there’s so many things we need to talk about. Lots of love.

Yes, after the war till first part of the '50s, Jews were killed on the trains. Yes. This is from Rhonda. “A cousin from Poland had papers to go to Montreal. She was being sponsored by my grandparents. She longed to go back to her home before making the trip to Montreal. She was met with hostility and eventually was found hanging from a tree dead.” Oh my God. Oh, I’m so sorry. Oi, oi, oi.

Q: Randy asked, “Why are the Jews blamed for blood libel when the Romans were in control of Israel and the Middle East and crucified Jesus?”

A: Ah, that is a very, very good question. Have you got an hour, Randy? Look, can you go to the website, because I have lectured at length on this, and all you’ve got do is put, 'cause it’s a big question and it requires a huge answer. And I have discussed this in a lot of detail. So have other historians. So if you go to our website, you’ll be able to find it. I meant in the camp survived just about 30,000.

Yes. I think Freda that about 30,000 survived, but the majority who survived were not ones who went into Russia or had been fleded or taken into Russia.

This is from Judith. “My friend’s father returned to his Polish village after the war to see if any family survived. There was a civic welcome plan. A Gentile friend warned him, 'Jerry, get out of town immediately, they’re going to kill you.’” Wow! It almost amazes me that after a thousand years in Poland, Jews were not considered Poles. Well, it also comes from the Jewish side. I mean, Felek, who loved Polish literature. You know, about two months before he died, he used to read it to me. He used to read me poetry and I said, “I don’t understand, Felek.” And he said, “You don’t understand. I want you to understand the rhythm.” But that he said, “We walked the same earth and we looked at the same sky.” Apart from in the cities, in the ‘30s maybe, maybe in Warsaw, there was a certain acculturation. But the bulk of them, particularly in the small towns and villages, they lived separate lives. They spoke a different tongue. Their worlds did not coincide enough. It’s a fascinating question of what it means to be a Jew. And I don’t know if this is of any use, but I’ve decided in September, because before Yontif we’re going to have a very eclectic period before we move into our next great slice of history and culture after Yontif, I’m thinking of trying to give four distinct lectures on the history of the Jews from the French Revolution to 1948. It will be tough, but I think it, and it’s probably, I think it’s going to be useful. And that, and it’s not so much, although I hope you’ll all listen, it’s not so much for you, it’s for your children and your grandchildren. Because we’ve got to do something.

Q: “Wasn’t postwar Poland disadvantaged by the Katyn Massacre?”

A: You see, that’s the point, Jerome. Poland does have a tragic history. The two desperate nations, the two sad nations. And also don’t forget that after the communists took control in Poland, you know, the Jewish issue was not pinpointed. The sign above Auschwitz didn’t even mention the word Jew. It was for the Poles and millions of other nations who perished. Because Stalin, look, he had, no, don’t let’s go into Stalin. So, and of course the Katyn Massacre was absolutely appalling. Murdered by the Russians, you know, we know that now. And the Poles had fought bravely, so let’s be careful, that’s what I’m saying, and when we look at Palestine, we’re looking at it from so many different angles.

Michael. “Lord Moyne was a terrible Jew-hater in favour of sinking all refugee ships. Many feel he got what he deserved.” Well, according to Churchill, Michael, this is interesting, he was beginning to change his mind. And the other thing you should bring into this equation is that it’s tied up with the blood for goods deal. Do you remember Castor is given the offer, and Brandt goes to relay it to the Allies. And Brandt is interviewed and he thought it was Lord Moyne, and someone said those terrible words, “What would we do with a million Jews?” Remember that it was a phoney deal, but Eichmann offered to sell the Jews of Europe, the remaining Jews of Hungary. And we now know that that comment was made by Alex Rendell who was head of the visa department in the Foreign Office, and was a Jew hater. Moyne did not say it. Moyne did not say it, and later on Brandt said he regretted it.

And don’t forget, when Brandt got to Palestine, he joined the Lehi. So we’ve got to be, we’ve got to try and hold the line a little bit. Yes, of course, you know, I had a very close friend in Poland, 'cause we were teaching in Poland just before communism fell. And an incredible man called Russek, who opened up the Polish Jewish Cultural Centre. Not the big one, he was really about discussion, and he said the tragedy was they killed all the Polish intellectuals. You know, the Russians, the Germans killed as many as they could. They wanted to cut the head off Poland, so they killed the intellectuals. Yes, Poland has a terrible history, and so do the Jews in Poland. But, and there was a bit of reconciliation. But now, and I’m hoping that with the new Polish, you know, well, let’s see what happens.

Oh, this is Marilyn’s pad from Jacob, “Churchill also referred to Attlee as a modest man, but added, 'With a lot to be modest about.’” Nobody could do the quip like Churchill. Except maybe Disraeli. He also described him as a sheep in sheep’s clothing.

My cousin, this is from Monty, “My cousin who survived Dachau ended up in Canada. When asked to visit London for a family wouldn’t come. Too near Europe was his reason.” Look, at the end of the war, how many Jews said, “Europe is the graveyard of the Jewish people.” I mean, come on, we know.

Oh, Rita’s giving us the website, thank you. Thank you Rita.

In the Bible, Morna says, “In the description of the crucifixion, the Jews supposedly said,” yes, there’s that terrible line in Matthew’s Gospel. But remember, it’s written a long time after the events, and because Pontius Pilate, remember the writers of the New Testament are writing under Roman rule and you can’t blame. Well, look, we happen to know that Pontius Pilate was one of the most appalling governors that Rome ever had. And can you really believe a Roman governor in Jerusalem, when you’ve got a million Jews coming for the Passover, and it was seething with discontent, would release a prisoner? Of course they wouldn’t. There’s no cross-reference into any Roman sources whatsoever on this. So it’s a parable, it’s a made-up story. You know, we have them too in the Jewish world, so let’s be careful. And so the Jews are given the blame. Not the Romans. And Pontius Pilate washes his hands and the Jews say, ‘cause Jews call, they don’t want Jesus, they call for Barabbas.

“May his blood be upon us and our children.” And people like Hyam Maccoby go as far as to say that’s the warrant for genocide.

This is from Yona. “A basic measure of the degree of being civilised. How does a society seek, treat those who violate its proclaimed values? Poland absolutely fails this test of being civil.” Let’s be careful. There were also some amazing Poles. Hold your powder till Jan Grabowski’s talk, and if you can get hold of Harper’s when Tanya’s article comes out, I think 6,000 words, she has, I think you’ll find it interesting. And as I said, the two of them will be talking. So thank you all very much. Look after yourselves.

Morna says, “Unfortunately fables are taught because gospel.” Every religion has its stories. We have to try and hold the line, don’t we. Take care all of you and be safe. And thank you very much for doing the slides and I must remember where I’m up to. Take care, God bless.