Trudy Gold
1945-1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 3
Trudy Gold | 1945-1947: The Survivors of the Holocaust and Zionism, Part 3
- Well, good evening, everyone from London, and as I explained right at the beginning, I was going to have to do these sessions on Zionism and Britain in three separate sessions because there’s just so much information. And also, I think this is the missing years. One of the reasons, one of the things I’ve been very concerned about, and I’m, in fact, going to be debating this with Sa'ad Khalidi in August, is that there’s never been so much information about the Holocaust, film upon film upon film, book, and yet, antisemitism has never been so high. Certainly on the syllabus in England, you have the Holocaust taught ‘33 to '45, not within the story of the Jewish people, almost dejudized, and then Israel appears in 1948. And that’s the reason I’m really spending a lot of time with you on this because I know a lot of you know a lot, but please make sure your kids have this information. It’s absolutely vital, your kids, your grandchildren because it’s the missing information. So what have we looked at so far? We’ve looked at the terrible situation in the war and how gradually the Zionists in Palestine realised what was happening in the camps, we’ve looked at the fact that the British would not open the gates of Palestine because they felt that they had to appease the Arabs in any future war, and then, of course, Churchill, who was relatively positive towards Zionism, in 1944, one of his closest friends, Lord Moyne, was assassinated. And that’s when he became very bitter.
When he left office, when he was kicked out of office, and for him, it must have been a terrible shock because whatever one thinks about Churchill, and every human being has flaws, I happen to believe he’s a very great man. In the end, what he writes about the Jews in his memoirs is very lovely, and we’ll be dealing with that later on. But the point is, he kept Britain safe when Britain was alone. But what is interesting, and he didn’t allow the, he tried for a Jewish brigade, he even gave the orders to bomb the camps, but it was never carried out, it was lost in the Foreign Office. And what we also know, that there were a lot of Foreign Office officials who’d become very, very anti-Jew. And don’t forget, in Palestine, when the White Paper had been issued in May, 1939, the Irgun and the, the Irgun began blowing up British installations. When war broke out, the Haganah and the Irgun ceased all that activity, but Lehi, or the Stern Group went ahead, and Stern was killed in police custody in 1942. More and more evidence coming through. And then in 1944, in February, '44, Begin took over as leader of the Irgun. The former commander, David Raziel, had actually died fighting for the British. And from February, '44 onwards, the Irgun and the Lehi were engaged in activities against the British and Palestine. So that’s the background. They ceased for a short time at the end of the war as the horror comes through. And we’ve already looked at what happened to so many survivors when they tried to go home.
They put their hopes in the labour government because the labour government had always been pro-Zionist. And they felt that they would then open the gates of Palestine. And Ernest Bevin, who was a very popular figure in the Labour Party, he was a man of the people, a working-class guy, he now is in charge of the policy. He is the minister for the colonies and, basically, for foreign affairs. And he took a line, which Richard Crossman said his views of the Jews were something like those that one would find in the protocols of the elders of Zion. So, basically, he is anti what’s going on in Palestine, and the British refused to open the gates. Now remember, when there were surveys taken in the DP camps, over 95% of them felt that the only place for them now was Palestine. The Berihah movement is going to get underway in 1946. What I’m going to do is today I’m going to deal with Britain America, and then next week, I’m actually going to look at '44 to '47 in Palestine because you’re going to see that the groups are going to turn against each other, they’re then going to come together, they’re then going to take different policies, and one of the reasons this is such an important area, the politics of Israel today were made in these years. The people who led the various factions became prime ministers of Israel. More than that, their ideas marked their people. So Netanyahu, remember, his father was Jabotinsky’s secretary.
There is a whole line that is going to, that culminates in today. So it’s a very important period of history, and that’s why, I hope you don’t mind, I know I’ve laboured the point, but I really felt that it was very, very, very important, I want to go through some of the characters that work for Bevin because Bevin absolutely stuns the Jews in Palestine, Weizmann is heartbroken. Weizmann, remember, he had believed the British would come through. He believed in the honour of England right up until 1939, May '39, when the British issued the White Paper, he really believed it. He was begging and begging and begging in the war years. Churchill was friendly with him, but because of the Lord Moyne incident, Churchill was still prime minister in 1945 when the war was over, the Labour Party don’t come to power till July, '45, but Randolph, his son, said to Weizmann, “My father’s too ill and old.” He didn’t want to see Weizmann. So they had all these hopes for the Labour Party. And now you have Bevin in control. But it’s important to have a look at some of the characters who were advising him. Remember, he’s the working-class boy who’s a great figure of the trade unions, and he’s now dealing with the Foreign Office mandarins. In 1945, the League of Arab States had come into being in Egypt.
The British had sponsored the League as an anti-Soviet and anti-French body. Think politics, the Cold War is underway. That’s one of the reasons West Germany was never properly denazified. The French still have interests in the Middle East. You know, Britain was bankrupt, but did Britain realise that the imperial dream was over? Think Suez in 1956. This is really the end of the British Empire, but they still have fingers in all sorts of pies. So they set up the Arab League as an organisation to stop the Russians and also to stop the French having an area of influence. But the Arab members wanted to combat Zionism. And this is very interesting because who made up the Arab states at the time? The Grand Mufti, even though he was a war criminal, was still not allowed back into Palestine. He was the titular head of Palestinian Arabs. You had completely different regimes with different aims around the Arab world. For example, the Saud dynasty had destroyed the home base of both Abdullah and his brother’s family, who, of course, were emirs in Iraq and in Jordan. They were hated. They hated the Saudis because the Saudis had destroyed their family and kicked them out of the Hejaz, which is now called Saudi Arabia. Abdullah had his own dreams, but the one thing that they could come together on as a rallying point was hatred of Israel.
And the Grand Mufti, he actually dispatches his people to London and to Washington to pressurise against the alteration of the White Paper. Remember, in the war years, he had actually had a lot of influence with Hitler, he’d made the most obscene radio broadcasts, he had reviewed Muslim troops, and not only that, he had done everything he could to stop the saving of 20,000 Romanian Jewish children. So you have a new colonial secretary who already has, well, you can see from the comments, his views, and who’s he surrounded by? The Foreign Office tells him he has to, he has to really appease the Arabs, especially, because of the importance of oil. And Britain’s got a foundry economy. “The goodwill of five Arab states and 40 million Arab citizens could not be jeopardised.” That is a memo from the Foreign Office. And Bevin becomes convinced that he had to take that line. And he actually said to survivors at the death, really the survivors of the death camps in the DP camps, “Jews should not be driven out of Europe.” So absolutely bizarre. Now, the Labour Party, remember, back in 1939, at the time of the White Paper had said a base betrayal of, the base betrayal, it’s filing a petition in political and moral bankruptcy. Now, so Bevin basically says, “I’m not going to alter the White Paper.” And he says this, “If Jews, with all their sufferings, want to get too much at the head of the queue, you have the danger of another antisemitic reaction throughout it all.”
And what’s going to happen, of course, is the real power broker is now going to be America. Already, the Biltmore Programme, which we discussed, the Zionists had declared in America. Remember, because there was no World Zionist Congress because of the war, they met at the Biltmore Hotel in May, '42, and said, “We need a state and we need it now.” But let’s have a quick look at some of the Foreign Office characters. Let’s have a look first at Harold Beeley. Again, he came up, I actually interviewed him once, I’ve done some very crazy things, he was born to a very upper middle-class family of merchants, he went to Oxford, he was a lecturer in history, he actually wrote a short biography of Disraeli, it’s disappeared without trace. He didn’t serve in the war. He was at Chatham House with Arnold Toynbee, the historian who very much shared his views. He worked in research at the Foreign Office, and he actually, he did design the UN Trustee Council. And he’s going to become very important in the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry I’ll be talking about soon. He believed that the formation of Israel would complicate relations for the whole Middle East. He was a noted Arabist, and all the Zionists, and it’s actually written about in the New York Times, they believed that he was one of the strongest influences on Bevin. Now, what happened to him after the war, very interesting, he was very much involved in Iraq. He wanted the Arab Bloc to come out strongly on the side of Britain against the Soviets. And, in fact, he devised a plan after the war to actually send weapons to the Iraqi army so they’d be armed with British weapons.
And his idea was that it could sweep through Syria and Jordan and join the Arab Legion to conquer the planned Jewish and Arab states. Because what we’re going to see is that the British are going to hand it over to the UN in 1947, and the UN are going to partition it. This guy, at the Foreign Office, his dream, Iraq is a British protectorate, it’s loyal to us, let’s arm it, let it sweep through, join up with the Jordanians and the British-trained Arab Legion and stop anything happening. This is from the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fad al-Jamal, “It was agreed that Iraq would buy for the Iraqi police 50,000 tommy-guns. We intend,” this is from his own autobiography, “we intend to hand them over to the Palestinian army volunteers for self-defense. Great Britain was ready to provide the Iraqi army with arms set out in a list prepared by the Iraqi general staff. The British undertook to withdraw from Palestine gradually so that the Arab forces could enter every area evacuated by the British so that the whole of Palestine should be in Arab arms after the British withdrawal.
We were all optimistic about the future of Palestine.” And these are the negotiations that are going on between '45 and '48, and Beeley is at the centre. And in 1955, he had his first ambassadorial appointment to Saudi Arabia. In 1961, he was ambassador to the United Arab Republic. You may remember that between '58 and '61, change of regime in Egypt, Nasser, and remember, Nasser was a pan-Arabist. What he created was the union of Egypt and Syria, and Beeley was the ambassador to that. And then he was, '67 to '69, he’s with Nasser in Egypt. He was in many, many posts related to the Middle East. He was a lecturer, he was the president of the Egypt Exploration Society, he was the chairman of the World Islamic Festival Trust right up until 1996, he was chairman of the British-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, and vice chairman of Middle East International, main advisor to Bevin. Now, let’s see the next one 'cause you’ll know a lot about Arnold Toynbee because he wrote that fascinating history of the world. He was one of those historians who believed in the sweeps of history, the comings and goings of different empires. He came from 12 volume tome. Again, the usual, private school, Belial, he worked at the British School in Athens, he was a tutor at Belial, he began working for the Foreign Office Intelligence Department, he was an LSE, he was director of studies at Chatham House. In 1936, he addressed the Nazi Law Society in Berlin, he had a private interview with Hitler, and he was one of the characters who believed that Hitler wanted a deal with Britain.
And actually, there’s a lot of mileage in that because Hitler believed, in his rather, in his totally diseased mind, that the British were Arian like the Germans. He wanted Europe, they could have kept the empire. And there’s a lot of evidence to, if Churchill had not become prime minister in May, 1940, and Halifax had, there would have been a deal. And Toynbee was one of those appeasers. He became very, very pro-Arab, he was totally against the formation of the Jewish state. The other point about him, he wrote about the Jews in his 12-volume work. We really irritated him because he said every people had its spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but the problem with the Jews, they’re exiled in their summer and they’re still here. They didn’t fit into any of his patterns. Let’s have a look at one or two of the others. Christopher Mayhew, I also met him, came from an aristocratic family. Again, clever, usual pattern, Oxford, president of the Union, Intelligence Corps. He was under secretary of state for Ernest Bevin. He was quite a personable character. He was incredibly pro-Arab. I remember, I was actually invited to a supper party, and I sat next to him. It was a very, very strange evening. And he really did believe in the protocols of the elders of Zion. And this is his obit, “The Foreign Office was confronted by the needs to handle, as successfully as possible, Britain’s declining role in the world and to negotiate her withdraw from parts of the old empire, where her supremacy no longer made sense.” So, basically, the obituary said he was so, he was very, very involved in looking after British interests. He was totally against communism and communist imperialism.
And the other problem with these kind of characters, I’m afraid, is that they saw communism as a Jewish invention. Now, how often have I said this to you? And I can go purple saying it. The majority of Jews were never communist, but the leaders, many of the leaders of the revolution were. And it stuck. Even Churchill believed it at one time. So Bevin is surrounded, Bevin is a little bit insecure, and he’s surrounded, and there’s another very, very unsavoury character. Let’s have a look at him. Sir Frank Roberts. He was, again, from a very wealthy family, private education, Trinity College Cambridge, he got a first, he was involved in much, in the late '30s, he was involved in a lot of diplomacy with Nazi Germany. He stays in London till 1945, then he’s posted to Moscow, and he comes back to become PPP to Ernest Bevin. When he was at the Foreign Office, he was responsible for some of those terrible memos. As evidence is coming through of what is going on with the Jews in Europe, he’s responsible for some of those memos. For example, the office spends too much time dealing with the wailing Jews, etc., etc. And this was all revealed in Martin Gilbert’s brilliant book, “Auschwitz and the Allies”.
They obviously didn’t shred everything, and Martin actually interviewed him, and boy did he squirm. So they are the kind of characters who are pushing Bevin not to open the gates of Palestine because the pressure is on. And also, the publicity. There’s a great deal of world sympathy for the Jews at this stage. In DP camps, the films of the liberation of the camps, they had an incredible impact. The Berihah movement is underway. And now let’s turn to America because whatever way you look at it, or Richard Crossman, by the way, he’s going to become important. And he’s going to be important in the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. And he, he’s actually on the side of the Zionists, and he is the one who points out just how anti, he crosses the line. These people are anti-Zionists. He says they’re antisemitic. But let’s have a look at America now. Enter the Americans. Now, as we’ve already discussed in previous presentations, one of the problems was that the Americans, in the war years, obviously defeating Germany was top priority, and the allied leaders did believe that the winning of the war was the only way to save democracy. The State Department did not confirm the Shoah until November, 1942, when, of course, the 11 allied governments issued the declaration. And the tragedy was that they had evidence, but they chose not to do anything about it. Let’s go on and have a look at some of the characters involved. Of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the great hero of America who dies in, he dies before the end of the war. He dies in 1945, but there’s been a lot more work done on Roosevelt and the Jews.
He was not the great hero of the Jews that they dreamt he would be, although his wife was. His wife was quite an extraordinary woman. Can we go on, please? Here you see Breckinridge Long. He came from a very wealthy family. Described as confederacy aristocracy, the majority of his family, they have a tradition of being in government. And he was a personal friend of Roosevelt’s, and he’d known him all the way back to the Wilson Administration times. And he contributed to the presidential campaign of '32. In his diary of, you know, I think if you go into public life, it’s dangerous to have your diaries printed. “I’ve just finished Hitler’s 'Mein Kampf’. It’s eloquent in opposition to Jewry and to Jews’ exponents of communism and chaos. My estimate of Hitler as a man rises with the reading of this book.” Eleanor Roosevelt, “Franklin, you know he’s a fascist.” FDR, “I’ve told you, Eleanor, you mustn’t stay there.” Now, the point was Long was at the State Department, and he was in charge of visas. And consequently, of course there’s a quota, and he made it very, very difficult for Jews to get into America. This is one in, this is from Lang, who was his assistant secretary.
“He sees himself as perceived by communists, extreme radicals, Jewish professionals, agitators and refugee enthusiasts.” This is one 1940 entry, “Refugee sympathisers who were largely concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard, principally around New York, have joined up with a small element in this country which wants to push us into the war.” He was one of those characters who had sympathy with the German Bund. And he supervised 23 of the 43 divisions in the State Department. And this is his position, again, this wasn’t shredded, “To delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into America.” The key, to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which will postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas.“ James G. McDonald, who was chairman of the President’s advisory board on political refugees, we’ve met him before, he was the convener at the Evian Conference, he constantly clashed with him because James G. McDonald was very much on the side of the refugees. Unfortunately, Breckinridge Long very much had the ear of Roosevelt. He blocked the granting of refugees to 292 German-Jewish refugees who were in Britain on transit visas because he believed they’d been pacifists in World War I. And he said they would have the same attitude about this country, as was indicated in the last war. If this country is not worth fighting for, it’s not worth coming to.
Now, so, basically, he lobbies against America opening the doors. And after details about the Shoah comes through, he and his department block the details. Can we see the next slide, please? John McCloy. Now, John McCloy was another pretty sinister character. He was a very, very important figure. He came from what he described as the wrong side of the tracks, and he became a very successful lawyer. He worked on something called the Black Tan case, which was German secret agents causing explosion. He worked as a Wall Street lawyer before becoming involved in public affairs. He was very conservative. He goes on to be an advisor. He was very serious in American politics to FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Reagan. He headed up many corporations and organisations, and he did, prior to World War II, he did extensive legal work for many corporations in Nazi Germany, including IG Farben. He was Assistant Secretary of War, and the problem was, it was to him that requests were made when America was in the war in 1944 to bomb the camps. And he actually wrote, "The target is beyond the maximum range.” He refuses to let the camps be bombed. Ironically, later on, he goes to West Germany in charge of the American section, and he was responsible for letting the IG Farben lot out of, they they only served six-month sentences. It was extraordinary. And IG Farben, of course, use slave labour from the camps. So, basically, you’ve got quite a few characters who are very problematic.
Rudy Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz, bringing back evidence, he said of him, he attributed the term to him, death murderer. And it’s later on going to be very much used by other people. And this is what Vrba wrote, “The foremost desk murderer amongst the allies was John J. McCloy, a Wall Street lawyer entrusted by America with the responsibility of helping Jewish refugees in Europe during World War II.” As I said, he was an incredibly important character in the American political scene. Let’s go on. There are one or two good guys in all of this. Next one. Here you have Josiah Ellis DuBois. He was a hero. When he realised that there was, that Breckinridge Long was actually blocking evidence coming forward, he informed Morgenthau, Henry Morgenthau, and he actually prepared a report. And he actually said, “The collusion of this government,” and he actually said that if Roosevelt did not do something to open up America, we’re now in 1944, and it’s an open secret, but it’s not even an open secret, it’s written about in the press, if America didn’t let people in, he would leak this, he would leak it all to the press. And this man is a hero. So there were good guys. And he was actually in Germany. He was in Germany at the time when McCloy was letting people out.
He was a lawyer, a very good lawyer. But the point is, you have some serious characters in power who are very, very opposed to refugees. And I think with McCloy and Breckinridge Long, they cross into antisemitism as far as I’m concerned. Can we go on, please? Next slide. You see, this is the kind of population, this is the kind of, this is the kind of press, because think about the Bermuda Conference. Where the Allies meet in Bermuda, they do not, they do not talk about the Jews. And this is 1943. When will the United Nations establish an agency to deal with the problem of Hitler’s extermination of a whole people? Can we go on, please? The extraordinary Jan Karski, and I’ve talked about him in the past, he’s a real hero. He worked for the Polish Underground. He was captured, tortured by the Nazis, he was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, he was smuggled to the gates of Treblinka. He knew what was going on, and he came to the west, convinced that once he told the story they would do something. And, of course, the Zionists are begging and begging and begging. He had an interview with Roosevelt, he had an interview with Anthony Eden. The facts were out there. Can we go on, please? Next slide. Ah, the Bergson Group, who I’ve already talked about. Hillel Kook. And we talked about them, if you will remember, in the context of Ben Hecht because Bergson was, of course, Irgun. He was working with Jabotinsky’s son. Jabotinsky died in 1940. They were taking out pageants, they were taking out ads, alerting the American public to what was going on in Europe. They had huge rallies. In fact, Eleanor Roosevelt went.
They got a lot of people, they got a lot of stars involved, a lot of Jewish stars, but also a lot of non-Jewish stars like Betty Davis, like James Cagney. Hollywood, ironically, was on the, the majority of those in Hollywood, they were all involved. You had the great Paul Muni, John Garfield, who, of course, were Jewish, Melvyn Douglas, and this was all about publicity. There were problems because Stephen Wise, really the self-styled head of American Jewry, he actually said the Bergson Group are worse than Hitler because they’re stirring up trouble for Jews. You see, this is always the problem. When activists take over, there’s going to be a lot of pressure against those activists. How do the Jews fit in? What does it mean to be a Jew? That does not go away. So what I’m giving to you now is the buildup, the buildup, the buildup. The next slide, please. The war refugee bid. In the end, in January, 1944, Roosevelt does establish the War Refugee Board. And it was really because the incredible pressure that was being put on the American government to help, quote, unquote “The abandoned Jews of Europe.” And, of course, Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, was very much behind it. And you have characters like John Pehle, who was the director of the Foreign Funds Control. He was also be becoming very sympathetic. And, in fact, the report, I misspoke, the report, DuBois’ report, the report to the secretary of the acquiescence in the murder of the Jews.
That was the report that led to the setting up of the War Refugee Board. Can you imagine if DuBois had leaked that to the American press in an election year? And what it does, it described the inactivity of the government once news had been leaked. And it was particularly critical of Breckinridge Long because once he gets the evidence, he holds back on it. Anyway. So what happens is, in the end, the Treasury Department grants the World Jewish Congress permission to send money to Switzerland. One of the problems when America comes into the war, the joint, the World Jewish Congress, the money, with money, you can smuggle people out. You can forge passports. Europe is porous, but America was blocking any funds going in because in case it fell into enemy hands, that was the excuse. They allowed that to happen. They were trying to help Jews escape, particularly from Romania and from France. Remember, France was divided up into two, the Vichy and, of course, the German-occupied France. But the money was meant to have been sent in July, ‘43, but the State Department delayed it for eight months. And all this is being, so much pressure is being put on Roosevelt that he does set it up. And he worked with the, they worked with the International Red Cross, they worked with the joint, the incredible joint, and they allowed about $15 million, collected from Jewish charities, to be transferred to Europe. And in August, 1944, 982 refugees in Italy, who had come from many countries, were actually survivors. Italy had fallen, of course, and they were sent to a refugee shelter in Oswego right on the bank, right on the Canadian-American border. And they were the, they were actually admitted outside the immigration quota.
And let’s have a look, please, at the next slide. Here you have the extraordinary Ruth Gruber. She was quite a heroine. In fact, I noticed, I haven’t seen it, but I did notice that, I think it was on Netflix, there is a whole television series about her. She was a very, very clever girl. She got her doctorate. The New York Times described her as the youngest, she had the youngest, the youngest person to achieve a doctorate in the world. And she studied in Germany, she heard Hitler speak, and she became absolutely attuned to the threat that he posed to the Jewish people, she goes back to America, she becomes a journalist. The Herald-Tribune commissioned her to write a series about women under totalitarianism. She went as far as Siberia for a story. Harold Ickes, who was the FDR Secretary of the Interior, he read her articles, and he asked her to study the prospect of Alaska for homesteading GIs after World War II. She has a huge reputation. Now, acting on an executive order, so this group of refugees are from Italy, Naples. So she is the one who goes to escort them. She’s given the rank of simulated general. Quote, unquote, from Ickes, “If you were shot down and the Nazis capture you, they have to give you food and shelter and keep you alive because if they capture you as a civilian, they can kill you as a spy.” And in Italy, she goes to join the refugees in Italy. She boarded the army troop ship with the refugees and 1,000 wounded soldiers. And she recorded all their case histories. And she said to them, “You are the first witnesses coming to America.
Through you, America will learn the truth of Hitler’s crimes.” You see, there are heroes, as I said to you before. They called her Mother Ruth. It took a lot of courage. I mean, she travelled, she travelled, maybe she had that reckless personality. I’ve been thinking a lot about that kind of thing, the sort of person who wins the VC to go in war-torn Europe, to Italy, huge humanitarian. And, of course, she’s with them when they are transferred to Fort Ontario. Unfortunately, they are placed behind barbed wire. And government agencies were still arguing as to whether they should be allowed to stay, and some actually suggested they be sent back to Europe. She constantly lobbied congress, she constantly lobbied FDR. Many of those refugees went on to have incredible careers. Dr. Alice Margulis helped to develop the CAT scan and MIRI, Ralph Manfred helped develop Polaris, the Polaris missiles.
They were teachers, they were composers, they were writers. You know, I know in August, Daniel Stoneman is going to lecture on the contribution of European refugees to British society. I think we should do the same about America. I know Patrick’s done some of it, but I think we need to do more because these people were absolutely extraordinary. And it really was the beginning of her career in Jewish rescue. She worked in Palestine, she was going to cover the events we’re going to talk about soon, she witnessed the exodus, and, of course, when the Ethiopian Jews were brought out, she was there. She was 74 years old. She wrote 19 books. The miniseries is called, “They came to America”. It’s a bit schmaltzy, but it’s actually very wonderful. So under Truman, under Roosevelt, too little too late. But America was the only country in the free world to allow in nearly 1,000 people, but even though they were put behind barbed wire. But then, of course, Truman dies, I beg your pardon, Roosevelt dies, and he is succeeded by the Senator from Missouri, Harry Truman. Let’s see Harry Truman. Yeah. Now, Harry Truman, he’s the 33rd president of America. Of course, he was the man who gave the order to bomb Japan.
Very, very controversial order. Later on, he’s the man who initiated and implemented the Marshall Plan so that Germany was not, remember, Germany’s going to be partitioned after the war, and he didn’t want to grind West Germany into the ground because it had to be its ally. It’s a very difficult debate, this, because about a 10th of those guilty of war crimes were brought to justice, and this has got a lot to do with it, the Cold War, the Cold War. Now, how would America stand on Palestine? Bearing in mind, Bevin is bankrupt, England is bankrupt, what will America do? The State Department was very worried about oil because, obviously, at the end of the Second World War, America is now the leader of the West. The British might dream, but America’s leader of the West. And what are we going to do with the emerging countries? Where are America’s interests best served? Although Weizmann had lost a lot of power because of his stand against Britain, he was still very much the diplomat. And there was one person who had open access to Harry S. Truman. And that person was a man called Eddie Jacobson. Can we see Eddie Jacobson, please? He was born on the Lower East Side. He came from a Lithuanian Jewish background, family moved to Kansas, and that’s where he met Harry Truman, when they both worked in downtown Kansas. They renewed their friendship when they were both together in World War I, they both reported together to Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
Together, after the war, they went into business together. They actually opened a haberdashers. The business failed as a result of the depression. And Jacobson actually became a salesman, whereas Truman, of course, went on to a very glittering career. But Truman was loyal to his friend, Eddie. And Eddie would go to the White House, evidently he had, more or less, open access to the White House, and he discussed the plight of the Jews with his friend. And, basically, the other point was Truman was getting very irritated with the Jewish leadership because they were pushing him, they were bullying him, but what got, but according to Jacobson, what got to Truman was this. So there’s a conversation where Truman says to Jacobson how irritated he is by all these Jewish lobbyists. And he said to Truman, “Your hero is Andrew Jackson. I have a hero too. His name is Chaim Weizmann. He’s the greatest Jew alive.” And I’m quoting, “He’s an old man and very sick, and he’s travelled thousands of miles to see you, and now you are trying to put him off. This isn’t like you, Harry.” Truman then agreed to meet Weizmann. And, in the end, this personal contact is going to be very, very important. Again, when Israel declares its statehood, it’s Jacobson who goes to see Truman with Weizmann, and, of course, America was the first country to actually grant diplomatic relations. Russia was the second, and Russia also granted de jure.
It took America a bit longer because, of course, Israel had to prove it was a democracy before America would grant de jure. Also, there were people working for Truman who were going to be very important in the story. Can we go on, please? Earl Grant Harrison. Now, this is one of the great heroes of the story. He was a Philadelphia lawyer, he was the second lieutenant in the First World War, he was dean of the Pennsylvania Law School, he’d served in Roosevelt’s administration, he became director of Alien Repatriation, and then the US Commissioner of Immigration in 1944. He was responsible for huge reform under his watch, he transfers from the labour department, he transfers the whole issue to the Department of Justice. And Roosevelt appointed him the American representative on the Intergovernmental Commission on Refugees. And on the 22nd of June of 1945, Truman ask him to inspect the DP camps. And on August the 26th, he reproduced his report. Because, already, the American press was full of reports that the DPs are being treated very, very shabbily. There was one report said that they’re being treated almost as badly as they were treated by the Nazis. And his report, this report totally, totally backed the idea that they were just being treated abysmally. He recommended, and he recommended there has to be resettlement of the DPs. He ordered that the American army move to create separate camps for Jewish DPs because they were being put in with Germans, some of whom were Nazis. And also to improve the medical treatment of DPs and also to improve Russians. And what about kosher food for religious Jews?
And, of course, who do you think paid for it all but the incredible joint? So Earl Grant Harrison, he writes this report, and it’s going to have a huge impact. In fact, when he died, he died quite young, this is the obituary, “A symbol of hope and friendship throughout the world to the aliens in this nation and to our newly-made citizens, to refugees from the rough scourge of war to other victims of social justice.” So the publication of his report is published in the New York Times. It really stirred a public debate and made a lot of Americans sympathetic to themselves taking in more aliens. He criticises both America and Britain for its treatment of refugees, and also began to recommend resettlement of Jews in Palestine. And it’s going to lead Attlee to have a huge dilemma. Bearing in mind that America was pouring money into Europe. The British were on the right side. It was only if you’d been defeated by America you were the beneficiary of the Marshall aid plan, Lend-Lease. Britain was bankrupt. Now, Truman is getting a lot of pressure now. Public opinion is behind the Jews in Palestine. And I’ll be talking about some of the things they are doing because when, that’s next week, because when Bevin refused to renege on the White Paper, they all come together. The Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi, they actually join up as a force, the Hebrew Resistance. And they’re getting a lot of publicity.
They’re running the ships to Palestine, the British begin to send them to Cyprus, any of the refugees, people are being killed. Now, think of that sort of image for Britain. The war is over, America is very much taking the plight of Jews to their hearts in the press, and now you have Harrison’s report, and the report stated, “There should be 100,000 Jews allowed into Palestine immediately and to order that DPs receive preferential treatment as far as American visas are concerned.” So, Attlee and Bevin have a real problem because, if you think about it, what’s going to happen next? Is Britain going to give in? It was actually Bevin who said, “The real truth is Truman doesn’t want 100,000 Jewish refugees in New York.” And there are lots of marches through Washington. Aren’t 6 million Jews enough? There’s a huge Jewish vote in swing states. What can be done? And it’s at this stage that Truman asks for the establishment of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. Can we see the next slide, please? That’s the wonderful joint that was so responsible for helping. Can we go on? Yes, that’s the Anglo-American Commission if Inquiry. Now, I’m giving you another quotation from the Harrison report. “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis did, we just don’t exterminate them.” So this is really the beginning of American involvement. This is when America says, “Okay, we’re getting involved.” Bevin didn’t accept the demand for 100,000, but he had no choice but to agree to the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry to offer a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict and also to the Arab, to the whole issue of dealing with the Arab problem as far as the Jews were concerned. There were to be 12 members, 6 from Britain and 6 from America, headed by two judges. It started its hearings. They tried to apply judicial standards to what was really a political and a religious conflict.
They started the hearings in Washington, then London, mainland Europe. They actually, the Arabs said it’s only an issue of the Jews and Arabs of Palestine, but the commission decided it was issue of Jews of the whole world, so they were interviewing people in the DP camps. And we’ve already talked about how so many were being murdered when they went back to Poland and the horror of it all and the dehumanisation that has happened to Europe as a result of the war. And the question you have to ask yourselves, when does Zionism become a majority movement? So they go off to Cairo, they conduct hearings with the Arab League, they conduct hearings with the British military authorities in the Middle East in Cairo, then they move to Palestine, they meet with representatives of both the Arab and Jewish communities, they then visit Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, then they finish up in Switzerland in April, 1946. They deliberate, they deliberate, they deliberate, and then they produce the report. And the report said, “100,000 DPs into Palestine immediately, annulment of the 1940 Land Transfer Act, restricting Jewish purchase of Arab land for specific areas, there should be an indefinite extension of the trusteeship in Palestine, Palestine was a holy land that can never become a land which any race and religion could claim as their own.” They believed economics was one of the chief causes of the friction. So they wanted to, they advocated equality of standards in economics, in education, in industry, in agriculture.
The final recommendation, suppression of any armed, any armed insurrection to stop the implementation of this report. So the positive, we’re allowing 100,000 Jews into Palestine immediately. Now, there are many, many books written about it by some of the people who were present, including Bartley Crum, who was an American lawyer. If you can get hold of “Behind the Silken Curtain”, it lists his story. The American head of delegation was a judge from Texas who had once been a high commissioner of refugees from Germany. They were an interesting bunch. Also, Richard Crossman wrote his diary. So if you want to go further, because it is very, very interesting. So the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, they vindicate Truman, you should allow 100,000 Jews into Palestine immediately. It’s at this stage that Bevin digs his heels in and says, “We can only allow this to happen if all the Jews in Palestine surrender their arms.” And that will take us straight into next week, when we will look at the joint Hebrew Resistance because it’s at this stage they come together, they’ve got to try and get rid of the British.
So as William said, when he presented, and as all my colleagues are saying when they present, we are trying, as far as possible, to be as objective as we possibly can. Why do you think I’ve invited so many different colleagues in on this particular issue? We have waited a long time to teach the Middle East because we realised it was the most complicated of all the things we deal with. So I hope we’re managing to bring you through it in a way that looks at both sides of the argument. So let’s have, and, of course, I will be interviewing Sa'ad Khalidi, whose father, in fact, surrendered Jerusalem in 1967. And, of course, as I’m sure you know from previous presentations, he is the only Palestinian Holocaust educator at Yad Vashem, and he’s a very wonderful man. And I should tell you that when October 7th happened, he phoned me up, and he sent flowers. He was extraordinary. We do have friends. So let’s have a look at the questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Rose is saying how disgusting Bevin is.
Yuna says it should be noted that before and during the war, the British were justifiably concerned with oil. Once the war was over, this total dependence was no longer as applicable. However, the Foreign Office, hide bound and anxious to preserve its class influence, did not recognise and adjust to the change in the economy at all. It’s a very interesting point, Yuna. Thank you.
Q: Was Churchill’s order to bomb the railways lost by the Foreign Office or simply ignored?
A: It’s very interesting because Martin Gilbert interviewed the head of bomber command, and he said, “If we had received the order, and if we knew it had come from the victims themselves, we would have done it.” And he actually looked at, he looked at an aerial photograph of the, because I’m sure you know that Auschwitz is a huge complex, and he looked at how they would do it. So bomber command, I believe, never received the order. We know that Churchill gave it. There is a letter from Churchill to Eden, the brilliant research of Martin Gilbert. Was it lost at the Foreign Office? Did Anthony Eden not pass it on? Who knows? There are certain things we cannot prove.
This is from Thelma. I grew up in Port Elizabeth in a very Zionist revisionist family. The “God Saved the King” was played after every movie, and the audience stood to attention, and some sang the anthem. Many of the Jews deliberately walked out in protest. It was a very difficult time. It was very difficult in London, I mean, in Britain. One of the areas I’ve looked at is the British response because once the Hebrew Resistance gets together, and then it fractures, the Irgun and the Lehi came to Europe, they were planting, there was even a plot to blow up the Foreign Office. And, of course, when Begin’s people blew up the King David Hotel, there were riots. When I first started teaching, I had students who had witnessed it. And there was one chap who’d been in the British Navy, and there was a, there was a terrible fight 'cause they hadn’t all been demobed yet. And from a British point of view, we fought the war to save you all. That was the kind of thing I was told that was said. So it’s a very difficult, it’s so difficult.
Marion tells this Breckinridge is, Breckinridge Long’s great-great uncle ran for president in 1860. It was defeated by Abraham Lincoln. I should mention to you that Mark Malcomson, who’s a brilliant lecturer, he’s coming in to do six lectures over a span of a few weeks on the American elections. He’s going to start with Truman and Dewey, and he’s going to do the choice ones like the Kennedy, Nixon, etc. It’s going to be, I think it’s going to be very interesting. Before the elections in America. Joan, how are you, darling? My father despised Breckinridge Long. He could not get a visa for my grandmother to get to the US.