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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]9. THE ZIONISTS[/b]
Most appeals for rescue included the call for opening the gates of Palestine. The 550,000 Jews there constituted the only society on earth willing to take in masses of Jewish refugees. But the British government, which held the mandate over Palestine, had all but closed it to Jewish immigration in 1939. Arab anger and fear, aroused by the growth of the Jewish population there since World War I, had erupted in a series of riots. To allay Arab unrest and thus protect their own long-term interests in the Middle East, the British issued a White Paper in May 1939. It restricted future Jewish immigration to 75,000, to be spread over the next five years. This would limit the Jews to one-third of Palestine's population, assuring Arabs that no Jewish state would arise there. [1]
The European war broke out soon afterward, and with it Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews intensified. This did not, however, bring any easing of White Paper restrictions. Instead, the war strengthened British determination to minimize Jewish immigration to Palestine. Unrest there or elsewhere in the Moslem world could hamper military operations, threaten supply lines, and drain off British troops to maintain order. The British realized that the Jews could not turn against them. The Arabs might. So British policy called for appeasing the Arabs, even though that meant excluding imperiled Jews from the national home the British had promised them in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. [2]
Once the White Paper was imposed, ship after ship of desperate Jews was turned away from Palestine. Sometimes boatloads of refugees did reach shore, only to be interned indefinitely, as were 800 fugitives from Rumanian butchery who arrived on the Darien in March 1941. A few months before, 1,600 refugees "illegally" landed from the Atlantic were deported to Mauritius, 4,500 miles away in the Indian Ocean. A few of these rickety ships disappeared en route to Palestine; the Salvador, for instance, sank in the Sea of Marmara, dooming 200 refugees. [3]
To avoid risking Arab animosity, and to make the 75,000 openings last as long as possible, the British intentionally kept the White Paper quota undersubscribed. [i] By October 1943 (four and one-half years into the White Paper's five-year tenure), 31,000 places (over 40 percent) remained unused. [4]
An incident in early 1942 brought the consequences of the White Paper policy sharply to the world's attention. Crowded onto a small vessel, the Struma, 769 Jews fled Rumania for Palestine in December 1941. But they had no Palestine entry certificates. They soon reached Turkey and apparent safety; however, the boat's engine quit there and could not be repaired. For two months, the refugees waited off Istanbul, their fate in the balance. The Turkish government refused to let them land without assurance that they could proceed to Palestine. And British administrators, quietly determined not to encourage any more "shiploads of unwanted Jews," forbade their entry there. Despite the captain's insistence that the Struma was unseaworthy, Turkish authorities had it towed out of port in late February 1942. Once on the open sea, the crippled boat was torpedoed or struck a mine and broke up. Only one person survived the wreck. [ii] [6]
The Struma disaster brought outraged reactions in Britain and the United States. Albert Einstein asserted that the episode "strikes at the heart of our civilization." Eleanor Roosevelt asked why technicalities should keep such people out of Palestine when the tiny quota was not even filled; "it just seems to me cruel beyond words. U Responding to widespread criticism, the British Colonial Office explained that, since the refugees had come out of Axis territory, Nazi agents might have been planted among them. It added that supplies were short in Palestine. [8]
The prominent British historian and Zionist Lewis Namier quickly pointed out that the passengers could have been interned in Palestine and checked before release. He also noted that Polish, Yugoslav, Czech, and Greek non-Jewish refugees had been admitted to Palestine from Axis territory. A confidential memorandum by the British Foreign Office more closely approached the truth concerning the exclusion of the Struma refugees: to bypass the system of "regularized admission" of Jews to Palestine "would involve a risk of dangerous repercussions on the non-Jewish populations of the Middle East." [9]
Secretly, however, the British decided to modify the policy and permit refugee ships that reached Palestine in the future to land. The passenger~ would go to detainment camps for security investigation, then be freed gradually against the quota. The order had to be kept confidential, the policymakers claimed; otherwise the Germans would send not only Nazi agents but "every kind of unwanted person" from the Balkans to Palestine. Obviously, the real reason was somewhat different: general knowledge of the new ruling would have encouraged many thousands of Jews to escape to Palestine. The British, who were constantly in fear of such an exodus, had built their refugee policy around keeping that from happening. The State Department quietly but completely supported Britain's Palestine policy. [10]
More than a year later, another special arrangement initiated by British authorities exemplified their extreme care to avoid stimulating refugee flight even as they bent a little to pressures for a more humane policy. It specified that Jews who managed to reach Turkey would be allowed into Palestine. (There they would be put through a security check and counted against the White Paper quota.) The arrangement was revealed only to the Jewish Agency for Palestine (which distributed Palestine entry certificates), the State Department, and the Turkish government. No public announcement was permitted. The modification in policy brought an end to Turkey's persistent refusal to let escaped Jews enter its territory. But the lack of publicity guaranteed that the concession would help only a very small number of refugees. [11]
American Jewish organizations fought the White Paper from the start. All groups, including those opposed to Zionism, agreed that Pal estine must be opened to Jewish refugees. But an acrimonious controversy divided American Jewry on the question of establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. And this disagreement prevented both a united struggle against the White Paper and a combined Jewish movement to press the American government for rescue action. The cleavage proved unbridgeable largely because Zionists insisted that the statehood issue was inseparable from either the White Paper issue or the rescue problem. [12]
Several Zionist leaders had been in the forefront of the pre-Bermuda Conference attempts to publicize the mass killings and to stir the government into action. Yet during those months the Zionist movement had concentrated its main efforts on the cause of a Jewish state. The overall strategy, initiated months before the news of extermination became known, aimed at building maximum support in the United States -- as rapidly as possible -- for a postwar Jewish state in Palestine. The haste arose from the Zionists' perception that their best opportunity for decades to come would materialize right after the war. The fluidity in international affairs that would emerge then would very likely reopen the status of Palestine. The Zionist movement had to be ready to wield all the influence it could when the postwar diplomatic settlements were made. Other factors that had led to increased Zionist activity in 1942 and 1943 were the disturbing consequences of the White Paper and early reports from Europe of mass atrocities against Jews. [13]
The first step toward maximizing American Zionist influence was to persuade the several competing Zionist factions to agree on a single policy. This was achieved at the Biltmore Conference in New York in May 1942. The formula, known as the Biltmore Program, called for the end of the White Paper, unlimited Jewish immigration into Palestine, and the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth. [iii] [14]
Zionism at that time was still a minority movement among American Jews. Thus, immediately after the Biltmore Conference, plans went forward for the second step: to marshal American Jewry as a whole behind the Zionist program. The method chosen was to can all American Jewish organizations to a conference to work out a common program for the postwar problems of world Jewry. American Jews could then present a united front at the peace negotiations. Because non-Zionist organizations most likely would not respond to a Zionist initiative for such a conference, Zionist leaders, headed by Chaim Weizmann and Stephen Wise, persuaded Henry Monsky, the president of B'nai B'rith, to issue the invitations. Monsky was popular and respected among American Jews generally, and B'nai B'rith was considered neutral on the question of po1itical Zionism. Monsky's chances of convening the conference were thus very good, and his personal pro-Zionist views could only help the cause. [iv] [16]
Thirty-two national Jewish organizations accepted Monsky's invitation to send representatives to a pre-conference planning meeting in Pittsburgh in January 1943. Two did not. The American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee, suspicious of Zionist motives and determined not to aid Zionist goals, refused to participate. Weeks of negotiations and pressure from the Jewish community induced them to support the conference. But the Labor Committee joined with misgivings, and the American Jewish Committee entered only after it was agreed that resolutions voted by the conference would not be binding on constituent organizations unless they also ratified them. [18]
Toward the end of May, the official conference call was issued. It stressed the importance of "common action to deal with post-war Jewish problems" and set dates for the elections of delegates. The agenda, which had been decided at the Pittsburgh meeting, had two key items: "the rights and status of Jews in the post-war world" and "implementation of the rights of the Jewish people with respect to Palestine." Rescue was not on the program. [19]
Through the late spring and summer of 1943, much of American Jewry turned its attention to the elections and other preparations for the convocation, now named the American Jewish Conference. During this time, the rescue issue was eclipsed, partly by this rechanneling of interest and partly because these were the weeks of despair that followed the Bermuda Conference. An article in June in a Zionist periodical reflected the shift: "The world at large replies to our protests and prayers and dramatizations only with resolutions and expressions of sympathy-never with deeds." "What can the Jew do now?" asked the writer. He supplied the answer himself: Jews must unite at the American Jewish Conference and demand Jewish postwar rights, especially in Palestine. [20]
Of the conference's 500 delegates, 125 were allotted to the sixty-five national organizations that finally participated. The rest were chosen by a complex system of local elections designed to provide the conference with a broadly representative character. If any doubt existed that the conference was essentially an endeavor to prove American Jewish support for the Biltmore Program, it was dispelled by the all-out election drives mounted by the Zionist organizations. Most of them agreed on joint slates of delegates for whom Zionists voted in blocs, thus defeating candidates with less thoroughly organized support. Zionist campaign rhetoric called for election of the maximum number of Zionist candidates because the main action at the conference would occur on the Palestine statehood issue and it was essential to show that American Jews were united in supporting that goal. The Zionists were extremely successful in the elections; 80 percent of the delegates were "avowed Zionists, II and few of the others were outright opponents of Zionism. [21]
Some complaints were raised about the representativeness of the elections. But more important dissension arose over the allotment of the 125 delegate slots that went to the various organizations. Both Agudath Israel of America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis withdrew from the conference before it convened, declaring that they had been granted unfairly small numbers of delegates. [22]
Another key reason for the disenchantment of these two ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist organizations was the American Jewish Conference's continuing failure to place rescue on the agenda. As far back as the Pittsburgh meeting, Agudath Israel had unsuccessfully urged concentration on rescue as well as ,on postwar issues. In its withdrawal statement, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis declared that the conference should raise a "powerful outcry over the destruction of the Jewish people and demand immediate means for the rescue of Jewish lives." Rescue was added to the agenda only in late July, a month before the conference met, and then only after persistent hammering by the Jewish Labor Committee. Even then, the conference's executive committee turned down a Labor Committee appeal to make the extermination of the European Jews the central issue. [23]
The American Jewish Conference took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotd in New York from August 29 through September 2, 1943. At the main sessions, audiences of up to 3,000 joined the 500 delegates, As expected, the Palestine issue dominated the proceedings. Convinced of the importance of winning united Jewish support for the conference's resolutions, Stephen Wise, Nahum Goldmann, James Heller, and a few other leading Zionists planned to press for a moderate position on Palestine. They recognized that all groups, including the influential American Jewish Committee, could agree on a demand to abolish the White Paper and open Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration. Though fully committed to the Biltmore Program themselves, they believed the controversial Jewish commonwealth idea could wait for a later reconvening of the conference. [24]
The first speeches by Zionists stressed unity and reflected a moderate approach to the Palestine question. Two important addresses by non-Zionists- Joseph, Proskauer of the American Jewish Committee and Israel Goldberg of the Jewish Labor Committee-harmonized with the Zionists' attempts at accommodation. All these speakers emphasized their agreement on the need to end the White Paper and open the gates of Palestine. [25]
By the second evening of the conference, the compromise forces seemed to have established control: But militant Zionists managed at the last minute to add Dr. Abba Hillel Silver's name to the speakers' list for late that night. Seizing the unforeseen opportunity, Silver delivered a stirring pro-statehood address that galvanized the delegates into .fervent support for the full Biltmore position. A flood of pent-up emotion, swollen by over a year of terrible news from Europe, broke loose and swept through the hall. As Silver finished, the huge crowd rose to its feet shouting and cheering. "Hatikvah," the Zionist anthem, filled the air and many wept. [26]
Silver, then fifty years old, was the rabbi of an important Reform congregation in Cleveland. He was also the chairman of the United Palestine Appeal, a co-chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and a major force in the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs. A powerful orator and astute political strategist, be was probably the most militant of the front echelon of American Zionist leaders. By the time of the conference, he was engaged in a power struggle that would eventually see him supplant Stephen Wise as the leader of American Zionism. Silver had not participated in the Jewish leadership's efforts for government rescue action. [27]
In his speech that night, Silver insisted on a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. He scorned "the thick blanket of appeals to Jewish unity" as an attempt to hide the' basic problem, Jewish national homelessness. It was Jewish homelessness, he declared, that was "the principal source of our millennial tragedy," the unbroken line of disasters from the start of the Dispersion until, now, the frightful Nazi onslaught. "The only solution is to normalize the political status of the Jewish people in the world by giving it a national basis in its national and historic home.... Are we forever to live a homeless people on the world's crumbs of sympathy, forever in need of defenders, forever doomed to thoughts of refugees and relief?" As for the pressing problem of rescue, Silver asserted that open immigration into Palestine would not come unless Jewish political rights to the country were recognized. "Our right to immigration in the last analysis is predicated upon the right to build the Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. They are inter-linked and inseparable." The conclusion was evident: no solution existed, now or for the future, except through the Jewish commonwealth. [28]
The conference's Palestine Committee, responsible for recommending a resolution to the full body, first met on the day after Silver's address. A 'compromise proposal was put forward, but the delegates had no patience for compromise, and only a few moderates were bold enough to press for it. One of them, Robert P. Goldman, a longtime Zionist from Cincinnati, disagreed with Silver's analysis. He insisted that the Palestine issue involved both an immediate problem and a long. range problem, and the immediate problem was not Jewish homelessness.
Goldman warned that the demand for a commonwealth would hurt the rescue effort because it would only harden British and Arab resistance to Jewish immigration into Palestine. And it would do nothing to save the European Jews. [29]
The Palestine Committee was not impressed by Goldman's appeal or by the few other voices that pleaded for compromise. By a vote of sixty-one to two, it recommended a strong resolution that called for the reconstitution of Palestine as the Jewish commonwealth, the immediate withdrawal of the White Paper, and the opening of Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration under Jewish control. The next day, the full conference adopted the resolution with only four negative votes and nineteen abstentions. Again, a tumultuous demonstration broke out in the auditorium, and the delegates and the audience sang "Hatikvah" and "The Star Spangled Banner." [30]
No such interest attended the conference's second main issue, Jewish rights in the postwar world generally. Resolutions were passed calling for an international bill of political and cultural rights, international agreements outlawing anti-Semitism, and postwar relief and rehabilitation of the European Jews. But, as a leading Jewish magazine noted, most delegates looked on this area as "a rather academic matter" and "fully relied on the work done by the experts." [31]
The third main issue, ,rescue, received little more attention, The conference had done no preparatory work on the rescue problem, Its Rescue Committee, which was not convened until halfway through the sessions, decided it could not formulate a program on such short notice, So, instead of plans for action, it discussed the proper contents of a resolution, This, despite the admonition by a leader of the World Jewish Congress that "unless we do our job, there may be no Jews for whom a postwar scheme of things is necessary." [32]
Some committee members were disappointed and upset, A woman delegate from Minnesota expressed their frustration:
And a man from Chicago added:
In the end, a paper resolution was what emerged. It was no more than a weaker version of the proposals the Joint Emergency Committee had sent to Bermuda. The American Jewish Conference adopted it unanimously. Before it adjourned, the conference elected an Interim Committee of fifty-five people to press for action on its resolutions, attend to other necessary business, and reconvene the full assembly within twelve months. [34]
The Zionists had triumphed. A representative assembly that included nearly all segments of American Jewry had overwhelmingly ratified the Biltmore Program. Louis Levinthal, president of the Zionist Organization of America, hailed the outcome as "the culmination of almost a half-century of Zionist activity in this country." [35]
While in session, the conference dominated the pages of the Yiddish daily papers. For the most part, they were enthusiastically favorable, especially toward the Palestine resolution. But within a week doubts surfaced. For example, Dr. Samuel Margoshes, an ardent Zionist and a conference participant, pointed in his column in the Day to the lack of emphasis on rescue, describing it as "the most serious 'sin of omission of the Conference." David Eidelsberg of the Morning Journal, a Zionist and a staunch supporter of the Palestine resolution, was disturbed that the Palestine issue had eclipsed the rescue problem. "After all," he wrote, "the first task should be to save the Jews for whom Palestine is needed." He asserted that "by waiting till the last moment to discuss this question and by passing stereotyped resolutions, the leaders of the conference gave a signal to the powerful [governmental] ministries that nothing can be done and that we have to wait till the war is over." [36]
Not two months after the delegates dispersed, the fragile unity of the American Jewish Conference began to crumble. The American Jewish Committee withdrew, declaring that it could not support the demand for a Jewish commonwealth. This loss was critical. The American Jewish Committee was too significant a force on the American Jewish scene for the conference to be effective without it. [v] B'nai B'rith and four other organizations cooperated with the conference only partially, holding back on endorsement of the Palestine statement. (Stephen Wise described B'nai B'rith as "having one foot in and one foot out" of the conference.) And the anti-Zionist Jewish Labor Committee gave only tepid support before quitting the conference altogether, in December 1944. [37]
The Zionist victory had come at a high price. It ended the possibility of cooperation with the non-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox groups. And it eliminated or weakened the involvement of other important organizations. In addition, in many local Jewish communities it reawakened old Zionist versus non-Zionist animosities that had been dormant. [39]
A Louisville rabbi asserted that the American Jewish Conference had
From St. Louis, a longtime Zionist who had been a delegate in New York replied to a funds appeal from the conference's headquarters, "You say you are in a precarious position. So are we." Because of the Zionist action at the conference, he explained, "the American Jewish community is now split wide open.... I was one of the few ... who pleaded for unity.... But my voice was unheeded." A prominent leader of Reform Judaism analyzed the conference's impact in mid-1944 and concluded that "American Jewry has never been more bitterly divided than it is today." He noted that many organizations were dissipating energy and funds lighting each other. These disputes had, in turn, set off strife in local communities. [40]
The conference's Interim Committee did not meet until six weeks after the delegates went home, thereby losing the interest and momentum built at the New York sessions. When it did convene, it elected three leading Zionists as its co-chairmen: Stephen Wise, Henry Monsky, and Israel Goldstein. It also put the conference on a semi-permanent basis by establishing commissions on postwar Jewish rights, rescue. and Palestine. Actually, the· commissions were little more than a means of affixing the prestigious label of an apparently broadly representative Jewish organization onto activities that Zionist committees already had under way. [41]
About all the Commission on Post-War Reconstruction did was issue a few statements concerning restoration of Jewish rights in Europe and a proposed international bill of rights. The statements were slightly revised versions of ones developed by the pro-Zionist World Jewish Congress and its subsidiary, the Institute of Jewish Affairs. The activities of the Commission on Rescue were essentially only a relabeling of the limited steps taken by the American Jewish Congress-World Jewish Congress partnership in the area of rescue. The Commission on Palestine was never more than a rubber stamp for the American Zionist Emergency Council, the political-action arm of the leading Zionist organizations. [42]
The conference's approach to rescue had its peculiarities. Two months elapsed between the New York meeting and the first actions related to rescue. Yet recent information from Switzerland had made Jewish leaders acutely aware, once again, of the ongoing devastation of the European Jews. [vi] When the conference finally did address the rescue issue, two of its first steps were attacks on Bergsonite activities, and a third was elimination of the Joint Emergency Committee.
At the end of October, conference officials appointed a small committee to investigate the Bergson-led Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The objective was to prepare a public statement exposing and condemning it. That statement was released to the press late in December, at a critical stage in the Emergency Committee's campaign for congressional action on the Rescue Resolution. [44]
During the same weeks, the American Jewish Conference interfered with the Rescue Resolution itself. First, Stephen Wise and Herman Shulman pressed leading senators to replace it with legislation more agreeable to the conference's leadership. When that failed, conference officials attempted to have an amendment concerning Palestine attached to the resolution. After that fell through, they worked behind the scenes to frustrate the legislation. [45]
In the fall of 1943, American Jewish Conference leaders also snuffed out the Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs. A month after the Bermuda Conference, the Joint Emergency Committee had met under a cloud of despair. It had appealed one more time to Sumner Welles for rescue action; his reply was noncommittal. In the next four months, only two more meetings took place. One was held in mid-July, after Jacob Pat of the Jewish Labor Committee protested the JEC's inertia. Although several suggestions were put forward then, no action resulted. In mid-August, the shocking report from Switzerland brought the group together again. It agreed on a number of moves, including approaches to the papal legate in Washington and Archbishop Francis]. Spellman of New York, and a message to President Roosevelt urging several rescue steps. These overtures achieved nothing. The meeting also discussed a march on Washington, a mass demonstration in the streets of New York, and warnings to the Roosevelt administration of large-scale defections of Jewish voters in the 1944 election if rescue action was not initiated soon. But these "more forceful" plans were referred to a committee on programs that did nor then exist and was apparently never set up. [46]
Even that late, the Joint Emergency Committee might have been revived. But it desperately needed a secretariat or some other apparatus to implement its plans. Lack of such machinery had always hobbled its efforts. An early decision to appoint an executive secretary and establish an office had never been carried out. [vii] After the Bermuda Conference, the Jewish Labor Committee pressed stubbornly for the formation of an administrative structure, but the step was continually deferred and died by default. [47]
When the Joint Emergency Committee convened again, three weeks after the American Jewish Conference's New York meeting, Zionist members tried to terminate it. They argued that the conference should now take responsibility for the united rescue effort. This first move to disband failed. At the next meeting, early in November, Stephen Wise proposed that the JEC dissolve itself and merge with the conference's Rescue Commission. Four of the JEC's eight organizations were decidedly non-Zionist. They strongly desired to continue the committee be cause it made cooperative efforts for rescue possible without working through the Zionist-dominated American Jewish Conference. Under normal circumstances, the vote would have been a four-to-four tie, and the motion to dissolve would have failed. But in a surprise maneuver, Hadassah-which had appealed for a place on the Joint Emergency Committee many months before and had been turned down-received voting rights and provided a fifth Zionist vote. [viii] The ]BC was eliminated. Only one of the non-Zionist organizations affiliated with the conference's Rescue Commission. The united front on rescue was finished. [49]
The Rescue Commission did not attempt actual rescue or relief work, but aimed at stimulating government action through publicity and direct contact with State Department and other officials. [ix] Its contribution was very limited, consisting mainly of participation in projects that the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress would otherwise have carried out on their own. About all the Rescue Commission could point to in its eighteen-month existence were a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall to commemorate the first anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto revolt, and an impressive outdoor demonstration in New York in July 1944 to demand government action to save the Hungarian Jews. [50]
The conference's Palestine Commission was headed by Abba Hillel Silver, who also directed the American Zionist Emergency Council, a political action committee working to implement the Biltmore Program. With the support of the conference's top leadership, Silver planned only one use for the Palestine Commission: to furnish the imprimatur of the American Jewish Conference for the AZEC's activities. AZEC minutes recorded Silver's expectation that, by utilizing the American Jewish Conference, "a good deal of our propaganda for the Jewish Commonwealth can be carried on not only in our name but in the name of American Jewry." The AZEC, discussing practical appli cations of this approach, decided that "the work [was] to be done by the Emergency Council and turned over to the Conference when representations to [the] Government were to be made." Moreover, in general, "the Conference should be used as the vehicle for public expression and public relations." [52]
In early 1944, the Jewish Labor Committee, hoping to join the fight against the White Paper without participating in the campaign for Jewish statehood, asked the conference's Interim Committee to divide the Palestine Commission into subcommittees. One would lead a united movement against the White Paper and for unlimited refugee immigration into Palestine; the other would carry on the Zionist drive for a Jewish commonwealth. Earlier, a similar suggestion had been submitted by a nonpartisan group within the conference. The Interim Committee refused, explaining that the two issues were too closely linked to be separated. Thus an opportunity was missed to broaden the struggle to end the White Paper, a rescue step that all Jewish groups could sup port. [53]
The victory at the American Jewish Conference in New York had completed the Zionist campaign to commit American Jewry to the Biltmore Program. The next objective was to win the backing of the American people and their government. Starting in September 1943, American Zionists poured large amounts of energy into that struggle, and they continued to do so until the Jewish state was won. Pivotal in the movement to build non-Jewish support, both in local communities and in Washington, was the American Zionist Emergency Council. [54]
Serving as the public-relations and political-action arm of the American Zionist movement, the AZEC attained a level of effectiveness seldom surpassed in American pressure-group politics. After struggling through four years of inadequate funding and excessive interference from its parent organizations, the AZEC Was revitalized in the late summer of 1943. [x] It was reorganized; its funding leaped from $100,000 a year to over $500,000; it changed its name (from American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs); and, most important, Abba Hillel Silver took the helm. [55]
A driving worker and an outstanding organizer, Silver rapidly created an efficient organization. In contrast to Wise and several other leaders, he saw little advantage in pleading with Roosevelt (whom he distrusted) and other high officials for their support. He believed in building public opinion and using it to apply pressure ro both political parties without becoming committed to either. [56]
Under Silver, the AZEC developed over 400 local councils, directed by volunteer leaders. They were situated in all major American communities. While the national office coordinated their operations and supplied them with information, the locals conducted a great variety of educational and political programs. They cultivated relations with their congressmen and senators as well as with local political leaders. They organized forums, provided speakers for Jewish and non-Jewish groups, obtained favorable editorials in the local press, mounted rallies, and when necessary sent deputations to Washington. [57]
These local councils secured pro-Zionist resolutions from scores of city governments, dozens of state legislatures, large numbers of Jewish organizations, and thousands of non-Jewish groups, including churches, labor unions, business federations, and fraternal associations. On short notice from the AZEC national office, the locals were able to rain letters and telegrams on Congress, the White House, and the State Department, from non-Jews as well as Jews. Politicians expressed astonishment at the amount of public interest shown. By the fall of 1944, three-quarters of the members of both the Senate and the House were on record in support of establishment of a Jewish commonwealth. [xi] [58]
The American Zionist Emergency Council proved that American Jewry could build a highly capable pressure organization, attract great energies, focus them on Washington, and provide the financing for a nationwide campaign. But no comparable drive for rescue was even attempted. Had the approach so effectively developed by the AZEC been applied to the rescue issue, Roosevelt's prolonged delay in initiating a program to save Jews might have ended substantially sooner. Moreover, the President might have been impelled to provide that program, once established, with the kind of support that it needed (but never received) for optimum results.
The AZEC launched its first campaign in October 1943. The main target was the White Paper. While local committees across America enlisted popular support, national Zionist organizations held mass meetings in many cities to demand open Jewish immigration to Palestine and establishment of a Jewish commonwealth. Such prominent Americans as Wendell Willkie, Dorothy Thompson, and Governor Thomas Dewey joined in the call. It echoed for weeks in newspaper editorials and in resolutions passed by Jewish and non-Jewish groups in all parts of the nation. [60]
On November 10, the British government announced that termination of Jewish immigration into Palestine, scheduled under the White Paper for March 31, 1944, would be postponed until the 31,000 remaining unused places had been filled. The announcement, which may have been timed to undercut growing Zionist pressures, did not slow Zionist momentum in any way. Rather, the AZEC soon decided to expand its campaign and press forward to commit the U.S. Congress to the Biltmore Program. [61]
At the request of the AZEC, resolutions were introduced in the Senate and House in January 1944 urging that "the doors of Palestine shall be opened for free entry of Jews into that country ... so that the Jewish people may ultimately reconstitute Palestine as a free and demo ocratic Jewish commonwealth." The legislation immediately drew wide support in Congress. After four days of successful hearings in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all signs pointed to quick and favorable action. But the War Department stepped in and asked the House and Senate committees to put the question aside. It advised that further action on the resolution would stir up the Arab world and risk upheavals that would require the Allies to transfer troops to the Middle East. This halted the resolution. Actually, the State Department, which did not want to take responsibility openly, persuaded the War Department to block the legislation. The episode reflected the Stare Department's low-key, but persistent, anti-Zionist stance. In this instance, the President also secretly backed the decision. [62]
Several congressional leaders informed the AZEC that a milder resolution, one deleting the demand for a Jewish commonwealth and concentrating on a humanitarian appeal for free immigration of Jews into Palestine, would most likely win approval in Congress, and probably quite quickly. [xii] (The New Republic and the New York Post were already calling for such a modified resolution.) But even though immigration to Palestine was one of the most important keys to rescue, AZEC leaders turned the suggestion down. They reasoned that accepting it would mean the end of the commonwealth resolution, because Congress would certainly not act on more than one Palestine proposal. Worried by indications that the Bergson group' was about to press for such a modified resolution, AZEC officials sought to persuade congressmen not to introduce it. They also made plans for opposing it, should it reach Congress. [63]
Despite the setback to its resolution, the AZEC prepared for the next round. In March 1944, Wise and Silver saw Roosevelt and obtained a statement favorable to their general goals. At the national political conventions that summer, Zionist leaders persuaded Republicans and Democrats alike to adopt platform planks calling for unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and establishment of a commonwealth there. Then, in the heat of the election campaign, Roosevelt and the Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey, both pledged strong support for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, the War Department withdrew its earlier objection to the resolution. [65]
After the election, the AZEC moved to secure a seemingly certain victory. But the State Department, lit Roosevelt's instruction, persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defer action on the resolution. Publicly committed to the Jewish state, yet afraid he would jeopardize American interests in the Middle East by alienating Arab governments, the President was stalling for time to devise a way out of his predicament. (He died without finding it.) [66]
This second failure of the resolution ignited the long-smoldering power struggle between Silver and Wise. Wise, loyal as always to Roosevelt, and believing him to be Zionism's best hope, blamed the defeat on Silver's insistence on pressing for action in the Senate committee despite signals from the administration to hold back. Silver acidly explained why he had not waited any longer for Roosevelt to flash the "green light" for the Palestine resolution: "It is now clear that the 'green light' is not given except at election time." [67]
Bitter strife between the Wise and Silver factions led to Silver's resignation from the AZEC. Continued fighting disabled the Zionist movement from December 1944 until July 1945. Finally, distressed Zionists throughout the country insisted on a reconciliation and Silver's return to frontline leadership. The resulting truce left Silver in control of the movement. [68]
The Palestine resolution at last reached the floor of Congress in December 1945. President Truman resisted it, asserting that its passage at that time would tie his hands in negotiating for admission of Jewish survivors into Palestine. The resolution nevertheless was adopted overwhelmingly by both houses. [69]
The struggle for the Palestine resolution had forced the question of Jewish statehood on Congress and brought it to the attention of the American public. The long debate had solidified Jewish opinion behind the statehood plan and had attracted considerable non-Jewish backing. Once adopted, the resolution served as a foundation on which broad American public support was built when Jewish statehood came before the United Nations in 1947. [xiii] [70]
While the Zionist campaign had survived setbacks and progressed, the American Jewish Conference had disintegrated. By mid-1944, its ineffectiveness was obvious, and criticism of its virtual inaction reverberated through the Jewish press and in Jewish gatherings. The conference's leading figure, Stephen Wise, admitted that his enthusiasm of a year ago had faded. Now, he lamented, "I rather feel as if I were ... saying Kaddish over the American Jewish Conference, which seems to have no life left in it." [72]
The conference declined even more in its second year. Bickering became commonplace among its member groups. When the delegates reconvened in Pittsburgh in December 1944, inter-organizational rivalry and strife dominated the sessions. Weak and ineffectual, the conference limped along until the end of 1948, then expired. [73]
What is the balance sheet on the American Jewish Conference? The main Zionist objectives for it were achieved. The delegate elections and the overwhelming vote on the Palestine resolution demonstrated that the Zionist position had attained majority support among American Jews. After August 1943, Zionist leaders could credibly claim in their publicity and their national and international contacts that their program represented the broad cross section of American Jewish opinion. The conference experience probably also helped prepare the ground for the postwar American Jewish unity that formed behind the cause of a Jewish state. [74]
On the debit side, Zionist insistence on committing the conference to a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, a postwar objective, ended the chance for united Jewish action on the immediate issue of rescue and on the related issue of the White Paper. On those points, consensus existed and Jewish unity Was possible. The American Jewish Confer ence might have been the instrument of that unity, but by adopting the full Zionist program it lost the opportunity."
An unavoidable conclusion is that during the Holocaust the leader ship of American Zionism concentrated its major force on the drive for a future Jewish state in Palestine. It consigned rescue to a distinctly secondary position. Why would Jewish leaders, deeply distressed over the agony of their people in Europe, have allowed any issue to take precedence over immediate rescue? No sure answers are Possible. But enough evidence is available to suggest the explanation.
The Zionist leadership concluded that little hope for rescue existed. Hitler had a stranglehold on the European Jews, and the Allied powers showed themselves unwilling even to attempt rescue. A Zionist editorial in September 1943, a survey of the then-closing Jewish year of 5703, mirrored the widespread despair:
Thirty-live years later, in entirely separate interviews, two leaders of the Jewish statehood drive of the 1940s emphasized the same feeling of helplessness, the belief that little or nothing could be done. "Utter helplessness," recalled one, a foremost Zionist. "I think the enemy Was helplessness, a feeling of helplessness. It's a terrible feeling to bear." The other, a prominent Christian advocate of Zionism, explained why the Zionists did not concentrate on rescue: "They thought it was a useless gesture.... It's impossible to do anything right now. And we'll be told [by government officials] to go mind our business." [76]
Although some signs of despair appeared before April 1943, it was the Bermuda Conference that destroyed hope. The early efforts for government rescue action had failed to breach Washington's "walls of indifference." During that same spring of 1943, however, prospects for the basic Zionist program were rising as the American Jewish Conference movement began to gather momentum. Moreover, it was essential to press ahead rapidly with the statehood campaign in order to be ready to exert maximum influence when the crucial postwar diplomatic decisions were made. [77]
As limited as Zionist resources were, it seemed reasonable to concentrate them on the possible rather than on what appeared to be a nearly hopeless cause. One week after the Bermuda Conference, Nahum Goldmann stressed the point at a meeting of the Zionist leadership. Too little manpower was available, he said, both to continue the mass meetings for rescue and to launch a major campaign for the Zionist program. Bermuda convinced him that the emphasis should be on Zionist goals. [xiv] [78]
Reinforcing the Zionists' choice was their view of Jewish history through the centuries of the Diaspora. Abba Hillel Silver clearly expressed the view in his speech to the American Jewish Conference. The chain of disasters that made up the history of the Dispersion, he reminded his listeners, extended far beyond Hitler and the present mass slaughter. It encompassed two thousand years of world hatred and murder of Jews. No end to "this persistent emergency in Jewish life" would come, Silver warned, until Jewish homelessness ceased. And that would occur only with the creation of a Jewish state. The state offered the only real solution to the ceaseless tragedies that dominated Jewish history. [80]
The Zionist leadership, limited in the resources it commanded, faced two momentous obligations. For the immediate need -- rescue -- the prospects for achievement appeared bleak. For the postwar objective -- the Jewish state -- the tide was running and the goal looked attainable. The Zionists made their choice. Events would show, however, that they had misread the signs concerning rescue. Substantially more was possible than they recognized. Their insight into the past and their dedication to the future hampered their vision of the present. [xv]
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[b]Notes:[/b]
[i] The British tactics were similar to the State Department's visa-control methods. Groups of Jews coming from Axis-controlled territory were excluded on the grounds that they were likely to be infiltrated with enemy agents. (No such agents were ever found, nor did the British have evidence that there were any.) Moreover, Palestine entry certificates were issued only through normal channels, making it almost impossible for escapees to receive them. [5]
[ii] It is quite possible that a Russian submarine torpedoed the Struma. A Soviet military report credited the sinking to the submarine Shch-213, noting that three of its crew "particularly distinguished themselves" in the action. Later the Russians insisted that the Struma's passengers were Nazi agents being infiltrated into the Middle East. [7]
[iii] This was the first time the American Zionist movement had explicitly advocated a Jewish state in Palestine. It constituted a fundamental shift from the previous position, which had accepted indefinite postponement of the statehood goal while concentrating on building up the Jewish community in Palestine. [15]
[iv] The small meeting at which Monsky agreed to act as convener took place during the first burst of activity following release of the extermination news. It was held December 2, 1942, the Day of Mourning and Prayer. Against that background, an outside observer might have expected the main issue under consideration to have been rescue. It was not. The focus was on postwar problems, with the major emphasis on Palestine. [17]
[v] The American Jewish Committee lacked the broad-based organizational structure needed for many types of political action. But it had important contacts in many cities and access to high levels in the government. It could also raise considerable funds. It applied these strengths to the effort for rescue only to a small extent. [38]
[vi] A report, received in August from Riegner and Lichtheim, advised that the Jewish death toll had reached 4 million. Excluding those safe behind Russian lines, Riegner and Lichtheim estimated that no more than 1.5 to 2 million Jews remained alive in continental Europe. And the slaughter was continuing without letup. [43]
[vii] One crucial reason for the failure to set up an office was interagency rivalry. The American Jewish Congress quietly discouraged the move from the start, out of concern that a fully functioning Joint Emergency Committee might be exploited by the American Jewish Committee to increase its own prestige and influence. Moreover, the American Jewish Committee might put the JEC forward as a replacement for the then-forming American Jewish Conference. [48]
[viii] Hadassah was the women's Zionist organization. Actually, it was already represented on the JEC through the American Zionist Emergency Council, of which it was a member.
[ix] To associate itself with overseas rescue and relief, the Rescue Commission tried to establish close ties with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. But the JDC refused to be linked to the conference. [51]
Although the American Jewish Conference had no role in rescue operations, various other Zionist groups were responsible for the larger part of the rescue activity that was carried out in Europe. Among the most effective were units of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the World Jewish Congress, and the Hechaluz (labor Zionists). The JDC and some Orthodox committees were also importantly involved in rescue efforts.
[x] Its sponsoring organizations were the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, the Mizrachi Organization of America (Orthodox Zionists), and Poale Zion (labor Zionists).
[xi] Two non-Jewish organizations worked closely with the AZEC. Both had been started and were funded by the Zionist movement. The American Palestine Committee (APC) was the main vehicle for Christian American support for the Jewish commonwealth. Its membership, even at its inception in 1941, included 3 Cabinet members, 68 senators, and about 200 congressmen. Many people prominent in religious and academic circles and the labor movement belonged to the APC. By 1946, it listed 15,000 members and 75 local committees.
The smaller partner, the Christian Council on Palestine, represented pro-Zionist Christian clergy and religious educators. Headed by Henry Atkinson of the Church Peace Union and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, it started in late 1942 with 400 members and grew to nearly 3,000 by 1946. [59]
[xii] The available evidence supports the accuracy of this analysis. Even Roosevelt favored the basic idea. The Jewish commonwealth issue was politically and diplomatically very explosive. [64]
[xiii] There is a continuing dispute among scholars and others over the extent to which Zionist activity influenced Harry Truman's Palestine policy -- and American Palestine policy generally in the early postwar years. [71]
[xiv] A similar assessment was made in Palestine. A scholarly study based on the files of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency has shown that the Zionists who controlled that body concluded in 1942 that almost no useful rescue action was possible. They decided that nearly all the limited funds available to the Jewish Agency should continue to go into the development of Palestine. [79]
[xv] Occasionally one comes across allegations that Zionists intentionally avoided rescue efforts in the belief that the greater the Jewish death toll in Europe, the stronger the case would be for a postwar Jewish state. This writer has found no evidence whatever to support such a charge. The world's realization after the war of the immensity of the Jewish tragedy did advance the cause of Jewish statehood. But by no system of logic can that be construed as evidence for the accusation.
Another inaccuracy sometimes encountered is the statement that Zionists, in order to keep maximum pressure on Palestine, failed to support -- or even opposed -- refugee immigration to other countries. Actually, an abundance of documentation shows that before, during, and after the war Zionists time and again backed efforts to open the United States and other areas besides Palestine to Jewish fugitives. This was not, however, central to their activities. [81]
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