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Lenni BRENNER
ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS
Preface
Why another book on the Second World War, which is probably the most
written about subject in human history? Why another book on the Holocaust,
which has been movingly described by many survivors and scholars? As
a general subject, the age of the dictators, the world war, and the
Holocaust have indeed been covered - but has the interaction between
Zionism and Fascism and Nazism been adequately explored? And if not,
why not?
The answer is quite simple. Different aspects of the general subject
have been dealt with, but there is no equivalent of the present work,
one that attempts to present an overview of the movement's world activities
during that epoch. Of course, that is not an accident, but rather a
sign that there is much that is politically embarrassing to be found
in that record.
Dealing with the issues brings difficult problems, one of the most difficult
arising out of the emotions evoked by the Holocaust. Can there by any
doubt that many of the United Nations delegates who voted for the creation
of an Israeli state, in 1947, were motivated by a desire to somehow
compensate the surviving Jews for the Holocaust? They, and many of Israel's
other wellwishers, catcheted the state with the powerful human feelings
they had toward the victims of Hitler's monstrous crimes. But therein
was their error: they based their support for Israel and Zionism on
what Hitler had done to the Jews, rather than on what the Zionists had
done for the Jews. To say that such an approach is intellectually and
politically impermissable does not denigrate the deep feelings produced
by the Holocaust.
Zionism, however, is an ideology, and its chronicles are to be examined
with the same critical eye that readers should bring to the history
of any political tendency. Zionism is not now, nor was it ever, coextensive
with either Judaism or the Jewish people. The vast majority of Hitler's
Jewish victims were not Zionists. It is equally true, as readers are
invited to see for themselves, that the majority of the Jews of Poland,
in particular, had repudiated Zionism on the eve of the Holocaust, that
they abhored the politics of Menachem Begin, in September 1939, one
of the leaders of the selfstyled 'ZionistRevisionist' movement in
the Polish capital. As an antiZionist Jew, the author is inured to
the charge that antiZionism is equivalent to antiSemitism and 'Jewish
selfhatred.
It is scarcely necessary to add that all attempts to equate Jews and
Zionists, and therefore to attack Jews as such, are criminal, and are
to be sternly repelled. There cannot be even the slightest confusion
between the struggle against Zionism and hostility to either Jews or
Judaism. Zionism thrives on the fears that Jews have of another Holocaust.
The Palestinian people are deeply appreciative of the firm support given
them by progressive Jews, whether religious-as with Mrs Ruth Blau, Elmer
Berger, Moshe Menuhin, or Israel Shahak-or atheist-as with Felicia Langer
and Lea Tsemel and others on the left. Neither nationality nor theology
nor social theory can, in any way, be allowed to become a stumbling
block before the feet of those Jews, in Israel or elsewhere, who are
determined to walk with the Palestinian people against injustice and
racism. It can be said, with scientific certainty, that, without the
unbreakable unity of Arab and Jewish progressives, victory over Zionism
is not merely difficult, it is impossible.
Unless this book were to become an encyclopaedia, the material had necessarily
to be selected, with all due care, so that a rounded picture might come
forth. It is inevitable that the scholars of the several subjects dealt
with will complain that not enough attention had been devoted to their
particular specialties. And they will be correct, to be sure; whole
books have been written on particular facets of the broader problems
dealt with herein, and the reader is invited to delve further into the
sources cited in the footnotes. An additional difficulty arises out
of the fact that so much of the original material is in a host of languages
that few readers are likely to know. Therefore, wherever possible, English
sources and translations are cited, thus giving sceptical readers a
genuine opportunity to verify the research apparatus relied upon.
As readers are committed to discovering by reading this book, the consequences
of Zionist ideology deserve study and exposure. That is what is attempted
here. As an unabashed antiZionist, I clearly conclude that Zionism
is wholly incorrect; but that is my conclusion drawn from the evidence.
The conclusions are, in short, my own. As for the persuasiveness of
the arguments used in arriving at them, readers are invited to judge
for themselves.
ABBREVIATIONS
AJC American Jewish Committee -bourgeois assimilationist organisation.
AJC American Jewish Congress-Zionist organisation identified with rabbi
Stephen Wise.
AK Armia Krajowa (Home Army)-Polish underground affiliated to the governmentinexile.
BUF British Union of Fascists.
CID British Criminal Investigation Division.
CPUSA Communist Party of USA.
CV Centralverein (Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith)-assimilationist
defence organisation.
DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party).
Endeks National Democrats-antiSemitic Polish party.
HOG Hitachdut Olei Germania (German Immigrants, Association in Palestine).
ILP Independent Labour Party-British socialist organisation.
INTRIA International Trade and Investment Agency - Zionistorganised
company selling German goods in Britain.
JFO Jewish Fighting Organisation-underground movement in the Warsaw
ghetto.
JLC Jewish Labor Committee-antiZionist labour union organisation in
America.
JNF Jewish National Fund-Zionist agricultural fund.
JnP Judischenationale Partei (Jewish National Party)-Austrian Zionist
party.
JPC Jewish People's Council-community defence group against Mosleyites
in Britain.
JWV Jewish War Veterans-rightwing American exserviceman's grouping.
KB Korpus Bezpieczenstwa (Security Corps)-Polish underground movement
friendly to the Revisionists.
KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany).
KPP Kommunistyczna Partja Polski (Communist Party of Poland).
Naras National Radicals-extreme antiSemitic Polish party.
NEMICO-Near and Middle East Commercial Corporation-Zionist company selling
German goods in the Middle East.
NPP-National Peasant Party-Romanian party.
NSDAP-Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist
German Workers' Party).
NZO-New Zionist Organisation-Revisionist international organisation.
POUM-Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (Workers, Party of Marxist
Unity)-Spanish leftwing party.
PPS-Polska Partya Socyalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party).
SDSicherheitsdienst (Security Service of the SS).
SPD-Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party
of Germany).
SS-Schutzstaffel (Protection Corps).
SWP-Socialist Workers Party-American Trotskyist party.
VnJ-Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (Union of NationalGerman Jews) -
proNazi Jewish assimilationist movement.
WJC-World Jewish Congress.
WZO-World Zionist Organisation.
ZOA-Zionist Organisation of America -a rightwing Zionist movement.
ZVfD-Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (Zionist Federation of
Germany).
GLOSSARY OF JEWISH AND ZIONIST ORGANISATIONS
Agudas Yisrael Union of Israel-an antiZionist Orthodox movement.
Alliance Israelite Universelle French Jewish philanthropy.
American Jewish Committee Rightwing assimilationist grouping.
American Jewish Congress Zionistdominated organisation identified with
rabbi Stephen Wise.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Major bourgeois overseas
charity.
AngloPalestine Bank Zionist bank in Palestine.
Betar Revisionist youth organisation. See Revisionists.
B'nai B'rith Sons of the Covenant - conservative assimilationist fraternal
order.
Board of Deputies of British Jews Major Jewish organisation in Britain.
Brit HaBiryonim Union of Terrorists - Revisionist Fascist organisation.
Brith HaChayal Union of Soldiers.
Brith Hashomrim Union of Watchmen-Revisionist organisation in Nazi Germany.
Bund General Jewish Workers League-Yiddish socialist movement in Russia
and Poland; antiZionist.
Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews Headed by Chaim Weizmann,
it organised German immigration to Palestine.
Centralverein Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith -defence
organisation of assimilationist bourgeoisie.
Comite des Delegations Juives Committee of Jewish Delegations- postFirst
World War international Jewish defence organisation dominated by Zionists.
Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs Official voice of World Zionist
Organisation in the Unite d States du ring the Second World War.
Far Eastern Jewish Council Organisation of Japanese collaborators.
General Zionists Bourgeois Zionists divided into rival factions.
Gentile Friends of Zionism ProPalestine Committee in Austria.
Ha'avara Ltd. Trading company set up by World Zionist Organisation to
trade with Nazi Gerrnany.
Hadassah Zionist women's organisation.
Haganah Underground militia in Palestine, dominated by Labour Zionists.
Ha Note 'a Ltd. Citrus corporation in Palestine which entered into trade
agreement with Nazi Germany.
HaPoel The Worker-Labour Zionist sports movement.
Hashomer Hatzair Young Watchmen-left Zionist youth movement.
HeChalutz Pioneers-Labour Zionist youth movement.
Histadrut General Federation of Jewish Labour in Palestine.
Hitachdut Olei Germania German Immigrants' Association in Palestine.
International Trade and Investment Agency British affiliate of Ha'avara
Ltd.
Irgun Zvei Leumi National Military Organisation-Revisionist underground.
Jabotinsky Institute Revisionist research centre.
Jewish Agency for Palestine Central of fice of World Zionist Organisation
in Palestine; originally it nominally included nonZionist sympathisers.
Jewish Colonial Trust Zionist bank.
Jewish Fighting Organisation One of two Jewish underground movements
in the Warsaw ghetto, incorporating the leftZionist youth groups, the
Bund and the Communists.
Jewish Labor Committee Arnerican organisation, dominated by Bundist
sympathisers, antiZionist in 1930s.
Jewish Legion Zionist military organisation in British Army du ring
conquest of Palestine in the First World War.
Jewish National Fund Zionist land fund.
Jewish Party (Romania) Zionist party.
Jewish People's Committee (USA) Communist front group.
Jewish People's Council Community defence movement against Mosleyites
in Britain.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency Zionist news service.
Jewish War Veterans Rightwing American exservicemen's organisation.
Joint Boycott Council of the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish
Labor Committee AntiNazi boycott organisation.
Judenrat Jewish Council-Nazi puppet council in the ghettos.
Judenstaat Partei Jewish State Party - Revisionist splinter group, post1934,
loyal to World Zionist Organisation.
Judischenationale Partei Jewish National Party-Austrian Zionist party.
Judischer Verlag Jewish publishers - German Zionist publishing house.
Judische Volkspartei Jewish People's Party rightwing party in German
Jewish communal politics, dominated by Zionists.
Keren Hayesod Palestine Foundation Fund.
Labour Zionists See Poale Zion.
Left Poale Zion Labour Zionist splinter grouping with a strong Yiddishist
orientation.
Leo Baeck Institute German Jewish exile research organisation.
Lohamei Herut Yisrael Fighters for the Freedom of Israel - Stern GangRevisionist
splinter group.
Maccabi Zionist sports organisation.
Minorities Bloc Coalition of bourgeois nationalists in Poland set up
by Polish Zionists.
Mizrachi Religious Zionist party.
Mossad Bureau in charge of illegal immigration for World Zionist Organisation.
Naftali Botwin Company Yiddishspeaking unit with International Brigades
in Spain.
Nationale Jugend Ilerzlia Revisionist youth movement in Nazi Germany.
Near and Middle East Commercial Corporation (NEMI CO) Affiliated to
Ha'avara Ltd.
New Zionist Organisation Revisionist international organisation set
up in 1935.
NonSectarian AntiNazi League AntiNazi boycott organisation of the
1930s.
Ordenergrupe Defence groups of the Bund in Poland.
Organisation of Jewish Centre Party Voters Grouping of Jewish capitalists
who voted for Catholic Centre Party.
Palestine Labour Party Labour Zionist party in Palestine; see Poale
Zion.
Palestine Offices Fourteen worldwide offices for immigration to Palestine.
Poale Zion Workers of Zion - Labour Zionists.
Polish Zionist Organisation Mainline Zionist federation.
Radical Zionists Bourgeois Zionist faction, later merged with a faction
of the General Zionists.
Reichstag Elections Committee Shortlived Jewish bourgeois grouping
for 1930 election.
Reichsverband judischer Kulturebunde German Union of Jewish Culture
Leagues - segregationist organisation established by Nazis.
Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden Reich Representation of Jews in
Germany-united organisation of Jewish bourgeoisie under the Nazis.
Revisionists Political party established by Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1925.
Staatszionistische Organisation State Zionist Organisation- Revisionist
movement in Nazi Germany, technically unaffiliated to world Revisionist
movement.
Stern Gang Lohamei Herut Yisrael - Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.
Swit Dawn-Revisionist underground movement in Poland under the Nazis.
Tnuat HaHerut Freedom Movement-Revisionist party in Israel, founded
by Menachem Begin.
United Jewish Parties Czechoslovakian Jewish electoral bloc including
Zionists.
Vaad Hazalah Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee during the Holocaust.
Vaad Leumi National Council-semigovernment of Zionist settlement under
the British.
Working Group Jewish rescue group in Slovakia.
World Jewish Congress ProZionist Jewish defence organisation established
in 1936.
World Zionist Organisation Central body of Zionist movement.
Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority Israeli Holocaust Institute.
Zidovska Strana Jewish Party Zionist party in Czechoslovakia.
Zion Mule Corp Zionist unit with British Army in the First World War.
Zionist Organisation of America Equivalent of General Zionists.
Zionistische Vereinigung fdr Deutschland Zionist Federation of Germany.
++++++++++++++++++++++
CHAPTER 1
ZIONISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM PRIOR TO THE HOLOCAUST
From the French Revolution to the unification of Germany and Italy it
appeared that the future foretold the continuing emancipation of Jewry
in the wake of the further development of capitalism and its liberal
and modernist values. Even the Russian pogroms of the 1880s could be
seen as the last gasp of a dying feudal past, rather than a harbinger
of things to come. Yet by 1896, when Theodor Herzl published his
Jewish State, such an optimistic scenario could no longer be realistically
envisioned. In 1895 he personally had seen the Parisian mob howling
for the death of Dreyfus. That same year he heard the wild cheers of
middleclass Vienna as they greeted the antiSemitic Karl Lueger after
he had swept the election for burgomeister.
Born amidst a wave of defeats for the Jews, not only in backward Russia,
but in the very centres of industrial Europe, modern Zionism's pretensions
were the noblest conceivable: the redemption of the downtrodden Jewish
people in their own land. But from the very beginning the movement represented
the conviction of a portion of the Jewish middle class that the future
belonged to the Jewhaters, that antiSemitism was inevitable, and natural.
Firmly convinced that antiSemitism could not be beaten, the new World
Zionist Organisation never fought it. Accommodation to antiSemitism-and
pragmatic utilisation of it for the purpose of obtaining a Jewish state-became
the central stratagems of the movement, and it remained loyal to its
earliest conceptions down to and through the Holocaust. In June l895,
in his very first entry in his new Zionist Diary, Herzl laid down this
fixed axiom of Zionism:
In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward antiSemitism,
which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above
all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat'
antiSemitism. (1)
In the severest sense, Herzl was a man of his time and class; a monarchist
who believed the best ruler 'un bon tyran'. (2) His Jewish
State baldly proclaimed: 'Nor are the presentday nations really
fit for democracy, and I believe they will become ever less fit for
it... I have no faith in the political virtue of our people, because
we are no better than the rest of modern man. (3)
His universal pessimism caused him to misjudge totally the political
environment of latenineteenthcentury Western Europe. In particular,
Herzl misunderstood the Dreyfus case . The secrecy of the trial, an
d Dreyfus's soldierly insistence on his innocence, convinced many that
an injustice was done. The case aroused a huge surge of Gentile support.
Kings discussed it and feared for the sanity of France; Jews in remote
hamlets in the Pripet Marches prayed for Emile Zola. The intellectuals
of France rallied to Dreyfus's side. The socialist movement brought
over the working people. The right wing of French society was discredited,
the army stained, the Church disestablished. AntiSemitism in France
was driven into isolation lasting until Hitler's conquest. Yet Herzl,
the most famous journalist in Vienna, did nothing to mobilise even one
demonstration on behalf of Dreyfus. When he discussed the matter, it
was always as a horrible example and never as a rallying cause. In 1899
the outcry compelled a retrial. A court martial affirmed the captain's
guilt, 5 to 2, but found extenuating circumstances and reduced his sentence
to ten years. But Herzl saw only defeat and depreciated the significance
of the vast Gentile sympathy for the Jewish victim.
If a dumb beast were tortured in public, would not the crowd send
up a cry of indignation? This is the meaning of the proDreyfus
sentiment in nonFrench countries, if indeed it is as widespread
as many Jews estimate ... To put it in a nutshell, we might say
that the injustice committed against Dreyfus is so great that we
forget that we are dealing with a Jew ... is anyone presumptuous
enough to claim that of any seven people two, or even one, favor
the Jews? ... Dreyfus represents a bastion that has been and still
is a point of struggle. Unless we are deceived, that bastion is
lost! (4)
The French government understood realities better than Herzl and acted
to head off further agitation by reducing the balance of the sentence.
Given the success of the struggle for Dreyfus, French Jewry -right and
left-saw Zionism as irrelevant. Herzl savaged them in his Diary:
'They seek protection from the Socialists and the destroyers of the
present civil order ... Truly they are not Jews any more. To be sure,
they are no Frenchmen either. They will probably become the leaders
of European anarchism.' (5)
Herzl's first opportunity to develop his own pragmatic strategy of nonresistance
to antiSemitism, coupled with emigration of a portion of the Jews to
a Jewish stateinthemaking, came with Karl Lueger's success in Vienna.
The demagogue's victory there was the first major triumph of the new
wave of specifically antiSemitic parties in Europe, but the Habsburgs
strenuously opposed the new mayorelect. Some 8 per cent of their generals
were Jews. Jews were conspicuous as regime loyalists amidst the sea
of irredentist nationalities tearing the AustroHungarian Empire apart.
AntiSemitism could only cause problems for the already weak dynasty.
Twice the Emperor refused to confirm Lueger in office. Herzl was one
of the few Jews in Vienna who favoured confirmation. Rather than attempting
to organise opposition to the Christian Social demagogue, he met the
Prime Minister, Count Casimir Badeni, on 3 November 1895 and told him
'boldly' to accommodate Lueger:
I think that Lueger's election as Mayor must be accepted. If you
fail to do it the first time, then you will not be able to confirm
on any subsequent occasion, and if you fail to accede the third
time the dragoons will have to ride. The Count smiled: 'So!'-with
a goguenard [scoffing]expression. (6)
It was poverty in the Habsburgs' Galicia, as well as discrimination
in Russia, that was driving Jews into Vienna and further into Western
Europe and America. They brought antiSemitism with them in their luggage.
The new immigrants became a 'problem' to the rulers of the host societies,
and to the already established local Jewries, who feared the rise of
native antiSemitism. Herzl had a readymade answer to the immigrant
wave that he thought would please both the upper class of the indigenous
Jews and the ruling class of Western capitalism: he would oblige them
by taking the poor Jews off their hands. He wrote to Badeni: 'What I
propose is ... not in any sense the emigration of all the Jews ... Through
the door which I am trying to push open for the poor masses of Jews
a Christian statesman who rightly seizes the idea, will step forward
into worldhistory.' (7)
His first efforts at diverting the wind of opposition to Jewish immigration
into Zionism's sails utterly failed, but that did not prevent him from
trying again. In 1902 the British Parliament debated an Aliens Exclusion
Bill aimed at the migrants, and Herzl travelled to London to testify
on the Bill. Rather than pass it, he argued, the British government
should support Zionism. He met Lord Rothschild but, in Spite of all
his public talk about the rejuvenation of Jewry, he dispensed with such
cant in private conversation, telling Rothschild that he 'would incidentally
be one of those wicked persons to whom English Jews might well erect
a monument because I saved them from an influx of East European Jews,
and also perhaps from antiSemitism'. (8)
In his autobiography, Trial and Error, written in 1949, Chaim
Weizmann-then the first President of the new Israeli state-looked back
at the controversy over the Aliens Bill. An immigrant to Britain himself,
the brilliant young chemist was already, in 1902, one of the leading
intellectuals of the new Zionist movement. He had met Sir William Evans
Gordon, author of the antiJewish legislation; even with hindsight,
with the Holocaust fresh in his mind, the then President of Israel still
insisted that:
our people were rather hard on him [Evans Gordon] . The Aliens Bill
in England, and the movement which grew up around it were natural
phenomena ... Whenever the quantity of Jews in any country reaches
the saturation point, that country reacts against them ... The fact
that the actual number of Jews in England, and even their proportion
to the total population, was smaller than in other countries was
irrelevant; the determining factor in this matter is not the solubility
of the Jews, but the solvent power of the country ... this cannot
be looked upon as antiSemitism in the ordinary or vulgar sense
of that word; it is a universal social and economic concomitant
of Jewish immigration, and we cannot shake it off ... though my
views on immigration naturally were in sharp conflict with his,
we discussed these problems in a quite objective and even friendly
way. (9)
For all his talk about sharp conflict with Evans Gordon, there is no
sign that Weizmann ever tried to mobilise the public against him. What
did Weizmann say to him in their 'friendly' discussion? Neither chose
to tell us, but we can legitimately surmise: as with the master Herzl,
so with his disciple Weizmann. We can reasonably conjecture that the
avowed devotee of pragmatic accommodation asked the antiSemite for
his support of Zionism. Never once, then or in the future, did Weizmann
ever try to rally the Jewish masses against antiSemitism.
'Taking the Jews away from the Revolutionary Parties'
Herzl had originally hoped to convince the Sultan of Turkey to grant
him Palestine as an autonomous statelet in return for the World Zionist
Organisation (WZO) taking up the Turkish Empire's foreign debts. It
soon became quite apparent that his hopes were unreal. Abdul Hamid knew
well enough that autonomy always led to independence, and he was determined
to hold on to the rest of his empire. The WZO had no army, it could
never seize the country on its own. Its only chance lay in getting a
European power to pressure the Sultan on Zionism's behalf. A Zionist
colony would then be under the power's protection and the Zionists would
be its agents within the decomposing Ottoman realm. For the rest of
his life Herzl worked towards this goal, and he turned, first, to Germany.
Of course, the Kaiser was far from a Nazi; he never dreamt of killing
Jews, and he permitted them complete economic freedom, but nevertheless
he froze them totally out of the officer corps and foreign office and
there was severe discrimination throughout the civil service. By the
end of the 1890s Kaiser Wilhelm became seriously concerned about the
ever growing socialist movement, and Zionism attracted him as he was
convinced the Jews were behind his enemies. He naively believed that
'the Social Democratic elements will stream into Palestine'. (10) He
gave Herzl an audience in Constantinople on 19 October 1898. At this
meeting the Zionist leader asked for his personal intervention with
the Sultan and the formation of a chartered company under German protection.
A sphere of influence in Palestine had attractions enough, but Herzl
had grasped that he had another bait that he could dangle before potential
rightwing patrons: 'I explained that we were taking the Jews away from
the revolutionary parties.' (11)
In spite of the Kaiser's deep interest in getting rid of the Jews, nothing
could be done through Berlin. His diplomats always knew the Sultan would
never agree to the scheme. In addition, the German Foreign Minister
was not as foolish as his master. He knew Germany's Jews would never
voluntarily leave their homeland.
Herzl looked elsewhere, even turning to the tsarist regime for support.
In Russia Zionism had first been tolerated; emigration was what was
wanted. For a time Sergei Zubatov, chief of the Moscow detective bureau,
had developed a strategy of secretly dividing the Tsar's opponents Because
of their double oppression, the Jewish workers had produced Russia's
first mass socialist organisation, the General Jewish Workers League,
the Bund. Zubatov instructed his Jewish agents to mobilise groups
of the new Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) to oppose the revolutionaries.
(12) (Zionism is not a monolithic movement, and almost from the beginning
the WZO has been divided into officially recognised factions. For a
list of the Zionist and Jewish organisations found herein, see pp. ixxii.)
But when elements within the Zionist ranks responded to the pressures
of the repressive regime and the rising discontent, and began to concern
themselves about Jewish rights in Russia, the Zionist bank-the Jewish
Colonial Trust-was banned. This brought Herzl to St Petersburg for meetings
with Count Sergei Witte, the Finance Minister, and Vyacheslav von Plevhe,
the Minister of the Interior. It was von Plevhe who had organised the
first pogrom in twenty years, at Kishenev in Bessarabia on Easter 1903.
Fortyfive people died and over a thousand were injured; Kishenev produced
dread and rage among Jews.
Herzl's parley with the murderous von Plevhe was opposed even by most
Zionists. He went to Petersburg to get the Colonial Trust reopened,
to ask that Jewish taxes be used to subsidise emigration and for intercession
with the Turks. As a sweetener for his Jewish critics, he pleaded, not
for the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, the western provinces where
the Jews were confined, but for its enlargement 'to demonstrate clearly
the humane character of these steps', he suggested. (13) 'This would,,
he urged, 'put an end to certain agitation.' (14) Von Plevhe met him
on 8 August and again on 13 August. The events are known from Herzl's
Diary. Von Plevhe explained his concern about the new direction
he saw Zionism taking:
Lately the situation has grown even worse because the Jews have
been joining the revolutionary parties. We used to be sympathetic
to your Zionist movement, as long as it worked toward emigration.
You do not have to justify the movement to me. Vous prêchez a
un converti [You are preaching to a convert] . But ever since
the Minsk conference we have noticed un changement des gros bonnets
[ a change of bigwigs] . There is less talk now of Palestinian
Zionism than there is about culture, organisation and Jewish nationalism.
This does not suit us. (15)
Herzl did get the Colonial Trust reopened and a letter of endorsement
for Zionism from von Plevhe, but the support was given solely on the
proviso that the movement confine itself to emigration and avoid taking
up national rights inside Russia. In return Herzl sent von Plevhe a
copy of a letter to Lord Rothschild suggesting that: 'It would substantially
contribute to the further improvement of the situation if the proJewish
papers stopped using such an odious tone toward Russia. We ought to
try to work toward that end in the near future.' (16) Herzl then spoke
publicly, in Russia, against attempts to organise socialist groupings
within Russian Zionism:
In Palestine ... our land, such a party would vitalise our political
life-and then I shall determine my own attitude toward it. You do
me an injustice if you say that I am opposed to progressive social
ideas. But, now, in our present condition, it is too soon to deal
with such matters. They are extraneous. Zionism demands complete,
not partial involvement. (17)
Back in the West, Herzl went even further in his collaboration with
tsarism. That summer, during the World Zionist Congress in Basle, he
had a secret meeting with Chaim Zhitlovsky, then a leading figure in
the Social Revolutionary Party. (World Zionist Congresses are held every
two years, in odd years; the 1903 Congress was the sixth.) Later Zhitlovsky
wrote of this extraordinary conversation. The Zionist told him that:
I have just come from Plevhe. I have his positive, binding promise
that in 15 years, at the maximum, he will effectuate for us a charter
for Palestine. But this is tied to one condition: the Jewish revolutionaries
shall cease their struggle against the Russian government. If in
15 years from the time of the agreement Plevhe does not effectuate
the charter, they become free again to do what they consider necessary.
(18)
Naturally Zhitlovsky scornfully rejected the proposition. The Jewish
revolutionaries were not about to call off the struggle for elementary
human rights in return for a vague promise of a Zionist state in the
distant future. The Russian naturally had a few choice words to say
about the founder of the WZO:
[He] was, in general, too 'loyal, to the ruling authorities-as is
proper for a diplomat who has to deal with the powersthatbe-for
him ever to be interested in revolutionists and involve them in
his calculations ... He made the journey, of course, not in order
to intercede for the people of Israel and to awaken compassion for
us in Plevhe's heart. He traveled as a politician who does not concern
himself with sentiments, but interests ... Herzl's 'politics'
is built on pure diplomacy, which seriously believes that the political
history of humanity is made by a few people, a few leaders, and
that what they arrange among themselves becomes the content of political
history. (19)
Was there any justification for Herzl's meetings with von Plevhe? There
can be only one opinion. Even Weizmann was later to write that 'the
step was not only humiliating, but utterly pointless ... unreality could
go no further'. (20) The Tsar had not the slightest influence with the
Turks, who saw him as their enemy. At the same time, in l903, Herzl
accepted an even more surreal proposition from Britain for a Zionist
colony in the Kenya Highlands as a substitute for Palestine. Russian
Zionists began to object to these bizarre discussions, and they threatened
to leave the WZO, if 'Uganda' was even considered. Herzl had a vision
of himself as a Jewish Cecil Rhodes; it hardly mattered to him where
his colony was to be situated, but to most Russian Zionists the movement
was an extension of their biblical heritage and Africa meant nothing
to them. A deranged Russian Zionist tried to assassinate Herzl's lieutenant,
Max Nordau, and only Herzl's premature death prevented an internal collapse
of the movement.
However, direct contacts with tsarism did not stop with Herzl. By l908
the ranks were willing to allow Herzl's successor, David Wolffsohn,
to meet the Prime Minister, Piotr Stolypin, and Foreign Minister Alexandr
Izvolsky, over renewed harassment of the Colonial Trust bank. Izvolsky
quickly came to terms on the minimal request and indeed had a friendly
discussion with the WZO's leader: 'I might almost say that I made a
Zionist of him,' wrote Wolffsohn triumphantly. (21) But, needless to
say, Wolffsohn's visit led to no changes in Russia's antiJewish legislation.
The First World War
Zionism's egregious diplomatic record in the prewar period did not
stop the WZO from trying to take advantage of the debacle of the First
World War. Most Zionists were proGerman out of aversion to tsarism
as the most antiSemitic of the contending forces . The WZO's headquarters
in Berlin tried to get Germany and Turkey to support Zionism in Palestine
as a propaganda ploy to rally world Jewry to their side. Others saw
that Turkey was weak and certain to be dismembered in the war. They
argued that, if they backed the Allies, Zionism might be set up in Palestine
as a reward. To these, it hardly mattered that the Jews of Russia, that
is the majority of world Jewry, stood to gain nothing by the victory
of their oppressor and his foreign allies. Weizmann, domiciled in London,
sought to win over the British politicians. He had already made contact
with Arthur Balfour, who, as Prime Minister, had spoken against Jewish
immigration, in 1905. Weizmann knew the full extent of Balfour's antisemitism,
as he had unburdened himself of his philosophy to the Zionist on ] 2
December 1914. In a private letter, Weizmann wrote: 'He told me how
he had once had a long talk with Cosima Wagner at Bayreuth and that
he shared many of her antiSemitic postulates.' (22)
While Weizmann intrigued with the politicians in London, Vladimir Jabotinsky
had obtained tsarist support for a volunteer Jewish Legion to help Britain
take Palestine. There were thousands of young Jews in Britain, still
Russian citizens, who were threatened with deportation to tsarist Russia
by Herbert Samuel, the Jewish Home Secretary, if they did not 'volunteer'
for the British Army. They were not intimidated; they would fight neither
for t he Tsar nor his ally, and the government backed down. The legion
idea was a way out for the embarrassed Allies.
The Turks helped make the scheme into a reality by expelling all Russian
Jews from Palestine as enemy aliens. They were also unwilling to fight
directly for tsarism, but their Zionism led them to follow Jabotinsky's
cothinker Yosef Trumpeldor into a Zion Mule Corps with the British
at Gallipoli. Later Jabotinsky proudly boasted of how the Mule Corps
- and the aid of the antiSemites in Petersburg-helped him to obtain
his goal:
it was that 'donkey battalion' from Alexandria, ridiculed by all
the wits in Israel, which opened before me the doors of the government
offices of Whitehall. The Minister of Foreign Affairs in St Petersburg
wrote about it to Count Benkendoff, the Russian Ambassador in London;
the Russian Embassy forwarded reports on it to the British Foreign
Office; the (chief Counsellor of the Embassy, the late Constantine
Nabokov, who afterward succeeded the Ambassador, arranged for the
meetings with British ministers. (23)
The Balfour Declaration and the Fight against Bolshevism
The end of the war saw both Jewry and Zionism in a totally new world.
The WZO's manoeuvres had finally paid off-for Zionism, but. not for
Jewry. The Balfour Declaration was the price that London was prepared
to pay to have American Jewry use its influence to bring the United
States into the war, and to keep Russian Jewry loyal to the Allies.
But although the declaration gave Zionism the military and political
backing of the British Empire, it had not the slightest effect on the
course of events in the former Tsarist Empire, the heartland of Jewry.
Bolshevism, an ideology principally opposed to Zionism, had seized power
in Petersburg and was being challenged by White Guard tsarists and Ukrainian,
Polish and Baltic forces financed by Britain, the United States, France
and Japan. The counterrevolution consisted of many elements which had
a long tradition of antiSemitism and pogroms. This continued, and even
developed further, during the civil war and at least 60,000 Jews were
killed by the antiBolshevik forces. Although the Balfour Declaration
gave Zionism the lukewarm support of the backers of the White Guardist
pogromists, it did nothing to curb the pogroms. The declaration was,
at best, a vague pledge to allow the WZO to try to build a national
home in Palestine. The content of that commitment was as yet completely
undefined. The WZO's leaders understood that the British government
saw the crushing of the Bolsheviks as its top priority, and that they
had to be on their best behaviour, not merely in terms of insignificant
Palestine, but in their activities in the volatile East European arena.
Western historians call the Bolshevik revolution the Russian Revolution,
but the Bolsheviks themselves regarded it as triggering a worldwide
revolt. So also did the capitalists of Britain, France and America,
who saw the Communist success galvanising the left wing of their own
working classes. Like all social orders that cannot admit the fact that
the masses have justification to revolt, they sought to explain the
upheavals, to themselves as well as the people, in terms of a conspiracy
- of the Jews. On 8 February 1920, Winston Churchill, then the Secretary
for War, told readers of the Illustrated Sunday Herald about
'Trotsky ... [and] ... his schemes of a worldwide communistic state
under Jewish domination'. However, Churchill had his chosen Jewish opponents
of Bolshevism-the Zionists. He wrote hotly of 'the fury with which Trotsky
has attacked the Zionists generally, and Dr Weizmann in particular,.
'Trotsky,' Churchill declared, was 'directly thwarted and hindered by
this new ideal ... The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist
and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the
Jewish people.' (24)
The British strategy of using both antiSemites and Zionists against
'Trotsky' rested ultimately on Zionism's willingness to cooperate with
Britain in spite of the British involvement with the White Russian pogromists
The WZO did not want pogroms in Eastern Europe, but it did nothing to
mobilise world Jewry on behalf of the Jews beleaguered there. Weizmann's
statements at the time, as well as his memoirs, tell us how they saw
the situation. He appeared at the Versailles Conference on 23 February
1919. Once again he enunciated the traditional line on Jewry shared
by both antiSemites and Zionists. It was not the Jews who really had
problems, it was the Jews who were the problem:
Jewry and Judaism were in a frightfully weakened condition, presenting,
to themselves and to the nations, a problem very difficult of solution.
There was, I said, no hope at all of such a solution - since the
Jewish problem revolved fundamentally round the homelessness of
the Jewish people - without the creation of a National Home. (25)
The Jews, of course, presented no real problem - neither to the nations
nor to 'themselves'-but Weizmann had a solution to the nonexistent
'problem'. Once again Zionism offered itself to the assembled capitalist
powers as an antirevolutionary movement. Zionism would 'transform Jewish
energy into a constructive force instead of its being dissipated in
destructive tendencies'. (26) Even in his later years Weizmann could
still only see the Jewish tragedy during the Russian Revolution through
the Zionist end of the telescope:
Between the Balfour Declaration and the accession of the Bolsheviks
to power, Russian Jewry had subscribed the then enormous sum of
30 million rubles for an agricultural bank in Palestine; but this,
with much else, had now to be written off ... Polish Jewry ... was
still suffering so much in the separate RussoPolish War, that it
was incapable of making any appreciable contribution to the tasks
which lay ahead of us. (27)
Weizmann saw Zionism as weak in all respects with only a toehold in
Palestine. Eastern Europe was 'a tragedy which the Zionist movement
was at the moment powerless to relieve'. (28) Others were not so torpid.
The British trade unions organised an embargo of arms shipments to the
Whites. French Communists staged a mutiny in the French Black Sea fleet.
And, of course, it was the Red Army that tried to protect the Jews against
their White murderers. But the WZO never Used its influence, either
in the AngloJewish community or in the seats of power, to back up the
militant unionists. Weizmann completely shared the antiCommunist mentality
of his British patrons. He never changed his opinion on the period.
Even in Trial and Error, he still sounded like a high Tory writing
of 'a time when the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution were fresh in
everyone's mind' (my emphasis). (29)
The Minority Treaties at the Versailles Peace Conference
Russia was out of control, but the Allies and their local clients still
dominated the rest of Eastern Europe; now that the WZO had been converted
by the Balfour Declaration into an official Voice of Israel, it could
no longer remain taciturn about the fate of the huge Jewish communities
there. It had to act as their spokesman. What it wanted was for the
Jews to be recognised as a nation with autonomy for its separate schools
and language institutions, as well as for the Jewish sabbath to be recognised
as their day of rest. Since reliance on imperialism was the backbone
of Zionist strategy, the Comite des Delegations Juives essentially
the WZO in tandem with the American Jewish Committee-presented a memorandum
on national autonomy to the Versailles Conference. All the new successor
states to the fallen empires, but neither Germany nor Russia, were to
be compelled to sign minorityrights treaties as a precondition of diplomatic
recognition. At first the idea was taken up by the Allies, who realised
that minority rights were essential if the tangled national chauvinists
of Eastern Europe were not to tear each other to pieces and pave the
way for a Bolshevik takeover. One by one the Poles, the Hungarians
and the Romanians signed, but their signatures were meaningless. The
rapidly growing Christian middle classes in these countries saw the
Jews as their entrenched competitors and were determined to dislodge
them. The Pole who signed their treaty was the country's most notorious
antiSemite, the Hungarians declared their treaty day a day of national
mourning and the Romanians refused to sign until the clauses guaranteeing
sabbath rights and Jewish schools were deleted from their treaty.
There never was the slightest chance of success for the utopian plan.
Balfour soon realised what problems the treaties would create for the
Allies in Eastern Europe. On 22 October, he told the League of Nations
that the accusing states would be assuming a thankless duty if they
attempted to enforce the treaty obligations. He then argued that since
the treaties preceded the League, it should not obligate itself to enforce
them. (30) The assembled lawyers then accepted legal responsibility
for the treaties, but provided no enforcement machinery.
Jews could not be bothered to use the meaningless treaties. Only three
collective petitions were ever sent in. In the 1920s Hungary was found
to have a numerus clausus in its universities. In 1933 the still
weak Hitler felt compelled to honour the GermanPolish Minority Convention,
which was the only such treaty applicable to Germany, and 10,000 Jews
in Upper Silesia retained all civil rights until treaty term in July
1937. (31) Romania was found guilty of revoking Jewish citizen rights
in 1937. Such petty legalistic victories changed nothing in the long
run.
The only way the Jews could have had any success in fighting for their
rights in Eastern Europe was in alliance with the workingclass movements
which, in all these countries, saw antiSemitism for what it was: an
ideological razor in the hands of their own capitalist enemies. But
although social revolution meant equality for the Jews as Jews, it also
meant the expropriation of the Jewish middle class as capitalists. That
was unacceptable to the local affiliates of the WZO, who were largely
middle class in composition with virtually no workingclass following.
The world Zionist movement, always concerned for British rulingclass
opinion, never pushed its local groupings in the direction of the left,
although the radicals were the only mass force on the ground that was
prepared to defend the Jews. Instead, the WZO leaders concluded that
they lacked the strength to struggle simultaneously for Jewish rights
in the Diaspora and build the new Zion' and by the 1920s they abandoned
all pretence of action on behalf of Diaspora Jewry in situ, leaving
their local affiliates-and the Jewish communities in these countries-to
fend for themselves.
The Zionist Alliance with AntiSemitism in Eastern Europe
Most of the Jews in Eastern Europe did not see the Bolsheviks as the
ogres that Churchill and Weizmann believed them to be. Under Lenin the
Bolsheviks not only gave the Jews complete equality, but they even set
up schools and, ultimately, courts in Yiddish; however, they were absolutely
opposed to Zionism and all ideological nationalism. The Bolsheviks taught
that the revolution required the unity of the workers of all nations
against the capitalists. The nationalists separated 'their' workers
from their class fellows. Bolshevism specifically opposed Zionism as
proBritish and as fundamentally antiArab. The local Zionist leadership
was therefore forced to turn to the nationalists as possible allies.
In the Ukraine that meant Simon Petliura's Rada (Council), which,
like the Zionists, recruited on strictly ethnic lines: no Russians,
no Poles and no Jews.
Ukrainia
The Rada was based on village schoolteachers and other language
enthusiasts, steeped in the 'glorious' history of the Ukraine-that is
Bogdan Zinovy Chmielnicki's seventeenthcentury Cossack revolt against
Poland, during which the enraged peasantry massacred 100,000 Jews whom
they saw as middlemen working for the Polish Pans (nobles). Nationalist
ideology reinforced the 'Christkiller' venom which was poured into
the illiterate rural masses by the old regime. antiSemitic outbreaks
were inevitable in such an ideological climate, but the Zionists were
taken in by promises of national autonomy, and rushed into the Rada.
In January 1919 Abraham Revusky of the Poale Zion took office as Petliura's
Minister for Jewish Affairs. (32) Meir Grossmann of the Ukrainian Zionist
Executive went abroad to rally Jewish support for the antiBolshevik
regime. (33)
The inevitable pogroms started with the first Ukrainian defeat at the
hands of the Red Army in January 1919, and Revusky was compelled to
resign within a month when Petliura did nothing to stop the atrocities.
In many respects the Petliura episode destroyed the mass base of Zionism
amongst Soviet Jews. Churchill lost his gamble: Trotsky, not Weizmann
and not Revusky, was to win the soul of the Jewish masses.
Lithuania
Lithuanian Zionist involvement with the antiSemites was likewise a
failure, although, fortunately, Lithuania did not generate significant
pogroms. The nationalists there were in an extremely weak position.
Not only did they face a threat from Communism, they also had to struggle
against Poland in a dispute over the territory around Vilna. They felt
compelled to work with the Zionists, as they needed the support of the
considerable Jewish minority in Vilna, and they also overestimated Zionist
influence with the Allied powers whose diplomatic assent was a requirement
if they were ever to gain the city. In December 1918 three Zionists
entered the provisional government o f An tan as Smetona and Augustinas
Voldemaras. Jacob Wigodski became Minister for Jewish Affairs, N. Rachmilovitch
became ViceMinister for Trade and Shimshon Rosenbaum was appointed
ViceMinister for Foreign Affairs.
The bait again was autonomy. Jews would be given proportional representation
in government, full rights for Yiddish, and a Jewish National Council
would be given the right of compulsory taxation of all Jews for religious
and cultural affairs. Nonpayment of tax would only be allowed for converts.
Max Soloveitchik, who succeeded Wigodski at the Jewish Ministry, enthused
that 'Lithuania is the creative source of the future forms of Jewish
living'. (34)
By April 1922 the Lithuanian government felt it could begin to move
against the Jews. The Vilna Corridor was definitely lost to Poland and
the Polish Army stood between Communism and the Lithuanian border. Smetona's
first move was to refuse to guarantee the institutions of autonomy in
the constitution. Soloveitchik resigned in protest, and went to join
the WZO Executive in London. The local Zionists tried to deal with the
problem by forming an electoral bloc with the Polish, German and Russian
minorities. This little extra muscle made the government slow its pace,
and Rosenbaum was given the Jewish Ministry by Ernestas Galvanauskas,
the new Prime Minister. By 1923 the onslaught began again with parliamentary
speeches in Yiddish being forbidden. By June 1924 the Jewish Ministry
was abolished; by July Yiddish store signs were outlawed; in September
the police scattered the National Council, and Rosenbaum and Rachmilovitch
moved to Palestine. By 1926 Smetona had set up a semiFascist regime
which lasted until the Second World War takeover by Stalin. In later
days Voldemaras and Galvanauskas openly assumed the role of Nazi agents
in Lithuanian politics.
Zionist Accommodation with AntiSemitism
The essentials of Zionist doctrine on antiSemitism were laid down well
before the Holocaust: antiSemitism was inevitable and could not be
fought; the solution was the emigration of unwanted Jews to a Jewish
stateinthemaking. The inability of the Zionist movement to take Palestine
militarily compelled it to look for imperial patronage, which it expected
to be motivated by antiSemitism to some degree. Zionists additionally
saw revolutionary Marxism as an assimilationist enemy which persuaded
them to ally against it with their fellow separatists of the antiSemitic
rightwing nationalist movements in Eastern Europe.
Herzl and his successors were proven correct. It was an antiSemite,
Balfour, who enabled Zionism to entrench itself in Palestine. Although
Israel was ultimately established through armed revolt against Britain,
if it had not been for the presence of the British Army during the early
years of the Mandate, the Palestinians would not have had the slightest
problem pushing Zionism out.
But we are victims here of a sleightofhand trick. Balfour did give
Zionism its toehold in Palestine, but did the British Mandate protect
the Jews against their enemies in Europe?
AntiSemitism could always be fought. It was not only fought, it was
defeated in France, Russia and the Ukraine without any help from the
World Zionist Organisation. Had the people of those countries followed
the dictates of the Zionists, the antiSemites would never have been
defeated.
The policies of the early WZO were continued, in all essentials, by
Chaim Weizmann, the main leader of the organisation during the Hitler
epoch. Those elements in the WZO who wanted to make a stand against
Nazism in the 1930s always found their main internal enemy in the President
of their own movement. Nahum Goldmann, himself to become a postHolocaust
President of the WZO, later described in a speech the fierce arguments
on the subject between Weizmann and rabbi Stephen Wise, a leading figure
in American Zionism:
I remember very violent discussions between him and Weizmann, who
was a very great leader in his own right, but who rejected every
interest in other things. He did take an interest in saving German
Jews in the period of the first years of Nazism but World Jewish
Congress, fight for Jewish rights, not that he denied their need,
but he could not spare the time from his Zionist work. Stephen Wise
argued with him 'but it is part and parcel of the same problem.
If you lose the Jewish Diaspora you will not have a Palestine and
you can only deal with the totality of Jewish life. (35)
Such was Zionism, and such its leading figure, when Adolf Hitler strode
on to the stage of history.
Notes
1. Marvin Lowenthal (ed.), The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 6.
2. Desmond Stewart, Theodor Herzl, p. 141.
3. Ludwig Lewisohn (ed.), Theodor Herzl: A Portrait, pp. 2934.
4. Ibid., pp. 21920.
5. Raphael Patai (ed.), The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl,
vol. II, pp. 6723.
6. Lowenthal, Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 71.
7. Ibid., p. 100.
8. Ibid., p. 366.
9. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, pp. 901.
10. David Yisraeli, 'Germany and Zionism'' Germany and the Middle
East, 18351939 (Tel Aviv University, 1975), p. 142.
11. Patai, Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. III, p. 729.
12. George Gapon, The Story of My Life, p. 94.
13. Patai, Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. IV, p. 15
21.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 1525.
16. Ibid., p. 1538.
17. Amos Elon, Herzl, pp. 3812.
18. Samuel Portnoy (ed.), Vladimir Medem The Life and Soul of a
Legendary Jewish Socialist, pp. 2958.
19. Ibid.
20. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 82.
21. Emil Cohen, David Wolffsohn, p. 196.
22. Meyer Weisgal (ed.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann,
Letters, vol. VII p. 81. After the Holocaust Weizmann could not
reveal the antiSemitism of Zionism's great patron. He changed the record
in Trial and Error: 'Mr Balfour mentioned that, two years before, he
had been in Bayreuth, and that he had talked with Frau Cosima Wagner,
the widow of the composer, who had raised the subject of the Jews. I
interrupted Mr Balfour ...' (p. 153).
23. Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, p. 74.
24. Winston Churchill, 'Zionism versus Bolshevism', Illustrated Sunday
Herald (8 February 1920), p. 5.
25 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 243.
26 Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration, p. 348.
27. Weizmann, Trial and Error, pp. 2401.
28. Ibid., p. 242.
29. Ibid., p. 218.
30. Jacob Robinson et al., Were the Minority Treaties a Failure?,
pp. 7980.
31. Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked shall be made Straight, p.
72.
32. 'Abraham Revusky', Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 14, col. 134.
33. 'Meir Grossmann', Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 7, col. 938.
34. Samuel Gringauz, 'Jewish National Autonomy in Lithuania (19181925)',
Jewish Social Studies (July 1952), p. 237.
35. Nahum Goldmann, 'Dr Stephen S. Wise', A Galaxy of American Zionist
Rishonim, pp. 1718.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
This text is a chapter of <Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
a Reappraisal>, by Lenni Brenner.
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