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The Jewish catastrophe in World War II, and the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees it left in its wake, rendered more urgent than ever the Jewish need for a homeland. The vision of that homeland was whole-heartedly supported even by as critical a Jewish philosopher as Hannah Arendt. The post-Holocaust world provided, she said, a rare opportunity for Jewish rehabilitation. However, while she had welcomed the foundation of a Jewish homeland, Arendt remained critical of many aspects of this vision, as conceived by the Zionist leadership, as well as the national myths at the basis of this vision, particularly those that were, in her eyes, thwarting the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians and the Arab world. The most powerful myth, according to Arendt, was that throughout history the Jews, in contrast to all other nations, “were not history-makers but history-sufferers, preserving a kind of eternal identity of goodness whose monotony was disturbed only by the equally monotonous chronicle of persecutions and pogroms.” Arendt believed that this view was an attempt to discharge the victim of responsibility, and that it extracted problems of Jewish identity and suffering from history, from their very historicity by essentializing Jewish victimhood. Such a view, Arendt said, cut off Jewish history from European and world history, and created a state of mind that she defined as “worldlessness.” Involvement, responsibility, and historicity are key concepts in Arendt's political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few are the texts which mold a generation's thinking and discourse instantly and lastingly, and create conceptual breakthroughs. If the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem elevated talk of the Holocaust to the public sphere and granted it the legitimacy and circulation it had not previously had, then the report of the trial by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) transformed this speech and revolutionized its language and meanings. Thus the two events, the trial and the book, and subsequently the fierce controversy around the book as well, became inextricably connected and of one piece. Not only did the trial take on mythological dimensions as a restorative and expiatory event, summing up a historical chapter and, as it were, “rendering justice” to the victims of the Holocaust, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel, as if justice could be rendered; Arendt's book itself, which endeavored to deconstruct the redemptive mythical discourse of the trial – and the maelstrom which engulfed the book and its author – also assumed mythical dimensions. It is therefore no longer possible to discuss the Eichmann trial and its significance separately from Arendt's analysis of it; or to discuss the meaning of the book without referring to its reception and perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nazi war crimes disclosure act of 1998 has triggered the release of some 8 million pages of documents on a breathtaking range of wartime and postwar topics—everything from the Greek resistance to Vichy French funds in the United States to Vatican policies. The preceding chapters show, through a sampling of these records, how the new files add to what scholars have known while offering some signposts for future research. One subject not covered in our volume is the postwar U.S. war crimes trial program. Records of these proceedings and nearly all documents about preparations for the trials had been declassified previously; new information adds little to our understanding of them. Still, a contrast between American prosecution and American intelligence activities is instructive. The United States took the lead in the first grand experiment with postwar justice beginning with the International Trial of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. Following this landmark trial, the United States held twelve more trials in Nuremberg, which involved 144 high-level defendants from the German High Command, the medical profession, big business, the judiciary, government ministries, SS economic officials, and most notably, the Einsatzgruppen. More military trials were held of German camp personnel and others so that by 1949, the United States had tried more than 1,800 German suspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General Donovan was informed about the Moltke connection, and a series of consultations were conducted by General Tindal, by the OSS Director himself and his closest aides, and outside consultants even after Count von Moltke was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1944. It appears that he may have been betrayed by Fritz Laufer, “Dogwood's” own and much trusted agent. For his part, the OSS Director was advised not to deal with some opposition groups in and outside Germany whose aims, strength, composition, and influence were questionable. Behind this advice one could discern the fear that such a Western German coup could have blurred the principle of proving Nazism as a complete military and political disaster inflicted on Germany by Hitler's military incompetence combined with his ideology, thus avoiding another November 1918 situation that not only left Germany with its army intact but indeed created the political climate that allowed it to claim a military defeat as a lost victory or misuse American commitments made by President Wilson as if they had been broken all the way to Versailles, creating a rift with the Soviet Union. Hitler was certainly doing his best to prevent a second November 1918, which was the crucial experience in his life that transformed him into a “Politiker,” and he would use any means possible to avoid the collapse of the home front and split the Allies by using propaganda means as well, including the “Jew's war” slogan, which was primarily aimed toward the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reality with regard to rescue in Hungary was that the rescue workers in Istanbul, Budapest, and Bratislava remembered that “Baron von Wisliceny,” as Pomeranz insisted upon calling him decades later (a totally baseless use of the title, which gave Wisliceny some kind of higher rank compared to his relatively low rank as SS Captain), was ready to enter into a ransom deal with regard to Slovakia. Since “Willy,” or the “Shtadlan” (the well-intentioned go-between), as they used to call Wisliceny, had disappeared from sight since August 1943, those trying to rescue the Jews were somewhat relieved when he reappeared shortly after the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944. According to Brand's own report to Shertok, they did their utmost to reach Wisliceny when he came to Budapest and revived his alleged ransom talks. Willy was equipped with a letter of recommendation from Rabbi Weissmandel in Bratislava. Afterward, his boss, Adolf Eichmann, made an official bid to “exchange a million Jews for ten thousand trucks,” as this “deal” was presented by the Zionist rescue workers in Budapest and by Brand himself to the rescue mission in Istanbul and to the Yishuv's leadership. The Allies eventually called it the “Gestapo Deal.” Chaim Barlas, Venia Pomeranz, and other rescue workers received Joel Brand, who later said that he expected the supreme Zionist and World Jewish leadership to wait for him in Istanbul. Pomeranz went to Palestine to see Ben-Gurion and others in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tragic irony of the Holocaust, that Jews were victims of politicized conspiracy theories, is to be sought in the politicization of the Holocaust itself among the victims and among their various kinsmen. One of the rescuers, Rezsö Kasztner, was actively involved in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and this brought about his assassination. The OSS, too, at least in the person of Charles Dwork, tried to make the “Jewish case” therein a separate subject, but the prevalent refusal to allow the Jews a specific standing among Hitler's victims limited his role considerably. Kasztner trapped himself and was trapped by others of his own people as a part of the “rescue debate” that had already started during his rescue activities and became perhaps the best-known case afterward in relationship to the politicization of the debate by the Zionist Right, Left, and the ultraorthodox. In fact, it was not just Kasztner who was trapped – and assassinated – due to his rescue efforts as compared to the enormous dimensions of the Holocaust in Hungary. In fact, a number of self-traps had been set by rescue activists for themselves, for the Zionists, and for the Allies ever since the Europa Plan negotiations by creating the impression that the Germans (or at least Heinrich Himmler) were ready to deal, and thus important rescue options may have been lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let us now return to the story of “Kasztner's Train” as it actually developed on the ground. The idea of letting 600 Palestine certificate holders leave Hungary originated with the Va'ada upon its earliest meeting with Eichmann's men early in April 1944. The list of 600 grew to 1,684 people thanks to monies paid by Kasztner to the Germans. The Jews were supposed to leave for Portugal or Spain but instead found themselves in the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp. Among the 1,684, there were people from Kasztner's own hometown of Cluj who were allowed to leave the ghetto of Cluj upon Kasztner's request and with Eichmann's consent. For the Germans, the 1,684 could serve as hostages for some kind of exchange deals, as we learn from the following document concerning the Holocaust in Holland and the fate of a few remaining Palestine visa entry holders at Vught and Westerbork camps, from which most of the Dutch Jews were deported to Auschwitz: In April, 1944 it was stated that: 'The Jewish section VUGHT has been closed down and WESTERBORK is almost empty. … The people with exchange papers for Palestine were sent … to a special camp … near Hanover … [which] appears to be EXCHANGE CAMP BERZEN BILSEN [sic] …, and as its name suggests, it contains Jews in possession of Palestine certificates and those who own passports … [of] South American countries. Leaders of Dutch Zionist organizations are in [that] camp, awaiting exchange for Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kasztner was not the only Jewish personality who had approached the Germans hoping to “deal” with them, but the ultra-orthodox Sternbuch brothers, representing an orthodox rabbinical group in America and situated in Montreux, Switzerland, also tried to deal with them. We are told by Randolph Braham that the ultra-orthodox Rescue Committee, headed by the Sternbuch brothers, worked on a giant rescue effort that was supposed to allow 750,000 Jews to leave Europe; this effort with Himmler, in which the Sternbuchs acted through the former Swiss Federal President, Jean-Marie Musy, was supported by a variety of personalities, such as the right-wing Zionist businessman Dr. Ruben Hecht. In the meantime, on December 1, 1944, the second “Kasztner Train” from Bergen-Belsen, carrying about 1,328 Jews who had left Budapest five months before, was allowed to cross the border to Switzerland in connection with money payments made by Hungarian Jewry itself, of which Kasztner remained in debt of about $65,000 (U.S.), according to his 1945 report. This was done in the framework of the “Becher–Kasztner” line, stressing a certain economic quid pro quo but one that required more sums and goods to be supplied by the Allies. In the January meeting between Musy and Himmler, so we are told by Schellenberg, the following decisions were arrived at thanks to Himmler's “active intervention”: First, every fortnight one train with about 1,200 Jews would leave for Switzerland, travel conditions, food, and so on. “to be as good as possible.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence that we can add to the existing literature in regard to Himmler's order to stop the Final Solution late in 1944 (as seemed to Kasztner at the time to have been the case thanks to Becher's “complete victory” described earlier) is a message sent by McClelland to the WRB and State Department on January 20, 1945, which first quoted “German press denials of any intention to exterminate inmates” of Auschwitz and Birkenau, following a strongly worded warning to Himmler personally, signed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull. McClelland added to this that he was unable to confirm reports “originated in Polish circles in London” that the SS was instructed to kill all inmates of Jewish camps “who could not be evacuated in face of Allied advance.” However, McClelland continued: based on a great deal of fragmentary information collected during past several months regarding course of Nazi policy toward Jewish deportees in camps, and more particularly on very recent statements of two intelligent Jewish women who reached Switzerland during late December having spent three months in Auschwitz August through October 1944 … I think it can be reliably stated that Nazis have abandoned extermination of Jews as a general policy, and certainly of those capable of working. On other hand they show tendency continue doing away on small scale with elderly people and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before and after their direct involvement with rescue problems as they presented themselves upon Brand's arrival, the Jewish Agency's Political Department under Moshe Shertok was involved in other activities related to rescue and the war effort and the old dream of establishing a “Jewish army” in the ranks of Allied forces. A “Jewish Brigade Group,” which Churchill finally authorized with Roosevelt's consent, was created not before September 1944, when several Jewish regiments in the British Army – plus more volunteers – were given the much desired status of a separate Jewish fighting unit deployed on the Italian front. Since late in 1942, the Yishuv had maintained a channel open to British SOE and to the regional A Force under Lieutenant Colonel Tony Simonds, working within the British Army's MI9 organization and not without trouble for him in London. Several members of the Hagana and the Zionist youth movements from Europe were trained as partisans to be dropped into occupied Europe. Several among them, including women such as Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian-born Labor Zionist poet, were trained by the British for the mission not without inner conflicts, as some of them refused to accept British authority. The British themselves finally endorsed the idea, not without a typical remark made by Brigadier Iltyd Clayton, the Chief Political Officer in the British area HQ, that their departure would make these Zionist activists pursue their aims elsewhere rather than in Palestine. The “paratroopers” were dropped as regular British commandos in Yugoslavia and Rumania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Allies received rather exact information in real time about the final stages of the Holocaust, which had not always been the case earlier. The destination was now known, the routes known, the railroads marked, and bridges pinpointed by the Allied intelligence agencies for the purposes of the 15th U.S. Air Force, based in Italy and capable of bombing the railroads leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers. Several overtures were made by Jewish organizations, including the Yishuv's leadership, to the Allies to bomb the railroads and the gas chambers and stop the factory of death, but they allegedly were not made rigorously enough. Sometimes, as Dina Porat tells us, the Jewish Agency's officials were in doubt among themselves whether such approaches would have any effect on the Allies or even be of any help to the inmates. In other words, the Zionists allegedly succumbed to the catastrophe rather than rising to meet it. I have asked Albert Speer what would have been the result of an effective bombing run that would have destroyed the gas chambers in Auschwitz. He replied: Hitler would have hit the roof. … He would have ordered the return to mass shooting. And immediately, as a matter of top priority – which it wasn't beforehand – in terms of military personnel, of allocating equipment, and the like. Instead of shipping those people to Auschwitz within months, they should have been shot on the spot within two weeks. […] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Germans apparently did not read all of the WRB's messages, and in fall 1944 the State Department shifted to code machines and stopped using the previously decoded ciphers. Thus, in addition to the German decrypts of WRB's activities, let us now examine its own reports by invoking the same “kaleidoscopic” method. The WRB claimed to have been able to save Jews by intervening with German-allied governments, including the Horthy regime in occupied Hungary. It took steps, as mentioned in a report on the WRB's activities from October 1944, “in cooperation with a private agency,” probably the Zionist Rescue Committee in Istanbul, “to establish contact with a mysterious person known only as ‘Willy’ [Wisliceny – S.A.] who was reported to have been successful in arresting the deportation of Jews from Slovakia.” This passage tells us first that those who communicated with “Willy” took him seriously, and thus Kasztner and Brand, who probably stood behind it, indeed believed in the Slovak myth or had to stick to it, having no other option but to try to make it a reality due to changed conditions on the ground. Second, they did reach the WRB in this regard, before Brand was sent to Istanbul, when on April 20 the WRB itself “asked an intermediary in Switzerland [probably Saly Mayer – S.A.] to explore with him [i.e., with Wisliceny] the possibility of arranging for evacuations from Hungary to neutral countries or for holding up deportations or permitting sending relief to those detained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More sophisticated than Brand's or Schwarz's interrogations was the evaluation of both missions made by Reuben B. Resnik, an AJDC representative in Istanbul who was associated with the WRB's effort in Turkey. Resnik met with Brand upon his arrival in Istanbul and also had his connections with members of the Va'ada in Budapest. In his report, prepared at the request of Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, Resnik – a wise man – expressed his impression that Brand: … was not as sincere and straight-forward as other observers thought him to be. He had ready and direct answers for all questions and was apparently very cooperative and reiterated on several occasions the seriousness with which he was carrying out his mission. It is important … to observe that Brand is not completely without anxiety and fear about his assignment and its possible consequences. This description reflects one who initiated or accepted Laufer's mission, and thereby made the Allies and the Zionists seemingly responsible from then on for the fate of the Hungarian Jews, pending his own personal success in that mission. Resnik mentioned “interviews and conferences” he held with persons “who have had close contact with Mr. Brand during his visit in Istanbul and while he was a resident in Budapest.” Resnik's “possible interpretations” of both missions (he never met Grosz) are rather penetrating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yishuv representatives in Istanbul such as Venia Pomeranz and Menachem Bader were not necessarily aware of the differences between the Nazi occupation authorities and intelligence bodies. In the past, they had used every contact possible, including couriers who had served OSS as well, such as Bandi Grosz, in order to reach Nazi-occupied or Nazi-controlled Europe. For Pomeranz, it might have made no difference that could help the cause of rescue. On the contrary, one had to talk to the killers themselves and somehow try to deal with them. This was an extremely sensitive matter, and it involved money, if not goods, to be supplied to Nazi Germany in exchange for Jewish lives. Seemingly anchored in the assumption that the Germans were ready to deal, Joel Brand wrote to rescue emissary Nathan Schwalb in Geneva upon arrival in Istanbul that in fact this is what was left to the Va'ada to pursue under the new circumstances of Nazi occupation. Indeed, Brand – and Bandi Grosz – were in touch with several Gestapo/SD operatives, discussing with them various deal options before Adolf Eichmann himself seemed to have endorsed them. One option, to try and exchange Jewish lives for Allied-supplied goods such as trucks, had been raised already in 1943 by Fritz Laufer. The truck option surfaced again after the German occupation, but we do not know whether Laufer suggested it first to Brand, who conducted most of the talks with the Germans alone, promising that the Allies would be willing to pay the price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to one of Grosz's British interrogation reports, the story behind his and Brand's mission evolved when several meetings were held early in April 1944 between Brand, Kasztner, Abwehr agent Winninger, and Eichmann's aides Hermann Krumey and Dieter Wisliceny, “always allowing themselves to be cheated out of their Zionist money in the hope that one day the Germans would really do something for the Jews … BRAND was acting out of misguided idealism and fright at the same time.” The next day, Laufer told Grosz that he would arrange for “all funds stolen from the Zionists to be returned … by EICHMANN to BRAND.” Laufer then “expressed the Gestapo's readiness to assist the Jews as much as possible” and instructed Grosz “to draw up a plan of Jewish demands together with BRAND.” On May 5, 1944, Brand met Eichmann, according to Grosz, in the presence of Clages, and both “treated BRAND very civilly.” Eichmann said that he would return to him the money and the letters delivered by the Swedish military attaché “intact.” Eichmann then: proposed that BRAND should go to ISTANBUL, and, through the Zionists, arrange for the purchase and delivery of 10,000 lorries, chocolate and cocoa to the Germans via TURKEY, SPAIN, PORTUGAL or SWEDEN. BRAND said that he could easily arrange that. In return, EICHMANN promised the Germans would close the ghettoes, stop the deportation of Jews, and see that a number of Jews were given a safe conduct to PALESTINE or elsewhere in N. AFRICA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fritz Laufer's bids for rescue “deals,” which he was indeed spreading among Jewish rescue workers upon his visits as a trusted American agent in Istanbul, and his contacts with the SD and the Gestapo, the latter being very probably one of his employers from the beginning in Prague, could have been easily seen in Jewish eyes as if they reflected some change on the Nazi side. But in Allied eyes a rescue “deal” involving the Jews of Hungary could be initiated by the Nazis to enhance sinister conspiracies such as using the Jews to drive a wedge between the Allies and their own citizens. Bring a disaster on FDR's head in an election year – around the uncertain results of the Normandy invasion – to make it seem as if he were fighting a “Jew's war,” and drive a wedge between the Western Allies and Stalin. This is how OSS-SI in Washington reacted to Brand's and Grosz's arrival in Istanbul, connecting them as “German double agents” to the precedent of one actual ransom deal authorized by the Nazis in occupied Hungary, that of the release of the rich Weiss family in exchange for its property (see cable 53647, REGIS in Washington to USTRAVIC, London; Copies sent to Director, Deputy Director, OSS, X-2, OSS, offices in the Middle East, Madrid, and Europe): 1. with the complete assistance of the german government, the weiss group mentioned in your (cable) #57377 (#178 to Madrid) reached Lisbon … [further details in previous cables between O.S.S. stations stations Bern and Washington − S.A.] and also to saint [O.S.S.−X-2 or counterintelligence − S.A.] about report that the signing of a 20-year lease of the weiss works [by the SS − S.A.] was forced as a bargain by the Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from Himmler's activities in fall 1943, which culminated in the liquidation of most Polish Jewry late in 1943 and early in 1944, and his infamous speech before the SS generals in Posen discussing the Holocaust as an act of bravery on October 4, 1943, which contradicted any serious attempt on his part to negotiate the end of the Holocaust with the West, we have at our disposal British decrypts concerning murderous activities by the SS at that time outside of Poland. These decrypts were made available to the Americans out of many thousands more that are stored at the British Public Record Office. According to these documents, when Wisliceny was supposed to have negotiated the Europa Plan in September 1943, the Germans were busy introducing “measures” against the Jews of Rome in spite of their fears that these measures would combine with the other, seemingly serious problems that they faced by suddenly taking over a former ally and its capital. By October 10, 1943, the Nazi official in charge – SS Captain Herbert Kappler – pretty much aware of the local conditions and possible trouble if the deportation of Rome's Jews was to be carried out at that early stage, reported to Berlin that at least “50 gks [kilograms] of Jewish gold are being dispatched to CdS” (Chef der Sicherheitpolizei – Gestapo and Criminal Police), expressing his hope that “as far as the Reichsbank is concerned this will facilitate the supply of Devisen [foreign currency – S.A.] for our purposes.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have here several issues: Was the Slovak “deal” a deal at all? Who initiated it? The Germans? Jews? Were bribes offered by the Jews effective then and later? This was the political and practical side of the matter, whose answer is to be sought in German documentation, when possible, because whether the Jewish side had initiated the bribes or not, the success of such deals depended on the German side and on their autonomous allies. The moral and political issue, however, seems to be detached from the practical one. One should have paid the Germans; even for nothing, if this would have finally proved to be the result, as long as one was not entirely sure about it, and even for the sake of rescuing one's image or reputation in the eyes of future generations. Yet “not finally sure” may be an indefinite, self-defeating procedure in which the other side may always be given the opportunity to maintain that your side could have done more, a strategy adopted by Eichmann himself regarding his alleged Hungarian ransom offer, to be discussed as the “Gestapo Deal,” in his trial in Jerusalem. Thus, he sought to transform the victim and third parties, who were supposed to deliver the goods, into collaborators in the victim's own doom. But for what actual purpose? Eichmann certainly did not prepare for his trial in Jerusalem in the early 1940s during the Hungarian Holocaust, and hence other reasons for his apparent willingness to negotiate the Gestapo Deal must be explored such as propaganda gains and political goals aimed at splitting the Allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let us now discuss the rescue mission established by the Yishuv's leadership in Istanbul, Turkey, in spring 1943, in addition to and in cooperation with the regular representatives of the Jewish Agency under the most difficult conditions of Turkish neutrality and dependence upon the British, whose standing in Turkey was relatively higher than that of the Germans. Another rescue mission established itself in Geneva, and both were connected with each other, with rescue workers in the Balkan countries, and with the Zionist leadership in Palestine, as well as with non-Zionists abroad. Dina Porat gave us the names and the political affiliations of the twenty people who were involved in this effort between 1942 and 1945. Tuvia Friling expanded the scope of this research by looking in much detail at the differences between the Zionist representatives in Turkey and their composition and ties with the Jewish Agency's own inner and hybrid structure at home. Friling's conclusion is that, under these circumstances, a small, secret system of decision-making was created within the Yishuv's leadership, comprised of David Ben-Gurion, Eliezer Kaplan (the Jewish Agency's “Minister of Finance”), and Moshe Shertok (the head of the Political Department). This small, compact group made decisions outside of the public Zionist bodies due to their diverse nature and British (plus American) surveillance of their activities. Thus, not much is available in terms of records that this inner group may have left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion of intelligence services on the Allied and the German sides (after all, the Gestapo and SD were among other things intelligence-gathering agencies) in this book assumed its central role due to the covert nature of hoped-for cooperation between the Zionists and other Jewish organizations working for rescue once experienced Jewish leaders such as David Ben-Gurion had realized that overt action by the Allies had many limits due to the menace of a “Jew's war,” which the Allies intended to avoid by all means at their disposal unless domestic opinion imposed such an action upon them. At the same time, Nazi and Allied intelligence gathered information on the Holocaust, on rescue efforts, and on the Zionists and other Jewish organizations that were supposed to cooperate with them. This information led also to various actions that contributed their share to the workings of the doomsday machine. In comparison to the regular bureaucracies, such as the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, which had adopted a rather anti-Zionist policy since the late 1930s that was followed by the politicians heading them on cabinet level but not Churchill himself, and in comparison to the General Officer Commanding in Chief (GOC in C) Middle East, who always feared an Arab revolt in his back yard, MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (i.e., the British Foreign Intelligence Service), was a little more open to the rescue of Jews and to Zionist overtures as far as activities planned against the Axis powers were concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divided into several stages and issues, the response of the British – and the neutral Americans until December 1941 – to Hitler's Jewish policies was partially based upon incomplete information on Nazi actions and intentions, supported by different interests and prejudices, to be described as partially inertial and partially political. Churchill alone was the exception when he publicly referred to the mass shootings in the Soviet Union as early as August 24, 1941, without, however, mentioning Jews by name: “Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.” At first, the fear of “masses” of Jewish refugees invading their shores or sensitive areas such as the Middle East dominated British minds, among other things due to the success, in their eyes, of German propaganda beamed into the Arab Middle East from Berlin, from the Fascist Italian radio station at Bari, and later from Vichy France's stations and even from occupied Athens. As far as British executive officials were concerned, their fears were coupled with the vision of a common Zionist–Nazi interest to move Jews out of Europe to Palestine and related to the Nazi threat to their values and their civilization, which was also accompanied by an optimistic evaluation of Western European power and Hitler's own weaknesses once they resorted to fighting him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the forced emigration phase, Jews expelled by Eichmann, many after a period of internment at Dachau and other concentration camps and having been released provided they immediately left German-controlled territory, sought a refuge anywhere. This included Palestine, and they tried to enter that country “illegally” with the help of the Jewish Agency, which at this stage was ready to do its best to support their effort and set aside previous considerations of securing “legal” entry quotas from the British. The British restrictions on emigration to Palestine forced the Zionist parties involved to use “conspiratorial” measures. They camouflaged their activities and sometimes used the services of dubious persons, conditions typically imposed by the British themselves, who then became suspicious of them and the methods of illegal immigration that they themselves forced the Jews to undertake. The Zionists had to hide their immigration operations from British Intelligence agents and try to defy the Imperial networks, which grew enormously after the outbreak of the war and kept many eyes on the half million Jews then living in Palestine. The Jewish Agency was thus engaged in “illegal” emigration as long as the Nazis allowed it, and they turned their attention to the neighboring Arab countries as well, seeking a common denominator with the British in fighting the Germans while at the same time offering their own services to them in order to make themselves useful to the war effort as best they could in order to gain politically and morally from such assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing debate between those who are called “intentionalists” and those called “functionalists” among the scholars who deal with the origins of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” should be mentioned here briefly. In my view, the debate represents two artificially separated aspects of Hitler's motives and actions while missing a most important mixture in him of what he believed to be his political genius and political action in response to the challenge, which he offered to others. This was combined with a sense of victimization and threat, of taking revenge and making his point in spite of and because of others' refusal to respond positively to his shorter-range overtures, plus rationalization mechanisms that legitimized his longer-range aims and basic convictions. What we have here is the multidimensional behavior of a man who was capable of living in several combined spheres: those of his ideology, his political and strategic calculations, and his reaction to his enemies' actions and their reactions for his own actions, which always made them responsible for his own actions against them. His previous successes, fears, and contempt toward his enemies should be added to the adopted and probably fragile perception of himself as a genial phenomenon, the redeemer of his own people and the incarnation of their best traits, previously in a state of decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occupation of Poland added two dimensions to the previous “Jewish politics” of Nazi Germany. More than two million Polish Jews were now under German control, and the war atmosphere allowed atrocities, which upon the German invasion were carried out on a large scale against the Polish elite and Jews. At the outset of World War II, Hitler ordered a full-scale euthanasia program aimed at the murder of tens of thousands of people defined as mentally ill, handicapped, or retarded. In this, the war combined with yet another devaluation of human lives, and experience was gathered in executing mass murder in gas chambers. On September 21, 1939, the chief of the Nazi “Security Police” (Gestapo and Criminal Police) and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, discussed with his aides the Jewish Question as a whole, including the German Jewish issue, the evacuation of Jews into Poland, and a possible evacuation of Polish Jews into Soviet-occupied Poland. Finally, Heydrich issued an express letter to his subordinates in Poland with regard to the shorter-range solution of the Jewish question and longer-range plans. He ordered the concentration of Polish Jews in such a way that they could later be moved as quickly as possible. The final stop for the evacuees was not clearly specified, but it is clear that Heydrich was aiming at a “Reservat,” a specific territory in the eastern part of occupied Poland. This Reservat was planned also to absorb all Jews from Greater Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]