The Joint Distribution Committee: American Imperialists and Israeli Reactionaries Collaborated with the Nazis in Holocaust and against Soviet State

Introduction

By the time of the Soviet victories in the Battle of Stalingrad in late 1942, the Anglo-​American imperialists had opted to support the Nazi Axis as a counter-​weight against the rising Soviet power. Such a contradiction between the Anglo-​American imperialists versus the Soviets also was reflected in the Israeli leadership. Socially based upon the corrupt bureaucrats of the Israeli trade unions, the Kautskyite faction favouring cooperation with the Anglo-​American imperialists was also the one that allied with the Nazis since 1943, assisting them in the anti-​Soviet war drive and even in the Holocaust. By contrast, the pro-​Soviet faction, which held its social base primarily in the Israeli cooperativists and proletarians, continued to wage the struggle against the Nazis and their collaborators. Since their 1943 alliance with the Axis, wherever they gained dominance, the Anglo-​American imperialists promoted the Axis agents onto the high ranks of the state security. The Israel-​Palestine region was no exception. With British colonial assistance, the Nazi Mufti and his SS-​created Jaysh Al-​Jihad Al-​Muqaddas (›Sacred Struggle Army‹) came to dominate the Palestinian territory, whereas the Israeli Nazi-​collaborationists were installed by the Anglo-​American imperialists onto the highest ranks of Israeli state security, despite the strong anti-​Nazi resistance from the pro-​Soviet faction of the Israeli state. The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an American imperialist espionage organization under ›humanitarian‹ cover, served as the primary intelligence channel of cooperation with the treacherous Kautskyite leadership of Israel, and as the main channel for funding the Holocaust and the anti-​Soviet war effort. The purpose of this article is to expose the crimes of the JDC.

1. The Joint Distribution Committee

The employment of ›Non-​Governmental Organizations‹ (NGOs) ostensibly devoted to ›humanitarian relief‹ or ›human rights‹ remains an infamous technique of American and Israeli espionage services. Among such NGOs was the ›American-​Jewish Joint Distribution Committee‹ — variously also called the ›Joint Distribution Committee‹, ›American Joint Distribution Committee‹, ›the Joint‹, ›AJDC‹, ›AJJDC‹, ›JDC‹, etc. Disguised as a ›Jewish human rights‹ organization:

»The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was formed in 1914 to help Palestinian Jews suffering under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.«¹

A report by the European Union’s EHRI noted that the Joint was established upon the initiative of US ambassador Henry Morgenthau:

»The AJDC was founded in the autumn of 1914 in New York when Henry Morgenthau, US ambassador to Turkey, approached Louis Marshall and Jacob H. Schiff with a request for $50,000 in support for the Jews in Palestine, who were suffering from famine.«²

With the assistance of the imperial powers, the ›Jewish Agency‹ in Palestine was founded, serving as the representative regime of the collectivity of Zionist settler-​colonies in Palestine until 1948, the date of Israel’s official founding. In this context however, and for the purpose of simplicity, the term ›Israel‹ will sometimes be used to refer not only to the post-​1948 regime, but also to the ›Jewish Agency‹. Hence, the terms ›Israel‹ and the ›Jewish Agency‹ will be used interchangeably.

Over the years, the American finance capital began to share the British imperialist view that supporting the Zionist movement in the Israel-​Palestine region would allow for an Anglo-​American base wars against the Arab proletarians and the Arab anti-​colonial national bourgeoisie, using the pro-​communist Yiddish citizens of Eastern Europe as cannon-​fodder. To this end, American finance capital invested greatly in the elevation of the US-​backed Zionist settlements. Founded in 1939, Ha-​Mossad Le-​Aliyah Bet was the intelligence branch of Israel’s ›Haganah‹ (›Defense‹) forces and acted as a predecessor to the modern Mossad founded in 1949. The Joint played a critical role in financing and operationally assisting the Mossad:

During the Second World War, the Joint, under Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz worked with Shaul Meyerov (later known as Shaul Avigur), the head of the clandestine ha-​Mossad le-​Aliyah Bet, to smuggle Jews from Europe to Palestine. In 1939, … the Haganah, and the Histadrut, the General Foundation of Jewish Labor, formed the Aliyah Bet (interchangeably called the Mossad) … The Joint raised its funds from American Jews to finance the escape movement. The Joint and the Aliyah Bet worked with the Jewish Agency to establish their main posts in Lisbon, Marseilles, Istanbul, and later in Paris. As early as 1939, Aliyah Bet agents were in contact with Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of »Jewish Affairs« in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange the release of some 1,000 Jews from Austria. In 1944, Saly Mayer, the Joint’s representative in Switzerland, provided funds to »buy« the release of over 1,500 Jews from Bergen-​Belsen concentration camp. Other rescue missions, including that of Raoul Wallenberg, were the results of efforts by the Joint and Aliyah Bet.³

The JDC played a very important role during the Great Patriotic War. The imperialist United States expanded financial support for the JDC via the War Refugee Board (WRB). The pervasive authority of the WRB is corroborated by a post-​war report published by the WRB itself:

»The functions of the Board … included without limitation »the development of plans and programs and the inauguration of effective measures for (a) the rescue, transportation, maintenance and relief of the victims of enemy oppression, and (b) the establishment of havens of temporary refuge for such victims« The Board was directed to enlist through appropriate channels the cooperation and participation of foreign governments and to cooperate with existing international refugee, relief and rescue organizations in the execution of such plans and programs.

The State, Treasury, and War Departments were directed to execute at the request of the Board such parts of the Board’s plans, programs and measures falling within their respective spheres. All agencies and departments were directed to supply or obtain such information, assistance, and facilities as the Board might require in carrying out the provisions of the Order.«⁴

It is worth noting also that US President Roosevelt was reluctant to establish an all-​powerful War Refugee Board for Zionist organizations. As he opposed the establishment of a »Jewish state,« FDR’s views regarding Palestine no doubt clashed with Zionist interests. A few months prior to the establishment of the WRB, in »a memorandum by Colonel Harold B. Hoskins of a conversation he had with the President on September 27, 1943,« it was stated:

»As to a solution of the Palestine problem, the President stated that his own thinking leaned toward a wider use of the idea of trusteeship for Palestine — of making Palestine a real Holy Land for all three religions, with a Jew, a Christian, and a Moslem as the three responsible trustees. He said he realized it might be difficult to get the agreement of the Jews to such a plan but if Moslems and Christians of the world were agreed he hoped the Jews could also be persuaded. This concept to be successful would, he also realized, have to be presented as a solution larger and more inclusive than the establishment of an Arab state or a Jewish state. He realized that this idea of course required further thought and needed to be worked out in greater detail, but at least that was the line along which his mind was running.«⁵

Although the US President Roosevelt was officially responsible for the establishment of the WRB, the President was basically forced to do so as the result of the lobbying campaign of the Jabotinskyite Irgun, which had roots in the Italian Fascists, and the pro-​Irgun officials such as Secretary Morgenthau. Yehuda Bauer, a prominent scholar from the Yad Vashem and a former Mapam activist, remarked:

The president yielded to a combination of public pressure, organized largely by the Emergency Committee of the Irgun and, quite independently, by a small group of non-​Jewish Treasury officials exercising constant pressure on Secretary Morgenthau. On January 22, 1944, Presidential Executive Order No. 9417 established a War Refugee Board to deal with attempts to rescue victims of the Nazis.⁶

The US government, through its War Refugee Board (WRB), backed the projects of the American imperialist intelligence organization, JDC, by issuing licenses that permitted the JDC to, on behalf of the US government, transfer funds abroad. According to a document published by the War Refugee Board itself, the Board’s

»operations were financed and carried out by private American and [Zionist Jewish] Palestinian agencies, under the direction of the Board’s representatives in Ankara. By far the largest number were rescued by the Jewish Agency for Palestine working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.«⁷

From then on, the Joint/​JDC was also covertly funded by the US government’s WRB via »the Intergovernemntal Committee of the Red Cross«:

»In addition, the Board obtained an allocation of $2,000,000 from the President’s Emergency Fund for payment to the Committee as the United States Government’s share of the Committee’s 1944 operational budget. The Committee spent the bulk of these funds … in France, Hungary and Rumania, using the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee as its agent.«⁸

As with everywhere else, the head of the Joint in Europe worked closely with Israel’s regime, known back then as the ›Jewish Agency‹: »The JDC director [Schwartz] added that he was working in close cooperation with the Jewish Agency.«⁹

The relationship between the Joint/​Mossad and American intelligence is confirmed also by a prominent American intelligence official named: »Capt. Jules Koenig, a member of X‑2’s small base in Vienna…«¹⁰ The X‑2 was one of the: »Three branches of OSS…«¹¹

It served as the OSS’s counter-​espionage and liaison activities. According to Koenig, the Joint worked for the Western intelligence services as a liaison and as the financier of the intelligence network in Europe:

»Funded by outside groups, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (commonly called the »Joint« or the JDC), the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the Political Section of the Jewish Agency, and the Aliyah Bet, Jewish agents penetrated the Third Reich both to rescue the refugees and to collect intelligence during the war. These personnel later formed the basis for the Brichah in numerous European countries during 1945 – 46. According to Koenig, »the various British Intelligence Services freely used the emissaries of this section [i.e. the Jewish Agency] for penetration, intelligence and DA [double agent] purposes. The representatives of the AJDC acted as a liaison with the Allied intelligence services and eventually financed this courier-​cum-​intelligence service.«¹²

As confirmed by Uri Bialer, a senior anti-​Soviet official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, this close financial and operational relationship between the Joint and Mossad continued well after the Great Patriotic War:

»This method required a great deal of financing and here, too, the experience acquired during the course of aliyah activities in Eastern Europe prior to May 1948 proved to be useful and significant. The organization of aliyah involved numerous other expenses, notably payment for land and sea transportation and maintenance of the refugees from their departure until their disembarkation in Palestine. Despite efforts to finance these activities independently after the Second World War, the Jewish Agency managed to raise only one-​quarter of the tremendous costs involved; the bulk came from the American Jewish organization known as »the Joint« (the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). The Joint’s support was clandestine, reflecting its ambivalence to Mossad activities: the organization’s leaders were sensitive to the preservation of the Joint’s posture of legality and to the absence of direct links with the Zionist movement. They also felt uncomfortable about contributing to illegal activities which were directly harmful to Britain, America’s ally. Under these circumstances, the Joint’s assistance to the Mossad had to be secret; indeed, it was not defined in any official document. Nevertheless, opponents of aliyah were certainly aware of the Joint’s role. When British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin reviewed the Palestinian problem in parliament early in December 1947, he strongly alleged that illegal immigration into Palestine would not be possible were it not financed by the Jews of America through the Joint. Historical evidence now available entirely supports Bevin’s claim.«¹³

An Israeli journal on military and intelligence affairs confirmed that until long after World War II: »the State of Israel [was] assisted and sometimes funded by the US Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC or ›Joint‹) …«¹⁴

As confirmed by Ya‹akov Kedmi (›Yasha Kedmi‹) — an important leader of the Israeli intelligence front ›Nativ‹, and a prominent Mossad operative — the Joint was, until 1967, responsible for almost all of the financing of the Mossad, the Nativ, as well as Israel’s nuclear program in Dimona: »The Romanians set the price, and we said that Jews have no price and that we would pay for everything. The money [for paying for Jewish migration] came from the JDC, like the financing for Dimona [nuclear project]. Until 1967, the Mossad and ›Nativ‹ were financed by funds provided by the JDC, not by Israeli national funds,« says Yasha Kedmi.¹⁵

In brief, the JDC/​Joint was an American-​Israeli intelligence and special operations organization. The Mossad was a part of Joint. The subordinate character of the Mossad to the American intelligence is demonstrated in the fact that for instance, in: »August 1944, OSS agreed to accept reports from the Jewish Agency, but refused to exchange American intelligence or even acknowledge the Jewish reporting.«¹⁶

Israel, or the ›Jewish Agency in Palestine‹, held a subordinate position vis-​à-​vis the United States, which makes sense because American finance capital obviously had more historical-​material factors under its control than Israel.

2. American Imperialism, the Nazis and Zionists

From December 1941 to December 1942, the Nazi regime pursued a hostile policy towards American imperialism, and hence Israel’s regime, the partner of American intelligence in the Middle East. Only for this one year, solely for this very brief period of time can it be said that the Nazis were genuinely opposed to Israel’s regime. The shift began with the turn of the tide against the Nazi war machine in Stalingrad and the Caucasus in December 1942. As the Axis forces began to gradually retreat, the Anglo-​American imperialists had no other choice than to aid the Axis as a bulwark against the victorious USSR and the Eastern European Peoples‹ Democratic forces. The result would be a historic alliance between the Axis and the Anglo-​American Allied forces documented in all the previous chapters on the Cold War.

Of the covert channels through which American intelligence supplied economic support for the Nazi forces, the most fascinating was the attempt by American intelligence in providing donations and grants to the SS under the cover of supplying ›humanitarian‹ funds for the Ashkenazim and the Sfaradim. The calls for the rescue of the Yiddish people from Nazi extermination were misused by the American imperialist secret service as a means of materially sponsoring the Nazis in the war against the USSR. In exchange for ›rescuing‹ a rather small number of ›biologically valuable‹ Zionist Jews from Nazi-​occupied Europe to move to Palestine, the American secret service and its recruited traitors to the Yiddish people would assist the Nazis in using Yiddish slave labour for the anti-​Soviet war effort, and would — with the approval of the Mossad — ›calm down‹ one million Jews so that they do not resist extermination by the Nazis. These facts will be evidenced in this chapter. Noteworthy is that the Soviet media relentlessly exposed the alliance between the dominant US-​backed faction of Israel’s regime and the Nazis. In a January 1953 article for the Soviet press titled ›Zionist Agents of the American Secret Service‹, a Soviet intelligence analyst wrote:

»In supporting the American imperialists’ policy of launching another world war aimed at establishing U.S. world supremacy, the Zionists are in fact supporting everything that goes with it, in particular, the revival of nazism and the implantation of bloodthirsty fascist regimes imbued with the spirit of race hatred, including anti-​semitism. By supporting this policy and assisting its implementation, the Zionists expose themselves as enemies not only of peace and democracy, but also of the labouring sections of the Jewish people.«¹⁷

The dawn of this Nazi-​Zionist alliance was in December 1942, as documented by Yehuda Bauer. ›Himmler‹, he said, succeeded in: »obtaining Hitler’s agreement in December 1942 to sell Jews for hard currency and, by implication, for real advantages to the Reich.«¹⁸

Some would accuse Bauer of having too much of a ›pro-​Soviet‹ ›bias‹. However, reinforcing the claims of Bauer is Shlomo Aronson, who has been a Brookings Institute scholar, an IDF correspondent, a Ben-​Gurion faction loyalist, a henchman of Moshe Dayan in the Telam Party in Israel, and a very prominent historian of the Holocaust. Aronson corroborated: »Hitler himself had authorized ransoming of »rich Jews« in exchange for »large sums of foreign currency« at the end of 1942.«¹⁹

»It could be speculated that Himmler saw in such exchange deals an opening toward negotiations with the West on a separate peace, capitalizing on Hitler’s limited permission to exchange a few Jews for much money. The requested sum was thus an opening for much more in terms of the very connection thereby created between Himmler and the West using Jews for his genuine political purpose, separate peace, following El Alamein and mainly due to the German defeat at Stalingrad, as argued by several parties involved such as Pomeranz in his postwar memoir and by some scholars ex post facto.«²⁰

Such negotiations in practice were not limited to saving the Yiddish proletarians from annihilation. Make no mistakes! On the surface, that is surely what they appeared as; in practice, they served as the noble mask to a sinister alliance.

The Moshe Dayan henchman Shlomo Aronson wrote about the financing of the Nazi SS via Slovakia. Dieter Wisliceny, the Nazi SS leader who served as a deputy to Adolf Eichmann, played an instrumental role in the negotiations between the SS and the Jewish bourgeois-​nationalist agents of the American intelligence service. The JDC, the Zionist leadership of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, and perhaps even ›more so‹ the Judaic extremist Rabbi Weissmandel all had a role in providing financial aid to the SS: 

»The so-​called ›rescue debate‹ seemed to have found here a solid ground. This was especially true when Rabbi Weissmandel’s view of its chances, Wisliceny’s alleged serious intentions, and Wisliceny’s superiors‹ alleged willingness to negotiate (if the Slovak Rescue Committee at least had something serious to show in terms of money) were shared by other rescue workers, even if with less bitterness and crusade-​like emotions. Some kept repeating that a chance was missed and that rescue in general could have been enhanced if more money had been appropriated by the ›conventional‹ Jewish leadership. In fact, the Zionist leadership and AJDC representatives in Europe invested much thought and energy in regard to the Plan, and in spite of their grave doubts about its origins and purposes, they invested in it the requested advances ... The Plan and its collapse became a combined religious and emotional case personally for Weissmandel, whose accusations were posthumously published by ultraorthodox leaders in order to explain the Holocaust their way as a result of the secularization process among Jews, which led on the one hand to the catastrophe of the European Jews as divine punishment and on the other to the alleged betrayal of Jews at the hands of secular Jews.«²¹

The finances provided to the Nazi military and intelligence bodies were not really ›bribes‹ to have the Nazis end the systematic extermination of the Ashkenazim and the Sfaradim but rather served as a tool through which the American intelligence, using the Jewish bourgeois-​nationalist traitors to the Yiddish people, financially sponsored the mass-​killers of the Ashkenazim and the Sfaradim. This was why, contrary to the assertions of the fascist Rabbi Weissmandel, the deportations of the Yiddish continued to happen for several months after the time they were supposed to ›stop‹ due to the supposed ›bribe‹ deal:

»About 60,000 of the 95,000 Slovak Jews were deported to death camps in Poland until August 1942, when the SD branch (Abschnitt) in Bratislava advised its head office (Leitabschnitt) in Vienna that about 59,000 had been deported, about 8,000 had fled to Hungary, and the lives of the remaining 22,000 had been spared by the Slovak authorities. In fact, the deportations continued for several months afterward and then were finally stopped. Indeed, said the report, the number of Jews had shrunk by 67,000, but it should be noted that most of the deported Jews were »small Jews,« who had few connections, whereas the rich and influential Jews to a large extent remained in the country. This argument entirely refutes Weissmandel’s assumption, and his posthumous allegation, that the Germans were successfully bribed to stop the killings.«²²

The ›secular‹ Kautskyite leaders such as Kastner, the henchman of David Ben-​Gurion, was on board with Rabbi Weissmandel:

»Pomeranz in Istanbul, Schwalb in Geneva, and several members of a Zionist »Rescue Committee« in Budapest, among them Joel Brand and Rezso Kasztner, came to share a similar concept, or at least adopted for various reasons a similar hope, that a deal (or several separate deals) with the Germans was possible. Such deals depended on outside funding or on the delivery of Allied goods. Once Wisliceny appeared in occupied Budapest with a letter of recommendation from Rabbi Weissmandel in Bratislava and was approached by the Hungarian Rescue Committee to renew negotiations he had broken off in August 1943, telling his Slovak counterparts that he might renew them in the future, these rescue advocates sincerely believed or at least argued that such deals should be pursued. Thus, the ensuing Gestapo Deal concerning the ransoming of the Hungarian Jewry might have been born first in their minds, then returned to them by the Germans as a ›real‹ possibility…«²³

Given that the SS did not fulfill its ›promise‹ to stop the deportations of the Yiddish detainees to Auschwitz, the Joint had every reason to cease all financial support for the SS. Saving the Yiddish was no longer an excuse for financing the SS, since the SS sent children of Yiddish background to extermination regardless. And yet, the Joint continued to finance the SS, in manners far more treasonous. Herein comes the Kastner case. In Hungary, the American-​Israeli intelligence was headed by Rezso ›Rudolph‹ Kastner. A US intelligence document listing the members of the Joint. ›In December 1943‹, the document stated, Kastner became the: »JOINT contact in Budapest.« (PERSONS CONNECTED WITH JOINT AGENCY OR AMERICAN JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE »JOINT« IN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA DURING THE WAR AND THROUGH JUNE 1946 AS NOTED IN THE SYMPHONY FILE, CIA, February 1950, p. 5) 

A report by the SSU — a US intelligence agency and an immediate predecessor of the CIA in the postwar years — confirmed that Kastner was indeed the leader of the Joint in Budapest since November 1943: »Samuel SPRINGMAN was leader of the JOINT in Budapest until November 1943. In December 1944 he, and his wife left for Palestine and transmitted his duties to KASTNER (alias Dr. KRASZNER) who worked together with Joel BRANDT.«²⁴

Kastner was also one of the: »members of the Jewish Agency…«²⁵ The top-​ranking SS leader in Hungary Kurt Becher listed Rudolf Kastner as one of the: »leading personalities of the Jewish agency and the Joint Distribution Committee…«²⁶ Becher also listed Kastner as the representative of the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee in Hungary, as well as the President of the Zionist Organization of Hungary:

»Shortly after I arrived in Budapest, I began negotiations with … the President of the Zionist Organization of Hungary, who was at the same time the representative of the Jewish Agency and the Joint D. C., Dr. Rudolf Kasztner…«²⁷

Dieter Wisliceny, another high-​level Nazi official and friend of Eichmann, confirmed that: »Dr. Rudolph Kastner [belonged to] the Joint Distribution Committee…«²⁸ Much has been revealed about Kastner by Adolf Eichmann’s memoirs. Under Eichmann, the camps in Hungary were set up for the aim of: »deportations to Auschwitz…«²⁹

As the official representative of Israel, and as the number one American-​Israeli intelligence operative in wartime Hungary, Kastner also served as the kapo-​in-​chief, helping the Nazis in the pacification of the Jews in deportation camps:

»This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-​cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation — and even keep order in the camps — if I … let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 to 20,000 Jews — in the end there may have been more — was not too high for me.

Except perhaps for the first few sessions, Kastner never came to me fearful of the Gestapo strong man. We negotiated entirely as equals. People forget that. We … trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though he were in a coffee house. While we talked he would smoke on earomatic cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a little silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.

Dr. Kastner’s main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. (…). As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of this immensely idealistic Zionist leader [i.e. Kastner]. As I told Kastner: ›We, too, are idealists and we, too, had to sacrifice our own blooc before we came to power.‹

Kastner would sacrifice a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his goal. He was not interested in old Jews who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood, that is, human material that was capable of reproduction and hard work. ›You can have the others,‹ he would say, ›but let me have this group here.‹ And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape. After all, I was not connected with small groups of a thousand or so Jews.«³⁰

In other words, the American-​Israeli intelligence official Kastner assisted the Germans in the extermination of approximately one million Ashkenazim and Sfaradim, in exchange for the ›biologically valuable‹ among them who could become cannon-​fodder for the aggressive Zionist anti-​Arab wars in the Israel-​Palestine region. Years later, the Kastner Case came up and the Mossad operative Kastner was, not at all incorrectly, accused of having helped the Nazis murder one million Jews. A CIA memorandum stated:

»Dr. Rudolf KASTNER’s wartime activities were rather thoroughly, though not entirely, exposed at a court trial in Tel Aviv. Kastner had initiated a libel case against a fellow Israeli who had accused him of making a deal with Eichmann in Hungary which resulted in the death of a million Jews.«³¹

People have to understand that many elderly Ashkenazim and Sfaradim were ideologically not favorable towards Zionism, not necessarily because they felt sympathies for the Arab nation, but because they found giving up their homes in Eastern Europe and farming in kibbutzim in Palestine ridiculous. Furthermore, they could not be very useful for the Ben-​Gurion regime even if they were sympathizers, since they were old. A significant number of them were not specialists. Had they traveled to Israel, the Ben-​Gurion regime would have had to pay heavy costs to provide a pension plan for people who were not even going to work. As such, as migrants to Israel, even if they were true believers in Zionism, they would have de facto operated more like an anti-​Zionist weapon of mass migration, creating costs for the Zionist ›welfare‹ state, and hence undermining Zionism rather than serving it. It follows that the Mossad could not care about their lives, and was willing to sell them for cheap in exchange for more Nazi cooperation with the Mossad against USSR, and in exchange for younger, ›more useful‹ Jews. Indeed, these relatively few Jews whom Kastner or other Joint officials selected would then be covertly transported to Zionist areas in Palestine:

»This is how most of the illegal emigrations were arranged: a group of special Jews was taken into custody and brought together in a place designated by Kastner and his men, where they were put under SS guard to keep them from harm. After the Jewish political organizations arranged transportation out of the country, I instructed the border police to let their transports pass unhindered. They traveled generally by night. That was the »gentleman’s agreement« I had with Kastner.

After leaving Hungary, the Jews could then travel through neutral foreign countries or stay hidden, usually in Rumania, until the necessary steamships arrived to take them on board. When they reached Israel, the ships waited off shore until a few courageous Jews helped the passengers land against the orders of the British mandate authorities. (…). All these minor shipments — a matter of 700 here, 2,000 there, and so forth — were made with Himmler’s permission. I would never have dared dance to my own waltz. If I demanded rigid obedience from my own subordinates, I had to be just as rigid in carrying out my superiors‹ orders. Otherwise I would have been a bad SS commander, and I pride myself on having been a good one.«³²

Kastner also negotiated with Kurt Becher in order to release his own ›biologically useful‹ family:

»At the same time Kastner was bargaining with another SS official, a Lieut. Col. Becher. Becher was bartering Jews for foreign exchange and material on direct orders from Himmler. (…). There were other agencies, German and Hungarian, which tapped Kastner for foreign exchange in return for Jews, but I held aloof from all money affairs and left the material transactions to Becher.

Men under Becher’s command guarded a special group of 700 Jews whom Kastner had requested from a list. They were mostly young people, although the group also included Kastner’s entire family. I did not care if Kastner took his relatives along; he could take them wherever he wanted to.«³³

As the Soviet Red Army forces were advancing against the Axis forces, Kastner, the representative of Israeli intelligence and regime, provided Jewish slave labour for the Nazi war effort against the Soviets:

»With the Russian advance westwards, conditions in Hungary became more and more chaotic. After the deportations stopped, I was called upon forcibly to deport 10,000 ethnic Germans before the Russians overran their homeland in eastern Hungary. When I returned to Budapest the situation was tense. My old friend and comrade, General Zehender, commander of the 22nd SS Cavalry division which we had hoped to motorize, was defending Budapest as the Russians drew nearer. Then his artillery ran out of shells. Zehender’s position was near a street-​car station on the east side of the city, but his ammunition depot was several kilometers beyond the last streetcar stop to the west. He told me in despair that the Russians were about to attack his division and he had no ammunition for his hundred guns.

I proposed a living chain of Jews to carry shells from the depot and load them on streetcars at the west and station. The streetcars could carry them through the center of Budapest to the eastern end of the line where his own units could move them to the front line. My idea worked. I told Kastner the plan and he furnished the necessary number of Jews. We made a living chain of them, six or eight kilometers long to carry the shells from the depot to the station. Then dozens of streetcars, one after the other, sped across Budapest to meet Zehender’s men in the east. The guns blazed away.«³⁴

In mid-​1944, Eichmann began: »following the second basic order of Reichsfuhrer Himmler: to arrange if possible for a million Jews to go free in exchange for 10,000 winterized trucks, with trailers, which we needed to use against the Russians on the Eastern Front.«³⁵ Himmler’s gang needed America and Israel to supply the SS with trucks in order to motorize their divisions:

»I do remember Himmler’s specifically saying to me, ›Eichmann, motorize the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions‹.

This indicated the personal concern of Himmler, as head of the »replacement army,« in receiving those trucks. They were far more important than the lives of individual Jews. What did he care about a million Jews? His concern was his division. He apparently did not want to motorize these two divisions but rather to equip them as a sort of fast-​moving task force.«³⁶

Dieter Wisliceny, the top-​ranking Nazi SS official and friend of Eichmann, remarked:

»While detailed preparations were being made and actions taken to prepare all Hungarian Jews for evacuation, Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Joint Distribution Committee gave me 3,000,000 pengoe [i.e. Hungarian currency] for Eichmann to induce him to grant a first interview on the Jewish question. This money was carefully counted and taken over by Geschke’s treasurer. About 8 or 10 April, a meeting was arranged at the Hotel Majestic in Eichmann’s office between Dr. Kastner, Mr. Brand another representative of the Committee, and Eichmann. There followed a series of conversations in which Eichmann was implored to leave Hungarian Jews alone upon an offer to pay any amount to stop further action. Eichmann reported the situation to Himmler who sent Standartenfuehrer Becher to continue negotiations in Budapest.«³⁷

The Nazis would use the vehicles exclusively for fighting the Soviet Red Army, and not the Anglo-Americans:

»Only Heinrich Himmler could turn off the liquidation machine. It was after the July 20th assassination attempt on Hilter, when Reichsfuhrer Himmler had taken over as commander of the Replacement Army and Minister of the Interior, that he authorized me to propose an exchange: one million Jews for 10,000 trucks and trailers, equipped for winter. The world Jewish organization could choose for itself what Jews it wanted to save. We asked only that they get us 10,000 trucks. Thanks to Himmler’s directive, I could assure them, on my word of honor, that these trucks would be used only on the Eastern front. As I said at the time, ›When the 10,000 trucks with trailers are here, then the liquidation machine in Auschwitz will be stopped.‹«³⁸

Indeed, American-​Israeli intelligence began the shipment of tractors to the SS. Kastner was not one of the rogue elements in the American-​Israeli intelligence. Kastner’s ideas were backed by his superiors in the American-​Israeli intelligence service in Europe. All of these facts are confirmed by the memoirs and work of Dr. Isaac Lewin — the member and Israeli representative of the Zionist ›Agudath Israel‹ movement in the United Nations and member of the UN Human Rights Commission — who was involved in the American-​Israeli funding of the SS with vehicles during the War. As an official in the Agudas Israel, Isaac Lewin describes the operations by: »Jacob Rosenheim, president of the ›Agudas Israel‹ World Organization.«³⁹ HIJEFS, Lewin said, was:

»a committee established in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1941 for the purpose of helping students of rabbinical academies in Poland and Lithuania who had escaped to Shanghai. The name is an abbreviation of »Hilfsverein fur jtidische Fltichtlinge in Shanghai.« Its founders were Isaac and Recha Sternbuch. The committee extended its activities and became the counterpart of the »Vaad Hatzala« in New York.«⁴⁰

Thus, ›Isaac Sternbuch‹, said a report by the executive director of the War Refugee Board, was the: »Swiss representative of the American Vaad Hahatzala Emergency Committee…«⁴¹ Vaad Hahatzala and HIJEFS were therefore practically different wings of the same organization. The latter was located in Europe, whereas the former was in New York. Lewin noted that a:

»convoy [containing the Yiddish] which was to be sent to a neutral country as a sign of the [Nazi] murderers’ ›good will,‹ after a lengthy journey from Klausenburg via Budapest and Bergen Belsen, eventually (on August 21, 1944) reached … the Swiss border. Thus 318 persons were saved…«

According to information from Sternbuch neither he nor his »Hijefs« organization had initiated this convoy. But the final act should be credited to them. To this very day it has been a mystery why Eichmann and his gang eventually released this convoy. Can it be assumed that this was gratuitous? In Eichmann’s first meeting with Brand he distinctly told him: »Ware fur Blut? Blut fur Ware« (Merchandise for blood? blood for merchandise). For the [life] of 318 Jews something had to be given. But what was given and who gave it?⁴²

Based on documents from Sternbuch, Lewin found that indeed vehicles were being sent to the Nazis as part of the effort to assist the motorization of the SS Cavalry, in exchange for the release of the 318 Ashkenazis:

»Sternbuch has transmitted to us original documents according to which his committee had sent to Budapest a letter of credit for a certain number of tractors. On July 5, 1944 Intercommerz Aktirngesellschaft in Zurich, Talstrasse 15, notified Simon Ascher in Bex that an order for thirty tractors had come from Budapest with the advice that the letter of credit in free currency was to be delivered by Ascher who collaborated with Sternbuch. Immediately feverish negotiations were started. The price was 519,000 Swiss francs.«

The orthodox representative in Budapest, Philip von Freudiger, cabled on July 7 to Sternbuch:

»Communicate urgently with Intercommerz Zurich Talstrasse 15 concerning credits for 30 Willy [Wisliceny] tractors exportable 17,300 francs each according to offer of 15 June payable to Buchs Budapest on presenting documents.«

Sternbuch of course immediately solicited the money and obtained consent to send the letter of credit in free currency. At that time the convoy was to be sent to Spain. Freudiger cabled Sternbuch on July 20:

»Settle immediately in agreement with Rosenheim the ordered tractors for final settlement of the Spanish compensation depends on it. Failure of tractor delivery endanger entire solution. Don’t delay to cable start of delivery.«

Sternbuch replied on July 23: »Rosenheim’s announcement temporarily dispatching 400 kilograms wool (Zell wolle) received. Opening on Monday letter of credit for ten tractors.«

The expression »400 kg. Zellwolle« was an agreed-​upon sign. It meant that Rosenheim (i.e. America) placed at »Hijefs« disposal 400,000 Swiss francs. The letter of credit in the Zurich firm was effected, although only for the initial ten tractors.

In the light of these telegrams it becomes clear why the group of 318 persons was eventually sent from Bergen-​Belsen (not to Spain but to Switzerland). Apparently Freudiger was able to prove that such a letter of credit was in Zurich; therefore Eichmann’s devilish principle »Ware fur Blut ? Blut fur Ware« had been satisfied.⁴³ Thus:

On August 26, Sternbuch cabled to Bratislava (because communication with Budapest had been temporarily interrupted): »First dispatch of 320 arrived…« On August 25 Sternbuch cabled us via the Polish Legation in Bern: »320 persons arrived by train to Basel. Among them many personalities and Rabbis. Other transports are said to be on the way, with them probably also Satmarer will come.« On September 26 Sternbuch cabled us via the Polish Legation about an action connected with the second group of this convoy:

»Recently we deposited 260,000 Swiss fr. in the Swiss Bank for the Gestapo trusties in Budapest. It’s a great pity we were not allowed to do it two months ago for we deposited on our own 170,000, saving in this way 320 persons. The merchandise and the money remained in Switzerland and probably will not be sent.«

These cables explain the puzzle connected with the rescue of the first convoy from Bergen-​Belsen. The letter of credit in the amount of 170,000 Sw. fr. for the shipment of ten tractors deposited by »Hijefs« at the end of July 1944 saved the first part of the convoy. Sternbuch, thanks to his contact with us via the Polish Legation in Bern and the Embassy in Washington, continued to work. The second much larger part of the convoy was also saved when the sum of 5 million Sw. fr. was deposited by »Joint« or McLelland from the American Legation in Bern as a down payment towards the 20 million Sw. fr. agreed upon. The second train from Bergen-​Belsen arrived in Switzerland on December 8, 1944. Among those rescued was Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum of Satmar, one of the greatest »Tzadiks« of the present time, who now lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, N.Y.⁴⁴

After the arrival of those trains, a new series of negotiations began a few days later. In these negotiations, documented by USA’s War Refugee Board, the US Treasury Department issued a license to Joint allowing the latter to loan $1,000,000 to Sternbuch’s network which in turn would transfer that money covertly to the SS in early March 1945:

»A second series of meetings between high Nazi circles and a Swiss citizen for the release of Jewish deportees came to the attention of the Board in December 1944. The negotiations were conducted in Germany by Jean-​Marie Musy, a former Swiss Federal Counselor acting as a private citizen, with Himmler and other high S.S. officers. Whatever his motives, Musy, who claimed to be an old personal friend of Himmler, succeeded in obtaining the release to Switzerland of 1200 Jews from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in early February 1945. Shortly before the arrival of these refugees in Switzerland, Musy had approached Isaac Sternbuch, Swiss representative of the American Vaad Hahatzala Emergency Committee, whom Musy had kept advised of his dealings with the Nazis, for a payment of one million dollars. Sternbuch cabled his organization in the United States urging that this sum be transferred to Switzerland at once stating that the German release of additional convoys of Jews depended upon the receipt of this sum by Musy. The Vaad Hahatzala Emergency Committee, after having arranged to borrow the million dollars from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, immediately requested the Board to recommend that the United States Treasury issue the necessary license permitting the transfer as specified by Sternbuch. A special meeting of the members of the Board was called to consider the matter. The Board unanimously decided that under no circumstances would it authorize the payment of ransom which might result from payment of the sum to Musy. However, since the mere presence of the money in Switzerland might serve to continue the negotiations, the Board agreed to recommend that the Treasury issue a license permitting the Vaad Hahatzala to transfer the sum to a joint account in the names of Sternbuch and the Board’s representative in Bern, Roswell D. McClelland, and providing that no payments be permitted from the account except as authorized by the Board. The Treasury issued such a license and the transfer was made in early March 1945. The fund was kept, intact for the remainder of the war except for a small payment authorized for relief supplies and the maintenance of refugees. The unexpected balance of this fund was returned after hostilities ceased to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.«⁴⁵

Again, these funds to the SS were used exlusively for fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front. In 1945, just as the Anglo-​American forces and the Red Army were marching towards Germany’s heartland, Himmler ordered Eichmann’s gang not to shoot at the Anglo-Americans:

»In the middle of our move an orderly arrived from Kaltenbruner with a directive from Reichsfuhrer Himmler ordering us not to shoot at Americans or Englishmen. I countersigned it and … I conveyed this order to the men.«⁴⁶

The rescue of the refugees could happen through using funds for financing a network of agents that both sabotage the Nazi war effort and provide illegal channels for allowing the escape of the refugees; funding the Nazi SS as a whole, not some rogue officials of the SS, and assisting it in the anti-​Soviet war effort was no positive contribution to the liberation of the Yiddish inmates. Had the US intelligence and the Jewish bourgeois-​nationalist agents been serious about rescuing the Yiddish inmates, the US intelligence would not have funded the Nazis and directly assisted the anti-​Soviet war effort. As in the case of the funding of the SS via Slovakia, there is very little evidence to suggest that funds provided to the Nazis were agreed upon to be in exchange for the release of more than a thousand Ashkenazi or Sfaradi inmates. Rather, they constituted the use of the Nazis‹ so-​called ›good will‹ gestures — such as the alleged release of 1,200 refugees — as an excuse to fund the Nazis. And for the record, the Soviets opposed the transfer of such funds to Nazi Germany. Another US diplomatic document, while providing details on the funds to Nazi Germany, admitted that such funds were provided without the authorization of their wartime ›ally‹ the Soviet Union:

»On February 7, 1945, 1,200 refugees arrived in Switzerland from Germany. Their release was arranged by Musy, a former Federal Councilor of Switzerland, who had made a number of trips to Germany at the instigation of Sternbuch, the representative in Switzerland of the Vaad Hahatzala Emergency Committee of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. Musy returned to Switzerland in advance of the refugees announcing that he had secured their release by direct negotiation with Himmler, whom he had seen on his previous trips to Germany. He stated that additional groups of refugees would arrive weekly in Switzerland dependent upon German transportation facilities. He advised Sternbuch that he would require a deposit of 5,000,000 Swiss francs in his (Musy’s) name in the Swiss National Bank immediately after the arrival of the 1,200. This money he suggested might later be paid over by the Germans to the International Committee of the Red Cross as a further gesture of good faith.

The Rabbis are now pressing the War Refugee Board and the Treasury Department for a license to transmit 4,000,000 Swiss francs to Switzerland to be paid to Musy. They have on deposit in Switzerland 1,000,000 Swiss francs under a previous license. The Department has been asked by Brigadier General O’Dwyer, Executive Director of the War Refugee Board, if it will approve the transaction. He has advised the Rabbis that he will issue the license if the Department agrees.

There are two other negotiations of this character in process. One, originating in a ransom proposal last June, has been shifted by Saly Mayer, the Swiss negotiator and a responsible person, to a proposal that in return for a German promise to cease exterminations, relief supplies might be furnished to feed surviving Jews in concentration camps. Mayer has conducted these negotiations with the Germans since August 1944. Early in January 1945 he requested the deposit of 20,000,000 Swiss francs in Switzerland in order to maintain his position in the negotiations. The Board and the Department authorized the transmission of these funds to a joint account in the names of Saly Mayer and McClelland, the representative of the War Refugee Board at Bern, with the stipulation that no commitment or payment be made without express authority from this Government. The transfer of these funds was reported to the British and Soviet Governments. An earlier report on these negotiations brought a reply from the Soviet Government that they were neither feasible nor permissible.«⁴⁷

Describing Himmler in the final days of the Third Reich, Eichmann remarked:

»I made my last report to Himmler less than a month before the final surrender of Germany. The Reichsfuhrer had been for some time negotiating with Count Bernadotte about the Jews. He wanted to make sure that at least 100 of the most prominent Jews we could lay our hands on would be held in a safe place. Thus he hoped to strengthen our hand, for almost to the end Himmler was optimistic about making separate peace terms. ›We’ll get a better treaty than the ones at Huburtusburg,‹ he said to me, slapping his thighs. We’ll lose a few feathers, but it will be a better one.‹ It was then mid-​April 1945.«⁴⁸

3. The Kastner Case

Years later, when the Kastner Case came about, Kastner was believed to be about to give confessions regarding the Mossad’s sponsorship of the Nazi Germans in Hungary. Just when he was believed to be about to give confessions regarding the Mossad’s role in killing the Jews, he was assassinated:

»The trial became a cause celebre among the parties in opposition to Ben Gurion. Kastner was faring very badly against the attacks of the defense lawyers and is reported to have been on the verge of divulging sensational revelations when he was cruelly murdered in front of his apartment in Tel Aviv. The opposition accused the government of murdering him to prevent a revelation of the true facts; the government in turn accused the terrorist groups of having slaughtered Kastner for political reasons.«⁴⁹

The criminals who murdered Kastner belonged to an infamous terrorist organization known as the ›Kingdom of Israel‹ (Hebrew: Malchut Yisrael): »In 1957, Kasztner was murdered by a far-​right group, Malchut Yisrael …«⁵⁰

Note that the trials were happening in the mid-​1950s. A few years prior, in February 1953, the ›Kingdom of Israel‹ terror group had launched a terrorist attack against the Soviet Embassy in Tel Aviv. Although the Israeli regime paid lip service against the terrorist attack and the ›Kingdom of Israel‹ terrorists were sentenced to up to 12 years, their sentences were commuted by the Ben-​Gurion gang and they were quickly released (see The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies C16S6). As such, they had the support of the Ben-​Gurion group. Furthermore, with the knowledge of Shin Bet, Israel’s counter-​intelligence and internal security service, Kastner was targeted for assassination and the person who murdered Kastner was a Shin Bet operative:

»Declassified: Shin Bet knew Israel Kastner was targeted [Just-​released 1956 cabinet minutes on his assassination]…could strengthen the conjecture of some that the Shin Bet security service was involved in the murder of Kastner.

The minutes raise difficult questions…[GSS head Isser]. Harel told the cabinet that the intelligence services knew of the plan to kill Kastner and had arrested eight people who were ›among potential terrorists.‹ One of them, who was convicted of the murder and imprisoned, was Eckstein. Harel told the cabinet that Eckstein had taken part in a 1955 plan to assassinate Kastner that did not go forward.… Kastner was given a bodyguard by the Shin Bet, who ›for some reason was pulled off a few days before the murder,‹ Katzir said, adding that this fact encouraged those who believed in a conspiracy theory involving the Shin Bet.

And a related, even more explosive question is whether the organization itself was involved with various conspiracy theories promulgated over the years. To understand them, it must be recalled that Eckstein, the assassin, worked as an informant for the Shin Bet before the murder.

Harel told the cabinet, according to the minutes, that ties with Eckstein were cut off before the murder…[According to Eckstein]…in his recent book Smichat Tla’im (›Quilt Blanket‹) (Carmel Publishing House, 2014):

»Little by little, without feeling how the change was taking place in my thoughts, in my opinions — and finally in my desires as well — the understanding grew stronger in me that when I spy and inform for ›ours‹ against ›them,‹ I am lying in my soul,« Eckstein wrote. He described how he became entranced with the underground against whom he was sent to spy. »They knew they were surrounded by agents and provocateurs, and I understood that if I wanted to be part of them, I had to bring them a suitable ›dowry‹ and thus — woe is me — I became the servant of two masters.«

…Harel told the ministers that the reason Eckstein was not tried was a lack of evidence, and because the justice minister feared people would say he was a provocateur.

…Eckstein, in his book, alludes to another person’s involvement in the murder. ›Another shot thundered at the very instant of my third shot, followed by agonizing cries. Apparently someone was there, in any event, carried out confirmation of the kill and, as a true professional, did not miss even in the dark.‹

Kastner’s daughter told a similar story…of another person who was involved in the shooting. That person was never arrested.

›My father got out of the car. Eckstein tried to shoot him and it didn’t work. My father fled, ran into the building, but somebody prevented him from going in. He ran out again, and took a bullet in the back,‹ Suzi Kastner says, recalling her father’s words…Suzi Kastner says she believes the mysterious other man, who confirmed the kill, was a Shin Bet agent, and that a senior Shin Bet official was behind the murder, to take revenge on Kastner for not saving his family in the Holocaust.

…Did [Police Minister Shalom] Sheetrit doubt that Eckstein and his accomplices, Dan Shemer and Yosef Menkes, were the actual murderers, and raise the possibility that the Shin Bet had assassinated Kastner?«⁵¹

Through this process, Kastner was duly eliminated and was not able to give confessions regarding the tinier details of the Mossad support for Hitler gang. At the time of his death, Kastner was a government official in the Ben-​Gurion cabinet.

4. Michael Weichert and the the US-​Effort to fund the Nazis in the War Effort against the Soviets

The Nazi SS also founded a fake ›humanitarian‹ group ostensibly to ›save the Jews‹ when in fact it was for the purpose of allowing the JDC, the Jewish bourgeois-​nationalist arm of the US intelligence, to fund the Nazis in the war effort against the Soviets. The fake ›humanitarian‹ group ostensibly meant to ›save the Jews‹, was headed by a JDC operative and prominent Gestapo-​collaborationist Michael Weichert. The operations of this fake humanitarian group were until 1941, when the JDC agents of US intelligence were still allied to the Nazis, and was renewed in 1943, shortly after the Battle of Stalingrad when the American intelligence renewed its alliance with the Nazis. In a letter describing the JUS, Weichert confirmed that its establishment was due to authorization by ›the Superior SS‹ and the ›Police Chiefs in the General Government‹:

»The Jewish Relief Agency for the General Government ›JUS‹ renewed, at the end of April, its activities by the authorization of the Superior SS and Police Chiefs in the General Government under the supervision of the General Government’s Administration, main department of Internal Administration, section of Population and Welfare. The authorities assigned to it the building at No 2a Jozefinska where offices, drug distribution service and stores have been.

The main purpose of ›JUS‹ consists in distributing to Jewish labour camps, to districts inhabited by Jews and factories where Jews are employed, drugs, food as well as clothes and linen received as gift packages from abroad or obtained through exchange or by supplementary purchase.«⁵²

Lucy S. Dawidowicz, a WWII-​era JDC operative, confirmed that Weichert was a JDC agent and had been funded by the JDC well until 1941:

»All through German-​occupied Poland ZSS branches came into being, many already operating spontaneously as skeletons of the prewar service agencies. Within a year, the ZSS had 118 branches, in large cities. By the beginning of 1942, it had 412 branches. ZSS personnel was recruited from the recognized social-​service agencies and other communal institutions. Its founder and head was Michal Weichert (1890 – 1967), a man of many talents, trained in law, the theater, and literature. A teacher in a Jewish gymnasium in Warsaw, he served as legal adviser to the JDC and ORT, and enjoyed a career as journalist, actor, and director before the war. In mid-​1942 the Germans dissolved the ZSS, but later reconstituted it as the Judische Unterstützungsstelle (JUS; Jewish Relief Office). Technically still under the Interior Department’s jurisdiction, JUS in fact fell under SS control. The Jewish underground thereafter regarded JUS in the same light as the Judenräte. (After the war, Weichert was tried in Poland on charges of collaboration, but was exonerated. He spent the last years of his life in Israel.)

ZSS’s basic strategy was to rescue what could be rescued. (…). ZSS funding came largely from the JDC, which spent about $1 million a year in Poland until America’s entry into the war, on December 7, 1941, halted the legal transfer of funds. Some moneys were obtained by voluntary donations, fund-​raising drives, theater and concert benefits. (…). ZSS funding came also from the Judenräte, some of which subcontracted part or most of their welfare programs to the ZSS.«⁵³

Concerning the case of the collaborationism of Weichert with the Nazi Germans, Yitzhak Zuckerman, the commander who betrayed the Jewish Fighting Organization and served as an apologist and supporter of Weichert, wrote:

»Now the episode of Michael Weichert. He was one of the greatest theatrical talents of Polish Jewry. Professionally he was a lawyer. As I recall, he cooperated with the Germans during World War I; but that was a totally different and positive cooperation. In any case, he had close contacts with them. He was a devoté of German culture, the representative of the Jewish Social Self-​Help (YISA), and later the Yidisher hilfs komitet (YHK, whose initials were also YSS, but the Germans ordered the name changed because of the »SS«). That was an umbrella organization of welfare operations. I never heard anything good about Weichert, but that’s not to censure him. I heard that he wasn’t an easy or a friendly person; but that doesn’t say anything against Weichert either.

The Weichert incident began after we picked up on the intensive social activity he was carrying out in 1943, after the Uprising. We realized that just when the Germans were taking the Jews of Warsaw, the Jews of Poland, even the Jews of Krakow, to death, Weichert, following orders from the Germans, formed JUS (Jüdische Unterstützungstelle) to replace the YHK. At the same time that the Germans were executing Jews, they assigned him to summon the Jewish world abroad to send material aid: medicine, food, and so forth. And the simple question arose of what was the purpose of these letters of appeal sent by a well-​known figure of the prewar era, and during the war as well, a man who led welfare operations and represented the Jews vis-​å-​vis the German institutions?

His letters abroad, sent in those very months of bloodshed and mass murder, created the impression abroad that this money was needed for the hungry. True, Jews were dying of starvation, in 1941 – 1942 and in 1943; but in 1944, that was no longer the problem. The difference between him and Ringelblum, and even between him and Kirshenbaum, was that those Jews did everything to alarm the world to the fact that the Germans were killing us—simple murder! Whereas Weichert requested material aid in his letters; and, if material aid was requested, it was requested for live Jews! So we suspected this activity as a first class deceit. This assessment didn’t come only from Jewish sources, we heard it from Polish sources too, for example, the Polish Committee for Welfare in Warsaw (RGO), a few of whose members cooperated with us in ZEGOTA; one of these was Marek Arczyfiski, the democrats‹ representative. (He was in Israel a few years ago and we entertained him.) Everyone felt that Weichert was a traitor, that he was doing the work of the Germans.

Weichert was the only Jew who didn’t wear the Magen-​David armband. He lived in his own house on the Aryan side, when there were no more Jews in Krakow. The remnants of Krakow Jewry were gathered in the Plaszow concentration camp, whereas he lived in Krakow under German protection and ran their errands. He received several shipments of food from abroad. When we learned that, we did two things: we wrote to London condemning the letters published in his name — in order to expose Weichert and proclaim that he was not the representative of the Jews; the second thing was to send Marek Arczyfiski to Weichert to persuade him to give up that disgraceful work and to suggest he go underground. We were willing to accept responsibility for his safety under the circumstances. At that time it didn’t occur to us to issue a death sentence against him. We thought we would hide him in Krakow or someplace else and support him, although I’m sure he didn’t need our money. We said we would provide an Aryan document for him; but he rejected our proposals. (We had a branch of self-​help in Krakow led by Marianska, who is now head of Yad Vashem in Tel Aviv.) 

When changes occurred in the status of the Plaszow concentration camp, Weichert announced he was willing to accept our offer; but when he realized that his position with the Germans was as firm as it had been, he again avoided accepting our judgment. He had two ›forced‹ assistants, Dr. Eliahu Tish and Dr. Haim Hilfstein, in the Plaszow camp. Weichert, as I said, was the only person in Krakow who operated freely. Those two were well-​known public figures, honest men, members of Et Livnot (the right-​wing faction of the General Zionists). But we couldn’t say anything to Tish and Hilfstein since they were both prisoners in the camp. Not Weichert. Ultimately, he disappeared.

There were meetings and discussions that resulted in a death sentence against him. He survived only because of our weakness.«⁵⁴

After the war, in Poland, the trial of Weichert began. Zuckerman then goes on to explain in his memoirs that since the start, he opposed the trial of Weichert because the trial against that Nazi-​collaborationist would have involved the execution of a Jew, whereas the Gestapo agent Weichert tried to promote Zuckerman as a hero. During the days of Weichert’s trial in Poland, Zuckerman was living in a luxurious apartment provided to him by the infamous Gestapo spy Spychalski, who was a close friend of Zuckerman. The judge that was supposed to purge Weichert in Poland was murdered, and Weichert was released and went to Israel. In Israel too, Weichert was judged as ›innocent‹. These facts about Weichert are all mentioned in the Zuckerman memoirs. In the memoirs, Zuckerman also provides an excuse for not having killed off the Gestapo spy Weichert; if the story which Zuckerman provided was true, then perhaps the rebels under Zuckerman’s influence were unable to kill Weichert, but there are reasons to, in the first place, doubt the story about the difficult conditions which Zuckerman’s team faced in killing off that Nazi agent. Zuckerman was a traitor to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1942 – 1943, and had been a rival of the Hashomer Hatzair martyr, General Mordechai Anielewicz. Once the Nazis exterminated Anielewicz, Zuckerman was catapulted into leadership but managed to never be hit by the Nazis. More details on the Hashomer Hatzair and Mordechai Anielewicz will provided later.

Jaroslaw Andrzej Piekałkiewicz, a commander affiliated with the London Poles and the Home Army (AK), wrote that Michael Weichert was an agent of the Nazis and that since 1943, by the time of which the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was continuing, the JDC continued to fund the JUS even in spite of the warnings issued to the JDC by Warsaw’s Yiddish rebels. The JDC leaders knew very well that only a small part of the medical and food aid sent by the JDC to the JUS went for the Yiddish inmates, who were already being directly murdered rather than being starved to death, and that anywhere between 80 percent to 90 percent of the aid was actually going to the SS:

»Another very harmful operation was run by Dr. Michal Weichert, a Jew, in cooperation with the Germans. The Germans permitted a Jewish welfare organization to function in the GG, the Jüdische Unterstützungsstelle (JUS), headed by Weichert, to appeal for help from international Jewry. Weichert first operated from Warsaw, but then transferred his office to Kraköw, where he lived in his own house outside the Kraköw Ghetto, moved freely around the city, and was not required to wear the Star of David armband. He wrote letters to international Jewish Organizations claiming that Jews were not being exterminated, but only interned in work camps. His efforts led to shipments of food and medicines being sent from Switzerland through the International Red Cross for distribution to Jews in need. It is calculated that only about 10 percent of all these shipments reached their Jewish recipients in the camps — the rest was robbed by Germans, with the full knowledge and collaboration of Weichert. The letters and shipments continued even after most of the Jews, including those in the labor camps, had been exterminated. International Jewish organizations chose to believe Weichert, who had been highly respected before the war, rather than the information provided on the Holocaust by the Underground State, the ZKN (Jewish National Committee), and the Bund through the Polish Government-​in-​Exile.«⁵⁵

»Tragically, the constant stream of information about the murder of Jews provided by the Polish Underground State to the Polish Government-​in-​Exile, which it turn passed it on to the Allied governments and to the Western media was not believed. It was often viewed as exaggerated propaganda stemming from Poles deep hatred of the Germans. Even the desperate appeals from Polish Jewish underground organizations, which confirmed this information, was ignored not only by the Western governments, but also by many Jews in Western countries (see below). To those who wanted to help, the only open avenue appeared to be through the International Red Cross (IRC) and its affiliate the German Red Cross. The latter was completely controlled by the Nazis and thus making it the guardian of aid to Jews was the same as putting a fox in charge of protecting a chicken coop. JOINT’s branch in Lisbon, Portugal, a neutral country, sent food and medicine parcels through the IRC, addressed either to the JUS in Kraköw (see chapter 8), or other addresses in Poland. Between February and April 1943, 12,559 parcels were sent. Of this number only 925, or 7.36 percent were received by the addressees. The rest was obviously stolen by Germans.«⁵⁶

For another case, Piekałkiewicz, citing the Yad Vashem prominent Holocaust researcher Yehuda Bauer, wrote:

»Even more disastrous was the shipment of 7,226 parcels late in 1943 when only 42, or a bare 0.58 percent, were delivered to their destinations (Bauer 1981, 331). The other German scam (see chapter 8 in The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies) was the permission for JOINT and the World Jewish Congress, with the assistance of the German Red Cross, to send whole train cars with food and medicine from Switzerland to the Michal Weichert’s JUS operation in Kraköw. Despite constant warnings from the Jewish Underground in Poland that Weichert was a German agent and that most of the shipments went to the SS, Jewish leaders in the West felt that even if a small amount reached the camps, it was worth the effort.

Eventually, JOINT did discover its error…«⁵⁷

Yehuda Bauer, it is worth mentioning, had been affiliated with a pro-​communist organization called ›Mapam‹, which acted as the Israel branch of the Soviet intelligence service. Bauer, as a leading figure in the Yad Vashem and IHRA, has done plenty of research. However, in keeping with the purpose of this book, which is to use confessions by anti-​Soviet sources for pro-​Soviet truth, Bauer cannot be cited. Nowadays, Bauer does denounce communism and the Soviets, but even his anti-​Soviet rhetoric is a very soft ›anti-​Sovietism‹, and contains many pro-​Soviet ›confessions‹, naturally coming from a Mapam-​affiliated historian. In any case, if the reader is further interested in JDC-​Nazi collaboration, the reader can refer to his works. Piekałkiewicz, a commander affiliated with the anti-​Soviet London Poles, acknowledged the correctness of Bauer’s claims.

The rhetoric of even the JDC operative Dawidowicz reflects the excuse, promoted by the JDC leaders, that however tiny the amount of aid going to the Yiddish inmates, it was still worth it:

»Since the ZSS was accredited to the German civil administration, it had access to supplementary supplies of food, clothing, and medicine that were not available to the Judenräte. Quantities were small, to be sure, but in the economy of scarcity prevailing in the ghettos, even small amounts extracted from the Germans were beyond price. The very fact that the ZSS received supplies from the Germans heightened the contrast in the Jewish public mind between the judenrat and the ZSS.«⁵⁸

The JDC leaders refused to mention the fact that when the rest of the aid, the 80 percent to 90 percent would go for the Nazi Wehrmacht and the SS, that would actually help the Nazis fight the Soviet Red Army more easily, thus preventing millions of Yiddish inmates from quicker liberation. That was the point after all; the JDC operatives serving the American intelligence, had no reason not to support the Nazis, and what a more useful propaganda cover — from the lens of the JDC — to misuse the call for the liberation of the Yiddish captives for such an agenda.

Lastly, a few things deserved to be mentioned concerning the ›Nazi-​Zionist‹ connection. It is not the case that Nazi-​collaborationism came primarily from the Zionist networks alone, nor is it the case that all ›Zionist‹ activists were affiliated with Nazi-​collaborationist organizations. There were ›Zionist Jews‹ who genuinely opposed the Nazis, ›anti-​Zionist Jews‹ who genuinely opposed the Nazis, and there were ›Zionist Jews‹ who collaborated with the Nazis and ›anti-​Zionist Jews‹ who collaborated with the Nazis. While it is true that the mainstream of the Zionist movement, the tools of Anglo-​American imperialism, were responsible for funding the Nazi SS, so is it also true that the rogue tendency in the Zionist movement, the ›Socialist Zionist‹ tendency, bravely fought against the Nazi SS. The case in point is the involvement of the ›Stalinist‹ ›Socialist Zionists‹ of the Hashomer Hatzair which were greatly involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazi occupation. The Hashomer Hatzair combined ›Marxism-​Leninism-​Stalinism‹ with Kibbutzism and Zionism, were opposed to the partition of the territory of historic Palestine and the chauvinist terror against the Arabs, instead favouring a bi-​ethnic state of the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, a state socialist-​leaning, kibbutzist, and allied to the USSR and the Peoples‹ Democracies against the Anglo-​American imperialists. The Hashomer Hatzair was an entirely different kind of a ›Zionist‹ movement than most of the rest of the Zionist current. The second thing about the ›Nazi-​Zionist‹ connection is that Nazi-​collaborationists were not solely concentrated in the Zionist movement, but could be found among the ›anti-​Zionist Jews‹ as well. The reactionary Menshevik ›Bundists‹ refused to engage in armed struggle against the Nazis (see The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies C13S4) and instead advocated pacifistic reformist politics in the Nazi regime to stop the Nazi persecution of the Ashkenazim during the Holocaust. Many of the Ultra-​Orthodox ›anti-​Zionist‹ Jewish rabbis, Rabbi Weissmandel chief among them (as indicated previously), were very active in funding the Nazi SS and claimed that the Holocaust was the due divine punishment for the irreligiosity of most of the Ashkenazim and Sfaradim. Traitorous was the bulk of the leadership of the Ashkenazim and Sfaradim who lived outside of the USSR; years of Nazi terror against the Yiddish revolutionaries, added to the constant lobbying campaigns and pressures imposed by the Anglo-​American intelligence agencies, had resulted in the rise of such traitors to the high ranks of the ›Jewish leadership‹, just like the traitors in the high ranks of the leadership of most of the rest of the other peoples living outside the USSR. All of those Bundist or Ultra-​Orthodox leaders who served as agents of the American intelligence service, were fighting on the same side as the Zionist settler-​colonizers in Palestine, even if they ›condemned‹ Zionism. The pro-​Soviet or pro-​communist elements in the Bundist, Zionist, etc. organizations were naturally inclined towards cooperation with the communist forces and a sincere struggle against Nazism. Simply put, the question of Nazi-​collaborationism vs. anti-​Nazism was actually a question not of Bundism vs. Zionism, but of loyal service to American imperialism vs. being friends of the USSR. The question of Jewish supremacism bore the same kind of a character. The Zionist agents of American imperialism wanted to carry out a genocide against the Arabs, whereas the Bundist agents of the Anglo-​Americans would have established separate ›Jewish states‹ in the territories of the USSR and would have carried out a genocide against the citizens of the USSR if given the chance. The ›Socialist Zionist‹ agents of the USSR, very different than the Zionist mainstream, opposed the genocide against the Arabs of Palestine.

Sources

Material cited collected in this PDF Sources_​Temuri_​The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies_Zionism_Nazism_SU