Fighting on all Fronts (21 page)

Zog nit keynmol (Never Say):

Never say there is only death for you.

Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue—

Because the hour we have hungered for is near;

Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,

We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.

And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth.

Shall our bravery, our vigour blossom forth!

We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,

And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,

And if the time is long before the sun appears,

Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

This song was written with our blood and not with lead;

It’s not a song that birds sing overhead

It was a people, among toppling barricades,

That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.

So never say that there is only death for you.

Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue—

Yet the hour we have hungered for is near;

Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

2
      A summary of this myth and its development can be found in Richard Middleton-Kaplan, “The myth of Jewish passivity” in Patrick Henry,
Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis
(Catholic University of America, 2014), p3.

3
      Henri Michel,
The Shadow War: Resistance in Europe 1939-45
(Andre Deutsch, 1972), p177.

4
      Most Jews of the Russian Empire were restricted to an area of about 20 percent of the territory of European Russia that included much of present day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and Ukraine. Known and the Pale of Settlement; this ended only with the Russian Revolution in 1917.

5
      This was partly because the Jewish workers did not work on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath) but also because they were more trade union orientated. Celia Heller,
On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars
(Wayne State University Press, 1980), p262. Adam Teller, “Economic Life”,
YIVO Encyclopaedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
,
www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Economic_Life
.

6
      Although membership figures for Poland are not available, electorally they were second to the Zionists. Gershon Bacon, “Agudas Yisroel”,
YIVO Encyclopaedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
,
www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Agudas_Yisroel
.

7
      The General Jewish Labour League of Lithuania, Poland and Russia (
Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland
) founded in 1897 was a socialist organisation based in the Jewish working class in countries within the Russian Empire. Generally just called the
Bund (Yiddish for “league”), their aim was a united Jewish socialist organisation allied with socialists of other national groupings. They played a major role in the early trade union formation among Jews.

8
      Due to the extreme anti-Semitism of the Tsarist regime. Lenni Brenner,
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
(On Our Own Authority! Publishing, 2014), p25.

9
      Theodore Herzl, “The Jewish State”, in Jackson Spielvogel (ed)
Western Civilization: Since 1300 Alternate Volume C
(Engage Learning, 2011), p754. Accessed online at
books.google.com.au/books?id=IYeUtjFBaggC&pg=PT487&lpg=PT487&dq=%22an+outpost+of+ci vilization+as+opposed+to+barbarism%22&source=bl&ots=4M-8T1M38&psig=_WNa_ M0s906gJkrs5R6h8tO_HUU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R_OtVIT1OKO5mwXxy4CQAg&ve d=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22an%20outpost%20of%20civilization%20as%20 opposed%20to%20barbarism%22&f=false
.

10
    Hilary Rubenstein,
The Jews in Australia 1788-1845
, vol 1 (Heinemann, 1991), p171.

11
    Nigel Jones, “Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski: Review”,
The Telegraph
, 4 May 2011; US Holocaust Memorial Museum; “Claude Lanzmann interview with Jan Karski”, Claude Lanzmann, 4 May 2011; Stephen Spielberg Film and Video Archive,
www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=4739
.

12
    Jan Karski, personal communication to Nehama Tec, December 1999, cited in Nehama Tec,
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men and the Holocaust
(Yale University Press, 2003), p262.

13
    Cited in Peter Novick,
The Holocaust in American Life
(Haughton Mifflin, 2000), p578.

14
    Louise London,
Whitehall and the Jews 1933-48: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust
(Cambridge University Press, 2000), p1.

15
    Laqueur actually argues that not only was no action taken but the information was actively suppressed. Walter Laqueur,
The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s “Final Solution”
(Penguin, 1982), p202.

16
    Richard Breitman, Norman Goda, Timothy Naftali and Robert Wolfe,
US Intelligence and the Nazis
(Cambridge University Press, 2005), p37.

17
    Michael Neufeld, “Introduction” in
Bombing Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted it?
(St Martin’s Press, 2000), p9.

18
    Cited in Michael Bar-Zohar,
The Armed Prophet: A Biography of Ben-Gurion
(Arthur Barker, 1967), p49.

19
    David Rosenthal, “Chaim Arlosoroff 40 Years Later”,
Jewish Frontier
, August 1974, p,23, cited in Brenner, 2014, p84.

20
    “Shtetl” is the word for the small towns where many Jews lived.

21
    Mordechai Gebirtig was born in Crakow in 1877 and murdered by the Nazis in June 1942. A member of both the Polish Socialist Party and the Bund, he wrote numerous songs and poems which were and remain highly popular in Jewish communities. It is false to think that in this song Gebirtig somehow predicted the Holocaust. It is clearly a call to fight against present dangers. The following translation is modified somewhat by Rachel Sztanski and myself from the version at the United States Holocaust Museum website
www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_so.php?MediaId=2621

It burns! Brothers, it burns!

Oh, our poor shtetl, brothers, burns!

Evil winds are fanning the wild flames

And furiously tearing,

Destroying and scattering everything.

All around, all is burning

(Refrain) And you just stand there staring

With your folded hands…

And you just stand there staring

While our shtetl burns.

It burns! Brothers, it burns!

Oh, our poor shtetl, brothers, burns!

Already tongues of fire

Have surrounded all our houses,

And the evil winds are howling—

All around us burns!

It burns! Brothers, it burns!

Oh, God forbid the moment,

That our shtetl, with us in it,

Turns to ashes in the flames,

So all remains, as after battle,

Will be bare black walls!

It burns! Brothers, it burns!

And help can only be from you alone!

If our shtetl is dear to you,

Grab the buckets, douse the fire!

Douse it with your own blood

Show us that you can!

(Final refrain) Don’t just stand there staring

With your folded arms

Brothers, douse the fire!

our shtetl burns!

22
    Cited in Heller, 1980, p282.

23
    Cited in Heller, 1980, p288.

24
    Leonard Rowe, “Jewish Self Defense. A Response to Violence”, in Joshua A Fishman (ed),
Studies on Polish Jewry 1919-1939
(YIVO Institute, 1974), p106, cited in Heller, 1980, p290.

25
    Leonard Rowe, 1974, p123, cited in Brenner, 1980, p217.

26
    Cited in Heller, 1980, p286.

27
    Brenner, 2014, p217.

28
    Jacob Lestchinsky, “Night over Poland”,
Jewish Frontier
(July 1936), pp11-12. Cited in Brenner, 2014, p218.

29
    Brenner, 2014, p218.

30
    Alexander Erlich et al, Solidarnosc, Polish Society and the Jews, p13, cited in Brenner, 2014, p219.

31
    Emmanuel Ringelblum,
Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War
(Northwest University Press, 1992), pp199, 203.

32
    Cited in Deborah Dwork and Robert van Pelt,
Holocaust: A History
(John Murray, 2002), p243.

33
    Marek Edelman,
The Ghetto Fights
:
Warsaw 1941-43
(Bookmarks, 1990), pp36-37.

34
    A ghetto inhabitant commented that the police were “already known for their terrible corruption, but reached the apogee of depravity at the time of the deportation”. Antony Polonsky (ed),
A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsw Ghetto by Abraham Lewin
(Blackwell, 1988), p288 note 159, cited in John Rose, introduction to Edelman, 1990, p22.

35
    Cited in Dwork, 2002, p246.

36
    Chaim Kaplan,
Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A Kaplan
(Collier Books, 1973), p225. Cited in Dwork, 2002, p216.

37
    The German term
Judenrat
(plural
Judenräte
) has been used throughout.

38
    The confusion of roles was exacerbated by the fact that many
Judenräte
were created from pre-existing welfare bodies known as the
Kehilla
which the community were accustomed to looking up to. Warsaw Ghetto survivor Hillel Seidman, for example, repeatedly uses the term
Kehilla
when referring to the Nazi sponsored
Judenräte
. Hillel Seidman,
The Warsaw Ghetto Diaries
(Targum/Feldheim, 1997).

39
    
Brenner, 2014, p229.

40
    Aharon Weiss, “Jewish leadership in occupied Poland: postures and attitudes”, in Yisrael Gutman, (ed),
Yad Vashem Studies
, vol 12, 1977, pp335-365, cited in Yehuda Bauer,
Rethinking the Holocaust
(Yale University Press, 2001), pp128-130.

41
    Bauer, 2001, p131.

42
    When the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944 Jewish leaders already knew about the exterminations from Polish and Slovakian Jewish refugees. But Rudolph Kastner, a Labour Zionist leader, did a deal with Eichmann, whereby he kept silent in return for safe conduct to Switzerland for 1,700 Zionist functionaries and their families. Eichmann later said: “We negotiated entirely as equals… We were political opponents trying to arrive at a settlement and we trusted each other perfectly.” Eichmann’s motive was concern about potential Jewish resistance or escape attempts to Romania which by then was unwilling to hand Jews over to the Nazis.

Kastner’s collaboration helped the Nazis to murder 450,000 Hungarian Jews not long before the end of the war. Much has been written about this despicable act. An Israeli court ruled in 1958 that it was not collaboration and the judge stated that Kastner’s actions were justified. The Israeli attorney general stated: “It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine.” Kastner himself said: “The Hungarian Jew was a branch which long ago dried up on the tree.” Labour Zionists have never regarded him as a traitor. All information and quotes on the Kastner affair are from Brenner, 2014, pp283-291.

43
    Nehama Tec,
Jewish Resistance: Facts, Omissions and Distortions
(Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance, Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001), pp15-17.

44
    Lucjan Dobroszycki, “Polish Historiography on the Annihilation of the Jews of Poland in World War II: A Critical Evaluation”,
East European Jewish Affairs
, vol 23, no 2 (1993), p47, cited in Tec, 2001, p18.

45
    For a comprehensive listing of works relating to Jewish resistance (updated 2003) see the Working Bibliography developed by the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance at the Center for Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which can be downloaded from
www.ushmm.org/research/the-center-for-advanced-holocaust-studies/miles-lerman-center-for-the-study-of-jewish-resistance/jewish-resistance-working-bibliography
.

46
    Eli Tzur, “From Moral Rejection to Armed Resistance”, in Ruby Rohrlich (ed),
Resisting the Holocaust
(Oxford, 1998), p40, cited in Donny Gluckstein,
A People’s History of the Second World War: Resistance Versus Empire
(Pluto Press, 2012), p118.

47
    Tec, 2001, p8. Kurt Schilde,
Jugendopposition
1933-1945 (Lukas Verlag, 2007).

48
    Nehama Tec,
Resilience and Courage: Women, Men and the Holocaust
(Yale University Press, 2003), p261.

49
    Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. “Biala Podlaska”, Holocaust Research Project website,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/bialapodlaska.html
. One reason I have presented examples from Biala Podlaska here and in note 71 is because that is the town of origin of my mother, Rose Stone. She reached safety in Australia in 1938 but her parents and younger siblings died in the Holocaust as did all members of her extended family who had remained in Poland.

50
    Tec, 2001, p20.

51
    Hela Rosner, “Sister Sister”, Australian Memories of the Holocaust website
www.holocaust.com.au/mm/j_sister.htm
. (Excerpt from Anna Rosner Blay,
Sister, Sister
(Hale & Iremonger, 1998), pp 106-138).

52
    From the “Oneg Shabbat” archive from the Warsaw Ghetto, cited in “In the ghettos”, Australian Memories of the Holocaust website,
www.holocaust.com.au/mm/j_ghettos.htm
.

53
    Non-military Jewish opposition activities are often labelled “spiritual resistance”. My argument is that all resistance by Jews to the Nazis was political whether armed or not and whether ideologically based or not. In fact the ideological basis of the Zionists did not assist
them or provide guidance as to how to fight the Nazis.