Lenni Brenner - 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis

51 DOCUMENTS:

Z IONIST C OLLABORATION WITH THE N AZIS

51 DOCUMENTS:

Z IONIST C OLLABORATION WITH THE N AZIS

EDITED BY LENNI BRENNER

Fort Lee New Jersey

Barricade Books

Suite 362

2037 Lemoine Ave.

Fort Lee, NJ 07024

Copyright 2002 by Lenni Brenner

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brenner, Lenni, 1937

51 Documents : Zionist collaboration with the Nazis / Lenni Brenner

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-56980-235-1 (casebound)

1. Zionism--History--20th Century. 2. Germany--Politics and government--19331945. 3. Jews--Palestine--Politics and government--20th century. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945) 5. Germany--Ethnic relations. I. Title.

DS149 B844 2002

320.54095694--dc21

2002026066

Sixth Printing

Manufactured in U.S.A.

This book presents 51 historic documents to indict Zionism for repeated attempts to collaborate with Adolf Hitler. The evidence, not I, will convince you of the truth in the issue.

Most selections formed the basis of my 1983 book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. An unknown Trotskyist doesn't expect a London Times review. Yet they liked it: "Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's." Moscow's Stalinist Izvestia said likewise, and the book became well known worldwide to specialists in Zionism. However, mainstream book reviewing in my America was then fanatically defensive of Israel.

The New Republic raged against me for being the historic source of Jim Allen's 1987 play, Perdition. Americans never heard of it, but theater historians will testify that, thanks to Zionist efforts to suppress it, it is one of the most famous plays in British history. I replied. But the magazine's notoriously eccentric publisher wouldn't run it, violating the right of reply upheld even by most Zionist reviewing journals.

A Village Voice editor told me they wouldn't review the book. "If you don't like it, set up your own paper." So it went, and the general public in modern Zionism's second home never heard of the tome.

However, the media's silence in regard to my book isn't the cause for modern American ignorance of Zionism's Holocaust role. In 1948, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to The New York Times, denouncing Menachem Begin and his Zionist Herut/Freedom Party as "closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties."

In 1960, Life magazine ran some of Adolf Eichmann's memoir, written In hiding. He described deals with Hungarian Zionist Rezs Kasztner. In 1961, celeb writer Ben Hecht published Perfidy, exposing Kasztner.

In 1963, Hannah Arendt critiqued the Zionist role in her celebrated Eichmann in Jerusalem, getting their customary brickbat reviews in return. Lucy Dawidowicz translated a secret German Zionist offer of collaboration with Nazism in her Holocaust Reader.

None of these triggered significant public reevaluation of Zionism. Unless dead Yanks are involved, most Americans stay away from reading about foreign history and politics like the devil hates holy water.

Serious intellectual interest in anything "political"Lincoln, whateveris far too much to expect of 47 percent of Americans, certain the God of Abraham created the world, much like it is, in the last 10,000 years. (Others believe dinosaurs and humans coexisted because they saw them together in a cartoon.)

Jewish readers are actually two publics. The exploding, worldly, Jews are the ca. 50% and growing, who reject Judaism as an intellectual broomcloset in a hyperscientific age. Since they usually encountered Zionism connected with Judaism, most have no interest in reading about it, as typical ex-Catholics don't read about Catholic politics.

But the imploding religious Jews are commonly worse. There are ca. 15,000-plus Orthodox who see Zionism as a monstrous secular perversion of their religion. However, for most Orthodox, political reading means a glatt or hyper-kosher Zionist propaganda weekly, and a daily run by nitch-market con-artists, "Jew-wooers" in this case, who pander to their readers' illusions.

Many members of the Conservative and Reform sects are troubled by Israel, which doesn't permit their rabbis to perform legal marriages. But they resolve their inner conflict, not by reading about or acting against what they know is bigotry, but by psychic flight from the topic.

Be also apprised that the Arab and Muslim publics are no better. An Iranian Shia Muslim daily pirated my second book, The Iron Walt. They decided that my figure, six million Jews killed by Hitler, was too high. Six became one.

The classic proverb stands: Fools outnumber the wise in every country in the world. Yet historians shouldand I willtry to reach America's "We the People," for all the stats. But the facts re historic and political illiteracy raise profound questions about the ability of democracy to cope in an age of war, terror and revolution, and they can't be ignored without destructive consequences. They will be dealt with in my last chapter, "Final Thoughts on the Final Solution."

But now Israel is everyday's TV news, and at least the historically educated, Jew and gentile, are grasping that fuller understanding of Zionism, with its 200 A-bombs, is essential to a sophisticated world politics. Today, with the internet, talk radio, public access TV, and a sharp decline of Zionist sentiment among America's Jews, the general public and media, the stark record will assuredly batter through any obstacles to reach serious researchers, well beyond specialists.

In any case, as Shakespeare insists that "brevity is the soul of wit," there is a short intro note to the selections, so you can understand it on your own. You also get a glossary of foreign terms, organizations, etc.

Then, after you've cast your verdict, I allow myself the short closing essay.

Readers seeking detailed amplification of the material herein are referred to my two books, available in major university and public libraries, and presently on the internet:

As the documents are from five languages, with those in English written over decades in American and British formats, each piece is edited on its own, without format unity across the collection.

Italians say traduttori, traditoritranslators, traitors. But mine did excellent work. I thank Hagai Forschner for his treatment of Yitzhak Gruenbaum's Hebrew 'About the Holocaust and about the Reaction." Professor Egon Mayor was more than generous in providing me with a provisional translation, prepared for him, of Rezso Kasztners Report on his negotiations with the Nazis. Henry Black was then invaluable in scrutinizing it, and translating other German documents.

However, if there is a translating traitor, it's me. I don't speak German, Hebrew, Italian or Russian. Yet I had the chutzpahHebrew for audacityto "correct" my translators' phrasing, and I take full responsibility for any errors of omission or commission.

Prosecution without a defense is automatically suspect. But here most selections are from Zionist sources, some specifically written to justify their policies. Most pieces are complete letters, articles, memos, speeches. Others are complete book chapters. Other documents had to be carefully excerpted to eliminate irrelevant or repetitious material.