Behind the Headlines New Documents Highlight British Hostility to Jewish Refugees

Newly released documents about British efforts to prevent Jews from leaving Europe on the eve of World War II show that there was strong opposition to the influx of Jews not only into Palestine but throughout the British Empire in places as far apart as Burma and the West Indies.

The evidence has been collated in an article by Martin Gilbert, the historian and biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, who concludes that lack of sympathy towards Jewish refugees in the Home Office and the Foreign Office was a major factor in the ultimate fate of many European Jews.

His article appears in the 1978 issue of the Zionist Year Book, published by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland and edited by Jane Moonman, and deals with British policy towards Jewish refugees between May and September, 1939.

The idea of admitting Jews to various parts of the empire was supported by Malcolm MacDonald who, as Colonial Secretary, was architect of the White Paper limiting the number of entry certificates to Palestine in order to appease the Arabs.

CLAIMS UNACCEPTABLE BURDEN

One of the alternative havens suggested was British Guiana, where 500 Jewish families would have been admitted. Objections were raised first by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, who said it would be an unacceptable burden on the British taxpayer and later by a Royal Commission on the West Indies, despite the fact that British Jewry in the meantime pledged to finance the settlement of the 500 refugees.

MacDonald himself had his own reservations about the British Guiana plan, telling a Cabinet committee that he was “afraid that when the refugee settlers became British subjects (i.e. after five years) they would acquire the right to migrate into the United Kingdom if they wished.”

Hostility to accepting Jewish refugees anywhere was voiced by A.W.G. Randall of the Foreign Office when commenting on some 300 European Jews whom the government of Cyprus refused to admit even on a temporary basis: “It is unthinkable that a miscellaneous crowd of Jews could be admitted to any other part of the empire,” he said on June 1, 1939.

Burma and Southern Rhodesia were two more British possessions considered as possible sanctuaries. Although Foreign Office officials like Sir Alexander Cadogan (later to be Britain’s representative at the United Nations) favored opening the doors, the idea was turned down at other levels.

Thus, on March 3, 1939, an India Office official commented on the Burma proposal: “There is no possibility of contemplating large-scale settlement by European refugees in the colonies in view of the strong objections which would be felt against such settlement to the prejudice of the indigenous races concerned.”

MORE OBJECTIONS CITED

On March 13, 1939, the Governor of Southern Rhodesia explained to the British Consul-General in Alexandria: “My government regrets they are unable to accede to request of the sixteen German Jews mentioned in your telegram to migrate to this colony. Capacity of Southern Rhodesia for absorbing aliens is definitely limited.”

To illustrate the attitude shown by some British officials, Gilbert quotes another Foreign Office official, Roger Makins, who stated on April 5, 1939: “Polish Jews will be less welcome as immigrants in the colonial empire than any other class.” Patrick Reilly added (on April 26, 1939) that some of the refugees were “definitely criminals or spies.”

As for the organizers of the growing illegal immigration traffic, a Foreign Office note, dated July 10, 1939, said that it was “as fundamentally anti-social as the German persecution of which they complain.” Another official said the illegal immigration was largely the work of Revisionists, doing it partly for political reasons and partly for the “heavy fares charged.”

Gilbert concludes: “Not only followers of (Zeev) Jabotinsky (leader of the Zionist Revisionist Movement), but Jews of no particular political affiliation, could be pardoned if the cynicism revealed by comments such as these were to induce anger, bitterness, or even, at times, despair.”