In this third and final part of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s interview with World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Gerhart Riegner, who represented the WJC in Geneva during the war, he evaluates the responses of the American Jewish community to the need to rescue European Jews during the Holocaust and the impact of its internal problems on its actions and behavior.
Q: There have been various charges, at the time and today, that the rescue of European Jewry was not a priority for the American Jewish community. Hayim Greenberg, the Labor Zionist leader, charged this in his famous essay “Bankrupt!” in the “Yiddishe Kemfer” on Feb. 12, 1943. Do you agree?
A: Generally, this sweeping statement is not true. There were times when they tried very, very hard, and there were times when they were in despair. There was a colossal effort, all kinds of proposals, before the Bermuda Conference.
(This was the Anglo-American conference of April, 1943 to study the refugee problem, which produced no practical results.) Then came Bermuda and several months of deep shock. Only when they got over this shock did action begin again.
There was colossal activity on behalf of Hungarian Jews — too late, because for three to four months, we didn’t know they were being murdered. No government gave us confirmation — that was also very strange. There was a telegram we sent in March, 1944 to America warning that we know the Germans will march in and apply the whole anti-Jewish program in Hungary, followed by another telegram. Until we heard, in June, 1944, that all the Hungarian provinces had been emptied of Jews.
THE ROLE OF KUBOWITZKI
Q: Who in the American Jewish community was active on rescue?
A: The one who pushed for rescue efforts was Dr. Arye Leon Kubowitzki (later Kubovy, Secretary-General of the World Jewish Congress; after 1948, Israeli Ambassador to Argentina and Czechoslovakia; and subsequently president of Yad Vashem). Kubowitzki was a Belgian Jewish leader who came to the U.S. from Brussels in 1940, and headed the World Jewish Congress’ Rescue Department.
He understood that some extraordinary concept should be applied — not just helping, not just philanthropy, something quite different. He really understood the difference between normal and extraordinary times. He had a very serious conflict on this with some of the other Jewish organizations in this country, whom he accused of not understanding (this difference), particularly the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
The World Jewish Congress was at certain moments clearly advocating a plan of government help. What is absolutely accepted today — that Jews alone should not be responsible for (their) people in need — was then a revolutionary concept.
Q: Early in 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto resistance broadcast an appeal to American Jews to sit on the steps of the White House until the government declared itself ready to save Polish Jewry. Nahum Goldmann (head of the Zionist Emergency Committee) wrote in his autobiography that “a desperate unconventional gesture might have achieved something ….”
A: They held at least a half-dozen enormous demonstrations; that didn’t help. As for sitting on the White House steps, this was just not in the thinking of the time; it was (still) the style of 1917, 1918. Maybe it could have helped; I don’t know.
Q: Another charge, by David Wyman, author of “The Paper Walls,” and others, is that Zionist leaders gave the struggle for a Jewish State a higher priority than rescue because they believed, after Bermuda, that this was possible while rescue was not. Do you agree?
A: After Bermuda, the shock was so deep that some people felt, “we aren’t making any headway, this is all wasted energy; and the lesson is to work for a Jewish State because nobody helps us, we need a government of our own.” I don’t accept (the charge) that they switched over completely to this (approach and gave up on rescue). I understand the new urgency of the statehood concept.
U.S. JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS
Q: What about the non-Zionist organizations in the U.S.? Greenberg charged that rescue was not a priority for them, either.
A: The American Jewish Committee opposed the claim for a Jewish State. What did it do until the end? It was the most powerful group in American Jewry at that time. Second, where was the urgency of the (American Jewish) Joint Distribution Committee — which was the AJCommittee’s apparatus to a great extent; a combination of the AJCommittee and the Labor movement was behind the Joint.
I am astonished that in all these discussions, the whole focus is always on (Rabbi Stephen) Wise (president of the World and the American Jewish Congress). It is absolutely wrong to focus only on him and not to say a word about the AJCommittee or the Joint — they should be investigated in the same way.
Wise was a great enemy of the Nazis. He was a symbol of the resistance against Germany. This was because he made the most forceful speeches against the Nazis and organized the manifestations, and the (pre-war) boycott. He was a symbol of the Jew who resisted.
Wise was a spokesman for the poor. He had the masses behind him, but not the power. The power was in other places. He didn’t have the rich Jews behind him, and he was not powerful in terms of funds. The real money was with the yahudim (Jews of German descent). The budget on which his whole organization ran was ridiculous; our budgets were ridiculous; the budget I had in Geneva was ridiculous … In my opinion, I don’t condemn Wise; I am sure he didn’t do everything he could have done–nobody did. But he was full of good will.
Q: Didn’t Wise believe he had Roosevelt’s ear?
A: He had it sometimes. Nobody (really) had Roosevelt’s ear — he was an astute politician. Wise had a certain relationship, friendship with Roosevelt, but FDR also knew who the powerful Jews were and he had his own relationship with them — the Lehmans, the Morgenthaus and others. They were not in Wise’s organization ….
THE SPLIT IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Q: Henry Feingold writes in “The Politics of Rescue” that the community was not united but in an “organizational deadlock.”
A: The American Jewish community was completely split. Before the war, some wanted an appeasement policy (with Germany) and some wanted a real fight. The American Jewish Committee accused Wise of making denouncements all the time instead of negotiating.
William E. Dodd, the American Ambassador to Germany, writes in his memoirs that the American Jewish Committee sent a special envoy to Germany, to the German Jews and to the Americans, the non-Jews, saying Wise is crazy.
This kind of appeasement policy was theirs, not Wise’s; he was an activist. Later, in 1938, ’39, they tried to make another scheme with Hjalmar Schact, head of the Reichsbank, to help get Jews out; but it didn’t work….
Q: But all this was before the war ….
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED
Q: Have we learned anything from the way we behaved in this tragedy? Has the Jewish community changed?
A: The community is quite differently organized today than it was then. We were completely disunited …. We were people without power. Today we believe we have power. We have more power (but) let’s not over-exaggerate its (extent). That, too, is a mistake. Power is also a question of the economy of power — how you use it.
We have to be more united …. The guilt complex, that they didn’t do enough, is also a very forceful element today, an important factor in future action and a stimulus to consciousness and awareness — to be careful not to repeat the same mistakes.
Never underestimate the enemy, that is the first lesson. Start to counteract when the enemy is weak, and don’t wait until he is full-grown… We have to watch social and economic developments. The (Nazis’ rise to power) is unthinkable without the economic crisis of 1929, and the national and social crises of Germany. The Nazis were the answer to the desperate development of the German middle classes’ battle against proleterization and pauperization …. The most important thing is that young people should speak to young people, Jews to non-Jews — show them what happened and what can happen…
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
