In Zionist Narrative, Orthodox Are Out

By Steve Rodan

Author's note: Most historians in Israel have ignored the huge role played by Orthodox Jews during the Holocaust. Objectively, this was unimaginable, considering that traditional Jews comprised close to a majority in many of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. But in a state where universities are closely monitored by the regime, Israeli doctoral candidates were required to stick to the narrative of Zionist heroism during World War II at the expense of quashing all evidence to the contrary. Even today, Holocaust historians will not dare to challenge the accuracy of books published by Yad Vashem, particularly its former research chief Yehuda Bauer, who nearly single-handedly groomed a coterie of students to maintain the narrative of Zionist rescue and heroism amid the cowardice of Orthodox Jews. Only in the last decade have historians been permitted to publish books on the role of the Orthodox, particularly their rabbinical leaders. Yad Vashem, however, continues to counter that narrative with articles of how the rabbis betrayed their flock and fled Hitler. But what cannot be denied is that Orthodox rabbis and other devout Jews had virtually nothing to do with active collaboration -- ranging from rounding up Jews for deportation of the death camps to serving as kapos in the German camps. In contrast, Zionist historians have never adequately addressed the huge percentage of Zionists who worked in the Judenrat, Jewish police and the camps.

From the chapter:

"The Shoah Industry"

Page 551 of "In Jewish Blood: The Zionist Alliance with Germany, 1933-1963"

In pursuit of its secular agenda, Yad Vashem erased the devout Jews of Europe. The Holocaust museum blocked virtually any display that reflected Jewish observance or faith. It dismissed testimony of how Jews struggled to remain observant in the death camps. When Yad Vashem finally addressed the Orthodox community, it was to claim that Hasidic leaders had fled their flock, abandoning their followers to the SS. This had been a theme of the state-controlled Israeli media. In 1997, Israel’s most popular television station, Channel 2, broadcast The 22 Missing Lines, directed by Shalom Barmor and meant to expose how leading Orthodox rabbis abandoned the Jews during the war. The program was aired on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In 2000, Efraim Zuroff wrote a book that accused Orthodox Jews of America of doing what the Zionists had done – saving only their own. The fundraising by Orthodox Jews to support rabbis outside occupied Europe, he wrote, diverted money that could have been used for mass rescue. The Orthodox, he said, refused to work with other Jewish groups, particularly JDC. His book, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust, essentially ends in January 1944, months before the Vaad Hatzalah in New York raised ransoms of nearly $1 million that saved Jews from the death camps. Most of those saved were not Orthodox. Bauer wrote the forward: “This book unlocks another important facet of Jewish responses during the Holocaust, and I hope its story will be included in future teaching about the subject, to Jews and non-Jews alike.”

The controversy regarding the Orthodox has been confined to the ideological war of the Jews. Gentile historians as well as a historical commission in the United States in the early 1980s agreed that Orthodox Jewish rescue efforts had been sincere and sometimes effective. While the Jewish federations in America avoided the issue, the Orthodox, particularly Agudah, raised more than $100,000 in one night for those in occupied Europe. In February 1943, leading Zionists acknowledged that Agudah rabbis were committed to rescue work. Haim Greenberg, head of Poalei Zion in the United States, wrote two articles in Yiddish on the total apathy of the American Jewish leadership. The exception was Agudah.

“Except for maybe Agudat Israel, we don’t know of a Jewish organization that for three of the most difficult years in our history was capable of freeing itself from fear that maybe they will accuse us of Jewish egocentrism. They all feared that they will cast doubts on our patriotism in our willingness to sacrifice for overall victory that they will scold us for asking for greater rights for Jews. We didn’t have the courage to come out with a declaration so understandable. We’re not looking for special rights, rather recognition of our right to live.”

Orthodox and Hasidic leaders usually stayed with their flock in occupied Europe. They refused to join the Judenrat and encouraged others not to cooperate with the Nazis. Throughout the war, the Germans targeted rabbis, particularly in Poland and Hungary. In early January 1940, Der Sturmer published a special issue on Rabbi Yitzhak Menachem Mendel Danziger, known as the Alexandrow Rebbe, head of one of the largest Hasidic groups in Poland. Some, like Rabbi David Bernstein, the Rebbe of Sokochov, counseled the Jews to revolt. So did Rabbi Shmuel Shlomo Leinder, the Rebbe of Radzyn. In Warsaw, Agudah and Mizrahi were linked to the resistance.

Orthodox Jews also defied the SS. Haim Neta Tiger, 104 years old, kept his earlocks and beard as he toiled in the sewing shop of the Lodz ghetto. Without spectacles, Tiger could sew as fast as a man 50 years younger. The words of Psalms never ceased from his lips, even when an SS man demanded to know why the Jew was not scared. “Nothing will happen to somebody who lives 104 years in faith and recites Psalms,” Tiger replied.

“You amaze me, Jew,” the Nazi said. “But there are not many like you among the Jews.”

“There are many,” Tiger said. “But you don’t know them.”

In Greece, Rabbi Moshe Pessah was the leader of the nearly 900- member Jewish community in the coastal city of Volos. In September 1943, in wake of the German occupation of the city, Pessah recruited the local archbishop and the National Liberation Front to save the vast majority of the Jews.

In Poland, Rabbi Avraham Perlov led the Karlin sect for close to 20 years. Before the war, while traveling abroad, he was urged to continue to Palestine, where he had many followers. He refused and instead returned to Karlin on the eve of the German invasion. He remained until the Germans decimated the ghetto and killed thousands. He also rejected Latin American citizenship, which he was told could save his life. In the end, Perlov joined his followers to their death.

The pressure on the rabbis to collaborate was intense. In the winter of 1942, there were four rabbis left in the Vilna ghetto. One of them was Rabbi Menachem Mendel Zalmanovich, whose family had been killed in the Ponary forest. Judenrat chief Gens leaned hard on the rabbis to support deportations. They refused and told Gens that he was violating Jewish law. Alone and isolated, Zalmanovich was hosted by a neighboring family for meals. The rabbi expressed grief over the destruction of the Jewish community.

“I don’t understand what this commandant Jacob Gens wants from me: Is it permitted for him to give up handicapped, elderly, ill Jews to the Gestapo in exchange for a promise that this would protect the Jews of the ghetto? He wants permission from me to give up Jews to be killed to save others – the young and healthy in the ghetto. I told him, ‘How can you ask me something that the Torah forbids? Don’t you know that you can’t differentiate between blood and blood – between the old and the young?’ I presented him with the rulings [of sages], Maimonides and those who came later. But he is insistent: He wants permission! I don’t understand why this is important to him? Without this, he can’t implement what he wants? From my conversation with him, I understand that Gens is having trouble with his conscience and wants to give it a rest.”

As chief rabbi, Robert Serebrenik saved thousands of Jews in Luxembourg. When the Germans invaded in May 1940, he did not negotiate or try to save a select few. Instead, he helped some 1,000 Jews flee to neighboring Belgium and France. Many of them managed to reach safety in Spain and Portugal. Together with a German officer, the rabbi foiled Nazi plans to deport all of the 5,000 Jews in the principality. He brought many of them to Vichy France or Lisbon. In March 1941, he was summoned to Eichmann in Berlin who gave him 11 days to clear Luxembourg of the remaining 1,100 Jews. He tried to rescue all of them, and over the next three months brought another 250 Jews to Lisbon.

In May, Nazis nearly beat the rabbi to death as he walked home from the Great Synagogue. The following month, he and his family arrived in New York. More than 60 percent of the pre-war community survived. He was not invited to testify at the Eichmann trial in 1961, but was allowed to submit a deposition.

When it came to courage the Zionists quietly acknowledged that the devout Jews had been the model. In September 1939, as the Luftwaffe mercilessly bombed and strafed Warsaw, the only ones who left their homes were the practicing Jews. They attended synagogue daily while the Zionist leadership, secular Jews and Polish gentiles hid in cellars. The synagogues had been the prime target of the Luftwaffe, particularly during the High Holy Days. Apolinari Hartglass hated traditional Judaism and from an early age embraced Polish culture. He admitted that he felt more comfortable with gentiles. But in his briefing to the Jewish Agency Executive he couldn’t help expressing admiration for the Jews who had long embarrassed him.

“Also on Yom Kippur, there was terrible bombing. It must be pointed out that the devout Jews were not concerned with the danger and gathered in the synagogues for prayer, while at the same time that we and the Poles were scared to go out on the streets and assemble for meetings.”

Hillel Danzig, the key aide of Kastner, couldn’t help notice the contrast between the young Orthodox and their assimilated counterparts in the labor brigades of Hungary. It was after a day of hard labor. In one hut, the devout would gather to read Psalms or Mishnah by candlelight. In neighboring huts, there would be gambling.

“In one of the huts the religious devotees would gather every night and pray or learn, while in the nearby huts there would be stormy card games or mundane talk. In the hut of the devotees, their heads would shake over the fraying Hebrew pages by the light of the candle. They would learn out loud a chapter of Bible or Mishnah from those pages that survived from the house or were found between the ruins of Russian cities. In one of the cells, the Zionists and communists would argue incessantly on the path and future of Judaism. In every group, the people would try, so to speak, to continue their lifestyle from home.”