The Book Banned in Palestine

By Steve Rodan

Within months after Hitler seized power in 1933, a book appeared that told of the brutality of the new Nazi regime. The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag challenged the free world, detailing the atrocities of Berlin, including the new camps filled with Jews, their torture and death, as well as the burning of books.

The book showed how Hitler had turned into the fuhrer, the ultimate dictator who demanded to be treated as a god. It asserted that Hitler's aides, particularly Hermann Goering, planned the fire at the Reichstag, the trigger to outlaw all political rivals, end freedom of the press and anything related to democracy.

The Brown Book became one of the biggest bestsellers of the decade. Published in Paris in the summer of 1933, it was translated into more than 20 languages, promoted by the new anti-fascist leagues throughout Europe and North America. It was promoted by leading figures, including Lord Marley, born Dudley Aman, a member of the British House of Commons and deputy speaker of the House of Lords. Marley, who wrote an introduction to the book, traveled around Britain and the United States, speaking out against Nazism and fascism. In February 1934, he spoke in 13 American cities and urged a boycott of German goods.

The book was published by Wilhelm Munzenberg, an exiled German and communist. When Hitler took power Munzenberg fled to Paris and insisted that any book reflect an accurate portrayal of National Socialism from 1919.

One of the authors of the Brown Book was Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of the century and the father of the Theory of Relativity. Einstein's efforts, however, went beyond the laboratory. He spent countless hours quietly warning the West against Hitler and saved hundreds of Jews from the death camps. He believed in a Jewish homeland and helped develop Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Nazis were furious and placed a $1 million bounty on the mild-mannered physicist.

"As far as the Brown Book is concerned, I think it critical that only foreign non-Jews express themselves, that is to say, only bystanders who are not personally involved," Einstein wrote in a letter dated July 20, 1933. "If I appear publicly as a prosecutor of the German government, it will have terrifying consequences for the German Jews. Even those who definitely have a right to talk to me, based on their demeanor so far, are begging me to stay in the background and not provide more pretenses for reprisals against the German Jews."

Einstein discovered that the Brown Book was banned in a key Jewish community -- Palestine. British authorities refused to allow the import of the book in any language. The decision by London wasn't about censorship. The British newspapers, available in Palestine, reported on Hitler and his policy of persecution. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was a leading supplier of news from Germany to the Hebrew dailies in Palestine.

The reason for the ban stemmed from the Zionist movement, which was negotiating with Berlin over the expulsion of Jews. The Zionist leadership approved a plan in which the Germans would be allowed to grab the assets of Jews and share a percentage with the movement. Called the Transfer Agreement, it also called for efforts to stop the growing anti-German boycott in Europe and the United States.

The Zionist agreement with Hitler stunned the liberal parties in the West. Trade unions and socialist parties could not understand how the Zionist leadership, close to the labor movement, could legitimize the Nazis.

Marley was one of them. He was the chief Labor whip in the House of Lords and sought to help the Jews of Europe. He served as chairman of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee to help the Jews. He supported a proposal to allow German Jews to flee to Birobidzhan, a supposedly autonomous Soviet republic in eastern Siberia.

The Brown Book was high on Germany's hit list. In April 1934, an American journalist and Hitler supporter, Doug Brinkley, addressed 1,500 people, many of them wearing Nazi armbands, in New York City's Town Hall. Brinkley denounced the book and insisted that the Nazis were respectful of human rights and had not incarcerated Jews, rather communists.

“I inquired with both Jews and gentiles, and I neither saw nor heard of a case of cruelty or brutality,” Brinkley said.

Other than Hitler supporters, many Americans and Europeans believed the Brown Book. In September 1933, London hosted a mock trial that alleged that the Nazis had burned the Reichstag. In March, 20,000 people filled Madison Square Garden to attend another prosecution of Hitler. In July 1934, a two-day conference was held in New York to examine Nazi atrocities. The Germans tried to stop all of these gatherings.

But the Germans were successful in Palestine. The Zionist leadership, through the Jewish Agency, neutralized most of the protests against the Germans. The leadership also censored or played down atrocities until the end of World War II. It was part of the 1933 agreement that the Zionists would block anti-German propaganda.

Einstein watched the Zionist alliance with Hitler in silence. Unlike the Zionists and later the State of Israel, he never forgave the Germans. In 1952, he declined a half-hearted offer by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to become Israel's president. Einstein even refused to meet representatives of the Israel Embassy in the United States. Weeks earlier, Israel had signed a controversial restitution agreement with West Germany that would eventually be worth billions of dollars and essentially forgive virtually all of the Germans for the Holocaust.

“After the Germans bestially murdered more than half of my Jewish brethren, it is impossible for me to participate in any German public endeavor," Einstein wrote in a letter dated March 8, 1948.

Below: Lord Marley