'The Greatest Disaster'

By Steve Rodan

Ben-Gurion Day for Hebrew Year 5783 begins at sundown on *Tuesday, 29 November 2022* and ends at nightfall on *Wednesday, 30 November 2022*.

Ben-Gurion Day (Hebrew: יום בן־גוריון‎) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the sixth of the Hebrew month of Kislev, to commemorate the life and vision of Zionist leader, and Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. If the sixth of Kislev falls on Shabbat eve, or on Shabbat, the memorial day is held on the following Sunday.

There is another narrative of the life of David Ben-Gurion, one that sums up his ideology in one word -- money. His 86 years were characterized by a lust for money and power as well as a hatred for those who questioned him. His greatest hatred was reserved for the Jews.

Not surprisingly, Ben-Gurion found common ground with Adolf Hitler. The Jewish Agency chairman had no love for this Austrian housepainter and saw him as a danger to Jews around the world. But a bloodthirsty anti-Semite could come in handy for Ben-Gurion and his ruling Mapai Party. So, when Hitler came to power in 1933, Ben-Gurion called it a "huge political and economic boost for the Zionist enterprise."

"Hitler provided the lever," Ben-Gurion said. "The matter of the German Jews can undoubtedly serve as a great lever, politically as well as financially, to raise up our Zionist enterprise."

Ben-Gurion closely followed Hitler years before he was selected chancellor of Germany. In September 1930, Ben-Gurion was in Berlin and read the Nazi newspapers, impressed by the rise of the party. He wrote in his diary that Hitler reminded him of Zev Jabotinsky, his rival in the Zionist movement.

Together with Chaim Weizmann, Ben-Gurion saw Hitler as a boon. The two Zionist leaders approved a wide-ranging deal with Hitler within months of the Nazi regime. Called the Transfer Agreement, the accord linked Berlin with the Zionist leadership in virtually every sphere -- political, financial and intelligence.

The Third Reich rewarded the Mapai-dominated Zionist movement while banning Jewish rivals. Ben-Gurion oversaw the Zionist meetings with Hitler's top aides, particularly Joachim von Ribbentrop, who by 1938 had become foreign minister, and Hjalmer Schacht, economics minister and president of the Reichsbank. Both Germans valued the alliance with the Zionists because they could be relied upon to torpedo any Jewish-led boycott against Berlin and defend an anti-Semitic regime.

Ben-Gurion had no problem defending the Zionist alliance with Hitler. If the relationship helped Zionism, he argued, then nothing else mattered.

"We are interested in Hitler being destroyed," Ben-Gurion said. "But as long as he's around, we are interested in exploiting this for the good of the Land [of Israel]."

That "good" included limiting Jewish immigration from Europe to German Jews able to enter Palestine as "capitalists," meaning they would bring at least the equivalent of 1,000 British pounds. That excluded virtually all of the 3.5 million Jews of Poland, prominent on Hitler's genocide list. Even those Jews who entered Palestine were subject to deportation in case of unemployment or illness. They were regarded by Ben-Gurion and his colleagues as "poor human material."

"Jewish suffering is also a political factor, and whoever says that Hitler diminished our strength, is not telling the truth," Ben-Gurion said in August 1937.

To ensure his money and power, Ben-Gurion, described by a leading British politician as "the dictator who runs the Jews in Palestine," fought any plan that would evacuate European Jews to destinations other than Palestine. His prime concern was that the Zionists would lose out on the millions of dollars donated to rescue the Jews.

"We can't let them destroy our activities," Ben-Gurion said.

The Zionist alliance with Germany continued throughout World War II. Under Ben-Gurion's guidance, the Zionists eagerly joined the Judenrat and helped deport millions of Jews to the gas chambers. Ben-Gurion, who received nearly daily reports from German-occupied Europe, feigned ignorance of the Final Solution. But sometimes in closed meetings with his Jewish Agency colleagues, he would reveal a chilling callousness.

"I think with the extermination of the six million the fate of the remaining million in Hungary will be better," Ben-Gurion said in mid-1944.

Toward the end of World War II, Ben-Gurion sent a message to the SS leadership that the Zionists were prepared to save them from capture and prosecution -- for a price. Over the next few years, Zionist agents in Italy and other countries would help smuggle countless Nazi fugitives to the Middle East and South America. Now prime minister, Ben-Gurion refused to order a search for Adolf Eichmann, despite leads from Simon Wiesenthal and others.

In late 1949, the Mossad sabotaged a plan to capture Eichmann in Austria. It was only a decade later that Ben-Gurion, threatened by a senior West German prosecutor, agreed to bring Eichmann for trial in Israel.

Throughout, Ben-Gurion made sure to cooperate with post-war Germany. He pressed for a reparations deal with West Germany that would absolve Bonn of the Holocaust in exchange for money. It would quickly lead to forcing German culture, including Hitler's favorite composer, Richard Wagner, on the huge Holocaust survivor community in Israel.

"Money has no odor," Ben-Gurion said.

Ben-Gurion's alliance with Germany lasted until his death. Although long out of office, he was treated as a stateman at the funeral of Konrad Adenauer, Germany's first chancellor, in April 1967. Ben-Gurion's main goal was legacy. He wrote or commissioned books and films meant to show himself as a world leader.

But those who knew him were unimpressed. They had long seen Ben-Gurion as little more than hungry for money and power. In retirement, he was ignored, seen, in the words of biographer Tom Segev, as "spiteful and cantankerous, resentful and insufferable."

Bereft of authority, Ben-Gurion saw no reason to cling to Zionism. He referred to his Polish town of Plonsk as home. He admitted that he was no longer sure that he was a Zionist and doubted whether the word held any meaning.

Yeshayahu Leibovich knew Ben-Gurion from World War II and his alliance with the Third Reich. For a while, the two shared confidences. In 1966, commissioned to revise the Encyclopedia Hebraica, the Hebrew University science professor, who decades later was given Israel's highest award, spent two night on Ben-Gurion's entry. He wrote that Ben-Gurion was a dictator who hated his people and religion.

"I think that Ben-Gurion was the greatest disaster that happened to the Jewish people and the State of Israel," Leibovich, whose entry was censored, said.

Below: Ben-Gurion in his commander's uniform in 1949.