The Welcome Mat: Now and Then

By Steve Rodan and Elly Sinclair

"Since the start of fighting when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, over 12,600 Ukrainians have arrived in Israel, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said Friday. Of those, some 3,650 are eligible to immigrate under Israel’s Law of Return or have already, according to Shaked." Times of Israel, March 18, 2022.

Some eight decades before the State of Israel opened the gates to gentiles at the expense of Jews, the Zionist leadership was maintaining the same policy during World War II. Following British dictates, the Jewish Agency welcomed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of gentiles from anywhere from Poland to Australia while blocking Jewish immigration from German-occupied Europe. The Zionist narrative then and now was that Palestine could not absorb more than a few Jews and, in any case, there was no chance of mass rescue.

Official documents from that period tell a much different story. The documents concern the period of July 1944 when Germany occupied Hungary and was rapidly decimating its nearly one million Jews. By the summer, about half of the Jews had already been sent to Auschwitz and killed. Hitler demanded that the pace be accelerated as the Red Army was moving through Hungary toward Budapest, with an estimated 350,000 Jews. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was working with Adolf Eichmann to conduct a "tremendous one-day action" to remove and kill all of the Jews around the Hungarian capital in the middle of July. The Zionist leadership in Budapest and Jerusalem knew of the imminent SS operation.

By then, however, the international community had finally begun to respond to Hitler's Final Solution. Hungary's ruler, Admiral Miklos Horthy, fearing Allied retribution after the war, came under heavy Western pressure to stop the deportations and ordered the gendarmerie to stop any SS attack on the Jews. He also told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he would allow Jews to enter Romania and board ships to Palestine. Romania said it would grant the Jews entry. Turkey said it would not turn Jewish refugees away. And even Britain,--the White Paper notwithstanding – agreed to allow them to reach the shores of Palestine.

ICRC responded with the promise of Jewish emigration. “Following on the steps taken in Budapest by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the Hungarian authorities have given the Committee official assurances that transportation of Jews beyond the Hungarian frontiers has ceased, and that the International Committee are authorized to furnish relief to Jews who are interned or in forced residence in Hungary," ICRC said in a letter to the U.S. legation on Geneva July 19, 1944. "The Committee is furthermore empowered to cooperate in the evacuation of all Jewish children under ten years of age who are in possession of visas to reception countries, and all Jews in Hungary holding entrance visas to Palestine will receive permission from the authorities to leave for that country."

On July 18, ICRC reported Romania's agreement to allow Jews refuge. Again, the notification was to the Americans, particularly the War Refugee Board, established six months earlier and which was pressuring Hitler's allies to stop the extermination of the Jews.

"We have the honor to inform you that our delegation from Bucharest has just informed us that the Vice-President of the Romanian Council has affirmed his intention to to allow the Hungarian Jews to enter Romania on the condition that they may emigrate in the near future," ICRC said. "For their part, the Romanian authorities, it seems, give a special card for passage to fugitives who arrive without papers. We are communicating this information to you as confidential information and without having been able to verify the matter."

The only party to oppose this arrangement was the Zionist leadership. Through Rudolf Kastner, the Zionists were working with Himmler to allow 1,700 rich and privileged Jews and gentiles to escape Hungary in exchange for facilitating the extermination of the rest of the Jewish community. Kastner's partner was Kurt Becher, Himmler's special envoy and responsible for acquiring the assets of the Jews before they were sent to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. The 1,700 protected by the SS became the sole focus of the Jewish Agency. All other rescue efforts were ignored, including by Zionist activists.

Zvi Bassei and Moshe Moskowitz were assigned by the Zionist movement, Hechalutz, to bring Zionist youth and others from Hungary to Romania. Their mission was to open escape routes from Hungary to Romania. They organized safe houses, gentile homes and baptismal documents for the arrivals. Between 600 and 700 were already in Bucharest. Up to 800 others were hiding along the Hungarian frontier with Romania. Agents were sent to Budapest to bring out Jews, many of whom had escaped from prison or labor camps.

Bassei and Moskowitz appealed to Nathan Schwalb, the Zionist liaison in Geneva. They said negotiations were proceeding for the release of 8,000 Jews, a quarter of them children. The Red Army was on its way and those who had collaborated with Hitler were now ready to work with the Jews.

At this point, they argued, everybody was up for sale, whether Axis soldiers, officials or even clergy prepared to issue fake baptismal certificates. But without money there could be no rescue. Bassei and Moskowitz had received $53,000 to establish the rescue network. They needed another $100,000 immediately. So far, nobody in Geneva or Istanbul was listening.

“In order to carry out the Brichoth [escape] more intensively, at least the mentioned 150 million lei are necessary and this must be sent immediately for this purpose. I think that we missed a lot in this direction only because we had no money. Our desperate calls to our forum from Kushta [Istanbul] and Geneva remain without result, or, if something has been sent, it has only now arrived and also in minimal amounts. An action that costs 30-40 mill[ion], you cannot use 4 or 5 mill[ion] to carry this out. Much misfortune could therefore have been avoided and I believe that if we had had enough funds at our disposal, we could have saved twice the number of people and friends. “We again appeal to you that you bear our concerns. Today, that Kessef [money] is the only argument here that speaks and convinces ... You have to consider that too ... ”

The Jewish Agency ignored Bassei and Moskowitz and helped Kastner undermine ICRC’s rescue plan. The agency signaled that the Zionist leadership did not expect help for Jewish emigration. That was just fine for the Red Cross brass, which insisted that it was incapable of either rescue or relief. During the last months of the war, the organization was seen as merely trying to revise its image of having abandoned the Jews to Hitler.

The prospect that Hungarian Jews might be saved and brought to Palestine alarmed the Zionist leadership. Emile Shmorek, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive, warned that should 100,000 Jewish refugees arrive in Palestine, half would wander the streets unemployed and homeless.

The Executive’s biggest fear was that the agency would not be paid for refugee settlement. Here is how Moshe Shapira, a leader of the Mizrahi movement put it:

"Can we really take out Hungarian Jews?" Shapira asked. "We can afford to take out a maximum of 2,000-3,000 a month. Greenbaum: Even the children might not stay here."

In the end, the Zionists succeeded in sabotaging the rescue plan. The first ICRC-sponsored train, scheduled for Aug. 10, did not leave Budapest as the Germans increased pressure on Horthy while threatening the Jews in Bergen-Belsen. The Gestapo, which demanded ever-increasing ransoms, also foiled a U.S.-arranged plan for the exit of 2,000 Jews from Hungary to Constanza, where boats were waiting to leave Europe.

On Aug. 23, the Red Army conquered Romania and blocked all emigration from Hungary. Another opportunity had been squandered, and this would cost thousands of Jewish lives.

But the Zionist leadership had its way. The Jewish refugees remained trapped by Hitler, who maintained the death machine until his suicide on April 30, 1945. The Zionists would no longer worry about who would pay for rescue and resettlement.

Below: ICRC letter to Roswell McClelland of the War Refugee Board, July 18, 1944. [FDR Library]