Zionist Use of German Military Facilities

By Steve Rodan

One of the most reliable partners of the Zionist movement was Germany. Starting from Hitler's takeover in 1933, Berlin worked with the Zionists in the expulsion of Jews, transfer of their funds as well as intelligence and political cooperation. With the eruption of World War II, the relationship expanded to the Final Solution.

An undated German-language document found in the archives of the American Joint Distribution Committee disclosed a significant detail in the cooperation between Hitler's regime and the Zionist leadership. The document told of the recruitment of the German military to facilitate Zionist communications with the ghettos and underground in occupied Europe. The undated report is titled "Report on the course of talks between representatives of the Hungarian Zionist Executive and the Budapest German Special Task Force (Gestapo)" and identifies those granted the privilege to use German military facilities.

"Since February 1943, some members of the Zionist Executive in Budapest, namely Dr. Rudolf Kasztner, Joel Brand and Samuel Springmann, were able to use the German military news agency in Budapest to organize help for the Jews remaining in Poland and Slovakia," the report said. "This news office also mediated the correspondence between Bratislava and Istanbul."

The report cites what was later known as the Europa Plan, an offer by the Slovak Jewish leadership to raise $2 million to stop the German deportation of Jews to the death camps. The plan marked discussions between a key SS officer, Dieter Wisliceny, the brother-in-law of SS chief Heinrich Himmler and close to Adolf Eichmann, and Slovak Zionist leader Gisi Fleischmann. Dismissed by JDC and the Jewish Agency, the money was never produced for ransom. Most historians have concluded that Hitler would never have stopped the destruction of European Jewry for any price. In his testimony at Nuremberg on Jan. 3, 1946, Wisliceny made no mention of the Europa Plan.

The use of the Wehrmacht for the extermination of the Jews was not exceptional. In his testimony, Wisliceny said the military's Transport Command supplied up to 25 trains that took some 54,000 Greek Jews to Auschwitz in 1943. He said the military also supplied the rations for the doomed Jews during their 10-day journey. The military then confiscated the money left over by the Greek Jews.

What Brand, Kastner and Springmann, in contact with the Jewish Agency team in Istanbul since at least the fall of 1942, relayed in their communications has never been disclosed. After World War II, none of them spoke about this, although Brand boasted of connections with world leaders, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

By 1943, Brand, Kastner and Springmann were smuggling Jews from Poland and Slovakia to Hungary. They were financed by a range of sources, including Baroness Edith Weiss, the eldest daughter of the late industrialist Manfred Weiss and a philanthropist to Jewish causes. The operations were facilitated by a network of couriers, all of them members of the Abwehr and Gestapo secret services. Abwehr was the intelligence agency of the German military and maintained a large presence in Budapest throughout the war.

What prompted Abwehr to allow the Zionists to use German military communications has also not been revealed. But the timing of the decision cannot be dismissed. In early 1943, Himmler was overseeing the destruction of the ghettos in Poland. The SS was ordered by Hitler to end the Jewish presence in that country by the middle of the year.

Virtually all of the ghettos were in disarray. The Jews came under the authority of the Judenrat, dominated by the Zionist movement and responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews to the death camps. The biggest question was whether the Jews, led by the Haganah, would resist.

This question plagued the Zionist leadership throughout the war. Moshe Shertok, a leading aide of Ben-Gurion, established a unit within the Jewish Agency Political Department to correspond with the ghettos. The unit, based in Bern, Zurich and Istanbul, operated a courier service and brought letters and money to Zionist representatives in Poland and the rest of occupied Europe. The couriers then returned with intelligence from the besieged Jewish communities.

Despite widespread starvation, there were signs of resistance in the ghettos. On Jan. 18, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto erupted in spontaneous revolt. The fighting was so fierce that the SS suspended plans to resume deportations.

This was not what the Zionist leadership wanted. In December 1942, Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion rejected calls from the Zionists in Poland as well as his colleague, Yitzhak Greenbaum, to supply help for a revolt. As he had done throughout the war, Ben-Gurion claimed ignorance.

“We must not give orders to the Jews on how to behave as Mr. Greenbaum proposes," Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive. "We don’t know what’s taking place there. There is a need for direct contact as well as a need to publicize a book on the atrocities to the Polish Jews and translate it into many languages so that others will know of the situation.”

It is likely that Kastner and his colleagues used the German military facility in Budapest to relay Ben-Gurion's orders to cooperate with the Nazis. In virtually every ghetto, the Zionists on the Judenrat foiled plans for revolt. The Jewish Agency's use of Nazi couriers to the ghettos ensured that the Abwehr and Gestapo would uncover virtually the entire Zionist underground network in Central and Eastern Europe.

The destruction of the Polish ghettos did not stop German military cooperation with the Zionists. The report cited the Zionist use of the German communications facility through the first quarter of 1944. By now, Kastner and Brand were relaying information to their superiors in Istanbul regarding the German occupation of Hungary in March. Now, the SS, through Wisliceny, wanted another $200,000 before any discussion regarding the fate of Hungary's 1 million Jews.

Within days of the German invasion of Hungary, the SS had established a Judenrat. By April 3, Brand and Kastner were able to raise the $200,000 from the rich Jews in Budapest. Several weeks later, the deportations to Auschwitz began.

The Zionist cooperation with the German killing machine disturbed some in the leadership. In March 1943, Eliezer Kaplan, privy to many of the secret Zionist activities in occupied Europe, was briefed on the Jewish Agency use of Nazi assets. Kaplan warned of disaster but did not protest the cooperation with Hitler.

“A network of contacts is being formed," Kaplan told the Jewish Agency Executive. "There is likely to be failures in terms of money and people. Those in contact serve two masters and we don’t know to whom they will be more loyal. And if they betray [us], the danger will not only be to money but also to people. And still, it is necessary to continue this activity.”

Below: report on the meetings between the Hungarian Zionist Committee and the Gestapo.