But we say: indeed, never again will world Jewry be duped by the Zionists.
Would the contemporary Zionists dare admit that their forebears forsook the Jews in their worst hour? That the Zionist never perceived the safety of the Jews as part of their goal?
Yes, it was the Zionists who supported Nazism, collaborated with the Nazis, identified with Nazism - all due to the ideology of Zionism, which was in effect anti-Semitic.
A Shared Platform
Both Zionism and Nazism believe in the inherent deficiency of the Jew. The only difference between them is in how the question should be answered. According to Nazism, the answer was first emigration and subsequently extermination. The Zionists preached the emigration of the Jews, and the preservation of their blood in Palestine.
Chaim Weizmann, who served as leader of the World Zionist Organization and later as Israel’s first President, could not have been more effusive about his support for racial anti-Semitism.
“We too are in agreement with the cultural anti-Semites, insofar as we believe that Germans of the Mosaic faith are an undesirable, demoralizing phenomenon.” (The letters and papers of Chaim Weizmann v. VII)
In support of the Nazis’ discrimination against Jewish citizens, Weizmann declared that “each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews.” (Benyamin Matuvo, ‘The Zionist wish and the Nazi Deed’)
For Zionism, the Nuremberg Laws were merely a restatement of their national character. The Judische Rundschau, the Zionist official organ in Germany, brazenly published a statement by A.J. Brandt, the head of the Nazis Press Association, that the enactment of the laws was for the Jews’ benefit. “Germany is helping Judaism to strengthen its national character and is making strides towards improving relations between the two peoples.” (Magaret Edelheim-Muehsam, Reaction of the Jewish press to the Nazi Challencge, Leo Baeck Insitute year book, bol. V (1960), p 324)
For Zionists. extending overtures to their fellow nationalists was not a brazen move, but a coordinated political tactic. In an article, Joachim Prinz, a prominent Zionist, offered the full implication of Zionist intentions: “Everybody in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealing with the Nazi Government. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our own appeal!“ (Young Zionist/London, November, 1937, page 18)
The Zionists: The Nazis’ Preference
Through Zionism, the Nazis gained legitimate support to strip the Jews of their rights. Their shared ideology and Zionist assistance resulted in favoritism displayed by the Nazi leaders.
Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Reich Main Security Office and the innovator of the Final Solution, knew enough to differentiate the Zionist from the Jew, a separate identity indeed. “We must separate Jewry into two categories… the Zionists and those who favor being assimilated.” He was overwhelmed with emotions when wishing the Zionists farewell: ‘The time cannot be far distant when Palestine will again be able to accept its sons who have been lost to it for over a thousand years. Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them.” (Hohne, Orders of the Death’s Head, P 333 and Karl Schleunes, The twisted Road to Auschwitz pp 1934)
Adolf Eichmann did not hide his wholehearted support for Zionism: “I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine being anything else. In fact, I would be the most ardent Zionist imaginable… As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders.” (Life Magazine, November 28, 1960)
After the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi prejudice in favor of Zionism could not have been more decisive. The only two flags allowed to be flown in Germany were the Nazi swastika and the Zionist Star of David. While all Jewish newspapers were banned, the only notable exception was the Zionist Judische Rundschau.
The Gestapo treated the Zionists with the deference Nazi sympathizers deserved. The Bavarian Gestapo ordered that “members of the Zionist organization are, in view of their activities directed towards emigration to Palestine, not to be treated with the same strictness which is necessary towards the members of the German Jewish organizations.” (Kurt Grossmann, ‘Zionist and non-Zionists under Nazi Rule in the 1930s’, Herzl Yearbook vol. VI, p. 340)
Who is the Anti-Semite?
In March 1942, Chaim Greenberg, the editor of the Zionist Jewish Frontier, admitted that there was “a time when it used to be fashionable for Zionist speakers to declare from the platform that to be a good Zionist one must be somewhat of an Anti-Semite." (Chaim Greenberg, ‘The myth of Jewish parasitism Jewish Frontiers (March 1942), p. 20)
This assessment cannot be more fitting. And the converse is true as well: to be pro-Jewish, one must be somewhat of an anti-Zionist.
The question we face today is not what Nazism was, but rather, what Zionism and its supporters continue to be.