- [CLAP]
- Yehuda Bauer first of all, I would
- like you to tell us something about yourself.
- As a Holocaust professor and researcher,
- where you personally involved in one way or another
- in the Holocaust?
- No, not at all.
- I was not involved at all in the Holocaust itself.
- In fact, I arrived in Palestine before the Second World War
- with my parents.
- And I spent a very calm and quiet childhood
- in Israel, Palestine, before the state of Israel.
- I was in-- I got interested in the Holocaust
- because I found that this is the central event
- in Jewish history, certainly in modern times,
- probably much longer than in modern times.
- And as I wanted to be a Jewish historian, that's what I did.
- And when did you--
- where did you come from?
- I came from Prague, Czechoslovakia
- when I was 12 years old my father
- was a member of the Zionist movement there.
- And we got out on the last day before the Germans came in.
- In fact, we came out on the day that the Germans came in.
- In '39.
- In '39.
- But you could have been involved in the Holocaust.
- I could.
- I certainly could have been involved.
- In fact, the Nazis boarded the train
- as we were driving out of Czechoslovakia.
- And the Czech engine driver crossed the Polish border
- without the German agreement.
- And that's how we were saved.
- Yes.
- And when did you start to work on the Holocaust?
- Can you say something about your experience in this field,
- from a human point of view?
- I think what made me deal with the Holocaust was
- a long discussion I had with Abba Kovner in about 1964
- or 1965.
- I was doing a Palestinian Jewish history, Zionist history,
- at that time.
- Something completely--
- Completely different.
- And I began dealing with the Holocaust
- because you can't avoid it.
- I mean, you cannot not deal with it.
- And he told me I was wasting my time.
- So [CHUCKLES] I asked him why.
- He said because if you want to deal
- with the really important problems,
- you've got to deal with the Holocaust.
- So I said, I'm scared.
- So he said, well, that's a very good point to start.
- If you're scared, that's a very good point to start with.
- And you work now since how long?
- And now I've been working at it for about 13 years, 14 years,
- something like that.
- And how would you characterize this kind of work?
- I think it's very taxing.
- It's very difficult because it involves you emotionally,
- and you have to, on the one hand,
- if you rid yourself of emotions, then
- there's nothing to work on.
- On the other hand, if you allow your emotions to overcome you,
- you cannot do any sort of writing.
- You have to find somewhere in between.
- And that is, in fact, what I do, not only for myself, also
- for my students.
- I always show a film to all my classes
- so that they will realize that this is not something which
- is sterile and dry and, quote unquote, "scientific,"
- but which has a human value of tremendous importance, one
- of the central humanly important events in human history.
- Do you think that the people who were not directly involved
- in the Holocaust can deal with this?
- Well, if they don't, then the whole thing is lost.
- Yes?
- Why?
- Well, because the people who went through the Holocaust
- will die.
- The people who witnessed from outside will die.
- And then the next generation, nobody
- will know anything anymore.
- And if you want to objectivize this,
- if you want to somehow transmit it to the next generation,
- you have to find a way which will be as near as
- possible to emotional involvement,
- and yet at the same time will give a objective dimension
- to it.
- But you admit that there is a trend today among survivors
- of the Holocaust, among writers, to say
- that it's impossible to deal with, that the best thing to do
- is to keep silent, that there is something obscene in dealing
- with such--
- Yes, well, the people who say that, on the other hand,
- they are the ones who talk.
- They talk much.
- They talk a great deal, and I feel that they have to.
- You cannot take the attitude to remain silent because if it
- remains silent, then the whole experience,
- which should be a warning to the Jewish people,
- to all the other people, will be lost.
- If the Holocaust is that important,
- then you have to do something to save it in such a way
- that it will mean something for the next generation.
- So you have to find a compromise between the emotional side
- and the objective, historical side.
- Yes.
- And what do you think of such an understatement like mine,
- to work, to try to make a film out of it.
- That's exactly what you are doing.
- You're doing exactly what I said just now.
- You are getting out of the people emotions,
- but you do it on an objective plane.
- You ask questions, and you compare
- the answers in your film.
- And so what you are really doing,
- you are doing a part of the job that I think has to be done.
- Yes.
- OK, did you (cut) to the common thread while (film logistics)
- (flim slating)
- [CLAP]
- Well, now I would like that we discuss in general terms
- about the question of the Judenrat.
- I would like to know, first of all, if here) in Israel
- seem to have started to work in this field,
- if you noticed a change in the outlook of the people
- towards the policy of the Judenrat,
- towards the question of the Judenrat?
- Yes, very definitely, there's a change.
- See the people came from the Holocaust, the partisans,
- were opposed to the Judenrat.
- There was a large number of people,
- a relatively large number, who survived from Łódź,
- from Holland, from Warsaw.
- Those Judenrat, which especially Łódź and Holland,
- were of the very negative kind.
- And there was a tendency to generalize.
- The term "Judenrat" became a term of cursing.
- It was an accusation.
- You didn't have to explain anything.
- You just said "Judenrat."
- It was an accusation.
- And the researchers that we went into
- have contributed to a change in the atmosphere
- where people say, well, first of all,
- they begin to understand what the conditions were
- that the Judenrat were working under.
- And secondly, perhaps the main point
- is this whole concept of a impossibility
- to generalize about the policy of the Judenrat
- all together, that there were so many cases, so
- many different examples, that the attempt to generalize
- becomes very, very difficult, indeed.
- Yes.
- And what do you mean when you talk about negative Judenrat?
- I mean the kind of Judenrat--
- I will take Holland as an example.
- Holland is a Judenrat right where
- you had a compliance of the Judenrat with German wishes
- before the Germans even expressed them.
- There was a complete and utter subservience to the Germans,
- to the extent that when the Judenrat was founded,
- the strike was on, the strike of the Dutch workers
- against the Germans for the Jews.
- And the Germans demanded of the Dutch Judenrat
- to intervene with the Dutch workers against the strike.
- It is the Dutch Judenrat who broke the strike.
- And the Dutch Judenrat broke the strike.
- This is how it started.
- So, in Holland, you have a very extreme case.
- You have an equally extreme case of a quite different category
- in Łódź, where Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski,
- an old dictator who wanted to save the Jews at Łódź by making
- them into slaves of the Germans, because he thought that no
- slave master would murder their slaves.
- So this was out of an ideology.
- There was no ideology in Holland.
- There was an ideology in Łódź.
- You mean he had a policy.
- He had a policy, no, an ideology, no.
- He had a policy which came out of an ideology.
- The ideology said that the only way
- in which the Jews could survive was
- if they listened to Rumkowski.
- And he went to the rabbi in Łódź,
- and we have one very definite case of this.
- He asked them whether what he was doing was correct,
- and he got the support of the rabbi.
- He got the support of the elite of the Jewish population
- in Łódź.
- He was supported there.
- He did not act in a vacuum.
- He was supported by some of the people who, after the war,
- attacked him because he was responsible for the murder
- of the children.
- He knew where they were going, and he delivered the children
- into the hands of the Germans.
- Can you enter into details about this?
- Yes, the knowledge of what was happening in Auschwitz in 1942
- was spreading.
- Rumkowski knew what was happening in Auschwitz.
- We know this from a discussion which Rumkowski
- had with a German, a Christian.
- I mean, not a Gentile, a Christian who went into Łódź
- in order to try to help Jews.
- And there was a discussion between that German
- and a rabbi and Rumkowski.
- And in that discussion, it was perfectly clear
- that Rumkowski knew what the Nazi policy was.
- The man was not Friedrich Hielscher.
- Hielscher, yeah.
- And the report--
- He met Rumkowski personally?
- No, he met Leon Rosenblat--
- He met Leon Rosenblat and he met Rumkowski.
- Yes?
- Personally, yes.
- And the problem there that you have
- is that, after this discussion, the children were delivered.
- The children were delivered to the Nazis.
- The Germans asked for them.
- The Germans asked for the children.
- They were delivered to the Nazis.
- So he knew exactly what was happening.
- But you see, his policy was, through the German bureaucracy
- in Łódź, to keep the ghetto alive,
- saying that if you destroy the ghetto,
- all these workers will not be working for the Germans
- anymore.
- And it is a fact that in July 1944,
- when there was no longer any ghetto anywhere
- in Eastern Europe, and certainly not in Poland.
- There was a remnant of Kovno Ghetto, yes?
- There was still a remnant ghetto in Łódź because they were
- working like slaves for the German machine.
- And it was only in July and August
- that the ghetto was finally destroyed.
- The last 60,000 Jews were shipped to Auschwitz.
- Yes, and what do you think about this?
- I call this a policy, this policy of rescue through words.
- Why did they think in such a way?
- Why did they-- why were they so much mistaking what it was?
- Well, it was a logical thing to think, because
- in the logic of modern society, where economics
- is a very central problem, and the Germans were very hard
- put in 1943 and 1944 to get their uniforms, to get weapons,
- to get all kinds of things, just to throw away all these tens
- of thousands of slave laborers?
- That would be silly.
- And so Rumkowski in Łódź and Barash in Bialystok,
- and Gens in Vilna, and not very many others--
- And Merin in Sosnowiec.
- Merin in-- no.
- Merin, yes, all right, Merin in Sosnowiec.
- But there weren't that many more who had
- had this very logical policy.
- And you can prove, for instance, in Bialystok,
- that between, shall we say, the end of 1942 and early 1943,
- there was a discussion, in German Nazi bureaucracy,
- what to do about the ghetto in Bialystok.
- And this was one of the problems they had to confront.
- We get very important things out of this ghetto.
- What shall we do?
- Shall we destroy it, or shall we not destroy it?
- This was decided, finally, really only by a direct order
- by Himmler.
- And it is a fact, you see, that in the spring of 1944, in Łódź,
- there were 69,000 Jews left.
- And if the Soviet army, which was standing from July 1944
- to January 1945 on the Vistula River,
- if they had advanced like they did in 1945 in January,
- in three days, and conquered Łódź,
- they would have saved or rescued 60,000, 69,000 Jews.
- And perhaps you and I would have thought then
- that Rumkowski was a great hero.
- I don't know.
- Was a savior.
- Was a savior, maybe there would be a statue to him somewhere.
- But as it is, he was a murderer.
- He was a murderer.
- There's no doubt about it.
- And when he was shipped to Auschwitz,
- a Jewish figure of the underworld in Łódź,
- whom he had sent personally to Auschwitz,
- got hold of him and threw him alive into the fire
- in Auschwitz.
- Are you sure of this?
- This was what the man told a witness after the war,
- and this was published quite recently.
- Yes, I know, but there are several versions
- of the death of Rumkowski.
- I think it's a true version.
- Yes, but they were very clear in their [INAUDIBLE] in one way.
- People like Rumkowski like Gens, all those pictures,
- they delivered the--
- They were very clear, yes.
- But there's a big difference.
- Again, you see Rumkowski wanted to cooperate with the Germans.
- Merin wanted to cooperate with the Germans.
- Barash did not.
- Barash supported--
- (film slating)
- [CLAP]
- Yes, but I think that we must try
- to go deeper because there was not inside the ghetto
- a situation of potential civil war, like, for instance,
- in the occupied countries like France, like other countries.
- Let take France, where there is always a permanent struggle,
- even if that door is not open between the bourgeoisie
- and the workers.
- However, for instance, the French bourgeoisie
- who collaborated with the Germans were a big part of it,
- because they preferred this, they
- had a kind of ideological agreement with them.
- One cannot say that it was the case in the ghettos.
- On the streets of the ghettos, they didn't--
- There's a great difference between what I call cooperation
- and collaboration.
- Collaboration is an ideological identification
- between the group or the person that collaborates
- and the Nazis.
- They agreed to the Nazi aims.
- They want to help the Nazis to win the war.
- Now we have only one case like that amongst the Jews,
- and that's not Judenrat.
- That's the 13 in the Warsaw Ghetto.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- The others want the war to end.
- They don't want the Germans to win, although some of them
- think that the Germans will win.
- They don't want them to win.
- And they want to save the Jews, somehow,
- until the end of the war, because at the end of the war,
- there will be peace, and the situation will be safe.
- And this is Rumkowski's idea.
- This is Gens's idea.
- This is Barash's idea.
- And Barash is expecting the Russian army
- to come quickly to rescue.
- I mean, no collaborator, no Quisling no Lavalle,
- hope for the Russian army to come and liberate
- France and Norway.
- There's a vast difference there.
- So the Jews are forced to cooperate.
- And these Judenrat that want to save the Jews through slave
- labor are operating, I would say,
- on a logical basis, which in the case of the Nazis
- didn't work because the hatred of the Nazis of the Jews
- was not based on economic or political foundations.
- It was based on ideological and quasi religious foundation.
- And so the end was murder.
- They wanted to save as many as possible, you see.
- And Barash, for instance, in Bialystok
- had relationships with the underground.
- He wanted the underground to act when there was no other way
- out.
- In the end, he missed the last point,
- and the underground rebelled.
- And Barash led the people to the trains to Treblinka.
- But there's a big difference between Barash and Rumkowski,
- because Barash was an honest person who
- was trying to save as many people
- as he could the only way he knew how.
- Whereas Rumkowski knew that he was murdering.
- And he was doing everything to suppress the living standards
- of the people in the Łódź Ghetto.
- He was combating the underground there.
- There was an underground in Łódź.
- He destroyed it.
- So there's a big difference.
- But you see, these cases of rescue through labor
- are not that many.
- There are a few very clear examples.
- But if you take, for instance, Warsaw,
- there's very little of it there.
- There was an economic activity, but it
- was done by the Germans--
- Tobbens and Schultz and others.
- It was also done by Jews, illegally, underground.
- You practically have none of it in Lublin.
- You had very little of this in Lvov, and in other places.
- Certainly nothing of it in Minsk,
- which was a rebellious ghetto.
- And so here, too, you see, if you say--
- if you try to make a stereotype of it, it doesn't work.
- Yes, completely right.
- Now you see there were other Judenrat.
- We discussed Holland.
- We discussed Łódź, Bialystok, and Vilna.
- Now there's Judenrat like, for instance, Shavil in Lithuania.
- Now there, the ghetto population supported the Judenrat.
- There's no doubt about that.
- And the Judenrat organized labor but on a different level,
- trying to save as many people, identifying with a population.
- It was a popular Judenrat.
- Yes, but did they succeed?
- As a matter of fact, in '72, there were a children's Aktion,
- and they gave the people too.
- They gave the people to the labor.
- They tried to save the children.
- You see, the difference between Łódź, Rumkowski,
- and Shavli is tremendous, because in Shavli the police,
- when it heard about the Kinder Aktion,
- the action against the children, they sent the policemen around
- to the families to hide the children.
- Now between that and the fact that they did not
- manage to save them is a second problem.
- But what we are discussing is the attitude
- of the Jewish leadership.
- It was objectively limited in what it could do.
- But we are discussing is not the outcome.
- What we are discussing is the intention.
- It's the moral action that we are discussing.
- The outcome was the same everywhere,
- as far as the children were concerned.
- In Shavli By the way, it worked in a way,
- because Shavli and Kovno were the two last ghettos in Eastern
- Europe.
- In July 1944, they were shipped to Germany,
- and most of the survivors in the South German camps
- were Lithuanian Jews from Shavli and from Kovno.
- Now you have a ghetto like Kovno,
- for instance, where the head of the Judenrat, Elhanan Elkes,
- was active in trying to help the underground,
- protecting the ghetto as far as he could,
- cooperating with the Jewish police, who were
- on the side of the resistance.
- And this is something which is, again, unique in a way,
- because there are not very many ghettos where
- the Jewish police act on the side of the resistors
- against the Nazis.
- Now you can say, again, the majority
- of the Kovno Ghetto inhabitants were killed, including Elkes.
- But the action of Elkes was an action of somebody
- who was thrown into the position of leadership
- and tried to do his best to protect the ghetto.
- And who didn't want to be--
- He didn't want to be the leader.
- He was forced to be a leader.
- And then to take the same area, you
- have Minsk, where you have 80,000 Jews
- and a leader who was put there by pure accident, Eliyahu
- Myschkin who the moment he became the head of the Judenrat
- began to help in organizing armed resistance.
- And this is not a small ghetto, yes?
- This is the fourth largest ghetto
- in Europe, 80,000 people.
- And we don't know to this day exactly how many,
- but approximately 10,000 Jews were smuggled out of Minsk
- into the forest.
- So you have from Holland, Łódź, Bialystok, Shavli,
- and Kovno to Minsk.
- You have a whole gamut of completely different reactions.
- And when you go to each Judenrat,
- whether it's Slovakia, or it's France, or it's Belgium,
- a regional country, each Judenrat
- had essentially a slightly different policy from any other
- you could examine.
- There are not exactly two Judenrat
- which are precisely alike.
- So the attempts that were made after the war
- to present the Judenrat as a stereotype must fail.
- There was no stereotype.
- Yes, how do you explain these different positions?
- Well, to start with, the German policy--
- --from the leader--
- No, no, no, no, not only from the leaders.
- Although, when you take, for instance, the places like Vilna
- and Kovno, which have the same environments and the same type
- of Jewish people and the same German rules,
- and yet the behavior of the Judenrat
- is completely different, you begin
- to wonder whether it's not very much
- a question of the character of the leaders.
- And undoubtedly, that plays a role.
- But look, Minsk, for instance, had forests.
- And there was a beginning of a partisan Soviet movement
- from end of 1941.
- Now this is not the case in central Lithuania,
- certainly not in Łódź, not to speak of Holland.
- So you have completely different environment, non-Jewish, local.
- You have also slightly different policies of the Germans,
- not in the overall attitudes of the Jews,
- but whether there's a military government
- or a civilian government.
- A military government in Belgium, for instance,
- versus a civilian government in Holland,
- where the civilian government in Holland
- has thousands of SS men in Holland
- to execute a command of the German government.
- Whereas in Belgium, the enmity between the military and the SS
- made it easier for the Jews to escape, to hide,
- to make contact with the Belgian resistance, and so on.
- Bauer, 4.
- OK.
- I think one ought to make the very clear picture
- of the periods in which the Judenrate operated.
- You find in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland,
- that in the first, what they call at that time, Kadenzia,
- which meant--
- Who called this Kadenzia?
- The people themselves, in the ghettos.
- The first period of the first Judenrat,
- you find a very high proportion of Judenrate
- who were supported by the population
- and of whom the population thought
- that they were good people.
- Afterwards, they thought that they had been good people.
- What you found when afterwards in Israel was the people
- said the Judenrate were bad, but our Judenrat was good.
- We had a research made of 128 Judenrate in Poland,
- where you could define exactly what they did.
- There were about 250 altogether.
- But 128 you could say exactly what happened.
- And we found that of these 128, 107 were of the kind
- that the people said they were good,
- or that we found that they resisted
- the Germans, whether it was already
- in the economic persecution at the beginning or later
- on when they were asked to supply lists.
- In other words, none of these 107 Judenrate
- went to the point of handing over Jews to the Germans.
- That is the decisive line of these 128.
- Now, that's the first period--
- Because they didn't stay long.
- No, no, some of them stayed a very long time.
- Some of them stayed till the destruction.
- And then you have the second group.
- Now, the second group after the first big murder
- action, the Germans chose usually
- people who are suitable to them.
- And there, the proportion of the Judenrate
- who cooperated with the Germans to the point of handing over
- people is much higher.
- But when you look at the situation
- that the Judenrate were in, you find
- that whether they resisted, or whether they refused
- to hand over lists, or whether they did hand over lists,
- the possibilities, the parameters,
- of what they could do is extremely limited.
- They were part and parcel--
- and in that the other historian colleagues of mine
- who say this, I think are right--
- they were part of a bureaucracy, which was set up by the Nazis
- all over Europe to facilitate cooperation
- or collaboration with them.
- This is true of Czech mayors of French mayors of French cities,
- of puppet governments all over Europe.
- I mean, you have to ask yourself,
- how many French mayors resisted the German call
- to send French slave workers to Germany after February 1943?
- How many Czech officials objected
- or acted against the German design
- to send hundreds of thousands of Czech workers
- into Germany factories.
- Yes, it is true, but the conditions
- were completely different.
- But nobody knew that.
- Nobody knew that.
- In Holland, when they sent the Dutch workers to Germany,
- many Dutch people were utterly convinced
- that they will never see these people again.
- You have the same situation in Poland, in Warsaw,
- after the big Polish rebellion, when
- the Germans evict all the Polish population out of Warsaw.
- The Poles were utterly convinced that they
- were going to be murdered just like the Jews.
- But the Polish underground signed a treaty
- after the rebellion, when they surrendered
- to the German, in which they enabled the Germans to do that.
- They had no other choice.
- They had to surrender.
- So within that framework of the Nazi terror machine,
- the possibility of action were very limited.
- Now, we are talking about what the Judenrate did
- within that framework.
- And within that framework what they
- did was Lvov, for instance, the first head
- of the Judenrat in Lvov refused to hand over
- Jews for slave labor, not destruction, slave labor.
- And he was killed.
- So they put a second one in.
- And when he did not collaborate or cooperate with the Germans
- as the Germans expected him to--
- he opposed them in a way, in his own way--
- he was removed.
- So you could say that the result is the same.
- But again, what we are discussing
- is the attitude and the policy.
- The fact that very few people survive
- is a result of the German policies, obviously.
- And so let me tell you a story, which I think makes this clear.
- In the Eastern Galicia, there is one of these 128 Judenrate,
- which I mentioned before.
- The place is called Kosow Huculski.
- And it was a small Jewish town.
- And there was a Judenrate.
- The Jews were in an area in the town.
- It wasn't really a ghetto.
- And the Germans came from the neighboring town
- to destroy the Jews of Kosow.
- At least that is what the Jews of Kosow
- got by telephone from that neighboring town,
- from Kolomyia.
- And the road from Kolomyia to Kosow
- took about 25 minutes, half an hour, by car.
- The Judenrat in Kosow decided that they
- would warn all the Jewish population
- and tell them to hide.
- In order to hold up the Germans when they came to Kosow,
- four Judenrat members remained in the building of the Judenrat
- to hold them up for 5 minutes, for 10 minutes,
- for a quarter of an hour.
- Out of these four people who stayed behind,
- while all of the others ran around
- to tell the Jews to hide, one of them
- became faint, understandably so.
- And the other three told him, well,
- we cannot have you with us.
- You are too weak.
- And they sent him to hide.
- And the three people in the Judenrat in Kosow
- remained behind to meet the Germans.
- Now, this isn't armed rebellion, yes?
- There were no arms.
- The environment was the Ukrainian.
- Ukrainians hated the Jews, collaborated with the Germans.
- There's nowhere to hide on a large scale.
- And they dug bunkers.
- They dug places to hide in.
- But what they did was the only thing they could do.
- And I think, as a historian I think,
- that the action of these three people in Kosow
- was a heroic action.
- And so you have that as against Holland.
- You have that on the opposite scale to the Dutch case.
- Yes, but I am thinking of the case of Gens, for instance.
- Although the speeches he delivered,
- he didn't stop to talk, said Chevalier,
- because he wanted to explain what he was doing.
- He wanted to explain his policy to the Jews
- and ask for their understanding.
- On the beautiful speech he gave, he
- informed those intellectuals of Vilna
- when you said, "I am the one who has the dirty hands.
- You will get out of this with clean--
- you will be very clean."
- So could you talk about this?
- Yes.
- That is another Judenrat policy, which, again, was engaged
- by some Judenrat heads--
- Gens was one of them--
- to sacrifice a minority, so they hoped, in order
- to save a majority, so they hoped.
- In the speech that you mentioned,
- Gens was justifying the action of the Vilna Jewish police
- in the ghetto of Osniany, where the Nazis came in
- with the Jewish police help to kill old people.
- And the Jewish police--
- The Jewish police participated in the killing,
- yes-- well, they didn't actually kill.
- But they helped the Germans to select the old people,
- to hand them over to be killed.
- And Gens justified it by saying if I
- hadn't done that, they would have taken women and children.
- This kind of policy was done not only by Gens.
- There were a few others who did that too.
- A very extreme case happened in Vilna in that very same ghetto.
- You had there the head of the Jewish resistance
- movement, a Jewish communist by the name of Yitzhak Wittenberg.
- He had been elected head of the Jewish resistance movement.
- A Lithuanian, apparently a Lithuanian communist,
- was caught by the Germans outside the ghetto.
- He told the story about Wittenberg.
- The Germans demanded Wittenberg to be delivered to them.
- Gens knew that Wittenberg was in the ghetto.
- He had met him.
- He demanded that Wittenberg be handed over.
- Bauer, 5.
- The Nazis demanded that Wittenberg be handed to them.
- This means that, of course, the Nazis knew
- that there was an underground--
- They knew that there was an underground movement
- in the ghetto.
- And Gens is the head--
- And Gens was the head of the ghetto.
- And they demanded of Gens that they
- wanted the head of the Jewish underground,
- the communist Yitzhak Wittenberg to be handed over to them.
- Now, Gens was faced with a problem
- of either resisting the Germans or acceding to their demand.
- And he called in the heads of the Jewish underground, whom
- he knew--
- And he knew who they were.
- He knew exactly who they were.
- And they do.
- And they went into him.
- And he demanded that they find Wittenberg and hand Wittenberg
- over to him, to Gens.
- And they refused.
- They refused.
- Gens organized the ghetto against the Jewish underground.
- And you have here a case where the underground,
- the resistance, faced not only the Judenrate.
- It faced the whole Jewish population,
- because the Jewish population saw that if Wittenberg was not
- handed over to the Nazis, the Nazis would come and destroy
- the ghetto.
- This is the way that Gens presented it to them.
- And probably, it is not far away from the truth.
- The fact that in the end Wittenberg
- was handed over to the Germans and the Germans
- nevertheless destroyed the ghetto is beside the point.
- Therefore the population started to demonstrate.
- The population demanded the handing over of Wittenberg
- to the Germans.
- In the streets of the ghetto, and the ghetto was very small,
- whoever looked like he could be a member of the underground,
- he was attacked.
- He was asked.
- He was pushed.
- They shouted and so on.
- People whom they more or less knew
- must belong to the underground were in trouble,
- in serious trouble.
- s the question really became one of a decision
- for the underground either to yield,
- to hand over the command of the underground to Gens--
- that means to the Germans--
- or to rebel.
- To rebel means not only against the Germans,
- not only against Gens, but against the ghetto,
- against the population, against the very population
- whom they wanted to lead against the Germans.
- This means there would have been a kind of avant garde
- without any support.
- Avant garde without any support whatsoever, left in front
- without anyone to follow them.
- Nevertheless, they could not bring themselves
- to make that decision.
- According to material that we now have,
- it was apparently a decision of the cell,
- of the Communist Party cell, that
- forced the issue by having the representatives
- of the Communist Party in the leadership
- of the underground support the handing over--
- No, but as far as I know, Wittenberg himself was himself
- as distrustful of his comrades as he was of Gens--
- He was distrustful not only of--
- He was alone.
- He was really alone.
- But he accepted-- this is the information that we now
- have of some of the people who were members
- of the communist cell and who participated in the decision,
- they say that Wittenberg was not in agreement.
- But he accepted the decision of the cell.
- Yes, but this not only a decision of the communist cell.
- It was a decision of the whole underground.
- But they would not have decided--
- this I think this is quite clear-- they would not
- have decided to hand over Wittenberg
- if they had not been supported by the communist cell.
- All right, but--
- This is quite.
- Yes, but I don't think it is exactly the point.
- Whether the communist cell decided this or not,
- the fact is that the whole resistance--
- Yes, but you see, the interesting thing
- is that in their decision, the communist cell
- reflected the view of the whole underground at that point.
- They were very united.
- They were united.
- But they waited for the cell to decide,
- because he was one of them.
- Yes, all right, but--
- Then they went over--
- then this came to discussion in the general meeting
- of the leadership.
- And the decision was taken.
- And Wittenberg handed himself over to the--
- No, no, it's not so simple.
- They said, OK, we can then ask to surrender.
- And they went to him, as far as I know.
- And he didn't want--
- you see, he fought for one night.
- He didn't want to go.
- He knew that he was going to his death.
- I'm talking already after that.
- Yes.
- In other words, the after that night--
- I made it short.
- You're right.
- There was first a decision.
- They went to him.
- He objected.
- There was a long discussion.
- And then what decided the issue was the decision of the cell.
- They went back.
- He agreed to accept the decision of his own comrades.
- He did not agree with it, but he accepted it.
- And he handed himself over.
- I think what comes out in this episode is a--
- Kind of a lesson.
- Yes.
- I think that what comes out very clearly
- is the terrible moral problem of an underground, which
- sees itself responsible for the lives of the whole ghetto.
- Whatever they do, they may be accused
- of causing the death of the people in whose name they
- want to fight.
- But it is exactly the same problem as for the Judenrat,
- in one way.
- Exactly.
- And therefore, you find, for instance,
- in Vilna and in Bialystok, that the policies of the Judenrat
- and the policies of the underground
- sometimes have a very similar tinge.
- They converge.
- They conver-- they are parallel.
- And there are points of meeting.
- You have another case, which is even clearer, where
- in Bialystok in February 1943, the Germans tell Barash
- that they will deport 5,000 Jews.
- And the underground has to decide whether to rebel or not.
- And there's a terrible discussion.
- And they decide in the end, no, because if we
- wait for another few weeks, we'll have more arms.
- The rebellion will be greater.
- And if the Germans take only 5,000, then we won't rebel.
- So in effect, they sacrificed 5,000 Jews in order,
- so to speak, to make a rebellion for the whole ghetto.
- Yes, and I think that this was one of the great dilemmas of--
- It was a terrible dilemma--
- Resistance in many ghettos, because they said,
- we prepare ourselves to resist.
- But when?
- Exactly.
- When will we start?
- And they said, the day of the liquidation.
- But what is--
- But nobody knows what the liquidation is.
- And in Bialystok, the 5,000 Jews who
- were supposed to be taken out of the ghetto became 12,000.
- Yeah, and it is a liquidation too--
- And no rebellion occurred.
- Or to be more precise, a small part
- of the resistance group in Bialystok
- nevertheless rebelled in February without arms,
- without any hope, and with no results whatsoever.
- And this means, why do I insist on this, because I
- think there was a cooperation--
- Between the Judenrate--
- Of the resistance too.
- Well, you can't call it cooperation.
- There was an acceptance of the same situation
- that the Judenrate had to accept.
- And in Bialystok, Tenenbaum was in touch with Barash.
- It's not as though Tenenbaum did not
- know what the problem was before Barash.
- They met.
- They discussed this together.
- It was one decision.
- It was one decision.
- Yes.
- I'll give you another example of the same thing.
- In a small place near Vilna, two Jews, two young Jews,
- escape to the forests.
- This is an area which was not too far
- away from the Rudniki Forest.
- And they were caught by the Germans.
- And they were put into prison.
- And they were tortured.
- And they escaped.
- They managed to escape in the middle of the night.
- They went and hid.
- And the Germans came to the Judenrate.
- And they said, look, if these two people don't come back,
- we are going to execute all the Jews of the village.
- And the message was given to these two young men.
- And they decided not to come back
- to the village and not to hand themselves over to the Germans.
- And the next day, 150 Jews from the village were killed.
- Now, this was the type of dilemma
- which the resistance faced.
- The Germans made them collectively
- responsible for the whole ghetto, for the whole village,
- for the whole population.
- And in this kind of a situation, they had no way out.
- Yes.
- This is a reason why I think that to emphasize
- too much the contrast between the resistance of the Judenrat
- can lead to a completely distorted picture of what
- was a real situation.
- Bauer, 6.
- We talked about the fact that in certain respects
- and in certain cases, the conditions that
- were imposed on the Judenrat and on the resistance
- forced both sides to adopt similar policies, to converge.
- But, of course, there is a vast difference
- between the resistance and the Judenrat in these two ghettos
- and in a number of others.
- Of course, there were Judenrate that were resisters.
- We are not talking about those.
- Because in the case of Bialystok or in the case of Vilna
- and in other cases, the resistance
- realized that there was literally no way out.
- They accepted the fact that the Jews
- were being killed by the Nazis.
- And that the only possible reaction to that kind of policy
- was armed resistance.
- There was no other-- although they knew perfectly well
- that everybody would be killed.
- Themselves too.
- Themselves too.
- So in that sense, there was a clear cut line
- of difference between themselves and the Judenrat.
- I think I'll read this letter now.
- It's the speech of Jacob Gens after the destruction
- of the ghetto of Osniany with the help of the police,
- Jewish police from Vilna.
- Exactly what did the Jewish police do?
- They selected old people in Osniany.
- They selected.
- But did they participate actually in the shooting?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- It is sure.
- They didn't have weapons.
- Yes, it's what I thought.
- But they led them to be killed.
- Yes.
- And this was known in Vilna?
- This was known when other people came back
- and this became general knowledge.
- "Many Jews regard me as a traitor," Gens says.
- "And many of you wonder why I show myself
- at this literary gathering.
- I, Gens, led you to death.
- And I, Gens, want to rescue Jews from death.
- I, Gens, order the uncovering of malinas"--
- that's the hiding places.
- "And I, Gens, try to get more food and more work
- and more certificates for the ghetto.
- I cast my accounts with Jewish blood
- and not with Jewish respect.
- "If they ask me for 1,000 Jews, I
- give them, because if the Germans themselves came,
- they would take with violence not 1,000, but thousands
- and thousands.
- And the whole ghetto would be finished.
- With 100"-- meaning that he gives them 100--
- "I save 1,000.
- With 1,000, I save 10,000.
- You are a people of spirituality and letters"--
- He's addressing--
- He's addressing the intelligentsia
- of the Vilna ghetto.
- "You keep away from such dirty doings in our ghetto.
- You will go out clean.
- And if you will survive the ghetto, you will say,
- we came out with a clear conscience.
- But I, Jacob Gens, if I survive, I'll
- go out covered with filth and blood.
- Blood will run from my hands.
- Nevertheless, I would be willing to stand at the bar of judgment
- before Jews.
- I would say I did everything to rescue as many Jews as I could.
- And I tried to lead them to freedom.
- And in order to save even a small part
- of the Jewish people, I alone had
- to lead others to their deaths.
- And in order to ensure that you go out with clear consciences,
- I have to forget mine and wallow in filth."
- It's a fantastic declaration.
- What do you--
- I think this is, first of all, an attack
- on the Jewish intelligentsia.
- You are with your clean hands.
- You don't do the dirty work that has to be done.
- Somebody has to do it.
- I am doing it.
- I hope to try to save--
- I hope to save a section of the Vilna ghetto.
- I think he was actually convinced then by his policy
- he would manage to lead a remnant of the Jews
- to the world after the war.
- But there is something else which is striking,
- whether it is Gens or Rumkowski or even
- Czerniakow but Czerniakow is very different we know.
- But all of them were insisting on the saving of the youth.
- Yes.
- They said that the youth was the hope.
- And this is extraordinary, because--
- Well, it's a tradition really.
- You can find, in a different setting,
- of course, a continuation of the Jewish tradition
- from previous times.
- During the time of the tsars, the Jewish communities
- in Russia sent poor youngsters to be
- sent into the Russian army, which
- meant either death or conversion away from Judaism.
- In order to save the spiritually valuable youth
- of the community, there too you had a sacrifice of some
- in order to save.
- To save who?
- To save, in those days, it was the intelligent, rich, young
- population of the Jewish community.
- Here, the concentration is on the youth.
- All the Jewish parties and groups
- had this orientation on young people.
- There's no doubt about that.
- And it was the hope of these leaders
- to save youngsters in that way.
- But, again, I'm afraid that if we overemphasize
- Gens and Barash and Rumkowski, the impression
- will be gained as though that was the general picture.
- And I insist that this is not the general picture.
- It is part of the picture.
- And there were other parts of that picture too.
- And if I may introduce another case,
- it is the case of Slovakia, where
- you had a Judenrat, which became in 1942 in the course
- of the deportations, a Judenrat which represented groups
- of Jews who wanted to save the whole community,
- not part of it, the whole of it.
- And they did it in a number of ways-- by negotiations,
- but not only by negotiations, by trying to pay money
- to the Slovak government--
- Slovakia was a puppet state--
- and establish work camps for Jews in Slovakia.
- There too you have that emphasis on youth.
- But in a different setting altogether.
- The youth will work.
- They will give the Slovaks furniture and whatever
- they produce in these camps.
- And as a result of their work, the whole community
- will be safe.
- That same Judenrat also, in 1943 and in early 1944,
- tried to smuggle arms to the youth in these camps.
- And this is a completely different policy,
- although there is also that concentration on youth.
- Yes, but the conditions were completely different.
- Conditions were different.
- There were no ghettos.
- Well, if you want to take a similar condition,
- you can take the again the ghetto of Minsk
- or the ghettos of Wolinia and Belorussia,
- where the Judenrate, some of the Judenrate certainly,
- tried to organize the youth in order to go out into the forest
- and fight against the Germans.
- Yes, I know very well the case of Slovakia.
- In light of [INAUDIBLE] OK, now, you wanted to say,
- and I think it has to be said, about difference
- with the generations.
- Yes.
- I think what we find in the ghettos of Eastern Europe,
- but also partly in the West, is a rift, an abyss,
- developing between youth and older people.
- The youngsters, especially the youth movements
- in Eastern Europe, whether they were Zionist or Bundists
- or communist--
- most of them were Zionist--
- The Jewish youth movement.
- The Jewish youth movement.
- They had not participated in the life of the adult community.
- The Nazi conquest forced them into redirecting
- their attention to the community, first in education.
- They had to try to encompass as many young people
- in the educational activity as possible.
- And later on, they found themselves,
- against their will really, representatives
- of the whole Jewish population in its struggle for life.
- And this is really what the resistance meant.
- These youngsters who made the rebellion
- in Warsaw or in Krakow or in Bialystok and in other places,
- before the war, they had no interest at all in what
- was happening in the community.
- And now because the old generation
- was so slow in understanding what was happening around them,
- it was under a shock, the youngsters
- freed themselves quicker from the shock.
- And they established a life, a new life for themselves,
- in which they became the leaders.
- But while it is very interesting,
- why they were cut before the war off the community?
- Well, if there were Zionists, they wanted to go to Palestine
- and rebuild a new life.
- They have nothing to do with the life
- in Eastern European Jewish communities.
- This was old.
- They rebelled against it.
- If they were communists--
- Now, this is a very important point too.
- There is a discussion in the--
- If they were members of Zionist youth movements,
- they were preparing for a life in Palestine before the war.
- They didn't want to have anything
- to do with the Jewish communities in Poland
- or anywhere else.
- They would come after them as time went on.
- It was a real rupture.
- It was a complete rupture.
- You had basically the same attitude, shall we say,
- of the Communist youth who wanted to create a new society.
- They were not going to be active in Jewish community life.
- The B'nais were a little bit different,
- but even there it was a cooperation
- between the Jewish and the Polish working classes
- to build a new society.
- The everyday activities in the Jewish community,
- that was not their business.
- And when the--
- But the B'nais was their way of life.
- The whole way of life, sure.
- This was foreign to them.
- They wanted to escape from it.
- Now, when the Nazis came and you had
- the creation of the ghettos, everybody was pushed together.
- People began to realize that they
- shared the fate of the community in which they were living.
- There was no escape.
- But in one way, it was what they hated the most.
- To be part of that community.
- Yes.
- Precisely.
- They were forced into it.
- And when they discussed what to do, some of them--
- in fact, there was a discussion in Vilna Ghetto,
- there was discussion in Bialystok ghetto,
- there were discussions in Krakow--
- where people said, look, why should we stay here?
- We have to protect our own movement.
- We have to protect the fighters.
- Let us escape to the forest.
- Let's fight the Germans there.
- And the community-- what will happen to the community
- will happen to the community.
- We can't help it in any case.
- But there were even some who said, our aim is Palestine.
- Our aim is-- sure.
- We have to protect ourselves and to protect the Jews--
- Our task is to reach Palestine.
- I must say, there was certainly such a view expressed.
- But amongst these youngsters, those
- who didn't want to stay in the ghetto said that the ghetto was
- lost in any case, escape to the forest and save--
- for Palestine, for the future, for whatever--
- save the few that would fight that would
- save the honor of the Jewish name and so on.
- The majority, of course, did not accept this view.
- The majority, in the end, either stayed,
- or even if they went to the forest,
- they went to the forest out of the ghetto, so to speak,
- taking with them whatever they could.
- When you go eastward to the masses of the Jewish partisans
- in Bielorussia, for instance, who
- had about 25,000 Jews who escaped into the forest
- to fight--
- not all of them managed to fight,
- but 25,000 people escaped.
- But they escaped why-- because they were forests.
- Because there were forests.
- Nowhere else was a forest.
- This is the first condition.
- And these people who escaped, you
- had whole communities escaping, families escaping.
- This was a different situation altogether.
- Yes.
- Go on.
- Well, you have to feed me with another question.
- No, no, no, because I said I thought it was very important.
- This was a case of Smolar for instance.
- Well, the case of Smolar, Hersh Smolar in Minsk, I think
- is a bit different.
- Hersh Smolar came as a communist into an environment
- which had been Soviet in Minsk.
- He found a Judenrat which was willing to do everything
- in favor of armed resistance.
- On the other side of the fence in the Bielorussian city
- of Minsk, there was practically no support--
- very little support.
- And what they did, what Smolar and his group did,
- together with the Judenrat, was to organize the people
- to go out into the forest.
- And that wasn't just young people--
- anyone could go out, with arms if possible, because it
- was very difficult to be accepted in the forest
- into partisan units without the arms.
- And it was in that area, the Minsk area,
- where you have family groups that fought--
- whole family groups, the so-called family camps,
- like the Bielski brothers and others.
- Yes.
- But to come back to the discussion between the people
- of the Jewish youth, it's important to say too
- that some of them said, what is the use of rescuing ourselves
- if there is no Jewish people behind us.
- Yes.
- All right, let me go into that a bit.
- You heard a very clear case of that in September 1942
- in Warsaw.
- In fact, after the great deportations from the Warsaw
- ghetto, most of the people who formed the resistance group
- thought there was no use in carrying on any longer.
- And they wanted to commit suicide.
- It was Antek Zuckerman, and Zivia Lubetkin,
- and Mordechai Anielewicz, and a few others
- who changed their views--
- who said, it is our task to remain in the ghetto,
- because we have to leave the Jewish remnant of the ghetto
- to a struggle.
- We cannot leave the ghetto behind us.
- We cannot escape by committing suicide or by some other way.
- In other ghettos, you had to escape into the forest.
- And the people said, no, we must not do this.
- We must stay here because we are part of the ghetto.
- And we must fight with the ghetto.
- And it is an irony that they decided this
- after the big Jewish masses had been destroyed.
- Had been destroyed, yes.
- Because while they were being destroyed,
- they had no support whatsoever from the leadership.
- They had no organization.
- They had no arms.
- And in fact, in Warsaw Ghetto, the few arms that they had
- were, by pure accident, found by the Germans,
- and the people who were responsible for it killed.
- So there was no physical, no technical way
- of having any kind of armed action
- during the big deportations in any case.
- Yes, I thought you could consider--
- excuse me.
- I think the reason for the failure of the resistance
- groups in the summer of 1942 in Warsaw
- to organize a resistance is due to the fact
- that they were still unprepared.
- They were still in that stage where
- they were looking for some way of action,
- but they had not identified yet with the masses
- of the Jewish population around them.
- They had not prepared any means of meaningful resistance.
- It was far away from their whole background,
- from their whole history, from their whole tradition.
- And they were living together as a community.
- They were living together, yes.
- And the attempts that they made were just the beginnings.
- And then the deportation came, and the leader was caught.
- Josef Kaplan was caught by the Germans and murdered.
- The sack where the ammunition and arms
- which they had collected by then was taken by the Germans.
- And the girl who transported it was killed.
- The organizer Braslaw, Shmuel Braslaw by pure accident
- was caught on the street and killed.
- So by a series of accidents, any resistance
- during the big deportation was impossible.
- And after that, there were about 55,000 Jews
- left in the ghetto in Warsaw.
- The Jews realized that the others had been killed.
- They didn't know it before.
- It suddenly came to their consciousness
- that all these masses of people are no more.
- And they began accusing themselves
- for having let them go.
- And this formed a good background for the resistance
- to get the support of the 55,000 who
- remained for a action of resistance against the Germans.
- There was a real unity.
- And the result was that the Judenrat was neutralized,
- the Jewish police was neutralized,
- and the unity came into being between the resistance
- group and the masses--
- what was left, and those Jews who
- were left in the Warsaw ghetto.
- It turns out the Judenrat was not even any more
- useful for the Germans.
- The Judenrat was neutralized.
- It just couldn't act anymore.
- It was useless.
- Yes.
- OK.
- Now, I would like that we talk about how it happened here
- during the--
- Yeah.
- Well, let me say, first of all, one thing.
- The knowledge of what was happening in Europe
- reached the whole Western world, including Palestine.
- Until 1942, in a way in which all detailed knowledge was
- there--
- you had news about pogroms in this place,
- and then murder in this place, and ghettos,
- descriptions of ghettos.
- All this you can find in newspapers, in the New York
- Times or in Palestinian Hebrew newspapers at that time.
- But nobody put it together into a plan.
- It was unthinkable.
- It never had happened before.
- There was no precedent.
- And therefore, people couldn't accept
- the idea of what today we know to have been the Holocaust.
- In Palestine, the real rupture came in November 1942
- when a group of largely women and children were exchanged--
- Palestinian citizens who'd been in Europe--
- were exchanged for Germans who were living in Palestine.
- And this was October 1942 and they left Europe.
- They arrived here in November.
- They knew everything.
- And they told, personally, the story of the Holocaust.
- And there was a sudden change, you
- see, from not realizing what was happening-- there was a shock.
- And the Zionist leadership in this country
- took the attitude that, in fact, nothing much could be done.
- The Jews were lost.
- (film slating)
- The news about the Holocaust were not put together
- into one big picture.
- There were the individual news that came in.
- For instance, you have in March 17, 1942,
- in the Hebrew paper, Davar, an article
- by a very well-known journalist who complains
- about the spreading of rumors.
- He said, "don't those who spread the rumors about tens
- of thousands and about a quarter of a million of massacred Jews
- feel that the majority does not tend
- to get overexcited from the facts and the numbers
- in these news because of their being
- unreliable and exaggerated?"
- And in fact, in July 1942, Gruenbaum--
- Yitzhak Gruenbaum, who was in charge of relations with Jews
- in the diaspora on behalf of the Jewish agency in Palestine--
- He was a very important member--
- He was a member of the Jewish agency, yes.
- A Jewish Agency Executive.
- And he was asked in the executive, what
- about all these news about Vilna, that masses of Jews
- were killed in Vilna?
- He said, it can't possibly be true
- because the rumors talk about more Jews in Vilna being killed
- than there were Jews in Vilna before the war, which
- shows that all these news are exaggerated.
- Now this same Gruenbaum later on, in December 1942,
- says that he knew about the slaughter in Poland in August
- but refrained from making it public because
- of the threat of the German invasion
- to Palestine, which was then overwhelming,
- and he did not want to make the atmosphere in Palestine,
- in Jewish Palestine, deteriorate even more.
- There is something in that.
- He received news, very detailed news, and one of these--
- or rather, two of these--
- dealt with the Holocaust itself.
- There was a news item coming out of England of the Bund report,
- which came which was publicized in Britain in June,
- and which reached Palestine in July, that the Jews were
- being killed in Poland.
- And there was a letter from Lichtheim,
- who was the representative of the Jewish agency
- in Switzerland, who was the only one of Gruenbaum's
- correspondents who put this in very clear language
- that the Jews are being systematically killed
- in Europe.
- The reply of Gruenbaum to Lichtheim
- is different from what, in December 1942,
- he said because in his reply to Lichtheim,
- he said he did not believe him.
- The fact is that he did not make Lichtheim's letter
- public, either to the Jewish agency executive
- or to the general public, whatever his reasons were.
- But why?
- What was the reason?
- I think that the real reason was that he did not want
- to believe what he was reading.
- And when the news did come through,
- the shock was tremendous, both to Gruenbaum himself,
- who felt himself responsible for not having reported what
- he knew before, and to the general public
- because in November, these 69 largely women and children
- came who were Palestinian subjects, citizens in Europe,
- exchanged for Germans in Palestine.
- They reached Palestine with the news they had seen!
- They were coming from Poland.
- They came from Poland, from Germany, from Belgium,
- from France.
- They came here and they told the story of the Holocaust.
- They saw it.
- And suddenly, you see, all of a sudden,
- from one day to the other, there was a shock
- to the whole population.
- Newspapers appeared in black margins, black borders,
- and the reaction of the agency executive
- and of the leadership of the newspapers
- and of Gruenbaum, who was responsible for rescue action--
- Yet this must be said, he was a--
- He was, at that time--
- Palestine Rescue Committee.
- He was the Rescue Committee.
- But I'll say something about that in a moment
- because it's not as simple as that.
- He was responsible and the reaction
- that you see in his activities, and in fact,
- in the activities of the leadership in Palestine
- altogether, is one that says, look,
- there is no chance of saving anyone in any case.
- The only way to save the people is to win the war quickly.
- As Gruenbaum says in December 1942,
- in an article in a Hebrew paper, he says,
- if there will be rescue, it will come from the American
- and Soviet armies.
- It will not come from us.
- He talked exactly like the Americans, like the British,
- rescues through victory.
- A rescue through victory.
- And what is the use of this?
- Precisely.
- Now that was the attitude of Gruenbaum.
- Now one must, however, understand that Gruenbaum--
- [AIRPLANE ENGINE HUMMING]
- Shall I repeat this again?
- OK.
- Let it go.
- Let it go, OK.
- The attitude of Gruenbaum has to be
- understood against the background
- of his position in the agency.
- He was a minority representative.
- He was shunted onto the Rescue Committee
- because the majority party in the Jewish agency
- executive, the Labor Party, occupied the major positions.
- Finance, foreign policy, leadership, and so on
- and so forth.
- Gruenbaum was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair?
- No, Gruenbaum was a member of the General Zionists.
- He was a minority representative.
- When you look at the actions that were done,
- whatever was done, it wasn't through Gruenbaum.
- Gruenbaum never sent the emissaries to Istanbul
- to contact the Jews in Slovakia, and Hungary, and Romania,
- and Poland and send their money.
- That wasn't done through Gruenbaum, that was done--
- OK, but why such a man was appointed
- as the head of the Rescue Commitee?
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- This means as a rescue of the very side--
- That was one-- you can say that here, you
- had a scandal of a lack of proper organization
- at a time when such an organization was needed.
- I'm just explaining the facts.
- And the facts are that when--
- at the same time, at the end of 1942,
- the Jewish Agency tries to send parachutists, large numbers
- to Europe.
- There was a plan to send, immediately,
- 500 parachutists from Palestine to organize resistance
- all over Jewish Europe.
- And this was proposed by the Jewish Agency Executive
- without Gruenbaum even knowing about it,
- never mind acting in it.
- So the personality of Gruenbaum is important,
- but it has to be taken in the proper context.
- The Jewish Agency Executive in Palestine at the time
- was generally of the view that very little could be done.
- Now, let's examine whether more could have been done?
- Yes, but I think that this lack of organization
- came from something much deeper.
- It's because--
- I'm coming to that.
- Now, you see, the problem with the Zionist movement
- in Palestine altogether, at the time,
- was you had a very weak Jewish population in Palestine,
- half a million.
- There was the British Empire that
- was opposed to the continuation of the Zionist endeavor,
- and there was a threat from Germany.
- In 1942, Rommel stood in Al -- stood in Alexandria.
- In this kind of environment, the Zionist leadership said,
- there was no possibility, whatsoever,
- for us helping European Jews.
- But we must help ourselves, we must defend Palestine,
- we must recruit ourselves to the British army
- against the Germans, and so on and so forth.
- The lack of Jewish power, the lack of Jewish influence
- caused the Zionist leadership to say,
- all we can do is to look after Palestine.
- There's very little we can do abroad.
- Some, we can do.
- Whatever we can do, we should do.
- But there's very little we can do.
- What can we do?
- We can press the British to send parachutists, military people
- to organize Jews in Europe.
- We can send money, whatever we can collect in Palestine,
- it's a very small community.
- We can try to influence the powers diplomatically.
- But let us not kid ourselves that we can do more than that.
- That was the attitude of the leadership.
- That was not the attitude of some of the youth movements,
- of some individuals, and so on.
- But that was the attitude of leadership.
- It was accepted.
- By the majority--
- There is a text of Gruenbaum, precisely about
- the approach of the Germans.
- Well, that's what I--
- Where he says, we have to fight, and if we
- know that the Jews are killed like sheep in Europe,
- this will destroy our fighting spirit.
- Yes.
- There is--
- Now this is-- Yeah, but you see, this
- is what he said in January 1943, about August and September,
- what is true, it is true of January 1943.
- In other words, he does not want to emphasize too much the news
- about the disasters in Europe because, and he says it openly,
- because he says, they will go, they went like sheep
- to the slaughter.
- We here must defend ourselves.
- We must be different.
- The point is that Gruenbaum and his group
- and the people who agreed with him
- did not change their basic attitude that nothing could
- be done, even after they knew about the Warsaw ghetto
- rebellion, which is three months after this.
- Because this is held in January.
- In April, they knew about the Warsaw rebellion,
- it was immediately publicized.
- And they did not change.
- They said, we can't do anything.
- Now what was done was done.
- Tres bien.
- Very good.
- (film slating)
- The problem is what they could have done, you see?
- For instance, you have here a quotation from Gruenbaum,
- early in 1943.
- He says, "Zionism is above all.
- This has to be said whenever a big Holocaust takes us
- from the struggle for redemption in Zion."
- "Redemption in Zion," whose redemption in Zion?
- "Our redemption struggle does not develop from,
- and does not directly merge with the actions for the diaspora.
- This is our disaster."
- See, there is a contradiction there.
- The contradiction is that you want to create a state.
- If your are a Zionist, you wanted
- to create a state in Palestine for whom?
- For the Jews in the diaspora.
- I mean, who would populate such a state?
- It is a question for the Jews in the diaspora,
- for an elite of the Jews.
- No.
- But they wanted to create a mass Jewish state.
- For the mass Jewish state, they needed
- the masses of the Jewish people in the diaspora.
- They saw themselves as an avant-garde,
- and the others would follow.
- But if there was nobody to follow,
- they would remain an avant-garde without a following.
- And that would be a tragedy.
- Yes, but [INAUDIBLE] avant-garde.
- Yeah, all right.
- But what for?
- So they are struggling with themselves all the time.
- There's a contradiction in the very-- in the sentences
- that I was reading.
- The contradiction inside.
- This was a contradiction with which
- they were living at that time.
- They were trying to establish-- trying to fight for a state,
- because if they did not fight for a state,
- nothing would be safe.
- If they fought for a state, something would be saved.
- If there was, after the war, no Jewish state and no country
- that would absorb whatever's left,
- then everything would be lost.
- Yes but in one way, what you say is complete, perfectly true.
- But they took, in one way, easily.
- Or too easily--
- They did not take it--
- --for granted that there was nothing that could be done.
- Well, now the problem arises what could be done.
- As I said, there were differences of opinion.
- We take Gruenbaum as the extreme example.
- There were other members of the Jewish Agency
- that acted differently.
- But what they essentially saw was a completely powerless
- Jewish people.
- And in 1942 and [? 1943, ?] this is undoubtedly, exactly
- correct.
- The Jews have no influence.
- They are pushed aside.
- Nothing will be done for their rescue,
- and all you can do is to run to the British,
- please, please send few hundred parachutists into Europe.
- They didn't do even that.
- In the end, they sent 31 parachutists.
- Jewish?
- Jewish parachutist from Palestine
- to help save Jewish communities in Europe.
- It was useless.
- They wouldn't even send a few hundred parachutists.
- So what else could you do?
- We had no ships, we had no aircraft,
- how would you get to Europe?
- Swim?
- There was no way.
- This was a country at war.
- There was no way to get to Europe.
- And so the only thing they could do
- was to get those few pounds together, collect money,
- send it to Istanbul, get it to Europe,
- advise them, and the parachutists.
- And that was all.
- And that was all right --
- So practically speaking, there was the question
- that the leadership said, OK, you want us to do something.
- What shall we do?
- The youth movements, the kibbutz movements in this country,
- and others said, at least do what you can do.
- Yes, but about the Judenrat, you talked
- about the moral attitude.
- Yes.
- One could say that they behaved very--
- They were very rude, these people.
- Yes, now what--
- They were statesmen and politicians.
- Well, that is undoubtedly true.
- They had to decide where to put their effort in.
- The priority.
- Their priority.
- And they put their priority in what
- they saw that they could do at that moment, which
- was to struggle for the continued existence
- of the Jewish population here and to establish
- a Jewish political independence later on.
- But you see, when you come to see what actually was done,
- the little that was done, you have to ask yourself,
- who wanted to do it?
- Did they get the support of the leadership?
- Well, they did get the support of the leadership.
- That same Gruenbaum, who is quoted now, very often,
- in the kind of quotations that I did.
- I did quote him.
- He says in one of his speeches to the Rescue Committee,
- of which he was the chairman, he said, anything we can do
- is useless.
- He said it.
- And then he added, but we must do it.
- We must do it.
- And so he runs around and he gets the money.
- And he does the little that he can do.
- When, after the war, he was accused
- of the things in the kind of quotations that I just quoted,
- he said, well, what else do you suggest
- that I should have done?
- I don't accept his excuse because--
- There is another quotation which is--
- You mean the one with the--
- Yes, [INAUDIBLE].
- I don't sway.
- I don't-- [INAUDIBLE].
- Yes.
- Yes, anything he was asked by members of his own group,
- from people who came from Poland, "they always demanded
- of me alarms."
- This is a bad translation from Hebrew,
- which means that they demanded of him that he
- should publicize, in the country, what was happening.
- "And I would pour cold water in their faces
- and cool their enthusiasm.
- They said to me, you have to swear
- in the name of the Jewish Agency that there
- will be no peace and quiet and until we stop the massacre
- and save the remnants of our brothers
- in the occupied countries."
- And he says, "no, I will not sway.
- It is possible that this is a main issue,
- but it is not the only one one has to see to.
- And, again, I spoke of the pledge.
- We have and need to get out of the situation
- of the exceptional people and become a people
- like all the other peoples.
- Two thousands of years of diaspora are enough.
- We shall have equal rights in the family
- of nations in this world.
- This is a testament, and we have to execute it."
- We can't do anything for the diaspora,
- we have to execute the testament of the diaspora here
- to establish ourselves as an independent people.
- No, no.
- But there is this place and there
- was a one he says, very clearly, "if I
- have to choose to give money for rescue
- or to give money for the--"
- For the KNK I remember the quotation.
- Yes.
- Jewish cause?
- Cause, then there will be the Jewish cause.
- In actual fact, he said it and he did the opposite.
- Because when the discussion came up, where should the money go?
- He demanded that the money should go to the rescue.
- I mean, one has to say that in his favor.
- I told you, there is a contradiction
- in their attitudes.
- And the interesting thing is the pressure
- that is exercised in Palestine by the people from the kibbutz
- movement, by the youth movements,
- by the working class movement in this country,
- and by other groups who demand more action.
- And the more action expresses itself
- in sending a delegation to Istanbul,
- which will be in touch with the diaspora
- and will try to send the money.
- That is, in effect, what they were asking for, that is,
- in effect, what they got.
- And then we come to 1943 and 1944.
- And for the first time, a real possibility
- opens up to do something real.
- And that is with the mission of Joel Brand,
- with a Hungarian business.
- And there, you can see at the moment
- when there is a possibility, what they do.
- And Gruenbaum is completely out of the action.
- He just is-- he doesn't exist there.
- The people who do it is Ben-Gurion and Sharett.
- And they try to influence the British and the American
- government to carry on negotiations with the Nazis
- to save the Jewish people of Europe.
- The expression of Sharett is "dangle a carrot
- in front of their eyes."
- Don't actually give them anything, just
- negotiate, and by the very process of negotiation,
- you will save Jews because you will postpone their murder.
- So when you come to June 1944, for the first time,
- the Jewish agency in Palestine does have a possibility
- to do something real.
- And this is what they do.
- They demand negotiations.
- Do you think that they did the utmost?
- Well, I don't quite know what the utmost is.
- This is a time of the invasion of Europe.
- The invasion of Europe was early June 1944.
- The Joel Brand business, Joel Brand
- came to Istanbul on the 19th of May.
- And Sharett flew to London on the 26th of June.
- Demonstrations in front of Churchill,
- can one really suggest, in retrospect,
- that British Jews should have demonstrated
- in front of the houses of parliament three weeks
- after the invasion of Europe?
- Or do you suggest that this should have been done
- in America at the same time?
- Hardly likely.
- So there was pressure.
- Yes, what is pressure?
- Meetings, memoranda, organizing non-Jewish diplomats
- and statesmen to intervene in behalf of whatever the Jewish
- agency wanted to be--
- No, but I agree completely with you.
- But what is so striking that when
- one compares the past and the reason of the deportations,
- day by day in Hungaria, the fantastic speed
- and the slowness of this pressure.
- And I don't accuse anybody, but one has to stress this,
- you know.
- I think one of the big problems there is--
- the lack of congruity, the problem
- that you have the Nazis in Europe doing
- the destruction of the Jews at a fantastic
- speed, and the reaction of the outside world
- is complicated, slow, contradictory.
- And the outside world knows what's happening?
- And the outside world knows what's happening.
- What is the reason for that, the basic reason for that?
- I think the basic reason for that--
- and this comes out very clearly in the Hungarian episode
- with the Jewish Agency demanding negotiations
- and the Western world opposing it.
- The real reason behind it is that the Western powers
- were leading a war to be won by military means.
- The aim of the war was actually to change the world,
- to destroy a terrible, satanic, demonic force, the Nazi power,
- which was trying to destroy peoples.
- So in actual fact, the aim should
- have been to save people, but this
- was lost in a concept which saw the war as a purely
- military affair.
- And there was a decision taken by the American military
- in January 1944 which said in so many words
- that no military action should be taken to save civilians
- which was not in line with military needs,
- and military needs meant anything
- that was conducive to the military victory in the war.
- Now, the Jews and, in some cases, others
- were civilians who were threatened by the Nazi machine,
- but their saving was not a military aim
- of the Western powers.
- Therefore, whatever the Jewish Agency did
- and when Sharett went to London in June 1944
- to try to convince the British--
- it was useless.
- On the 2nd of June, 1944, Greenbaum
- sent a cable to America to convince the Americans
- to bomb Auschwitz.
- This was another thing that the Jewish Agency
- could do to demand the bombing of Auschwitz.
- This was actually not an idea of the Jewish Agency.
- No, it was not.
- This came from Slovakia, from Weissmandel.
- Yes, it came from Weissmandel, the first one.
- But it reached the Jewish Agency.
- They adopted the plan.
- They sent it in.
- But you see, the Americans and then the British--
- they didn't see this as a priority.
- The priority was to bomb the chemical factories
- near Auschwitz but not to bomb the concentration camps.
- So what the Jewish Agency in Palestine
- could do, even in that situation,
- was what we talked before the Judenrat could do.
- They could show good intention.
- They could press.
- There wasn't very much more they could
- do in those circumstances.
- Exactly what was asked--
- that the Jews of Warsaw asked there already--
- in October 1942, when Karski was sent,
- he said one has to take specific measures for the Jews.
- --specific military measures.
- In 1942, when Karski came to Europe and to America--
- in October 1942, there was no military means
- by which American bombers could reach Eastern Poland.
- But in 1944 there was, and it was realistic.
- And the Western powers wouldn't do it.
- We don't talk about the Soviet Union
- because the Soviet Union simply wasn't
- interested in the whole business.
- Now let me come to the Hungarian problem.
- There are several issues involved there.
- I think one basic issue has to be gotten out of the way
- straight away, and that is the question
- that Kasztner, who was the factual, not the nominal,
- leader of the Zionist Rescue Committee in Budapest
- was accused of, namely, that he was negotiating with the Nazis,
- and in return for the negotiation with the Nazis,
- he kept quiet about the mass murder in Poland
- and thereby prevented Hungarian Jews
- from reacting to the Nazi deportations
- differently from what they did react in fact.
- And this is put forward especially
- clearly in the case of one town in Eastern Hungary,
- Cluj, where Kasztner comes from, where
- it was said that he saved a number of his friends,
- and family, and so on by bringing them to Budapest.
- And he did not want the others, thereby preventing their escape
- to Romania, which was just 12 kilometers away
- across the border.
- Now, let me put this very clearly.
- I think that this whole issue is put the wrong way around.
- Hungarian Jewry, including the Jews of Cluj,
- did not have to be told about the mass murders in Poland
- or about the plan of the Germans to annihilate
- the population of Europe.
- They saw it happening in front of their eyes.
- It is quite futile to talk about anyone,
- whether it was Kasztner or anyone else, that
- was needed for the Jews of Cluj or any other place in Hungary
- to tell them what was happening in Poland.
- How did they know?
- Well, first of all, there were 2,500 Polish Jews
- who escaped between 1942 and 1944
- into Hungary from Poland, especially
- from the area of Lvov.
- They told their hosts, the Hungarian Jews, about Belzec,
- about Treblinka, about Majdanek, about the mass destruction
- in all these places.
- Some of them survived.
- We have the testimonies in Yad Vashem.
- They tell us that the Jews who hosted them, including people
- who escaped into Cluj, did not want to listen to them,
- threw them out.
- The Judenrat, the Hungarian Judenrat in Budapest,
- created a separate department which sent out emissaries
- to Hungarian provincial towns to warn
- the Jews that they were going to be deported to Poland
- and killed.
- What does it mean?
- What does it mean precisely?
- Precisely, 12--
- If they sent people to war, what did they tell them?
- They went to the various ghettos--
- by that time, they were already ghettos, yes.
- This was after the beginning of April.
- Yes, but in order to understand one
- has to say that the lifetime of these ghettos was very short.
- Six weeks, six weeks.
- Most of these emissaries came within those six weeks.
- They were sent out as a measure of immediate rescue.
- They came with the task to tell the Jews in those ghettos,
- don't agree to be taken into trains.
- Don't agree to be taken away because you
- are going to be shipped to Poland, and Poland means death.
- That is what they were told.
- Of these 12 people who were sent out--
- this was a small department immediately
- organized to send out people who looked not Jewish, who
- could go around.
- There isn't a single one--
- I think eight or 10 of the 12 are here in Israel today--
- who does not tell the story that he comes to this ghetto,
- and to that ghetto, and to this town, and to that town,
- and they are kicked out by the communities.
- But this is not surprising.
- It was the same in Poland, too.
- But this is two years after the destruction starts in Poland,
- and what I'm trying to say is that it is not
- a matter that the Jews of Hungary didn't know.
- It is a matter that they did not want
- to know because to no meant--
- No, no, but one has to enter in detail.
- These Jews who were sent as emissaries--
- what did they do?
- They gathered the people?
- They delivered the speeches --
- No.
- They talked--
- They tried try to see--
- --to the chiefs of the community.
- Yes, they try to see the chiefs of the community,
- and it is the chiefs of the community who did not
- want to receive the message.
- The accusation that was afterwards
- leveled against Kasztner and a few others
- was that they did not warn the chiefs of the community,
- and what I'm saying is that the chiefs
- of the community and the community had the information
- and did not have the knowledge because they didn't
- want to have that knowledge.
- Yes, but, first of all, you don't convince me absolutely.
- I'd say it's so simple what you say.
- And the second thing--
- we don't understand very well what Kasztner,
- in the same time, was doing.
- Now, I'm coming to that, but I first
- want to make this point clear because if I didn't convince
- you, I have more points.
- There were Hungarian soldiers who came from the Ukraine
- on leave.
- No, no, no.
- No, I agree completely about this,
- that they knew about this destruction.
- This is very clear.
- But I think that if they would have
- been warned in another way--
- and I don't know which one--
- maybe the results would have been
- different because when you talk to some of these people today--
- and I did.
- I have talked to some of them who are in Israel and who
- were shipped from Transylvania or from Cluj, even,
- to Auschwitz, these people complain.
- And they say today that they were never warned.
- Well, this is simply not true.
- In Cluj there was a committee, a rescue committee,
- which was composed--
- all right, I'll start exactly from there.
- In Cluj, you had a very typical situation, a very important one
- because Cluj is a very short distance away from the Romanian
- border, and there was, theoretically, a possibility
- of crossing it, although how many, in fact,
- could have crossed the border in the middle of war
- between Hungary and Romania is very doubtful.
- In Cluj, there was a committee of community leaders.
- Kasztner wasn't a community leader.
- Kasztner was a journalist, an important journalist.
- But the list I have here of one, two, three, four, five,
- six central leaders of the community,
- including the rabbi of the Neolog community in Cluj--
- they were trying, during the period of the ghettoization,
- which is a very short period of time,
- to convince the Jews of Cluj to escape.
- It was a rescue committee.
- They knew what was happening in Poland.
- They were trying to warn them.
- What I'm trying to say is that, to have Kasztner come in
- or any Kasztner, any person to Cluj
- to tell the people of Cluj what was happening in Poland so they
- shouldn't go there was futile.
- They knew it in any case.
- The question of the--
- It seems that the warning was not delivered properly.
- I'm saying that the warning didn't
- have to be delivered properly because the people knew.
- In other words, the addition of somebody else telling them
- what they already knew had no meaning.
- Their own leaders told them.
- If the chiefs of the community would have said what was
- their [INAUDIBLE]--
- But that was the leadership.
- Look, Dr. Moshe Weinberger, for instance--
- he was a leader of the community.
- Hillel Danzig was the leader of the community.
- These people were on that committee.
- This was before some of them went on the Kasztner train,
- yes?
- This is--
- And what does it mean?
- The population of Cluj, the Jewish population was gathered?
- This man-- yes.
- What we discussed before, that the population of-- the Jewish
- population in the Hungarian provincial cities-- in fact,
- anywhere--
- simply did not want to realize what was going to happen,
- not that they didn't have the information.
- I think that they had no time--
- Ah, now I'm coming to that.
- [? --to realize ?] because it went very fast.
- And second, [? see, ?] I don't think that they have been
- warned properly by their own natural leaders.
- Well, those were their natural leaders.
- If their leaders would have said--
- I am not sure that they said--
- if their leaders would have said, run away,
- and you are doomed--
- No, they didn't say, run way.
- --you are finished--
- They said, escape.
- Some of this --
- They said, escape to Romania, in Cluj.
- In most cities in Hungary, there was no point
- in trying to escape anywhere.
- Yes, it was too far.
- I admit it.
- There's no way.
- But what Kasztner was accused of was
- that he was negotiating with the Nazis
- to save the whole of the Jewish population of Hungary
- if possible, yes, as against money.
- That is what he was doing.
- His first meeting-- he first met with Dieter Wisliceny
- at the end of March of 1944 and then again in April.
- They were trying to negotiate for a ransom which would free--
- first of all, which would not put the Jews of Hungary
- into ghettos--
- this was the first thing--
- and afterwards, to try to save, by some kind of negotiation,
- through the Brand negotiations and afterwards, whoever
- it was possible to save.
- Now, he was accused of-- by doing these negotiations,
- he was closing the option of turning to the Jews of Hungary
- and telling them, run.
- Now, when you analyze this now, you
- have to see that he could either have-- he could have done
- either the one or the other.
- The moment he turned to the Jewish population
- to tell them to run, that was the end
- of the negotiation with the Nazis
- because there was no hiding.
- Yes, it was the end of--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- So the problem for Kasztner was, what was more effective?
- What had more chances?
- The Germans came into Hungary with a plan, a very quick plan.
- It took them very little time to go
- through the stages of concentration, of isolation,
- of Aryanization, and so on, and so forth.
- The ghettos existed for a very short period of time.
- They were only--
- It was the preliminary [? stage. ?]
- --preliminary steps to deportation.
- The central Judenrat in Budapest had very little effect
- anywhere.
- The process was very quick.
- The cooperation of the Hungarian population and government
- was almost 100%.
- There was no possibility for the Jews
- to escape into the countryside.
- The few Jewish communities on the Romanian border
- were few communities on the Romanian border.
- All the rest were not in that situation at all.
- And Kasztner decided, together with Komoly
- together with other members of that group,
- that the only chance to save Jews was by negotiation.
- The Jewish men were in labor battalions.
- But you said the only chance to save Jews.
- You should say the only chance to save some Jews because--
- No.
- --as a matter of fact, he thought already
- that those were doomed [INAUDIBLE]
- and he wanted to save [INAUDIBLE]..
- That is not true.
- That is not true--
- I think.
- --because his negotiations, to start with,
- with Wisliceny and [INAUDIBLE]--
- But this was a--
- --a first stage.
- Yes, the very first stage.
- The second stage was Brand, and Kasztner
- believed in the Brand mission.
- And the Brand mission was to save one million Jews.
- Don't forget that.
- Yes, but there was a third stage.
- But you see, when the second Kasztner negotiations started,
- they did not start, as you know, before early part of June.
- By the early part of June, the process
- of the deportation of the provincial Jews
- was in full swing.
- That's exactly what I say.
- He knew it.
- So the only way that he could act
- or that he thought that he could act
- was by negotiating with the Nazis
- to save whoever he could save.
- His negotiations turned about the Jews
- of Debrecen, the people who were transported,
- 15,000 or 17,000 people who were transported.
- But you see, he writes himself in his report
- that he wanted to save a kind of ark of Noah.
- Now, no, it's not only that.
- What he wanted to do--
- he wanted to break the precedent.
- He wanted to create a precedent of saving Jews
- with German agreement.
- If this precedent was once created,
- negotiations could then begin to save large numbers.
- The precedent was the famous Kasztner train.
- By the way, Kasztner, of course, thought
- there would be more things, yes, but there was, in the end,
- only one.
- Like all leaders in Europe in similar situation
- of the adult groups, not the youngsters,
- he saved or he put--
- he took from Cluj his friends, his family.
- He took into that train people representing
- all the sections of Hungarian Jewry, and he argued--
- And many rich, too, who could pay.
- And rich people who could pay for the rest.
- He argued that, if he put his family in there, then
- people would join.
- If not, who could know?
- Perhaps the Germans were going to betray him
- like they betrayed so many times before
- and they would ship the train to Auschwitz.
- I don't know whether that is true
- or not, but what is clear to me is
- that he believed in this idea of a precedent
- because we have evidence--
- What interests me is that one can
- see the achievement of Kasztner in a double light,
- either a complete positive one or a negative one.
- The positive one is what you say,
- that he created a precedent, and in fact, this
- was the first time that the Nazi released Jews.
- 1,600 Jews-- it's nothing, and it is [INAUDIBLE]..
- And it is a tremendous thing, yes.
- And the negative thing is that he
- behaved like a classical Judenrat member.
- In one way, he was only interested in saving a handful
- because he knew that he couldn't save the [INAUDIBLE]..
- I'm not sure that you are right.
- I'm not sure at all.
- I'm not sure that you are right, too.
- All right.
- I think that I would plunge for the positive explanation
- in the case of Kasztner, not that Kasztner was, shall
- we say, the ideal representative of the Jewish people,
- by no means.
- He certainly was interested in saving his own group.
- There's no doubt about that.
- He was a person with very peculiar standards
- occasionally, but there's no doubt in my mind
- that he wanted to save the Jewish population of Hungary
- and not just that group, that the group that he saved
- was, for him, a stepping stone to save
- others, and more people, and as many as he could.
- And I think that he was right because I think that there was
- no other way of saving Jews in the situation of Hungary
- where you have all the Jewish men in the labor battalions
- and no rebellion is possible, where
- you have no weapons and no support
- from the Hungarian population, where you are
- under SS occupation in Hungary.
- There was no other way but by ransom negotiations.
- He conducted these negotiations very cleverly, very cleverly,
- and he, in fact, through Eichmann and afterwards
- through Becher convinced Himmler that he was somebody with whom
- it was worthwhile negotiating.
- I think it can be said that, partly due to Kasztner,
- Hungarian Jews were saved.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- (film slating)
- I think it can be said that, even in 1942 already,
- Himmler and some of the German generals
- knew that Germany couldn't possibly win the war.
- I think you can find it in Felix Kersten's memoirs
- and in various other places.
- Kersten was the masseur of Himmler.
- Kersten was the masseur of Himmler,
- and he had discussions with him and so on.
- I think these memoirs have to be taken seriously.
- So I would say that the Jews were, for Himmler, a means
- to get to these kind of negotiations,
- and this was based on the idea that Himmler believed in,
- like most of the top Nazis, that the Jews were a world power,
- that they could influence the Western Allies,
- that those Jews who were in Nazi Germany's control
- could be used as a means to reach the Western Allies.
- This was, of course, complete fantasy.
- The Jews didn't have any power, but the Germans
- believed that the Jews did.
- And this is the basis for these negotiations.
- Otherwise you just can't explain them.
- This is enough to understand why the Jews were killed,
- powerlessness.
- Powerlessness, and they were imputed to have
- a power they did not have.
- Now, the Western Allies had no such illusions, of course,
- and for the Western Allies, the Jews
- were a relatively unimportant element in the whole situation.
- And the Jewish position in between this Nazi idea
- of a tremendous Jewish power through whom one
- can reach the Western Allies and, on the other hand,
- the complete lack of interest, really, of the Western Allies,
- who were fighting a war against Germany--
- that is the situation of the Brand mission.
- That is the situation in which the Brand mission failed.
- It had to fail because the Germans meant it seriously,
- and the Allies did not.
- Now, behind the Brand mission in 1944
- you have this figure of Bandi Grosz,
- that fascinating figure because Bandi Grosz was sent by the SS
- to try to negotiate a separate peace.
- It's ridiculous to think that anybody would have
- taken Bandi Grosz seriously.
- He was a smuggler, a little thief, a crook.
- But he was the only person in the whole Nazi Reich
- who, in 1944, had direct contact with the British and American
- intelligence services in Istanbul, in a neutral country.
- And he was used by the SS in order
- to try to get the negotiations with the Allies going.
- He was sent along with Brand.
- Really, Brand was a cover Grosz.
- In reality, the Brand mission--
- he was sent in order to exchange goods, trucks for Jews--
- was just one and line.
- And the Grosz mission was the real one.
- They wanted to get to negotiations with the Allies.
- And the refusal of the Allied powers
- to negotiate over the Brand scheme stemmed from the fact
- that the British and the Americans realized in the end
- that the real mission was Grosz, and Grosz was
- negotiating a separate peace.
- And the Western Allies would not have anything of that.
- Do you think that they would have negotiated for the Brand
- mission only, even if they wouldn't have been Bandi Grosz?
- No.
- No, but the complete burying of the Brand mission
- was the result of finding out about Grosz.
- You see, until the Grosz mission was found out,
- a few weeks passed.
- During these weeks, both the British and the Americans
- said, OK, we are not going to give the Germans any goods
- or anything like that, but let's keep the door to negotiations
- open.
- That was the phrase.
- I don't know what would have happened if they had not
- discovered the real aim of the Grosz mission,
- but it is clear that, when they did discover it,
- it buried the Brand mission completely.
- And there again you have this Jewish situation
- where the Jews are the victims of powers which are completely
- beyond the Jewish faith, the Nazi realization--
- well, some Nazi realized that the war is lost
- or the war can be won, that they want
- to negotiate with the Allies, the Allied refusal.
- And in the middle there are millions of Jews
- who are slowly being or quickly, rather,
- being ground up in the Nazi machine while this is going on.
- It's true, but it's difficult to understand
- because, in the same time, Eichmann was killing.
- Eichmann was killing because there were, in the SS,
- two parallel lines of policy.
- One was the one that I just outlined,
- in other words, the line of Himmler, Becher which said,
- we must try to find some way of reaching the Western Allies.
- But of course, this was not known to Hitler.
- And the idea of complete destruction,
- annihilation of the Jewish people in Europe
- was the second one.
- It was carrying on, and Himmler was going on
- with this parallel--
- He knew.
- It wasn't done without his knowledge.
- Pardon?
- It was not done without his knowledge.
- No, of course.
- This was the second line.
- He was pursuing two lines at the same time.
- But you see, both lines are within the Nazi ideology,
- and it cannot be explained without reference to Nazi
- ideology.
- Nazi ideology did not see the Jews as human beings.
- Therefore, you could either kill them
- or sell them, whichever was more convenient.
- The selling process stemmed from the same background
- as the killing process.
- Exactly, they saw them as trucks.
- They saw the same as trucks, yes.
- And then you have the same situation
- carrying on after the failure of the Brand mission
- with the negotiations in Switzerland, which
- were conducted from August 1944 to February 1945
- by a representative of the JDC, of the Joint
- in Switzerland, Saly Mayer, with the same group,
- with Becher on behalf of Himmler.
- And it is the same line.
- Himmler there, quite clearly, is trying to get to the Americans.
- Yes, at this time it is clear.
- So you have throughout the Holocaust--
- you have, at least from 1942 on, in my view--
- it can be proved later, but I think it is true also from 1942
- on--
- a line, a possibility of saying, look, the Nazi decision
- to murder all the Jews of Europe was conditional in a sense,
- that if there was somebody to buy the Jews,
- they might have sold them.
- But there was nobody to buy the Jews
- because the Allied idea was--
- Yes, it is very important.
- Pardon?
- To sell or to kill was the same thing, as a matter of fact.
- This cannot be understood otherwise.
- It is very important.
- Next?
- No, no, I'm-- there are now the people of the Europa Plan,
- the Jews, Weissmandel, Wisliceny, Weissmandel,
- Fleischmann.
- (film slating)
- I think it ought to be stressed that if the Allies had agreed
- to negotiate about the trucks, that
- would have led also to direct negotiations,
- precisely as Himmler wanted.
- Now let me go to the Slovak negotiations of 1942.
- But while that's true, I think that the fact
- that the only way they thought of an opening
- to the Allies for negotiations was--
- --was with the Jews.
- It was the Jews.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- The only-- yeah, that's perfectly true.
- This goes with their idea of the Jewish power.
- The Jewish power, definitely.
- The whole idea of the Nazis was that they
- were fighting a war against world Jewry, therefore
- any negotiations with the powers they were fighting
- against involved the Jewish problem one way or the other,
- perfectly clear.
- This is very, very, very important.
- Yes.
- I think it's been shown, it's been
- proved that the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union
- was an attack which was designed to fight against world Jewry.
- That was the idea of the struggle against the Soviet
- Union, and the same applies to the so-called "Western
- plutocracies," who were supposed to be controlled
- by the Jewish world power.
- But one can even follow a line which
- starts much earlier, the negotiations for ransom.
- Schacht-Rublee, certainly, yes.
- There's a line from Schacht-Rublee [INAUDIBLE]..
- You have a line from Schacht-Rublee,
- perhaps even earlier than that, where the Nazis, in fact,
- already, before the war, say that there
- are various ways of dealing with the Jews.
- One of them is to sell them, and this
- was the idea behind the Schacht-Rublee negotiations
- of December, January, February 1939.
- Could you say in one word?
- The Schacht negotiations were the result
- of the Evian Conference of 1938, and the idea
- was to have 100,000 young Jews emigrate abroad,
- and then the others would follow.
- They would prepare the ground for the others to follow.
- And the Jewish people outside Germany
- would pay for it, in essence.
- America wasn't very happy about this plan,
- and by the time the negotiations about it started,
- the World War broke out.
- But Hitler gave his agreement to this explicitly,
- so one can say that the idea of selling the Jews in this sense
- was, with Hitler in 1939, parallel to very grim decisions
- that were apparently in the process of being
- taken at the same time.
- So you have this kind of parallel attitude
- throughout the war.
- Now, when we come to the question of the ransom deal
- or the supposed ransom deal in Slovakia,
- Jewish survivors argue that the ransom that
- was paid by Weissmandel and Gisi Fleischmann
- in Slovakia to Wisliceny in June and in September 1942
- stopped the deportation of Slovak Jewry.
- There is circumstantial evidence to show that this was so.
- What is the circumstantial evidence?
- The dates of the discussion between Wisliceny
- and the Jewish group preceded by a few days
- a meeting between Wisliceny, and the German ambassador
- to Slovakia, Hanns Ludin, and the Slovak premier, Prime
- Minister Tuka.
- And in that discussion, Wisliceny
- announced to a very surprised Slovak prime minister
- that the Nazis were stopping the Jewish deportations,
- supposedly because of the intervention
- of the Catholic church, supposedly
- because the Slovaks were corrupt and they were letting 35,000
- Jews out of the deportations.
- When you check this, it's very unlikely.
- The Catholic intervention was in March, not in June.
- 35,000 Jews who were freed from the deportations
- by the Slovaks-- that's pure fantasy.
- Nothing like that ever existed, and it's a fact
- that the Germans stopped the deportation.
- Ludin and Wisliceny reported to Berlin
- that they were stopping the deportations for those reasons.
- So you have this time element which comes together.
- There is, therefore, a case for saying that the ransom stopped
- the deportations, but there is no proof
- because you could say that the deportations were
- stopped for other reasons which we don't know today.
- We don't have the documentation.
- And we can say, too, that it was always
- the way the Nazi dealt with because they never deported--
- --everyone.
- --one community at once.
- Very difficult to say, but it is a fact
- that the deportations were stopped for six weeks,
- that within those six weeks the other part of the ransom
- was supposed to be paid, that it was not paid,
- that more transports went, and that after the second payment
- was paid, there was only one more transport.
- And then the deportations stopped for almost two years.
- So there is a case, but if you ask me whether there is
- a proof, I cannot say that there is a proof.
- Now, what was our next point?
- I am sure there is no proof.
- Well, I don't know.
- We find peculiar things in us in the last few years,
- and I haven't lost hope that we may find proof one way
- or another in this case.
- But you see, when you look at this,
- you see that what is really important
- is the utter conviction of the people who were negotiating
- that they had stopped the deportations through the ransom
- because that made them approach Wisliceny in November
- for the Europa Plan.
- Had they not believed that they stopped the deportations,
- they would not have tried it.
- Yes, for sure.
- Now, what--
- But why did the Germans answer to them
- when when they suggested the Europa Plan, OK,
- we agree for this?
- Find the money, and we will stop.
- Why did they say that?
- Yes.
- Well, I think that is quite clear.
- They said they wanted to negotiate with foreign Jews.
- They said they wanted to negotiate with world Jewry.
- They said they wanted the money in a neutral or Allied country
- to be delivered to them.
- They quoted a ridiculously low figure in the money terms
- for the ransom, and they demanded $2 million.
- What are $2 million in a World War?
- The very sum that they demanded, the small sum they demanded,
- I think, goes a long way to show that what they
- were after was not the money.
- The money was just a means to get into the negotiations,
- and I think it is-- to me, at least,
- it is perfectly clear that already
- in 1943 what they really wanted is the negotiation
- with the Allies.
- Because they wanted the money from outside?
- From the outside.
- They didn't want the local.
- Yeah, and I think Weissmandel's story there is very clear.
- He invented a world Jewry.
- He invented somebody who represented in Switzerland,
- a man by the name of Ferdinand Roth, and in his name
- he wrote the letters.
- And that went.
- That was OK.
- That influenced it.
- In fact, Wisliceny reflected that kind of belief
- with whom he was negotiating when he was on trial in 1946
- in Slovakia after the war.
- In his testimony before the trial, he reflected that.
- And what did he say?
- He said that he was negotiating with world Jewry.
- He was convinced of that, and he reported this,
- through Eichmann, to Himmler.
- And that he also said in the trial, yes.
- Now, last point, what you said about the war
- against the Soviet Union, that it was, in fact,
- a war against Jews.
- Could you elaborate this?
- Yes, this you'll find in Hitler's second book, which
- was written in 1928, that the Jews control the Soviet Union,
- and therefore any expansion of Germany
- must be at the expense of the Soviet Union
- and destroy the Jewish power there,
- which will be the destruction of the world Jewish power.
- His preparations for the attack on the Soviet
- Union at the end of 1940 and beginning of 1941
- reflect this very clearly.
- He is attacking a Judeo-Bolshevist power,
- which is the greatest demonic power that he's
- fighting against.
- He's fighting against the control of the world
- by world Jewry.
- He says this in a number of places,
- and I think this is perfectly clear.
- It is unbelievable today to a normal person today
- to say that Hitler was fighting the war against Russia
- to fight against Jews.
- It sounds crazy, but it happens to be true.
- What can you do?
- The Jewish problem for Hitler was
- one of the two poles of his whole ideology.
- The positive power was the conquest of the world
- by the healthy and cultured Germanic race,
- and the negative pole was the demonic, satanic power
- of the Jews that was, in fact, in control
- of the world of Hitler's enemies and against which he
- had to fight in order to win.
- (film logistics)
There is no transcript available for this track
Overview
- Description
- Yehuda Bauer, an Israeli scholar, talks about how he first became involved in the study of the Holocaust and how he tries to strike a balance between emotional involvement and objectivity. He talks about the Jewish Council and Israeli attitudes to them after the war. Lanzmann and Bauer debate Kasztner's actions and motivations and the Nazi fantasy of the powerful "world Jewry". The interview was recorded outdoors in the early evening at a kibbutz in Israel (probably Bauer’s home).
FILM ID 3793 -- Camera Rolls 1-3 -- Interview Judenrat
CR1 Bauer says he came from Prague in 1939 at the age of twelve. His father was a Zionist and got the family out on the day the Germans came in. Lanzmann asks how he started working on the Holocaust in Israel and Bauer explains that it was impossible for him as a historian not to deal with it and that he was scared to do so.
CR2 Lanzmann asks Bauer if there is a change of attitude among Israelis toward the Judenrat. Bauer says yes, and that research has shifted toward an understanding of the conditions under which Judenrat were working, and the impossibility of generalizing about the policy of all of the Judenrat. Bauer describes an extreme case in the Łódź ghetto where Rumkowski wanted to save the Jews by making them slaves of the Germans, calculating that no slave master would murder his slaves. He did this with support of the rabbis and Jewish elites. Lanzmann calls this a policy of "rescue through work". It did keep 60,000 Łódź Jews alive until 1944, longer than in other ghettos. Had the Soviet Army moved into Łódź in July 1944 instead of January 1945, Rumkowski might have been remembered as a hero or savior, but Bauer calls him a murderer.
CR3 Lanzmann talks of the ghetto situation being different from that of occupied countries like France where there was a permanent struggle between the bourgeoisie and the workers. Bauer points out that there is a big difference between cooperation and collaboration, the latter being an ideological union with the occupiers which helped the Nazis win the war. Some Judenrat tried to save the Jews through slave labor, but the approach did not work because the Nazis hated the Jews based on ideology, rather than economics, so the end was murder. It is important to look at the moral action or intention. Barasch in Bialystok was an honest man who tried to save as many people as possible by working with the underground, while Rumkowski fought against the underground and destroyed it. In Kovno, the Jewish elder Elkis tried to help the underground with the support of the Jewish police. In Minsk, the leader Myschkin helped to organize the resistance. Bauer says that attempts to present the Judenrat as stereotypes are fallacious. Lanzmann presses Bauer to define the difference in the leaders' position. Bauer says it was more than the leaders; it was also the environment and whether there was a military or civilian government in place.
FILM ID 3794 -- Camera Rolls 4-6 -- Interview Judenrat
CR4 Bauer draws a distinction between when the Judenrat operated. Studies show that a large number of Judenrat had the support of the population at first. Later, their sphere of action was limited, and they felt forced to hand over their own people as slave laborers. Bauer tells a case in Kosov, Ukraine, where when alerted that the Germans were coming to kill the Jews, three of the Judenrat delayed the Germans with talk while the Jews ran off to hide. Bauer explains that there was a policy among some Judenrat heads to sacrifice a minority in the hope of saving the majority, which is what Genz did in Vilna having the Jewish police handing over the old people to be killed by the Germans.
CR5 Lanzmann and Bauer discuss the decision of the Communist Party, the Judenrat, and the ghetto population to turn in Itzi Gritenberg, the head of the resistance movement, to the Germans. Gritenberg supported Jakob Genz in sending Jewish elders away. The underground found itself in a similar position as the Judenrat, with the responsibility for choosing the life or death of others. Bauer illustrates a case of two Jews near Vilna who escaped to the forest; when they did not return, the Nazis killed 150 Jewish villagers. The resistance felt that the Germans put them in a no-win situation.
CR6 Bauer explains that the resistance movement was different from the Judenrat in that the former realized that armed resistance was the only reaction to the Nazis, and that it was hopeless - everybody would be killed. In contrast, he reads a speech by Jakob Genz, head of the Vilna ghetto, who sacrificed elders rounded up by the ghetto police, with Genz saying that he has blood on his hands, whereas the intelligensia would live with a clear conscience. Bauer cites examples of alternate ways of dealing with the Germans. In Slovakia, the Judenrat decided to save the whole community, so were able to negotiate with and pay money to the Slovak government, and establish work camps for youths. Lanzmann points out that conditions were different in Slovakia because there were no ghettos. Bauer counters with examples of ghettos in Minsk, Wolinia and Belorussia where the Judenrat helped get youths into the forest and fight the Germans. Many of the youth were Zionists who had disengaged from the Jewish community before the war.
FILM ID 3795 -- Camera Rolls 7,8 -- Interview Divers
CR7 Bauer says again that the youth movements, Zionist and Communist, both had as their mission the establishment of a new society. But being stuck in the ghetto, they had to share the Jewish way of life, which they had rejected. In Vilna, Bialystok and Cracow, they decided that the ghetto was lost anyway, so where they could, they escaped into the forest and became partisans. In Belorussia, about 25,000 Jews escaped, many of them becoming fighters, even forming family camps. Acquiring guns was a major challenge, since it was difficult to be accepted into partisan units without arms. But in the Warsaw ghetto, there was no way to have an effective armed resistance during the big deportations in 1942.
CR8 Bauer surmises that the reason for the failure of the resistance groups to organize an uprising in Warsaw in 1942 is that they were still unprepared. It went against their history and tradition to rebel. But when the remaining 55,000 Jews in the ghetto realized that the others had been killed, the population organized themselves, neutralizing the Judenrat and the Jewish police. Bauer explains that the Western world had heard about the pogroms, murder and ghettos in Eastern Europe, as reported in the New York and the Palestinian Hebrew newspapers, but no one had put the events together as a plan because the events were so unprecedented as to be unthinkable. The shock of realization came when a group of Palestinians who had been living in Europe came to Palestine in the fall of 1942 and told the whole story.
FILM ID 3796 -- Camera Rolls 9,10 -- Zionism
CR9 Bauer goes into detail about the disbelief of the Western world about the news of the systematic killing of the Jews in Europe. He cites the public denial of Itzak Greenbaum despite having accurate information from a correspondent in Switzerland. Lanzmann presses Bauer and he says that Greenbaum knew there was little the Jewish population of Palestine could do, so he took the attitude of "rescue through victory." It was only when 69 Palestinians came from Poland, Germany, Belgium, and France in 1942 having witnessed the atrocities, that the world realized the "rumors" they had discounted were true. Greenbaum sent out a call to fight in 1943 saying that the European Jews had gone "like sheep to slaughter" and that "we must be different".
CR10 Bauer speculates about what the Jews in Palestine could have done. He says the dilemma for the Zionists in Palestine was to create a mass Jewish State. All would be lost if there was no Jewish State after the war and no country would absorb what Jews were left. The Jews were completely powerless in 1942 and 1943 - they had no ships or aircraft to get to Europe. Leaders sought help from the British and begged that a few hundred parachutists be sent into Europe. In the end, 31 parachutists were sent. Bauer continues about the contradiction of resources, whether to raise money for building an independent state or for rescuing European Jews. There was pressure from the kibbutz movement, youth movements and working class movement for more direct action, such as sending a delegation to Istanbul. Ben Gurion and Sharett tried to influence the British and American governments to negotiate with the Nazis to save the Jews of Europe or at least to delay their murder. Lanzmann mentions that the slow pace of the pressure to negotiate is in direct contrast with the speed of the deportations of the Hungarian Jews in 1944.
FILM ID 3797 -- Camera Rolls 11,12,14 -- Interview Divers
CR11 Bauer agrees with Lanzmann about the incongruity of events: The Nazis destroy the Jews at a fantastic speed, yet the reaction of the world was contradictory and slow. He surmises that the Western powers were focused on winning the war by military means in an effort to destroy the Nazis. Saving people was not a military aim. Even in 1944, when American bombers could have reached Eastern Poland, bombing Auschwitz was not a priority. Bauer addresses the accusations against Kasztner, the leader of the Zionist rescue committee in Budapest. Kasztner is alleged to have negotiated with the Nazis. Bauer does not believe the Jews of Klusz knew of the Germans' plan of annihilating European Jews from the 2,500 Polish Jews who escaped into Hungary between 1942 and 1944. Those who escaped told their Hungarian hosts about Belzec, Treblinka, and Majdanek. The Judenrat in Budapest sent messengers to ghettos to warn Jews that they would be deported and killed in Poland. Several of the twelve messengers survived and reported after the war that they were kicked out by the ghetto community - people simply did not want to know. Lanzmann questions how they were warned.
CR12 Bauer and Lanzmann argue about whether the Jews of Klusz were sufficiently warned about the deportations - Bauer suggesting they were warned by their own leaders but didn't want to believe the information, Lanzmann saying that people were not told directly enough to run for their lives. Bauer says that Kasztner, a noted journalist, was setting a precedent by negotiating with the Germans for a ransom - first, not to put the Jews in a ghetto and later, to save as many Jews he could. Kasztner had to decide which approach was more effective. He chose to negotiate because the Germans put the stages of concentration, isolation, Aryanization and deportation into action very rapidly with the cooperation of the Hungarian population and government; there was no time or place for escape. The discussion turns to the famous train he negotiated. It consisted of Klusz Jews, including Kasztner's family, friends and some rich people who could pay for others. Bauer argues that Kasztner put his family there to show that the train would go to a safe place rather than to Auschwitz. Lanzmann sees Kasztner's achievements in two ways: he saved 1,600 Jews, yet behaved like a classic Judenrat member in saving only a handful of people. Bauer sees Kasztner in a positive light, given that everything was stacked against saving even a few people - the Jews were in labor battalions, rebellion was impossible, there were no weapons nor support from the Hungarian population and the SS was in charge. Kasztner was a clever negotiator, convincing Eichmann, Becher and Himmler that he was someone to be reckoned with.
CR14 Bauer explains that the German generals knew that Germany couldn't win the war in 1942. The Nazis saw the Jews as a world power and thus a bargaining chip with the Allies. The Brandt mission in 1944, meant to exchange trucks for Jews, was doomed to failure because of this dichotomy. Bandi Gross, a crook, was the only person with direct contact with the British and American in Istanbul to negotiate a separate peace. Lanzmann wonders why Eichmann continued the killings if negotiations were going on. Bauer explains the two parallel lines of Nazi policy - the use of the Jews as a bargaining tool (without Hitler's knowledge) and their complete destruction. To the Nazis, the Jews were not human beings, so they could be either sold or killed, whichever was more convenient. Lanzmann adds, "Kill or sell was the same thing."
FILM ID 3798 -- Camera Roll 15 -- Interview Divers
CR15 Lanzmann says the only way the Nazis could reach the Allies for negotiations was through the Jews because of their imputed world power. Bauer agrees that the Nazis were fighting a war against world Jewry. He states that negotiation plans to "sell Jews" began in 1939 with Schacht-Rubli whereby 100,000 young Jews would emigrate under support from Jews outside Germany. Bauer revisits the "ransom deal" in Slovakia with Wisliceny in 1942. Deportations stopped for a while, which Wisliceny attributes to the Catholic Church's intervention. Bauer disagrees, contending there is no proof of the connection. He says that Weissmandel and Fleischmann believed their plan stopped the deportations, so they proposed the Europaplan, again to exchange Jews for money. Bauer suggests that this plan wasn't about getting money for Jews, but about opening the door to negotiations with the Allies. Lanzmann asks for more details about the war against the Soviet Union being a war against the Jews. Bauer says the evidence is to be found in Hitler's second book in 1928 and his preparations for the attack in 1940 about fighting the Judeo-Bolshevist power. Hitler's quest was a conquest of the world by a healthy, cultured Germanic race and the destruction of the Satanic power of the Jews, which, he believed, controlled the world of his enemies.
FILM ID 3799 -- Camera Roll 13 -- Coupes
CR13 Bauer is speaking but the sound is missing and the roll has not been located in the archive. It is dark and Bauer puts on a sweater. There is no written transcript for this roll so it is likely that the audio malfunctioned during the interview. - Duration
- 02:21:00
- Date
-
Event:
1979
Production: 1985
- Locale
-
Israel
- Credit
- Created by Claude Lanzmann during the filming of "Shoah," used by permission of USHMM and Yad Vashem
- Contributor
-
Director:
Claude Lanzmann
Cinematographer: William Lubtchansky
Assistant: Corinna Coulmas
Subject: Yehuda Bauer
- Biography
-
Claude Lanzmann was born in Paris to a Jewish family that immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. He attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. His family went into hiding during World War II. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in the Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed a 1960 antiwar petition. From 1952 to 1959 he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. Later, he married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer, and then Dominique Petithory in 1995. He is the father of Angélique Lanzmann, born in 1950, and Félix Lanzmann (1993-2017). Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah, is widely regarded as the seminal film on the subject of the Holocaust. He began interviewing survivors, historians, witnesses, and perpetrators in 1973 and finished editing the film in 1985. In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title "Le lièvre de Patagonie" (The Patagonian Hare). He was chief editor of the journal "Les Temps Modernes," which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, until his death on July 5, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/claude-lanzmann-changed-the-history-of-filmmaking-with-shoah
From 1974 to 1984, Corinna Coulmas was the assistant director to Claude Lanzmann for his film "Shoah." She was born in Hamburg in 1948. She studied theology, philosophy, and sociology at the Sorbonne and Hebrew language and Jewish culture at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and INALCO in Paris. She now lives in France and publishes about the Five Senses. http://www.corinna-coulmas.eu/english/home-page.html
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Genre/Form
- Outtakes.
- B&W / Color
- Color
- Image Quality
- Excellent
- Film Format
- Master
Master 3793 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3794 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3793 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3795 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3796 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3797 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3798 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3799 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3795 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3796 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3797 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3798 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3799 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3795 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3796 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3797 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3798 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3799 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3794 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3793 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3795 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3796 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3797 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3798 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3799 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3795 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3796 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3797 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3798 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3799 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3795 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3796 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3797 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3798 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3799 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3794 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3793 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3795 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3796 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3797 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3798 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3799 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3795 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3796 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3797 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3798 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3799 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3795 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3796 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3797 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3798 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3799 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3793 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3794 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3793 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3795 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3796 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3797 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3798 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3799 Film: positive - 16 mm - b&w - workprint
Master 3795 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3796 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3797 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3798 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3799 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - sound - acetate - workprint
Master 3794 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3795 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3796 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3797 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3798 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3799 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
Master 3518 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3518 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3518 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3518 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3519 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3519 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3519 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3519 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3520 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3520 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3520 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3520 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3521 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3521 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3521 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3521 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3522 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3522 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3522 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3522 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3523 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3523 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3523 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3523 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3524 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3524 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3524 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Master 3524 Audio: Audiotape (reel-to-reel) - 1/4 inch - magnetic - sound
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- You do not require further permission from the Museum to access this archival media.
- Copyright
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, State of Israel
- Conditions on Use
- Third party must sign the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's SHOAH Outtakes Film License Agreement in order to reproduce and use film footage. Contact filmvideo@ushmm.org
- Copyright Holder
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem
State of Israel
Keywords & Subjects
- Personal Name
- Bauer, Yehuda.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Film Provenance
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased the Shoah outtakes from Claude Lanzmann on October 11, 1996. The Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection is now jointly owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
- Note
- Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years locating survivors, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses for his nine and a half hour film Shoah released in 1985. Without archival footage, Shoah weaves together extraordinary testimonies to render the step-by-step machinery of the destruction of European Jewry. Critics have called it "a masterpiece" and a "monument against forgetting." The Claude Lanzmann SHOAH Collection consists of roughly 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming.
- Film Source
- Claude Lanzmann
- File Number
- Legacy Database File: 5766
- Record last modified:
- 2024-02-21 08:04:35
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1004791
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Also in Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection
Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years locating and interviewing survivors, perpetrators, eyewitnesses, and scholars for the nine-and-a-half-hour film SHOAH released in 1985. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased the archive of SHOAH outtakes from Mr. Lanzmann on October 11, 1996, and have since been carrying out the painstaking work necessary to reconstruct and preserve the films, which consist of 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming. The collection is jointly owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. SHOAH is widely regarded as the seminal film on the subject of the Holocaust. It weaves together extraordinary testimonies to describe the step-by-step machinery implemented to destroy European Jewry. Critics call it “a sheer masterpiece” and a “monument against forgetting.”
Tadeusz Pankiewicz - Cracow
Film
Tadeusz Pankiewicz was a Pole who ran a pharmacy within the confines of the Krakow ghetto, refusing the Germans' offer to let him relocate to another part of the city. He aided Jews by providing free medication and allowing the pharmacy to be used as a meeting place for resisters. FILM ID 3220 -- Camera Rolls #1-2, 3-4, and 5-7 01:00:09 CR 1,2: Lanzmann and Pankiewicz stand in a Krakow street. They spend most of the interview in different parts of the Plac Zgody (now Plac Bohakerow Getta), from which Jews were deported from the Krakow ghetto. They begin walking. Pankiewicz tells Lanzmann that in 1941 he got the order to run a pharmacy within the ghetto. The Germans first required him to prove that he was not Jewish. From the window of his pharmacy he could see all the deportations from Plac Zgody and the horrible treatment meted out to the Jews. Lanzmann asks Pankiewicz to describe exactly what he saw. They are standing on Targowa street, the street where the Jews were gathered for deportation, and where