THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
24 Friday, December 21, 1919
JDLer Writes Revisionist View of Palestine Immigration
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By ROBERT ST. JOHN
(Copyright 1979, JTA, Inc.)
Factory Fresh
WASHINGTON — By
the end of December 1940,
the Nazis had occupied De-
nmark, Norway, Belgium,
Luxembourg and The
Netherlands; France had
surrendered; Italian troops
had swept-through Greece;
Hungary and Romania had
joined the Axis; the United
States was still neutral, and
Hitler's generals were get-
ting ready for the attack on
Russia.
By the end of December
1940, 49 ships flying a
variety of flags had run the
British blockade in the
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Mediterranean and 22,563
of their Jewish passengers
had been successfully
smuggled into Palestine,
despite all the British Navy
could do to stop them.
Now it is revealed, for the
first time, that at this criti-
cal moment in world his-
tory, British military, naval
and diplomatic authorities
felt so harassed, so helpless
about stopping the illegal
immigration, that they con-
sidered giving the Jews of
the world one of Britain's
potentially richest little
colonies in South America
— British Guiana, just
south of Venezuela, a tropi-
cal land about the size of
Idaho, with large planta-
tions, rice farms, valuable
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mineral resources, thick
forests, wild mountains and
many regions as yet never
explored ... and only about
half a million inhabitants.
On Dec. 28, 1940, a secret
British Foreign Office
document, No. 371/29161/
HN06526 stated:
"The only way of stop-
ping illegal immigration
(into Palestine) would
seem to be to give the
Jews themselves respon-
sibility for administering
the immigration policy of
some area of the world's
surface which, as far as
immigration is con-
cerned, they can call
their own. Alternatively,
a second Jewish national
home could be set up
somewhere else ..."
Other heretofore secret
documents disclose that
British Guiana, then a
British colony, was given
special consideration as the
possible "second home."
However, there is no record
of it being officially offered
to the Jews, as Uganda had
been 37 years earlier.
All this is disclosed in a
modest footnote in a book
just published, "The Four-
Front War, from Holocaust
to the Promised Land," by
William R. Perl, former di-
rector of the Jewish Defense
League, psychologist, and
leader in an underground
organization that claims
credit for rescuing a major-
ity of the 40,000 Jews who
had reached Palestine il-
legally.
Dr. Perl, who volunteered
in the war as a private and
rose to the rank of lieuten-
ant colonel, became after
the war special assistant to
the prosecution at the war
crimes trials at Dachau.
Since then he has taught at
various American univer-
sities and has been in the
forefront of the fight for
Soviet Jewry.
Dr. Perl uses the texts of
many heretofore secret offi-
cial memoranda, most of
them never published be-
fore, to indict British gov-
ernment officials, who, he
claiitis, were the most de-
adly enemies of Europe's
Jews, next to the Nazis. He
even offers convincing proof
that the British were worse
than the Nazis during one
brief period when the Nazis
were willing to close their
eyes to the illegal immigra-
tion.
The four-front war Dr.
Perl writes about, with a
pen dipped in acid as well as
blood, was against the
Nazis, the British, the
weather-at-sea and the
Jewish establishment. On
this last front he names
names.
His chief villains were
Chaim Weizmann, who be-
came Israel's first
president; David Ben-
Gurion, who became Israel's
first prime minister; Moshe
Shertok (Sharett), who be-
came Israel's first foreign
minister, and David Haco-
hen, who is still a Knesset
member, all of whom he ac-
cuses of being more in-
terested in cooperating with
the British than saving
Jewish lives.
The book gives in great
detail the Revisionist side
of the internecine conflict
between the Jewish left
and the Jewish right in
pre-independence Israel.
A sample of Dr. Peas bit-
terness:
"Fortunately for the
British, they had people,
Jews, whom they could let -
do their dirty work, thus
saving Britain from having
to soil her hands. These
people whom the British
were going to use were none
other than Dr. Weizmann
and Moshe Shertok
(Sharett)."
One of the heroes in the
book is Reuben Hecht, son of
a prominent Swiss family
and leader of the Re-
v isionist movement in
Switzerland, who was re-
sponsible for saving nearly
a thousand Jewish lives by
chartering seven planes
from Swiss Air to transport
Jewish refugees from Swit-
zerland, where they had
been given temporary ref-
uge, to Prague, where they
joined one of the Re-
visionists' transports for
Palestine.
Hecht later became foun-
der and owner of Dagon, the
First and still the largest
grain elevator in Israel.
There is no mention in
the book of Rudolph
Kastner, head of a small
Jewish rescue committee
in Budapest, who, in the
later days of World War II
saved the lives of 1,680
Hungarian Jews by put-
ting them on a train for
Switzerland, after paying
Adolph Eichmann more
than $1 million in ransom
money.
Subsequently, in Israel,
Kastner was murdered by a
fellow Jew, after a sensa-
tional court trial in which
he was derided by the pre-
sent Israeli minister of jus-
tice, then the attorney op-
posing Kastner, for showing
favoritism in selecting who
should go on the train and
thus be saved.
"The Four-Front War"
revives memories of the
Kastner case. Dr. Perl, dis-
cussing how he and his Re-
visionist colleagues chose
the people to go on the il-
legal immigration ships,
writes:
"Determining who could
come with us involved the
most painful decision-
making. Picking one, we re-
jected many. And we knew
what that meant. Priority
went to members of our own
Betar; almost without ex-
ception these were boys and
girls between the ages of 16
and 20 .. .
"All kinds of pressures
were exerted on us to
take this or that person.
There was a man who
asked us to take his chil-
dren who were of the
proper age but did not be-
long to any Jewish youth
organization. This man
was very influential with
the Jewish community
and promised to put his
full weight behind the
next large transports if
we took his children. Cer-
tainly not an easy deci-
sion .... But we had to
stick to our principle of
priority for Betar ...."
"The Four-Front War"
will please hardline Re-
visionists. It states their
case brilliantly. But for a
wider public it is the first
complete story of what is
correctly called "the
greatest rescue operation of
the century."
Forty thousand Jews
were saved from mass ex-
termination by Dr. Perl and
his colleagues. More than
that, they set an example
for a great deal more post-
war people-smuggling.
It is not generally known
that of the 400,000 immig-
rants who had made their
way to Palestine prior to the
declaration of independence
in 1948, approximately
200,000 had reached the
Promised Land without
visas and in defiance of
Great Britain.
Prof. Yerushalmi Will Head
Columbia's Jewish Studies
NEW YORK —Columbia
University has appointed
Harvard University Prof.
Yosef Yerushalmi as direc-
tor of its Center for Israel
and Jewish Studies.
Dr. Yerushalmi is consid-
ered to be one of the world's
leading experts on Jewish
history and will also become
the first Salo Wittmayer
SALO W. BARON
YOSEF YERUSHALM1
Baron Professor of Jewish
History, Culture and
Society at Columbia when
he assumes his new position
in July.
He is a graduate of
Columbia and a former stu-
dent of Prof. Baron, who
taught at Columbia for 33
years.