Holocaust Warnings

The Holocaust Was Not Inevitable

For years before the Germans attacked the European Jews with the help of all European countries, a number of European Jews recognized the danger to which the European Jews were subject and warned the Jewish population of the coming persecutions.

Among those who  saw the genocide coming were the 2.5 million Jews who came to the United States between 1884 and 1924.

Congress passed the first immigration laws in 1924. Prior to that year, there were no laws preventing anyone from coming to America.

On the murder of the Russian Czar Alexander III, some Russian Jews moved to the USA because the Russian Czar Alexander IV hated all Jews and initiated  several dictates, including the effort to force Jews to become Chistians or be slaughtered.  Indeed, many Russian rabbis told their followers that in America Jews married non-Jews. Many no longer adhered to the kosher laws, while others no longer observed the Sabbath.  These rabbis discouraged migration to the USA, so that the 2.5 million who came to America were a minority who recognized the danger of remaining in Europe.

It was in 1882 that the Russian Jewish physician Leon Pinsker published his now famous pamphlet “Auto–Emancipation.” Pinsker warned the European Jews of the coming catastrophe. He reviewed the gross violations of Jewish existence in all European countries and showed that the European Jews had no means of defending themselves against the coming mass murders. Pinsker recognized that the only means of defending the European Jews was the establishment of a Jewish state. His warnings were ignored, or ignored by the Jews who could have escaped to the USA or could have left Europe.  Pinsker described how Jews were unable or unwilling to fight for their existence because they had no weapons, no government, and no resources.  Indeed, all Jews had the opportunity to leave Europe in 1884 but did nothing to confront European hate.

In 1888 the warnings concerning the probable genocide of all European Jews became even more important when the so called Dreyfus Affair led to violent outbursts of hate against the Jews of France. France had claimed to be the most liberal country in Europe after the French Revolution of 1789 gave Jews equal rights for the first time in European history.  Nevertheless, Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the General Staff of the French army, was convicted of giving the Germans French military secret papers revealing French defensive measures designed to prevent another German invasion as had occurred in 1870. Dreyfus was innocent of the charges of conspiring against his own country. Yet, the high command of the French army pretended that Dreyfus was the traitor, when the commanding generals knew full well that it had been Ferdinand Esterhazy, also a member of the French general staff, who sold French military secrets to the Germans. Dreyfus was convicted despite the evidence that he had not been guilty of this offense. He was imprisoned in a French penal colony called Devil’s Island in South America until the famous author Emile Zola published an article in a Paris newspaper, called J’accuse, in which Zola accused the army of convicting an innocent man because he was Jewish. Meanwhile French citizens ran through the streets screaming “Kill all Jews.”   The ensuing  uproar induced the president of  France to pardon Dreyfus and order his release. On the return of Dreyfus to Paris, he was given a promotion and placed in charge of a French regiment during the First World War.

The Dreyfus Affair was observed by Theodor Herzl, a Jewish reporter for the Austrian newspaper Die Neue Freie Presse. Herzl recognized that there was great danger for the European Jews when even the so called French citizens ran through the streets screaming “kill all Jews.” Therefore Herzl wrote a book in 1894 called Der Judenstaat, in which he advocated the establishment of a Jewish state as the only means of defense available to the Jews hounded by hate and destruction. Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and predicted in 1898 that a Jewish state would come into existence in fifty years.  He was right, as Israel declared its independence in 1948. Since then the Muslim Nazis have attacked Israel repeatedly. These attacks have not succeeded, as Israel is a sovereign state with an army, navy, air force, and an atomic bomb.

Herzl did indeed recognize that the European Jews were in danger of being murdered. He did not live long enough to see the Holocaust. His efforts were rejected by the German and other Jews, but his memory lives on, as he is viewed as the founder of Zionism.

Zeev Jabotinsky was without doubt a major contributor to the warnings he gave the Jews of Europe that their lives were in danger. He traveled all over Euvope with the message to the Jewish communities, “Get out while you can.”  The German Jews refused to follow Jabotinsky’s message. German Jews wanted to believe that their extraordinary service to the Fatherland, Germany, during the First World War would be recognized by the German haters. Some said “I will leave Germany (Deutschland) on the last train. They left Deutschland with the last train to Auschwitz. Had they listened,  the German Jews could all  have been saved had thy left before September 1, the day the Second World War began and all borders out of Europe were closed.

This review demonstrates that the mass murder of six million Jews could have been avoided.

Shalom u'vracha.

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