the case. In fact, it is possible to entertain the notion that wherever feasible, anti-Jewish
police actions fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Jewish kapos:
The Satanic plan of the Nazis assured that the personal fate of each Jew
whether for life or death - be exclusively left up to the decisions of the
"councils of elders" [Judenrat]. The Nazis, from time to time, decided upon a
general quota for the work of the camps and for extermination, but the
individual selection was left up to the "council of elders", with the
enforcement of kidnappings and arrests also placed in the hands of the Jewish
police (kapos). By this shrewd method, the Nazis were highly successful in
accomplishing mass murder and poisoning the atmosphere of the ghetto through
moral degeneration and corruption. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, pp. 119-120,
emphasis added)
In his moving letter to the editor below, Israel Shahak underlines that almost all the
administrative tasks and policing required by the Nazis was placed in Jewish hands, that Jewish
collaborators were ubiquitous, and that it was Jewish collaborators who rendered the Jewish
Holocaust feasible and who stood as obstacles in the path of Jewish resistance:
Falsification of the Holocaust
Letter to the editor by Prof. Israel Shahak, published on 19 May 1989 in Kol Ha'ir,
Jerusalem.
Available online at:
http://www.kaiwan.com/codoh/newsdesk/890519.HTML
I disagree with the opinion of Haim Baram that the Israeli education system
has managed to instil a 'Holocaust awareness' in its pupils (Kol Ha'Ir
12.5.89). It's not an awareness of the Holocaust but rather the myth of the
Holocaust or even a falsification of the Holocaust (in the sense that 'a
half-truth is worse than a lie') which has been instilled here.
As one who himself lived through the Holocaust, first in Warsaw then in
Bergen-Belsen, I will give an immediate example of the total ignorance of daily
life during the Holocaust. In the Warsaw ghetto, even during the period of the
first massive extermination (June to October 1943), one saw almost no German
soldiers. Nearly all the work of administration, and later the work of
transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths, was carried out by
Jewish collaborators. Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the
planning of which only started after the extermination of the majority of Jews
in Warsaw), the Jewish underground killed, with perfect justification, every
Jewish collaborator they could find. If they had not done so the Uprising
could never have started. The majority of the population of the Ghetto hated
the collaborators far more than the German Nazis. Every Jewish child was
taught, and this saved the lives of some them "if you enter a square from which
there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and
one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, and
then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew".
One of my own strongest memories is that, when the Jewish underground
killed a despicable collaborator close to my home at the end of February 1943,
I danced and sang around the still bleeding corpse together with the other
children. I still do not regret this, quite the contrary.
It is clear that such events were not exclusive to the Jews, the entire
Nazi success in easy and continued rule over millions of people stemmed from
the subtle and diabolical use of collaborators, who did most of the dirty work
for them. But does anybody now know about this? This, and not what is
'instilled' was the reality. Of the Yad Vashem (official state Holocaust
museum in Jerusalem - Ed.) theatre, I do not wish to speak at all. It, and its
vile exploiting, such as honouring South Africa collaborators with the Nazis
are truly beneath contempt.
Therefore, if we knew a little of the truth about the Holocaust, we would
at least understand (with or without agreeing) why the Palestinians are now
eliminating their collaborators. That is the only means they have if they wish
to continue to struggle against our limb-breaking regime.
Kind regards,
[Israel Shahak]
To bring closer to home and closer to the present day the inadvisability of attributing
collective guilt, we may note that more than one out of every hundred Americans is presently
sitting in jail, and yet we do not from this condemn Americans as a nation of criminals. And so
if we extract from this the conclusion that a participation rate as high as one out of every
hundred is insufficient to depict the entire population as participants, then Ukrainians should
be allowed a total of 360,000 criminal collaborators - a number never yet broached - without
Ukrainians being collectively condemned as Nazis.
The plea to avoid ascribing collective guilt is not new to Ukrainian-Jewish relations, and has
been put forward by both sides. It is time that the plea was heeded:
Even as we Jews justly disclaim responsibility for the acts of the Jewish
