Eichmann's initiative, according to his testimony in Jerusalem, had been
influenced largely by the propensity of rival SS factions to negotiate with the
Jews. He was going to confine the offer to freeing 100,000 Jews, but then
thought that only a major gesture, involving a million, was going to have any
impact. When Himmler approved the scheme, Eichmann was actually surprised.
(Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1134)
However, Joel Brand, attempting to negotiate this exchange, met with no support, either from
representatives of the Allied nations, or from Jewish representatives. When he realized that
the offer would not be accepted, he burst out with:
Do you know what you are doing? That is simply murder! That is mass murder.
... [O]ur best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children
will be first! (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p.
1137)
Among the objections was not that the deal would fail, but rather that it was undesirable that
the deal succeed:
"But Mr. Brand," the British host exclaimed, "what shall I do with those
million Jews? Where shall I put them?" (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1985, P. 1140)
The plain fact was that there was no place on earth that would have been ready
to accept the Jews, not even this one million. (Adolph Eichmann in Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1140)
A similar comment was made with respect to the above-mentioned Antonescu Plan:
The British Foreign Office ... was concerned with the "difficulties of
disposing of any considerable number of Jews" in the event of their release
from Axis Europe. ... [W]ithin the Foreign Office there was fear of large-scale
success.... (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, P.
1140)
And a similar reaction with respect to discussions concerning the rescue of Bulgarian Jews:
Hull raised the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and
are threatened with extermination unless we could get them out and, very
urgently, pressed Eden for an answer to the problem. Eden replied that the
whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and that we should move
very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like
Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make
similar efforts in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up on any
such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in
the world to handle them. (Harry Hopkins in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 1985, P. 1122)
The role played by Jews in the Allied indifference was, to repeat, one of support of inaction:
There is considerable difference of opinion among the Jewish people as to the
policies which should be pursued in rescuing and assisting these unfortunate
people, and no one course of action would be agreeable to all persons
interested in this problem. (American Secretary of State Hull in Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1125)
The Rudolph Vrba Accusation. The reports above of American Jews and world Jews doing little to
save their coreligionists under Nazi occupation, or of even obstructing efforts to save them, or
reports of the Antonescu Offer, or of the Eichmann offer - these do not exhaust the accounts
leading to the conclusion that the Jewish role in saving Jewish lives during World War II fell
short of heroic, and perhaps was typically complicitous or collaborative, and sometimes even
becoming criminally so. Rather, other such accounts can be found, among them the one offered by
Dr. Rudolph Vrba in the Oshawa Times account below. Vrba's accusation standing by itself falls
short of totally convincing, and would need to be bolstered by substantive detail before it was
given full credit. Nevertheless, Vrba's accusation is reproduced below to demonstrate that the
accusations of Jewish non-assistance focus on many events in many parts of the world, and
because it heightens the probability that further investigation would credit some of these
accusations:
Jewish Council Blamed For Deaths of 400,000
FRANKFURT (AP) - A Canadian professor contends that 400,000 jews killed by
the Nazis at the Auschwitz extermination camp could have been saved had the
Budapest Jewish Council warned them in time instead of co-operating with the
Nazis.
Dr. Rudolph Vrba, 43, associate professor of pharmacology at the University
of British Columbia, in an interview gave an account of his escape from
Auschwitz and his efforts to warn the world of the fate threatening more than
1,000,000 Hungarian Jews.
Vrba testified last Friday at the trial here of two former SS (Elite Corps)
colonels charged with the mass murder of Hungarian jews during the war.
Vrba, a native of Czechoslovakia and a Jew by birth, said he was deported
to Maidanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in June, 1942, and two
weeks later transferred to Auschwitz.
In the spring of 1944, he heard that 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews were to die
