Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1984. január-június (38. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1984-06-28 / 26. szám
Thursday, June 28. 1984. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11. THE GOLDBERG REPORT OH THE HOLOCAUST A few weeks ago was released, in mimeographed form, the preliminary Report of the research team of the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust, whose chairman is Arthur J. Goldberg, former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and whose vicechairmen are former U.S. Senators Jacob J. Javíts and Abraham Ribicoff, Harrison J. Goldin, comptroller of New York City, and Seymour M. Finger presently a professor at the City University of New York. Professor Finger served as Director of Research and editor of this 200.000-word Report, consisting of papers on relevant subjects by a team of many scholars. The preliminary Report sets itself two related questions, quoting Mr. Goldberg: "Did they (the dominant Jewish leadership) have knowledge of what was happening and did they or could they have done something about it?* The Report agrees that the answer to the first question is, Yes; and that the answer to the second is that not nearly enough was done, though there is some difference of opinion as to how much might have been done. Clearly, following the analysis of the Report's papers, not enough was done forty years ago in the face of Hitlerism's threat because the nature of Hitlerism was not then understood by that leadership and, in this Report, still is not comprehended. Certainly, one of the main inhibitions came from class considerations. Thus, soon after Hitler came to power a global boycott of German-made products was organized - led by the Left in general and supported at first by the American Jewish Congress. This gained instant and enthusiastic support from Jewish and other masses in the United States. This made a deep impression upon those in power in Berlin; indeed, the boycott of 1933 led the German leadership to publicly call off its own boycott of all Jewish businesses in Germany. But, meanwhile, the leading Jewish organizations in Germany urged their counter-parts in the United States to call off the antinazi boycott; it angered Hitler, they said! In response, the main U.S. Jewish organizations, like B'Nai B'Rith, called off the action. Soon 60.000 of the wealthiest Jews in Germany had persuaded Hitler to allow them - for very considerable ransoms - to emigrate. Thereafter, not until deep in the Second World War and millions of Jews (and others) had been slaughtered, did the U.S. Jewish leadership broadcast the "terrible secret" (which they had known for many months), namely, that Hitler intended the annihilation of all the Jews in Europe. By then it was too late, especially in face of the very conservative and anti-Semitic qualities of the British Foreign Office and of the U.S. State Department, plus the fact that both favored Hitler's purpose of destroying the Soviet Union - which also accounts for the 'two-year delay in establishing the Second Front... In the lead essay in the Report, by Professor Seymour Finger, the reader is told that, "Germany in 1933 embraced the demagogue Adolf Hitler with his virulent anti-Semitism, contempt for democracy, and advocacy of world domination by a German master race", that his cause made "bloodless" advances until 1939 and that the "Western Powers" were guilty of a "long and feckless flight from reality and that they practiced appeasement"... by Dr. Herbert Aptheker It is not true that "Germany embraced" Hitler in 1933; the majority of the German voters never did support Hitler - and this despite the problems of bourgeois - conducted and - financed elections. And the essence of Hitlerism is omitted in Professor Finger's description. Hitler, the creation of German monopoly-capitalism and militarism, had the financial and propagandistic support of multi-millionaires in every bourgeois democratic nation as well as that of the rulers of Italy, Hungary and Rumania. He had that support because he promised to destroy the class-conscious labor movement of Germany, to wipe out its powerful Communist and Socialist parties and, as central to his avowed purpose, to destroy the Soviet Union. William Shirer in his just-published The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940 (Little, Brown, Boston) tells of a luncheon he gave in Hitler's Berlin to visiting U.S. businessmen. He reports that "the genial tycoons" were impressed with "the situation in Nazi Germany." Especially pleasing was, Shirer reports, "Law and order. No strikes, no trouble-making unions. No agitators." Shirer adds: "I was rather puzzled that our American businessmen and our rich tended to sympathize with Fascist countries. I wondered if it was because the Right-wing dictatorships claimed to be anti-Communist. The ploy is still working in America in the 1980's," Shirer correctly observes, "not only with our well-heeled men of affairs but with our government." Hitlerism was the fascism specific to Germany. Fascism - a word and a concept which does not appear among the 200.000 words of the Holocaust Report - is state power held by the most reactionary, most chauvinist, most imperialist and most aggressive components of the monopoly bourgeoisie; it represents the negation of reason, the avowal of brutality, the quintessence of racism, the glorification of war. It exists in order to assure the power of the top monopolists by ruthlessly suppressing all labor, popular, democratic and radical expression, organizations and movements.... (To be continued) MAGYAR KÜLKERESKEDELMI VÁLLALAT Budapest, V. Szabadság tér 15. H-1395 Budapest, P.O.B. 406 Tel: 123-400, 323-500 A TANNIMPEX EXPORTÁL KÜLÖNFÉLE NŐI, FÉRFI ÉS GYERMEKCIPŐKET, ELEGÁNS SZÖRMEKABÁTOKAT, ^ SPORTOS BŐRRUHÁZATOT, VALAMINT DIVATOS 1 BŐRDiSZMÜÁRUT ÉS KESZTYŰKET. *
