Jonathan Cook on Tony Greenstein’s exposure of a glaring omission in a new biography of Rudolf Vrba, the first Jew to escape Auschwitz and an intense critic of the Zionist movement.
Auschwitz entrance. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
Tony Greenstein offers an excoriating account of how Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland distorted the historical record in his biography of Rudolf Vrba, the first Jew to escape Auschwitz.
One might wonder why Vrba’s incredible story has been buried for decades, given how keen Hollywood is to make Holocaust movies.
Greenstein explains. Vrba’s efforts in early 1944 to warn other Jews of their coming fate in the Nazi death camps were betrayed by European leaders of the Zionist movement, who silenced him.
That movement was prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Jews in return for the Nazis escorting the Zionist elite out of danger in Europe to Palestine. There the Zionist movement was already well-advanced in its preparations to expel the native Palestinians and build a self-declared Jewish state on the ruins of their homeland.
The Zionists’ attitude reflected that of the movement’s founding father, Theodor Herzl:
“The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.”
Vrba was hugely critical of the Zionist movement for collaborating with the Nazis, and had no love for the Jewish state it spawned.
In 1961, The Daily Herald published an extract from Vrba’s memoir, cited by Greenstein, in which he wrote:
“I am a Jew. In spite of that, indeed because of that, I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence …
I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks’ notice that [Adolf] Eichmann [key architect of the Holocaust] planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers … [Rezso] Kasztner [leader of Hungary’s Zionist movement] went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’”
“Vrba was hugely critical of the Zionist movement for collaborating with the Nazis, and had no love for the Jewish state it spawned.”
Kasztner’s betrayal of those Jews, dooming them to the Nazi gas chambers, was later justified by Israel’s attorney general, Haim Cohen, in the following terms:
“He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions… That was his duty … It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine… Are we to be called traitors?”
[See: The Treachery of the Nazi-Zionist Alliance]
It is on that basis that Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem has effectively excised Vrba’s astonishing story from its halls, and why Israeli schoolchildren learn nothing of Vrba. It’s also presumably why Hollywood has never picked up the most Hollywood story to come out of the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem in 2023. (Hagai Agmon-Snir, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The anti-Zionist Vrba’s story exposes the ideological foundations of Israel to be fully in sympathy with ugly European ethnic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism. His story explains how Israel was always capable of, and is now committing, a genocide in Gaza.
When ideology becomes more important than human life, people — even those you see as your own — become expendable. They come to be treated as pawns in a savage game of power politics.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, gave voice to precisely this sentiment in December 1938, as Nazi pogroms against Jews in Germany raged:
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
Freedland’s task in his book The Escape Artist was to appropriate Vrba’s story, strip out its anti-Zionist message, and incorporate it into the now-dominant Zionist narrative carefully crafted after the Second World War.
That is why the biography has received awards and endless gushing praise from the usual suspects. Vrba’s life story is doubtless now ready for a Hollywood makeover – one that, should it happen, will greatly enrich Freedland.
“Freedland’s task in his book The Escape Artist was to appropriate Vrba’s story, strip out its anti-Zionist message, and incorporate it into the now-dominant Zionist narrative carefully crafted after the Second World War.”
Thanks to his efforts, the threat posed by the true story of Vrba has been neutralised. That accords with the wider fate of anti-Zionist Jews — their existence is either ignored or sanitised to accord with a self-serving Zionist interpretation of history.
That process continues to this day:
The many anti-Zionist Jews who supported Jeremy Corbyn were either ignored or driven out of the Labour Party because they undermined the bogus anti-Semitism narrative Freedland and many others promoted to get rid of a leader who genuinely supported the Palestinian people’s right to statehood.
And the many anti-Zionist Jews who attend the marches to protest the genocide in Gaza have been disappeared because they give the lie to the establishment media’s efforts to paint those marches as anti-Semitic.
Protest outside the office and home of the U.K.’s pro-Zionist (“without qualification”) Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on Aug. 12. (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Note that Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made close alliances, just as Herzl recommended, with openly anti-Semitic states like Viktor Orban’s Hungary. They have continued in the tradition begun by Kasztner, who saved himself and his Zionist friends by sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Note too that for decades Israeli governments have been moving relentlessly rightwards, to the point now that senior government ministers like Bezalel Smotrich openly declare themselves to be “Jewish fascists.”
Nonetheless, their Zionist ideology is little different from their supposedly “moderate” predecessors. The chief difference is that they are unapologetic in their Jewish supremacism and loud-mouthed in their contempt for Palestinian life.
Zionism is simply coming out of a closet it was partially forced into by the rhetorical need to claim a moral basis for its actions and by concerns about placating western publics.
It is not the self-declared fascist Smotrich committing a genocide in Gaza. It is Israel’s establishment generals and its citizen army.
Greenstein recently published an important book, Zionism During the Holocaust, that deals extensively with the collusion of those who helped to found Israel with the Nazis. I recommend everyone seek it out.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Allowing millions to be sacrificed to save their own skin is not just a heinous zionist act. World leaders do it every day, and the sham regime change wars over the last 25 years speak to the utter disregard for life the powerful have. So anyone thinking the US would not initiate a nuclear war because it would devastate much of the country — wake up. US leaders would throw their own mothers under the bus to maintain their power. Politicians are not our friends, so think long and hard before jumping on their bandwagons. The most sickening sight recently was the brain-dead clapping seals at the DNC applauding a party steeped in genocide, ethnic cleansing and censorship.
I don’t believe any of them because my father was there and so was General Patton
If you know what I mean..
This article should be required reading for every senior high school class every year.
Remember the MOSSAD motto: “By way of deception, thou shalt do war.”
Cook’s quotes in the bold print.
” Vrba was highly critical of the Zionist movement for collaborating with the Nazi’s and had no love for the Jewish state it had spawned.”
“Freedland’s task in this book The Escape Artist was to appropriate Vrba’s story and strip out it’s anti-Zionist message, and incorporate it into the now-dominate Zionist narrative carefully crafted after the Second World War.”
Two statements that bookend the current messes in Ukraine and Israel. Cook has presented us a a key to understanding who led the world down the road to perdition.
Judging from what I have learned here Mr. Cook’s article here and through my review of a hefty number of books on topics related to the creation of CIA, misdeeds orchestrated there in connection with misdeeds apparently conducted to allow the transfer of SNM (special nuclear materials ) from NUMEC to Israel during the 1960’s, I believe my opinion that the Zionist movement in the US, from the past to the present, has inflicted tremendous damage to the county is correct.
We have been deceived and I’m pretty sure I know who and what was behind the scam.
I’m more than willing to let everyone else here make up their own mind about how loyal to US citizens the national security state actually is.
CIA has been primary in crafting US foreign policy since the inception of the agency. Judging from what I have witnessed and studied in my life time the remainder of the national security apparatus fell into lock step with CIA from day one.
Take a close look at the world today, if that is one can withstand the smell of death to get close enough to see it.
My hat is off to Mr. Cook.
Young children often discover that they can exercise a degree of power over their parents by pleading “you don’t love me” to the adult that is in charge of them. It’s emotional blackmail….and has been used by a minority of humans to achieve parity or even power over a materially stronger majority….through out history.
Blackmail, emotional or otherwise, has always been a tool available to unscrupulous humans to achieve their ends. It works as well as it does because scrupulous humans can be shamed. It needs to be publicly exposed every time it occurs. We should consistently remind ourselves of the eroding effects of blackmail on any culture that values the sustainability and equality of humans.
Blackmail is a high crime to our souls. Mass murder and genocide is now justified because we have allowed ourselves to be blackmailed! We should expose and outlaw it….not support it!
Eric I agree. In the past I have written that Israel has been blackmailing the U.S. government for years and in earnest since the NUMEC Caper in the 1960’s.
This is my view and I intend on sticking to it.
Thank you Robert,
“One man can make a difference….and everyone should try” JFK
Remember the past to understand the present.
Just a small note as a Hungarian: Hungary isn’t anti-Semitic at all. We have a significant Jewish minority and the largest synagogue in Europe and we are all fine. Nor the state or Orbán are anti-Semites. Don’t get me wrong, he is anything but a nice guy and he is pretty nationalistic, neoliberal, anti-Islam and anti-migration and so on, and I never voted for him ever. But I can’t deny he never said anything anti-Semitic and he has very good relationship with local Jewish organisations (except the ones siding with the opposition). I know, this whole thing is going back to his feud with the Hungarian-American billionaire, George Soros. Because Soros tried to support the political opposition and NGOs critical of Orbán’s regime. Hence, he became a public enemy for a while in Orbán’s political communication. But I can’t recall the propaganda even mentioned once that Soros has Jewish roots. It had nothing to do with that. And I also know that some media outlets siding with Soros (like Politico, etc.) indeed tried to play the ‘anti-Semite’ card in that situation. Why? Well, I think CN knows more about the workings of the empire than me, so I won’t start to guess. Otherwise, a very interesting article, thank you!
For a change, objective commentary on the untouchable, from the heart!
Thank you for correcting the record on that point. When I read that statement in the article about Hungary and Orban being anti-Semitic, I wondered about its veracity, so again thank you for your comment.
Orban has been a staunch supporter of Israel (unfortunately) and protected Israel from criticism both in the EU and at the UN.
Since when, in human history, has being a blind faith supporter of any one religions idolatry pragmatically served to unite humanity?
It must be difficult or impossible to really know what was said between Zionists and the Nazis. I can’t see any negotiations could have stopped millions of Jews going to death camps – who could do that? What was really offered by those Zionists to the Nazis to save their lives – what could it be? “If you let us go we won’t say anything about the millions”? Some deal! Is any of this on contemporary documents?
I suggest that you read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She does discuss some negotiations and just how successful simply running away from the Jewish Council police – who the dirty work of tracking down runaways – could be. In Germany, the police were very efficient. In Hungary, not so much. Be sure to read through Chapter 7 at least.
Holy Mackerel! Ahh! even a “chosen” of the “chosen” the latter selected by “the chosen” to be the sacrifice. Incredible. Heart forsaking the degree of twistedness.