The Holocaust Is Undeniable - Why Question The Holocaust?
According to the wikipedia-entry of 2006 the term "holocaust" (Heb., sho'ah) is derived from the Greek holokauston,
which originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire; it was used in the translation of I Samuel 7:9, "a burnt
offering to God". In the course of time it came to be used to describe slaughter on a general or large scale, and, especially,
various forms of the destruction of masses of human beings. In the 1950s the term came to be applied primarily to the
destruction of the Jews of Europe under the Nazi regime, and it is also employed in describing the annihilation of other groups
of people in World War II. The mass extermination of Jews has become the archetype of GENOCIDE, and the terms sho'ah and
"holocaust" have become linked to the attempt by the Nazi German state to destroy European Jewry during World War II.
The use of the Hebrew word sho'ah to denote the destruction of Jews in Europe during the war appeared for the first
time in the booklet Sho'at Yehudei Polin (The Holocaust of the Jews of Poland), published by the United Aid Committee
for the Jews of Poland, in Jerusalem in 1940. The booklet contains reports and articles on the persecution of Jews
in eastern Europe from the beginning of the war, written or verbally reported by eyewitnesses, among them several leaders
of Polish Jewry. Up to the spring of 1942, however, the term was rarely used. The Hebrew term that was first used,
spontaneously, was hurban (lit., "destruction"), similar in meaning to "catastrophe", with its historical Jewish meaning
deriving from the destruction of the Temple. It was only when leaders of the Zionist movement and writers and thinkers in
Palestine began to express themselves on the destruction of European Jewry that the Hebrew term sho'ah became widely
used. It was still far from being in general use, even after the November 1942 declaration of the Jewish Agency that
a sho'ah was taking place. One of the first to use the term in the historical perspective was the Jerusalem historian
BenZion Dinur (Dinaburg), who, in the spring of 1942, stated that the Holocaust was a "catastrophe" that symbolized
the unique situation of the Jewish people among the nations of the world...
In 2008, the wikipedia-entry on the Holocaust has been edited as follows:
The Holocaust (from the Greek Ολόκαυστον
(holókauston): holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as (Ha)-Shoah (Hebrew: השואה),
Churben (Yiddish: חורבן) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately
six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.
Other groups were also persecuted and killed, including the Roma; Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war; ethnic Poles;
the disabled; homosexual men; and political and religious opponents. Most scholars, however, define the Holocaust as a genocide
of European Jewry alone, or what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Taking into account all the
victims of Nazi persecution, the total number of victims would be between nine and 11 million...
...The word "holocaust" is also used in a wider sense to describe other actions of the Nazi regime. These include the killing
of around half a million migrant Romani peoples, the Roma and Sinti, the deaths of several million Soviet prisoners of war,
along with slave laborers, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled (See eugenics), and a vast assortment of perceived potential
troublemakers and political opponents. The use of the word in this wider sense is objected to by many Jewish organizations,
particularly those established to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust. Jewish organizations say that the word in its current
sense was originally coined to describe the extermination of the Jews, and that the Jewish Holocaust was a crime on such a
scale, and of such totality and specificity, as the culmination of the long history of European antisemitism, that it should
not be subsumed into a general category with the other crimes of the Nazis...
Each year, the United States observes Days of Remembrance, a commemoration of victims of the Holocaust. To help to provide
students with the information and insights they need to understand the events and implications of the Holocaust,
Education World interviewed Warren Marcus, a teacher educator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C..
Following are some excerpts:
..."The Holocaust, the persecution and the murder of millions of Jewish people and additional victims, was not the
work of one man or a few. It was made possible by the actions and choices of hundreds of thousands of people, in and out of
the Nazi party, in and out of Germany. It was made possible by millions of bystanders who allowed it to happen. Jews were
targeted simply because of who they were, because of a twisted belief in "racial science," which often led to misperceptions,
scapegoating, and stereotyping.
The Holocaust happened in a civilized, democratic nation with a constitution. Mass murder was in some cases approved
of, and perpetrated by, individuals with degrees from great institutions of learning. Some religious groups and leaders either
supported the process or turned away."
..."Teachers, due to a lack of time, may start their Holocaust study in 1939 or 1941. To provide some context for grappling
with how a civilized nation and continent could descend so quickly into this barbarity, it is crucial to start a Holocaust
study with the history of antisemitism and with events at least from the end of World War I. Also, if the study starts during
World War II, students may see the Jews and other target groups only as victims."
Before turning to the actual events of that time, we have to scrutinize an important statement in the interview: The
Holocaust happened in a civilized, democratic nation with a constitution.
This statement is fundamentally false.
Fact is, following civil unrest, the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s with mass-unemployment reaching 6 million
or 44% of the employable population, the counter-traditionalism of the Weimar period, and the rise of communism in
Germany, many voters began turning their support towards the Nazi Party with its promises of strong government, civil peace,
radical changes to economic policy and restoration of national pride.
In the general election of November 1932 Hitlers Nazi Party lost 4,2% but remained with 33.1% or 11,737,399 votes the strongest
party. After other attempts to form a viable government had failed, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President
von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933, and asked Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag (parliament). A general election was scheduled for March 5, 1933 - the last election before 1949.
The burning of the Reichstag six days before the election, depicted by the Nazis as the beginning of a communist revolution, resulted in the Reichstag Fire Decree, which (among other things) suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights. Hitler used the decree to have the Communist Party's offices raided and its representatives arrested, effectively
eliminating them as a political force.
Although receiving five million more votes (17,277,180 out of 44.685.764 eligible voters) than in the previous election,
the NSDAP with 43.9% had failed to gain an absolute majority in parliament, depending for a slim majority on the 52 seats
won by its coalition partner, the German National People's Party.
To free himself from this dependency, Hitler had the cabinet in its first post-election meeting on March 15 draw up plans
for an Enabling Act, which would give the cabinet legislative power for four years. The Nazis devised the Enabling Act of 1933 to gain complete political power without the need of the support of a majority in the Reichstag and without the need to bargain
with their coalition partners. Over the next year, the Nazis eliminated all opposition. Starting from ten different parties
in March, Germany was officially declared a one-party state on July 14, 1933.
At Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934 the Nazi-controlled Reichstag merged the offices of Reichspräsident and
Reichskanzler and reinstalled Hitler with the new title "Führer und Reichskanzler" (Leader and Chancellor) with dictatorial powers. This also gave him additional controll over
the military, resulting in a renewed unanimous oath of allegiance by all members of the armed forces, as well as civil servants
to obey Adolf Hitler - the so-called Hitler oath which superseded the original oaths. (By swearing loyalty to the person of
Adolf Hitler rather than the nation or the constitution, the officers and men of the armed forces found themselves bound by
their honor to the Führer, even after Hitler had set out down the path to war and ordered the Wehrmacht to commit war
crimes.)
Between 1933 and 1945 more than 3 million Germans had been in concentration camps or prison for political reasons. Tens
of thousands of Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance. Between 1933 and 1945 Special Courts killed 12,000
Germans, courts martial killed 25,000 German soldiers, and 'regular' justice killed 40,000 Germans. Many of these Germans
were part of the government civil or military service, a circumstance which enabled them to engage in subversion and conspiracy
while involved, marginally or significantly, in the government's policies.
Thus, instead of being a democratic nation with a constitution as stated in the interview, Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship.
A misrepresentation of that kind raises the suspicion of a deliberate
shift of the events into a completely different political and social environment in order to give it an even greater significance.
Jewish suffering during the Holocaust - which, it should be emphasized, was immense and not to be minimized - takes on
a different meaning when it is divorced from its the larger context. There is no disputing the murder of millions of European
Jews during the Second World War, just as there is no disputing the fact that they were killed simply because they were Jews,
even if they did not self-identify as Jews. These are incontrovertible facts. But how different the facts take on meaning
when you say, "the Nazis killed three million Polish Jews" than when you say, "six million Poles - about 22% of the population
- were killed by the Nazis, half of whom were Jews." To frame facts in this way, however, is to risk being accused of "minimizing"
the Holocaust, though one could easily argue the opposite, that it enlarges the tragedy.
The estimated number of victims who died in the holocaust is not 6 but at least 11 million - by Religion approx. half of
them were Jews, the other half were mostly Christians; by citizenship half of them were Poles. The first mass execution of
World War II took place in Wawer, a town near Warsaw, Poland on December 27, 1939 when 107 Polish non-Jewish men were taken
from their homes in the middle of the night and shot.
"All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its
major task to destroy all Poles."
- Heinrich Himmler
Why are Polish victims divided by religion (Jews and non-Jews, Christians) other victims by their ethnicity (Sinti and
Roma - Gypsies); why do we find seperate numbers for victims with disabilities, European Freemansons, Communists,
Homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses? Have Polish Jews been killed primarily because they were Jews or because they were
Poles?
"Raised by parents who had survived the Holocaust, I heard many stories about the atrocities of this World War II horror.
I learned how one of my family's homes in Poland was burned to the ground by Nazis. I learned that my uncle was shot in the
head by Nazi soldiers because his family was hiding a Jewish woman. Painful as it was for them to speak about it, my parents
[Frank and Ewa Pencak] felt it was important that I knew the stories of the Holocaust. It was only after I moved to the Los
Angeles area several years ago that I realized that many people were not aware that millions of victims of the Holocaust were
NOT Jewish. Outside the Polish community, I heard very little mention about the five million non-Jewish victims -- usually
referred to as "the others".
Whenever I would say that my parents were survivors of the Holocaust, people would look at me oddly and say, "Oh, I
didn't know you were Jewish?"
I realized that most people were not aware of any other Holocaust victims except Jews."
-
Terese Pencak Schwartz
Are the more than 5 million so-called "additional victims" to be forgotten because they don't have a
lobby?
The only group counted in one number, regardless of citizenship or possible other criteria mentioned above are the Jewish
victims. But instead of pointing to the total number of victims of the Nazi-holocaust as a horrendous Crime against
Humanity the crime was reduced by half, thus minimizing it, by presenting it as an almost exclusive crime against the Jews
- why and for what purpose?
Sometime in the past the official number of Jews murdered by Nazi Germany was fixed at 6 million. Since then the number
of victims who died at Auschwitz has been reduced from 4 million to 1.3 million, approx. 1 million of them were Jews, yet
the official number of 6 million remains unchanged.
With 6 million jewish victims The Holocaust has become the ultimate crime, impossible to be exceeded.
Why?
We are told that the Holocaust is the best investigated event in history, that there is undeniable proof that
everthing we are told has happened exactly the way it is presented. Conflicting arguments or researches to the contrary are
simply rejected instead of disproved. Whoever raises doubts regarding this official version is branded anti-Semite, a revisionist
or even a Holocaust denier, accused of dishonoring the victims, or even jailed for demagoguery as is the case in some parts
of Europe.
New independent scientific researches are rejected for the same reason. Don't dare to question it.
Why?
Is there a chance that some of the opposing arguments might be correct or is there yet another completely different reason
why revisionism has to be prevented?
--------------------------------
According to the popular version of the Holocaust History, the Holocaust was an isolated historical event to exterminate
the Jews - blamed soley on Germany, starting with the Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) on November 9,
1938 and terminated with the liberation of the concentration camps, yet otherwise hardly related to the context of the ongoing
war.
The common explanation is that the Germans have always been anti-Semites, that the Holocaust was
the culmination of the long history of European antisemitism but history tells otherwise: Jews experienced a period of legal
equality from 1848 until the rise of Nazi Germany. German Jews enjoyed full equality in the Weimar Republic, many receiving
high political positions like foreign minister and vice chancellor. The Weimar constitution was the work of a German Jew,
Hugo Preuss, who later became minister of the interior. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews became somewhat common from the
19th century; for example, the wife of German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann was Jewish.
Throughout the life of the Weimar regime, that became known as the Judenrepublik -though Jews comprised only a tiny minority of
the German population- Jewish businessmen, journalists, and politicians were among its most active and ardent supporters.
Through their commercial and banking activities, Jews contributed to the substantial economic development and reconstruction
that took place during the Weimar era. Jewish firms accounted for nearly 80% of the business done by department and chain
stores, 40% of Germany’s wholesale textile firms, and 60% of all wholesale and retail clothing businesses. Almost half
of all private banks were owned by Jews, as were the largest and most successful of the credit banks and the majority of the
newspapers.
What had happened in Germany or Europe that brought Hitler to power -an Austrian by origin, convicted and incarcerated
for High Treason- an ardent anti-Semite who apparently succeeded in turning a whole nation into beastly Jew-haters and
mass-murderers as the Germans in general are described in the Holocaust history?
What was known at that time and why did the world turn a blind eye to it, and what happened at the same time in other parts
of the world, primarily in Palestine?
Hitler blamed the Jews for the disastrous economy of pre-Nazi Germany, especially for Germany's loss of World
War I. He told the German people that they could have won the first war, if Germany had not been "stabbed in the back" by
the Jews and their conspirators.
To get a more complete picture we have to look back at World War I.
The Great War, World War One, consisted of two stages: conventional warfare that lasted from 1914 to 1916, and a war of
desperate expedients, when both sides struggled for their own existences, lasting until the end. The two sides of the
war consisted of the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, and other smaller countries) and the
Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey/Ottoman Empire, along with other smaller country support).
Though Germany turned out to be the Central Power most involved in the war, there is little or no evidence that the Germans
had planned for war. There are several fundamental causes that had brought the world to the brink of war: nationalism, imperialist
competition, militarism, and the build up of prewar alliances. These growing appearance of these factors perhaps inevitably
led to what was called the Great War, World War One that resulted in the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles has become infamous for the harsh reparations it imposed on Germany. Perhaps even more notorious
is the “War Guilt Clause” contained in the peace. The “War Guilt Clause,” Article 231 in the treaty,
arose out of a controversy during the negotiations in the spring of 1919 concerning the nature of reparations that would be
collected. It was argued whether or not to include war costs in the reparations to be levied or “just” civilian
damages suffered. The Reparation Settlement was the worst condition set upon Germany—the country could not possibly
hope to meet its demands and maintain financial security at the same time. Chambers et al state, “Germany was made liable
for sums unspecified and without foreseeable end…”
This "War Guilt Clause" was in absolute contradiction to the fact that the US 67th
Congress in the 4th Session (Nov. 20, 1922-Mar. 3, 1923) in Senate Document 346 stated plain and openly that “…the
full responsibility for the First World War rests on the shoulders of the international Jewish bankers.”
The provision, after Germany’s Weimar Republic delegates signed the treaty on June 28, 1919, bound the German nation
to accept full moral responsibility for all damages to the citizens of the Allied countries and for the precipitation of the
war itself. The provision blatantly ignored Austria-Hungary’s culpability in the conflict, as that country was completely
dismantled by a separate treaty. Public reaction in Germany to the treaty was to say the least unfavorable. In addition to
the devastation of World War I, the reparations imposed on Germany precipitated a deep depression before 1924. After the Wall
Street Crash of 1929, the US called in its loans to Germany, and the German economy collapsed. The Number of unemployed grew
between 1928 and 1932 from 2 million to 6 million; people starved on the streets. Only after the Weimar Republic busted into
national bankruptcy and the mark ceased to exist as a practical means of payment did the Allied countries base reparations
on Germany’s ability to pay them. Because of the reparations, many Germans, in particular the industrialists who lost
wealth and power with the Saar and Rhineland occupation by the French, proved to be hostile to the republic, maintaining that
it had betrayed the German people by accepting the treaty.
The reference to front-page headline "Judea Declares War on Germany" on the March 24, 1933 edition of the
British newspaper, the Daily Express, followed in America by Samuel Untermeyer's speech on WABC in August 1933,
declaring a 'holy war' by the Jews against Germany is usually rejected as a reaction to the Ermaechtigungsgesetz (Enabeling
Law) that was introduced the same day but who knows that Bernard Lecache, President of the World Jewish League,
on 07-20-1932 declared in Paris "Germany is our public enemy No.1. It is our object to declare war without mercy against her"
even before the elections of 1932 that made Hitlers party the strongest in the German Reichstag? It should have been obvious
that statements like this were bound to turn german Jews into undesirables at home.
As a largely overpopulated country, Germany was dependent on export. It could not exist and survive without export. Adolf
Hitler's election to chancellorship marked the beginning of the end of presumptuous and unregulated Jewish influence in many
areas of German affairs, including banking matters. To the Jewish Diaspora, the world's most powerful trading and political
bloc, Hitler's election meant interruption and interference with the world's commercial and political cohesion in which Jews
were heavily involved. As the boycott organised by world Jewry spread, German trade was hit particularly hard and during
the first quarter of 1933, Germany's vital exports were less than half its 1932 trade.
"The fight against Germany has been carried out for months by every Jewish conference, trade organisation, by every Jew
in the world.... we shall let loose a spiritual and a material war of the whole world against Germany." - (M. Jabotinsky,
founder of Revisionist Zionism, Natcha Retch, January, 1934)
The ideology of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party was to enforce the establishment of an Aryan empire throughout Europe and Russia,
a racial supremacy; Hitler vigorously supported Zionism’s proposal for Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-41, yet on July 5, 1938, eleven days after Hitler annexed Austria, the EVIAN CONFERENCE (France), was called by President
Roosevelt to discuss what to do about the Jewish refugees trying to escape Nazi Germany. Delegates of thirty-two nations attended
and decided they could do very little. The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica were the only countries willing to take in Jews
fleeing Europe - and then only for payment of huge amounts of money, leaving only the illegal immigration to Palestine for
those who could escape Nazi Germany.
Why?
Instead of providing answers, the view back at history opens up more and new questions:
Why?
With 6 million jewish victims The Holocaust has become the ultimate crime, impossible to be exceeded.
What about the more than 5 million "others" - are they to be forgotten because they don't have a lobby?
Why?
Is there a chance that some of the opposing arguments might be correct or is there yet another completely different reason
why revisionism has to be prevented?
George Orwell wrote in 1944 regarding the Spanish Civil War (1936-39): "The history of the war will consist quite
largely of 'facts' which millions of people now living know to be lies. ...[yet it] will go into the history books and future
schoolchildren will believe in it. So for practical purposes the lie will have become truth. .. History is written by the
winners".
We all know the term "" which means that after each conflict the reason for it is presented in a way favorable to the victor
to justify the war. This presentation then becomes official history, or to use Orwell's words after the :
Interwar-revisionism based on declassified documents and memoirs has proven this term never to be more true than regarding
World War I.
The similarity of this behavior to the 9/11 cover-up is more than obvious. Even the arguments are
the same: it would dishonor the victims, yet in the case of 9/11 only those in charge could be dishonored. If 9/11 was to
teach us but one lesson it is never to judge an event or incident at face value for reality might be different.
For this reason we will present on the following pages little-known details of historical events that should be under close
scrutiny for the possibility of either suppression or exaggeration for political reasons, or even a hoax - not only for
the doubts on the official version of the story, but also for the fact that the reaction to these doubts meets the same
criteria.
As the official versions are mostly well known, we will restrict our posting to contradicting documents, articles, and/or
videos for their arguments are hardly presented in the Mainstream Media.
Instead of being a warning: "Never again", The Holocaust has become justification for "an eye for an
eye" policy and occupation. Those rightfully fighting illegal occupation on their own soil have been branded "terrorists",
thus stripping them of their undeniable right according to the Geneva Convention of which the U.S. and Israel are signatories.
"We
have joined the 'War on Terror'" is the latest vindication by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regarding the ongoing
occupation and land grab of Palestine in the name of Zionism. It hardly matters to Mr. Olmert that many Israeli Jews reject
his plan and demand justice for the people he's now persecuting.
What hypocricy!
Though The Holocaust
has stopped at the end of WWII, it is justification for an ongoing holocaust in the Middle East, veiled as a war on terror
with victims or "casualties" that could exceed those of The Holocaust.
In order to honor all the victims we
need to question the offical Holocaust History to find out what really happened, whatever the outcome.
Not only do we need to know what happened, we also need to know how it was possible to happen. We need to recognize the
first signs of a dictatorship or false propaganda - once we have lost our civil liberties it is hardly possible to prevent
states' terror from being carried out in our names.
If there ever was a chance to give the complete holocaust its place in history as the last one in a long
line of Crimes against Humanity, the political misuse has already prevented this.
Patriotism and Nationalism have again prevailed against Humanity.
"Never again" has to be brought
back to its true meaning, a reminder to the inalienable right of life and integrity that should apply to all peoples, regardless
of nationality, race or religion.
In this, we not only bow to all victims of the Holocaust but also to the victims
of occupation and the War on Terror.
A discriminatory “Jew count” was ordered for the German army in October 1916
The majority of German Jews viewed military service as a patriotic duty. When the quick victory hoped for failed to emerge,
rumours were deliberately spread implying that the Jews were “shirking” their duties. Subsequently, in October
1916 the Prussian Ministry of War ordered a statistical registration of all servicemen according to their faith and where
they were deployed. This “Jew count” led to public defamation and exclusion. Jewish hopes of continued integration
into German society were thereby shattered.
Decree from the Prussian War Ministry on the statistical registration of Jewish soldiers, 11 October 1916
Form to confirm the number of Jews liable for military service present in the army, October 1916
The way that the registration process was carried out revealed antisemitic motives. In order to achieve the desired result,
Jews were transferred from the front to behind the lines. Nonetheless, the process did not go as expected. The result of the
“Jew count” was not published.
http://www.ghwk.de/2006-neu/room3.htm
In the aftermath of World War I, Jews strongly supported the creation of the liberal Weimar Republic. Indeed, a
Jewish socialist, Hugo Preuss who served as minister of the interior in the provisional government established after the
collapse of the monarchy, was primarily responsible for drafting the Weimar constitution. Throughout the life of the
Weimar regime, Jewish businessmen, journalists, and politicians were among its most active and ardent supporters.
Through their commercial and banking activities, Jews contributed to the substantial economic development and reconstruction
that took place during the Weimar era. Jewish firms accounted for nearly 80% of the business done by department
and chain stores, 40% of Germany's wholesale textile firms, and 60% of all wholesale and retail clothing businesses. Almost
half of all private banks were owned by Jews, as were the largest and most successful of the credit
{p. 26} banks. The most important was the DD bank, formed from the merger between Arthur Salomonsohn's DiscontoGesellschaft
and the Deutsche Bank. The DD bank helped to revive and rebuild Germany's heavy industry and merchant navy after World War
I. The equally important Dresdner Bank was directed by Eugen Gutmann until his death in 1925 and then by Henry Nathan. The
Darmstadter and Nationalbank, directed by Jakob Goldschmidt, was largely responsible for obtaining major loans of working
capital for German industry Irom Holland, Sweden, and the United States.
In a continuation of the pre-World War I pattern, Jews were influential in the liberal press of the Weimar Republic. Three
of the nation's most important liberal newspapers, the Berliner Tageblatt, the Vossiche Zeitung, and the Frankfurter Zeitung
were owned by Jews. Jews also owned the two largest publishing houses in Germany, the Ullstein and Mosse concerns, as well
as many smaller publishing firms.
In addition, Jews were extremely important in the professional, intellectual, and cultural life of Weimar Germany. Approximately
11% of Germany's physicians and 16% of its lawyers were Jews. Jewish academics, intellectuals, and artists were the leading
figures in German theater, literature, music, art, architecture, science, and philosophy during the Weimar era. Jews were
also the most influential critics of drama, art, music, and books as well as the owners of the most important art galleries
and theaters.
Their central place in the economy and cultural life of Weimar Germany gave Jews a major stake in the liberal regime. The
commitment of the Jews to this regime was, of course, greatly increased by the rise of the Nazis and other anti-Semitic movements
seeking to overthrow the Weimar Republic. The virulent anti-Semitism of these groups provided Jews with a very strong incentive
to fight for the survival of the Republic.
Although Jews had participated in the creation of the German Communist party (KPD), the overwhelming majority of German
Jews backed parties and politicians who supported the Republic against its enemies on both the left and right. Most Jewish
voters identified with the moderate Democratic party. A smaller number belonged to the Social Democratic party (SPD) which
had largely abandoned its more radical prewar stance and given its support to the liberal regime. Many important Jewish
politicians were liberals independent of party ties. These included Walter Rathenau, minister of the interior who
was assassinated by right-wing extremists in
{p. 27} 1922, and Curt Joel, the leading figure in the Reich ministry of justice from 1920 to 1931.
Because Jews constituted only 1% of Germany's population, their electoral weight was slight. Jews, however, were
important financial contributors to liberal parties, and the political influence of the Jewish legal establishment, press,
publishing industry, and other media was substantial. Jews were a major source of financial support for liberal parties including
the Center, Democratic, and Social Democratic parties as well as the Bavarian People's party. As the militancy of the Nazis
and other anti-Semitic parties on the political right grew after 1930, Jews also helped to fund the paramilitary "Reichsbanner"
units formed by the Social Democrats to defend against violent attacks from right-wing thugs and paramilitary groups.
The Jewish legal establishment, too, played a role in opposing right-wing opponents of the Weimar Republic. Politicians
of the right specialized in arousing their followers with inflammatory speeches that often provoked violent action. Lawyers
funded by the Jewish Centralverein adopted the tactic of pressing charges of disorderly conduct or slander against such
speakers and their followers. As a result of this technique, a number of prominent right-wing politicians, including Julius
Streicher, Gregor Strasser, and Pastor Munchmeyer, were compelled to pay fines or serve short jail terms.
Jewish journalists, writers, dramatists, and intellectuals were among the most determined opponents of the institutions
and forces associated with the antirepublican political right. Writers like Kurt Tucholsky and Ernst Toller enraged conservative
opinion by mounting fierce attacks on the Junkers and the army - the twin pillars of the old regime. Similarly, Jewish journalists
were relentless in their criticism of the right-wing political parties and politicians that emerged after the war. In the
end, of course, the exertions of the Jews on its behalf were not sufficient to save the Weimar regime. As we shall see, moreover,
their strong identification with and defense of Weimar helped to make the Jews a more inviting target for the Republic's
foes.
Jews and the Communist State
In Western Europe, middle- and upper-class Jews gave their support to liberal states that provided them with equality before
the law, the right to participate in politics, professional opportunities, and protection for their investments. In nineteenth-century
Eastern Europe, however, most Jews lived in poverty and faced a constant
{p. 28} threat of violence from their neighbors and, often, from the authorities as well. Socialist movements spoke most
directly to their concerns. They held out the hope of a state that would improve the economic conditions of the Jews and protect
them from violence. Jewish subjects of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires were a major base of support for socialism.
When millions emigrated to Central and Western Europe and the United States at the turn of the century, they often carried
their socialist commitments with them.
In addition to the Jewish proletariat, middle-class Jewish intellectuals were often drawn to socialism. Particularly in
Central Europe, many Jewish university graduates found that their career opportunities were not commensurate with their educational
qualifications. In Germany, Jewish students were able to gain access to higher education; indeed, the proportion of the population
attending universities was far greater among Jews than any other group. In Prussia, the largest German state, the
proportion of Jews receiving university educations was ten times greater than the percentage of Protestants and Catholics.
At the same time, however, Jewish university graduates were effectively barred from the civil service careers that attracted
many of their fellow students.
Those Jews who sought to pursue academic careers found that their opportunities to attain secure professorial appointments
were limited by the anti-Semitism that pervaded German universities. Before the First World War, nearly 20% of the part-time
and temporary teaching staff at German universities were of Jewish origin. However, less than 7% of the full professors
were Jews. At the most prestigious university, Berlin, there was not a single Jewish full professor. Examples of the difficulties
faced by Jewish scholars are numerous. Georg Simmel, one of Germany's most brilliant sociologists and philosophers, was not
awarded a full professorship at the University of Strassburg until four years before his death at the age of sixty. Similarly,
Ernst Cassirer, Germany's leading neo-Kantian philosopher, could only secure a professorship at the new and struggling University
of Hamburg.
This lack of appropriate career opportunities often bred alienation among Jewish intellectuals and encouraged them to imagine
a social and political order that allowed fuller play for their talents. As a result, members of the Jewish intelligentsia
figured prominently, both as theoreticians and activists, in socialist and communist movements. For their part, such movements
found that Jews' intellectual skills rnade them useful propagandists and organizers. Thus, in the
{p. 29} late nineteenth century, Jewish intellectuals came to be a major element within the leadership of left-wing parties
and movements.
In pre-World War I Germany, for example, Jews were extremely important in the Socialist party. The SPD was founded by a
Jew, Ferdinand Lasalle, and Jews, including such individuals as Eduard Bernstein and Otto Landsberg, were among the party's
most prominent parliamentary leaders. In addition, the party's leading journalists were Jews as were its most notable theorists
- Bernstein, Adolf Braun, and Simon Katzenstein; its leading expert on municipal administration was a Jew, as was its expert
on electoral law and its chief youth organizer, Ludwig Frank.
Socialists dominated the provisional government established in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Two
of this government's six cabinet members, Otto Landsberg and Hugo Haase, were Jews. Other Jewish Socialists also played
important roles during this period. Kurt Eisner was prime minister of Bavaria in 1918-1919. Georg Gradnauer was prime minister
of Saxony from 1919 to 1921. In Prussia, Paul Hirsch served as prime minister from 1918 to 1920 and Kurt Rosenfeld as minister
of justice in 1918. As noted earlier, Hugo Preuss formulated the Weimar constitution and served as minister of the interior.
After the creation of the Weimar Republic, Jews continued to play important roles in the leadership of the SPD. About 10%
of the party's Reichstag deputies were Jews, including Rudolph Hilferding, who was minister of finance in 1923 and from 1928
to 1930.
Among the most vehement opponents of the Socialist provisional government was the German Communist party, whose leadership
also included a number of Jews. In 1919, under the direction of party chief Paul Levi, the KPD staged a revolt against
the Socialist provisional government. One of the most prominent leaders of this revolt was Rosa Luxemburg, who was later
captured and murdered by rightist paramilitary forces. Jews were also among the leaders of the Communist government that the
KPD briefly established in Bavaria after the murder of Kurt Eisner. Eugen Levine was head of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet
Republic, Gustav Landauer was its commissar for propaganda and cultural affairs, and Ernst Toller commanded its "red army."
This regime was crushed in May 1919 by free corps forces.
Jews were also important in Socialist and Communist movements in a number of other nations including Britain, France, the
United States, and most of the nations of East Central Europe. In Hungary,
{p. 30} for example, Jews were prominent in the prewar Socialist movement and in the "Galileo Circle," the center of Budapest
student radicalism. The Hungarian Communist government established by Bela Kun in 1919 was dominated by Jews. Twenty of the
regime's twenty-six ministers and vice-ministers were of Jewish origin. This government was overthrown after one hundred days
by French-backed Rumanian forces.
In Russia a number of Jews, most notably Paul Axelrod and Lev Deutsch, were among the founders of the Social Democratic
party in the 1890s. In addition, the Jewish Socialist Bund organized tens of thousands of workers in the Pale and played
a major role in the unsuccessful 1905 revolution. During the period leading up to the 1917 Revolution, Jews were active
in both the Menshevik and Bolshevik leaderships.
http://mailstar.net/ginsberg.html
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/witness2history/4.html
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/index.shtml
How was it done? It was accomplished exactly as in World War I:
