|
The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
EASTERMAN ON HITLER’S
MASSACRE OF THE JEWS: 1942
Alex Easterman, ‘An Anniversary the World Forgot’,
Jewish Chronicle, 15 Dec., 1967.
‘Very few, whether Jews or non-Jews, will
recall that, exactly 25 years ago, on December 17, 1942, an international event
occurred as poignant as any in the long history of Jewish tragedy and
suffering.
‘On that day a declaration by all the wartime
Allied Governments and General de Gaulle’s French National Committee, was made
public at the same hour in London, Washington and Moscow, announcing officially,
for the first time, to an astounded and horrified world, that “the German
authorities . . . are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention
to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. . . .
‘“From all the occupied countries, Jews are
being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern
Europe . . .” and “deliberately massacred in mass executions.” The Declaration
concluded: “They [the Allied Governments and the French National Committee]
reaffirm that those responsible for the crimes shall not escape
retribution.”
. . .
‘In our agony and helplessness in 1942, when
more than a million European Jews had already perished in the Nazi horror camps
and gas chambers, we believed that the Allied Declaration meant that we had, at
last, convinced the democratic world that Hitler’s threats to annihilate
European Jewry were actually in process of fulfilment by a deliberately
calculated plan of mass murder.
‘To obtain the Declaration had been no easy
matter. Before the war, and until 1942, all our persistently repeated efforts to
arouse Governments and world opinion to accept the reality of the Nazi aim to
destroy the Jews as “The final solution of the Jewish problem” were received
either with scepticism or incredulity. By Governments and press alike, Hitler’s
design was regarded merely as one sample of the vituperative demagogy he
employed in embroidering his well-worn antisemitic
mania.
‘Wall
of Silence
This remained the situation until June 29,
1942, when World Jewish Congress officials in London made a final desperate
attempt to break through the wall of silence and
indifference.
. . .
‘For the first time, the world press and radio
told the terrible story of Nazi infamy and Jewish catastrophe. The free world
was instantly horrified. Prelates, politicians, public men in all spheres and
the press denounced the infamous bestialities of the pagan Nazi regime. But the
Allied Governments maintained silence.
‘Two months later, in August 1942, World
Jewish Congress leaders in London received from the Congress’s Geneva office
authentic information, transmitted through diplomatic channels, that plans were
being elaborated in Hitler’s headquarters for the complete annihilation of
European Jewry by mass deportation, murder, gassing and burning to ashes in the
incinerators of the Nazi concentration camps.
‘This terrifying news was instantly
communicated to our colleagues in New York, headed by the late Dr. Stephen Wise
and Dr. Nahum Goldmann. With other Jewish organisations in London and the United
States, intensive diplomatic representations were undertaken, calling for an
Allied denunciation of the Nazi perpetrators of this vast crime and governmental
measures to save the surviving Jews.
‘The response was painfully, exasperatingly
and disappointingly slow, particularly in
Washington.
‘From the first, the British Government was
understanding and sympathetic, but cautiously anxious to obtain independent
confirmation of our information.
‘British Initiative
Eventually, the terrible facts were accepted,
and the British took the initiative in proposing the Allied Declaration we had
requested.
. . .
‘These are a few background facts relating to
the all but forgotten Allied Declaration of 1942. . . . In the topsy-turviness
of these times, when the Soviet Union sponsors and rearms the enemies of the
Jewish state and tolerates the deprivations and frustrations of Jewish life in
Russia, when the President of France indulges in a gratuitous and provocative
anti-Jewish diatribe, and when a neo-Nazi political movement emerges in Germany,
we must look back on that Declaration not only with sadness, but in
anger.’
*********************************************************************