The Holocaust before It Happened

George Santayana was famous for his aphorism "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Perhaps those who believe in the myth of the `six million' have forgotten that Jews were making substantially similar claims regarding `six million' Jews about to perish in the aftermath of World War One.

Don Heddesheimer has written a fascinating account of these claims in The First Holocaust: Jewish Fundraising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims during and after World War One. Again and again the pages of the New York Times and other journals were filled with allegations that Jews in Poland and other war-torn countries, all `six million' of them, were threatened with imminent extinction through starvation and disease unless large sums of money were raised and sent overseas. As a matter of fact there was much starvation and disease in Germany and other war-ravaged lands but it did not primarily affect the Jews. Rather, as numerous American military and diplomatic personnel observed, the common people suffered while wealthy Jews lived high on the hog. Then as now, Jews sought to elevate their suffering above that of all others.

Heddesheimer establishes that despite much hand wringing over real and alleged suffering the bulk of the money for Jewish relief actually went to "constructive undertakings" – meaning such things as establishing cooperative banks in Poland, financing tradesmen and artisans, and, in particular, promoting Jewish agricultural settlements. It should be emphasized that this Jewish fundraising was conducted within the context of three key concurrent historical events: 1) the communist revolution in Russia; 2) the rise of Zionism in Palestine together with the incipient Palestine Mandate; and 3) the effort to secure `minority rights' (better, Jewish rights to a state within a state) in anti-Semitic Eastern Europe. Thus, Jewish relief served as camouflage for much broader political objectives. More

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