before the Allied landing in Normandy, but the Jews of Sighet had not been informed of the ramifications of the Final Solution. The free world, including Jewish leaders in America and Palestine, had known since 1942, but we knew nothing. Why didn’t they warn us? Though this in no way attenuates the guilt of the killers and their accomplices, it is impossible not to feel indignation at the passivity of our brothers and sisters in America and Palestine. How many of our people would have escaped the enemy if Roosevelt, Churchill, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and the leading lights of world Jewry had issued radio appeals: “Hungarian Jews, don’t let yourselves be locked into ghettos, don’t get into the cattle cars! Flee, hide in the caves, take refuge in the woods!” Had we been told that the road from the ghettos led to the railroad stations, and that the trains’ destination was Auschwitz, had we been told what Auschwitz meant, many Sighet Jews would have chosen to go underground—and thereby would have survived.
This question has haunted me ever since the war: Why did the Jews of the free world act as they did? Hadn’t our people survived persecution and exile throughout the centuries because of its spirit of solidarity? Driven from their land after the defeat of Judea, the Jews found a haven among their brothers in Rome and Cyprus. Expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by their fellow Jews in Turkey and the Netherlands. When one community suffered, the others supported it, throughout the Diaspora. Why was it different this time?
In my first essay on the Eichmann trial, published in
Commentary
, I suggested that, before condemning the criminals and their accomplices, we confess our own shortcomings. Free Jews did not do all they could to save the Jews of Europe. The Palmach in Palestine could havesent emissaries to Poland and Hungary to train Jews for combat, or at least to inform them. It did not.
This article drew the wrath of Golda Meir, then Israeli minister of foreign affairs. “You forget,” she replied, “that the world was at war, that Palestine was under a British mandate. How could our boys have reached occupied Europe?” Usually I didn’t dare argue with her. I respected her and was careful not to irritate her. But this time I decided to answer: “Every boy or girl who risked his or her life going from ghetto to ghetto or community to community to maintain contact among persecuted Jews ran a greater risk than your emissaries. Yet they accepted this risk, while your men were ordered to remain in Palestine.”
“You’re forgetting the paratroopers,” Golda said. “They were ready to go, as soon as the British army gave its green light.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “The paratroopers. Their courage and heroism are laudable. But by the time they arrived in Budapest, there were almost no Jews left to save in the provinces.”
This is an observation that applies equally well to Raoul Wallenberg, to whom we will be eternally grateful. He risked life and liberty, abandoning the security of his home in Sweden for the Hungarian capital, where he saved thousands of Jews. But for the Jews of the provinces, it was too late.
For us it was too late, in every sense. Sacrificed, abandoned, and betrayed, delivered to the invader and left to face him alone, we were ignored by everyone but the enemy. He alone paid attention to us. And when he drove us to the ghetto, we went.
I see images of exodus and uprooting, reminiscent of a past buried in memory; ravaged, dazed, disoriented faces. Everything changed overnight. A few words uttered by a man in a uniform, and the order of Creation collapsed. Everything was dismantled: ties were severed, words were emptied of their meaning. Homes became unrecognizable; my house was no longer my own. Everything a family had managed to accumulate in a lifetime had to be left behind. Utensils, clothing, pots and pans, books, and furniture: it was all too heavy, too burdensome, to
This question has haunted me ever since the war: Why did the Jews of the free world act as they did? Hadn’t our people survived persecution and exile throughout the centuries because of its spirit of solidarity? Driven from their land after the defeat of Judea, the Jews found a haven among their brothers in Rome and Cyprus. Expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by their fellow Jews in Turkey and the Netherlands. When one community suffered, the others supported it, throughout the Diaspora. Why was it different this time?
In my first essay on the Eichmann trial, published in
Commentary
, I suggested that, before condemning the criminals and their accomplices, we confess our own shortcomings. Free Jews did not do all they could to save the Jews of Europe. The Palmach in Palestine could havesent emissaries to Poland and Hungary to train Jews for combat, or at least to inform them. It did not.
This article drew the wrath of Golda Meir, then Israeli minister of foreign affairs. “You forget,” she replied, “that the world was at war, that Palestine was under a British mandate. How could our boys have reached occupied Europe?” Usually I didn’t dare argue with her. I respected her and was careful not to irritate her. But this time I decided to answer: “Every boy or girl who risked his or her life going from ghetto to ghetto or community to community to maintain contact among persecuted Jews ran a greater risk than your emissaries. Yet they accepted this risk, while your men were ordered to remain in Palestine.”
“You’re forgetting the paratroopers,” Golda said. “They were ready to go, as soon as the British army gave its green light.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “The paratroopers. Their courage and heroism are laudable. But by the time they arrived in Budapest, there were almost no Jews left to save in the provinces.”
This is an observation that applies equally well to Raoul Wallenberg, to whom we will be eternally grateful. He risked life and liberty, abandoning the security of his home in Sweden for the Hungarian capital, where he saved thousands of Jews. But for the Jews of the provinces, it was too late.
For us it was too late, in every sense. Sacrificed, abandoned, and betrayed, delivered to the invader and left to face him alone, we were ignored by everyone but the enemy. He alone paid attention to us. And when he drove us to the ghetto, we went.
I see images of exodus and uprooting, reminiscent of a past buried in memory; ravaged, dazed, disoriented faces. Everything changed overnight. A few words uttered by a man in a uniform, and the order of Creation collapsed. Everything was dismantled: ties were severed, words were emptied of their meaning. Homes became unrecognizable; my house was no longer my own. Everything a family had managed to accumulate in a lifetime had to be left behind. Utensils, clothing, pots and pans, books, and furniture: it was all too heavy, too burdensome, to
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