Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder
Authors: Timothy Snyder
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principle by much of the Polish Center and Left, were meant to prevent the pogroms organized by nationalists. The leader of OZON had a Jewish wife, something unthinkable for a Nazi. Nevertheless, by the standards of previous Polish practice, the change after 1935 was fundamental and unmistakable.
The man responsible for Jewish policy was Wiktor Tomir Drymmer, a close collaborator of Polish foreign minister Józef Beck. With a background in military intelligence, Drymmer was formally in charge of both personnel and consular affairs in the foreign ministry. He was also the head of its emigration office, charged with arranging the exit of citizens. Poland’s official position was that European maritime empires should either permit Poland access to resources in their overseas colonies or allow Polish citizens to migrate to such places. This analysis had a force that went beyond Jewish policy. At a time when rural unemployment exceeded fifty percent, Warsaw was pushing for the right of all of its citizens to emigrate. In the case of Jews, Polish diplomats pointed to the dramatic consequences of frozen migration routes. Before the First World War, roughly 150,000 Jews left Europe each year; in the 1930s the figure was a small fraction of this. In “trying to find an outlet for its surplus population” the Polish government had “in mind the Jews first of all.”
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The question of the settlement of European Jews was a general European one, in which Poland occupied a position somewhere between the Nazi one (Jews must be eliminated, and emigration seemed the practical way to achieve this) and the Zionist one (Jews had a right to a state, which would have to be created from an existing colony).
The question of where European Jews might settle had been open since the nineteenth century, and very different sorts of politicians and ideologues proposed the same places. The island of Madagascar, a colonial French possession off the southeast African coast in the Indian Ocean, was introduced to the discussion by the antisemite Paul de Lagarde (actually a German named Bötticher) in 1885. This idea could be considered with greater or lesser hostility or sympathy. It had supporters in Great Britain and, of course, among Germans, including the Nazi leadership. Only in French could one say
“Madagassez les Juifs,”
but not all of those who considered the idea in France were enemies of the Jews. Zionists also considered Madagascar, although most rejected it.
Polish authorities also allowed themselves to be tempted by the prospect of colonizing Madagascar. The idea of settling Madagascar with Polish citizens was first raised in 1926; at that time the idea was the emigration of Polish peasants from the overpopulated countryside. A decade later, after Piłsudski’s death, the idea returned in a Jewish variant. Beck proposed the emigration of Polish Jews to Madagascar to French prime minister Léon Blum in October 1936, and Blum allowed the Poles to send a three-man exploratory delegation to the island. The representative of the Polish government thought that about fifty thousand Jews could be settled immediately—a significant number, but not one that would have affected the population balance in Poland. The delegate from the Jewish Emigration Association thought that four hundred families might settle. The agricultural expert from Palestine thought that even this was too much. The inhabitants of Madagascar rejected any settlement from Poland. French nationalists, for their part, were concerned that the Polish colonization project would succeed and that the island would become Polish. Meanwhile, the pro-Madagascar propaganda of the Polish regime backfired: When told that the island was suitable for colonization, Polish nationalists demanded “Madagascar only for the Poles!”
Beck and Drymmer expressed a special interest in the future of Palestine, a former Ottoman possession that was under British authority. The decline and fall of
The man responsible for Jewish policy was Wiktor Tomir Drymmer, a close collaborator of Polish foreign minister Józef Beck. With a background in military intelligence, Drymmer was formally in charge of both personnel and consular affairs in the foreign ministry. He was also the head of its emigration office, charged with arranging the exit of citizens. Poland’s official position was that European maritime empires should either permit Poland access to resources in their overseas colonies or allow Polish citizens to migrate to such places. This analysis had a force that went beyond Jewish policy. At a time when rural unemployment exceeded fifty percent, Warsaw was pushing for the right of all of its citizens to emigrate. In the case of Jews, Polish diplomats pointed to the dramatic consequences of frozen migration routes. Before the First World War, roughly 150,000 Jews left Europe each year; in the 1930s the figure was a small fraction of this. In “trying to find an outlet for its surplus population” the Polish government had “in mind the Jews first of all.”
—
The question of the settlement of European Jews was a general European one, in which Poland occupied a position somewhere between the Nazi one (Jews must be eliminated, and emigration seemed the practical way to achieve this) and the Zionist one (Jews had a right to a state, which would have to be created from an existing colony).
The question of where European Jews might settle had been open since the nineteenth century, and very different sorts of politicians and ideologues proposed the same places. The island of Madagascar, a colonial French possession off the southeast African coast in the Indian Ocean, was introduced to the discussion by the antisemite Paul de Lagarde (actually a German named Bötticher) in 1885. This idea could be considered with greater or lesser hostility or sympathy. It had supporters in Great Britain and, of course, among Germans, including the Nazi leadership. Only in French could one say
“Madagassez les Juifs,”
but not all of those who considered the idea in France were enemies of the Jews. Zionists also considered Madagascar, although most rejected it.
Polish authorities also allowed themselves to be tempted by the prospect of colonizing Madagascar. The idea of settling Madagascar with Polish citizens was first raised in 1926; at that time the idea was the emigration of Polish peasants from the overpopulated countryside. A decade later, after Piłsudski’s death, the idea returned in a Jewish variant. Beck proposed the emigration of Polish Jews to Madagascar to French prime minister Léon Blum in October 1936, and Blum allowed the Poles to send a three-man exploratory delegation to the island. The representative of the Polish government thought that about fifty thousand Jews could be settled immediately—a significant number, but not one that would have affected the population balance in Poland. The delegate from the Jewish Emigration Association thought that four hundred families might settle. The agricultural expert from Palestine thought that even this was too much. The inhabitants of Madagascar rejected any settlement from Poland. French nationalists, for their part, were concerned that the Polish colonization project would succeed and that the island would become Polish. Meanwhile, the pro-Madagascar propaganda of the Polish regime backfired: When told that the island was suitable for colonization, Polish nationalists demanded “Madagascar only for the Poles!”
Beck and Drymmer expressed a special interest in the future of Palestine, a former Ottoman possession that was under British authority. The decline and fall of
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