Haavara FAQs: Why did Hayim Greenberg describe American Jewry as "morally bankrupt" in early 1943?

In February 1943, at a critical moment during the Holocaust, prominent Zionist Jewish leader Hayim Greenberg labeled America's Jewry as "morally bankrupt." SPOILER ALERT: Greenberg made it clear from the opening lines of his article that he was not overreacting and he was dead serious.

Greenberg's criticism was not isolated. Soon after, he published another article, "Break the Siege," where he tackled the taboo subject of hoarding and starving rescue funds, a practice that remains censored to this day. We are still trying to locate this second article and encourage anyone with access to share it.

It's important to note the timeline: Greenberg wrote his critique seven months before the "infamous" American Jewish Conference and the Rabbis' March on DC. These events marked the official shift in American Jewry's priorities from rescuing Europe's Jews to focusing on the creation of a "Jewish state."

The claim of "moral bankruptcy" occurred when the last three million Jews were still alive in Europe's ghettos and death camps, demonstrating that these policies were deliberate, not accidental. American Jewish leaders were well aware of the unfolding calamity and the consequences of their choices, as news of the genocide was arriving almost in real-time via JTA.

This historical context prompts a reflection: How did American Jewry respond to the genocide in Gaza? Arguably, their behavior was only marginally better than in the 1940s. The more this community's response to the Holocaust is researched, the more alarming it becomes. If this is how they treated their own during a genocide, how might they treat their "perceived enemies"?

Surprisingly, Greenberg had written a scathing attack on "territorialists" (those advocating for saving Jews anywhere, not just in Palestine) ten months earlier, in April 1942. It appears that between the two articles, as the scale of the Holocaust became undeniable in the Fall of 1942, he recognized the danger of the Zionists' Palestine-only fixation and shifted to a territorialist stance himself. Shortly after, he lobbied for sending Jewish refugees to Alaska, a position that led to a swift reprimand --a "smackdown"-- from Zionist leaders.

If Greenberg's framing seems exaggerated, historical investigation proves otherwise. Fifty years later, in 1983, American Jewry attempted to investigate this very point but quickly suppressed the findings. This issue remains a major taboo, the "third rail" of Jewish politics, capable of ending a career.

Interestingly, historian Beit-Zvi reported that Greenberg completely ceased his criticisms after publishing these two articles. This raises the question of whether Zionist forces managed to silence him, much like they did to Hannah Arendt after she exposed the Kapos phenomenon in 1963. Our detailed research on the actions of this "most moral, liberal, and progressive community" is available for further reading.

Finally, we note that 23 years later, Elie Wiesel attempted to address Jewish silence regarding the USSR's Jewry. However, this effort was quickly weaponized to promote the "Second Holocaust" scare just before the 1967 Six-Day War.

An article written eight months after Greenberg's piece by "John Q. Public" in the Hebrew (see Beit-Zvi, pp. 300) paper Bitzeron sarcastically commented on the 500 Rabbis' March on DC and the Bergson Group's efforts to seek FDR's help. This highlights the community's aloofness to rescue efforts at the height of the calamity --a stark contrast to their unified, passionate response to the pogroms in Kishinev and Ukraine just a few decades earlier.

In any case, for those who care, our analysis continues below the article.

193. Hayim Greenberg's article was cited in THE INNER EYE Selected Essays: "Bankrupt!", p. 193 - 202, which you can read for free on Archive.org:
194.
195.
196.
197. As you see in the 2nd half other page, Mr. Greenberg clearly became a territorialist by making the case that Jews should be saved immediately anywhere besides Palestine. Keep in mind that it was him who wrote a scathing attack against territorialists just eight months earlier. He must have felt guilty:
198. Mr. Greenberg referred Bergson Group's NY Times ad (without naming them), whose main focus was raising a Jewish Army to fight Hitler. Anyhow, it seems the Bergson Group heeded his advice and switched direction four months later in the second half of 1943 by focusing on rescuing Jews as their top priority:
199. Notice the sarcastic point of criticism at the AJC:
200.
201. In the middle of the page, Mr. Greenberg asked the AJC to open the gate in Latin and South America for Jews. On the other hand, he must have known that the AJC's leadership (Rabbi Stephan Wise and Nahum Goldmann) lobbied the US State Department against such a thing (see Politics of Rescue, p. 101):
202.

Just in case you're curious, we Palestinians often lynched our brothers and sisters for doing far less than treason. Just imagine Black Americans electing the House Nxxxrs after their emancipation in the 1860s. That is exactly what American Jews have elected since the 1940s. They allowed their lowest (thugs, fascists, gangsters, socialist nationalists, etc.) to lead them; in return, they accumulated political and economic power (David Ben-Gurion described this process as the LEVER)! Hannah Arendt's conclusion was correct: The Jews were not tethered to reality. The Jews would have been much better off being leaderless, and as a consequence, the Jews would have fared much better. Mazeltov, dear Jews, on this "wonderful gift" to humanity! Please give yourselves a big hand!

 

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