Why were the majority of Kapos used to be Zionist activists?
How was their role a key in making the death camps a lean, mean killing machine?
Introduction: Identifying A Pattern
A recurring and unsettling pattern emerged during research into the Haavara Agreement: the prominent presence of Zionist activists --a minority among European Jewry-- acting as collaborators (a.k.a Kapos or functionaries) with the Nazis in WWII-occupied Europe.
Key Figures in Collaboration
Noteworthy individuals included Chaim Rumkowski, Abraham Gancwajch, Lotek Salzwasser, Moshe Merin, Ephraim Barash of the Bialystok ghetto, Jacob Gens, Samuel Springmann, Ottó Komoly, Jakob Edelstein, Paul Eppstein, Oskar Neumann, Adam Czerniakow (who committed suicide rather than continuing his dangerous job -- here is how AI reflected on Adama's suicide which is often misinterpreted as a purely emotional, tragic gesture of a broken man), Apolinary Hartglas, Joel Brand, Moshe Kerner (a former member of the Polish Senate), and the infamous Dr. Rezso Kastner. While most Kapos were Zionists, only a few of the top collaborators were not. Even non-Zionist Leo Back led two major Zionist organizations in Germany.
This observation was initially dismissed as isolated cases, despite earlier knowledge of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's collaboration with Symon Petliura during the massive pre-Holocaust pogroms. However, years of research solidified a pattern: the Nazis appeared to prefer working with Zionist activists. This section seeks to explore and explain this controversial dynamic.
Addressing the Taboo Questions
The persistent pattern leads to difficult, often avoided, questions:
Why did the Nazis favor Zionists over other Jews for collaboration?
What specific traits made Zionists appealing partners for the Nazis?
Why did David Ben-Gurion and his associates go to extreme lengths to defend and protect collaborators, such as the infamous Dr. Kastner?
Why are the Kapo files still locked when other Zionist archives have been released?
Why were Israeli courts initially hesitant to investigate this phenomenon and only relented when citizens began taking vigilante action?
Why were Kapos given minimal sentences in Israeli courts when other nations executed traitors for lesser offenses? Even in the case of Israel, those who collaborated with the "enemy" (as in the case during the war on Iran) were prosecuted much more harshly, although their activities resulted in no deaths!
These questions will be addressed, but first, the context of how this topic became radioactive in Jewish communities must be established.
Hannah Arendt and the Controversy of Eichmann In Jerusalem
The Kapos phenomenon in the ghettos and the death camps was an open secret in Europe and pre-Nakba Palestine, evidenced by the fact that the majority of European Jews chose to immigrate to the Americas, not Palestine, although it was emptied during the war.
In 1963, Hannah Arendt, a towering intellectual figure, brought this reality to public attention in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem (specifically Chapter VII, pages 153-178). Zionist figures and their supporters in the US, UK, and Europe launched a coordinated attack on Arendt, nearly ending her career. She was accused of "blaming the Jews for the Holocaust" and downplaying Nazi culpability --a common tactic of conflating Zionism with Judaism.
Arendt's work unequivocally implied that collaboration by Zionist leaders in the ghettos and death camps was a critical factor, especially since she only cited Zionist leaders as the main Kapos. Her analysis effectively placed David Ben-Gurion, the Jewish state's founding father, in her crosshairs.
The Kapos' Role in the Holocaust's Efficiency
A careful reading of Arendt's presentation reveals how Kapos transformed the Nazi killing operation into an "extremely efficient killing machine".
Camps and ghettos were primarily staffed by Jews, making the camps highly cost-effective (manned by only a few thousand SS guards).
The Judenrat (Jewish Councils) calmed arriving Jews by telling them they were being transported to labor camps and dismissed all rumors of gas chambers.
Crucially, the Judenrat helped the Nazis to streamline the killing process from start to finish, especially by playing the central role in compiling the deportation lists. If you care about this topic, here is more hidden details from the Steve Rodan the author of "In Jewish Blood".
Arendt concluded that the Jews would have been significantly better off being leaderless --a conclusion that infuriated Zionists. This analysis is supported by the fact that three-quarters of French Jews survived the Holocaust because they refused to cooperate with the French Judenrat. (The lack of a central registry for Jews in France was also a major factor, as noted by Tony Greenstein, pp. 194-5).
Note: Arendt's work was largely based on Raul Hilberg's seminal The Destruction of the European Jews. Hilberg struggled for 6 to 12 years to publish his work, reportedly due to opposition from the "Ministry of Truth in Tel Aviv." While Hilberg provided the facts, Arendt is credited with publicizing the phenomenon and providing the crucial, missing context and framing.
If you care, here is how Google AI unpacked Arendt's presentation.
The Backlash: Hannah Was Pogromed
who banned all kinds of anti-Nazi protests in the 1930s,
YES, the Land of Kapos who refused to boycott the Nazis managed to boycott the free and brave Jew, Hannah Arendt, who called a spade a spade. Dorothy Thomson, the most important American intellectual in the 1930s and 40s, had a similar experience soon after Nakba when she recognized how she was manipulated and deceived. Ms. Thomson was swiftly canceled and shunned by most publications and media outlets, although she did more than any Jew to bring attention to the rise of fascism in the 1930s and to the plight of Jewish refugees during WWII.
Stay tuned. Soon, we shall expose Zionists' cowardliness and treason from Zionist and Israeli sources before, during, and after the calamity; stay tuned.
Why Did The Nazis Prefer The Zionists To Work With As Kapos? What Was So Unique About The Zionists?
Herzl's followers believed in his marching orders religiously, and to this date, it is still being followed as if it is divine guidance, especially by the Zionist leadership from inception. In other words, Herzl's marching orders set Zionists on a path that turned them into eager servants to Europe's antisemites as long as it would serve them in creating their "Jewish state". This belief explains why they welcomed wearing the yellow badge eight years before Hitler asked them to do so. And when the calamity started, they were well conditioned to play this role instinctively, which the Nazis exploited to the letter. That is why the Zionists to this day have sought alliances with every European antisemite you could name; we call it: the martial art of Jujitsu in politics. In this context, it was more like the art of becoming the Nazis' "bitch" and that was a few steps worse than the House Nxxxr character in the African American community.
Hannah Arendt elegantly compared the Zionists' exploitation of antisemitism to harnessing the steam energy that moves a locomotive. She wrote in 1946:
The Unforeseen Side Effects of Appeasing Antisemites
Fake Valor: Jewish-Brigade, Italy April - 1945: The Impostering Hero, see me while I bomb Nazis, ONLY a few weeks before WWII ended. We wonder: were any similar selfies taken at the al-Alamein meat grinder?To prove what was written earlier is an open secret in Jewish communities, and it wasn't just a Palestinian anti-Zionist rant. Here's Nahum Goldmann (one of the most important founding fathers of the "Jewish state" who lived those fateful moments in the 1930s and 40s), looking back with great remorse and painful regrets at those events. Mr. Goldmann wondered how many Jews might have survived if the Jews (especially in the case of Zionist Jewry) had chosen to confront Europe's antisemites instead of appeasing them! Mr. Goldmann came to the same conclusion that Ms. Arendt articulated earlier: the Jews would have fared much better if they were leaderless! Here is a fun fact: Mr. Goldmann got slightly better treatment than Ms. Arendt; the Zionists chewed him as well.
Conclusion
Here is the unvarnished truth: The kapos in the death camps were no different from the kapos in Palestine; both were similar threads cut from the same cloth. If Rommel made it to Palestine (which was a viable scenario then, as we pointed out earlier), Ben-Gurion & Co. would have gotten Chaim Rumkowski's fate. Both did what was best to serve their interests and to save their necks. Did Dr. Kastner "save" 1,600 Jews? HELL YES, 1,600 Zionists and wealthy Jews were "saved" in return for streamlining the murder of 437,000 Hungarian Jews.
If you think about it, Zionist Jews in Palestine were the worst type of Kapos ever, who were making life-or-death decisions for Europe's Jews while they were living under British protection, which many of them were bombing WWII war efforts, while their families were being gassed in Poland! And when Ms. Arendt explained how the Nazi killing machine came to be so efficient and streamlined, she was chewed and spit out by a Zionist mob because she dared to expose Zionists' role in greasing the Nazis' lean, mean killing machine. That is exactly why Palestinians are being used as the perfect deflection tool (such as the Mufti Hajj Amin) to hide Zionists' treason during the 1930s and 40s.
Fake Valor: Why did two of Israel's future PMs, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, bomb WWII war efforts while their families were being gassed in Poland?God forbid you think our framing of the events was way over the top, please give us the benifet of the doubt. We ask you to contemplate how and why Hayim Greenberg (one of the towering American Jewish Zionist intellectuals) wrote on Feb 12th, 1943, in the Jewish Frontier, a few months after the Holocaust became known. Hang on to your seat; trust us you will need it:
The time has come, perhaps, when the few Jewish communities remaining in the world, which are still free to make their voices heard and to pray in public, should proclaim a day of fasting and prayer for American Jews. No--this is not a misprint. I mean specifically that a day of prayer and of fasting should be proclaimed for the five million Jews now living in the United States. They live under the protection of a mighty republic governed by democratic laws. . . . The vast majority of them have enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and roofs over their heads. . . . Nevertheless, they deserve to be prayed for. They are not even aware what a misfortune has befallen them, and if they were to look at themselves with seeing eyes they would realize with shock how intolerable this misfortune is. . . . If moral bankruptcy deserves pity, and if this pity is seven-fold for one who is not even aware of how shocking his bankruptcy is, then no Jewish community in the world today (not even the Jews who are now in the claws of the Nazi devourer) deserves more compassion from Heaven than does American Jewry. (The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals, p. 46 and here is the full article)
Questions And Answers About Kapos
- Did Zionist Jews directly cause the calamity?
Hell no, but were they enablers of the Nazis from day one? Hell yes. To this date and way after the fact, they keep on using Palestinians as a deflection tool to cover up for their deeds. - Did individual Zionists fight the Nazis in Europe? Yes, on the other hand, Zionist leadership in mass refrained from fighting the Nazis. Zionist leaders sent clear instructions to their followers in Nazi-occupied territories to leave for Palestine (i.e., Frumka Plotnicka, Mordechai Tenenbaum of Bialystok ghetto, Zivia Lubetkin, and Adam Czerniakow), not resist the Nazis, and reject the Masada mentality (Dina Porat, 241-43). See for yourself how the Jewish Agency went out on a limb to secure exit visas, permits, and transportation to its leaders before the Jews were blocked from leaving Nazi-occupied territories in Oct. 1941. (The Jews of Warsaw, p. 17-18)
- Were all Judenrat collaborators with the Nazis?
Of course, no, especially in the case of the Romanian Jewry. Actually, from our research, we found many who helped the anti-Nazi resistance; as we pointed out earlier, many of those were Zionists. On the other hand, that doesn't invalidate Ms. Arendt’s central point: the Jews would've been much better off being leaderless, and that explains a high survival rate among French Jews who refused to cooperate with Jurendats (Tony Greenstein, p. 194-5; the same could be said about Bulgaria's experience).
It might interest you to know the case of Gisi Fleischmann, who actually started being part of the Slovakian Judenrat. When she recognized how dangerous they were (exactly as Arendt articulated earlier), she flipped on them by mid-1942. Please pay attention to how the Zionist leadership asked her repeatedly to leave for Palestine, but she refused. To the last minute, she refused. In fact, Gisi and Rabbi Michael Weismandl were sent in the last batches that arrived at Auschwitz in the 2nd half of 1944. -
Was there any quid-pro-quo (or a neutrality pact) between Zionist leaders and Nazis?
Hitler's Message To The West: If Jews are such noble citizens and you care about them, how come you're not letting them in?
Although we found no evidence of that, at the same time, we shouldn't be surprised if we discovered one day that it was the case. This is a valid assumption since what happened on the ground points towards such an assumption. As you consider what we wrote, please keep in mind that the Jewish Agency's offices in Berlin closed their doors in May of 1941, and Haavara was officially shut down in late December of 1941 by FDR.
Therefore, this scenario should not be discounted. The Zionists always did what was good for Zionism, including risking Jews' lives and empowering antisemites. - Note how Zionist Revisionists (i.e., Irgun, Herut, Stern, and Lehi) always exploited the Kapo files to their advantage, not because they were any better. On the contrary, many of their leaders reached out to Hitler for an alliance ten months before Mufti Hajj Amin did. Menachem Begin always reminded Labour Zionists (i.e., Mapai) that it was they who sent a condolence letter to Hitler when President Hindenburg died in August 1934. Actually, Begin used to call them Kapos but spelled with a C. On the other hand, Herr Begin conveniently forgot that it was his Irgun who bombed WWII war efforts while his family was being gassed in Poland! Sporadically, the Kapo files appear in the media to settle political points; here is one of them, but please be seated first.
- After the White Paper of 1939, didn't Ben-Gurion state that the so-called yishuv should fight the Nazis as if the White Paper wasn't there, and to fight the White Paper as if the Nazis weren't there? YES, but the Zionists' leadership quickly discovered there was no bandwidth to fight both (Hitler and the White Paper), and of course, they left the Goems to fight Hitler! (NY Times April 18th, 1982). In other words, talk is cheap.
- Did the Zionist leadership foment antisemitism, hoping that would create a refugee crisis that later could act as the lever to create their "Jewish state"?
Hell yes. - Did Zionist leaders know it would blow up in their faces?
Probably not, but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is when it blew up, and the calamity was known to all, did they care or change course? Hell no. - Did Zionist leaders instruct their followers in Europe to play it safe and to work as kapos with Nazis?
We have no evidence that that is the case. That being said, we haven't seen any evidence to the contrary either, which is damning by itself. At a minimum, there are no records of the Zionist leadership instructing Dr. Kastner and Mr. Brand to stop being chief Kapos when they get the chance to do so. As we pointed out earlier, many of the Kapo files are still locked, and very little has been released. -
Did Zionist leaders hinder rescuing those Jews who could be saved in places other than Palestine?
Hell YES. - Can we blame prisoners for collaborating with those who were torturing them?
Hell no. On the other hand, what happened in the death camps was unique; even the enslaved Blacks in the Americas didn't go through a similar experience. In this unique experience, the traitors crossed several red lines.
First, except for a few, Kapos knew well they would most likely end up dead sooner or later. Meaning their collaboration was done when they knew in advance they would get very little in return. At least in the case of the slaves, they knew in advance they would be kept alive.
Second, Kapos were responsible for streamlining the killing process, which explains why many committed suicide when they recognized how dangerous they were to the group!
Third, we need to separate the low-level functionaries from the leaders who efficiently ran the killing machine.
Fourth, to give a free pass to Kapos, especially to the most notorious ones, is reckless and dangerous.
For the love of God, this dangerous phenomenon could be repeated ("again") to Jews and non-Jews alike; that is why most societies lynched traitors who did far lesser crimes. Actually, the way Zionists slapped Kapos on the wrist is very telling. Why did that happen? Do you honestly think Israeli Jews would tolerate traitors who pose an existential threat to their state and people? Hell no! Everything about Kapos in the Zionist narrative smells! - Did the Zionist leadership behave like a chicken with its head cut off during Dr. Kastner's trials?
Hell YES. Chief Kapo, Ben-Gurion, went out on a limb to defend Dr. Kastner and pressured the Supreme Court to clear his name. To this date, the court proceedings are locked, although the Zionist archives have been mostly open for the past four decades. - Thus, it is simple and stupid: to judge Dr. Kastner implies judging Chief Kapo, Mr. Ben-Gurion. Are you surprised that Dr. Kastner was found dead just before his trial was about to get underway? Are you surprised that later, we found that the Shin-Bet had a hand in murdering him? The whole Kastner trial(s) explains why Zionists' dogs chewed Ms. Arendt when she addressed the same subject just a few years later. Thank God she was a citizen of "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Otherwise, she would have wound up dead as Dr. Kastner.
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To add salt to injury, the Jewish Agency sent Dr. Kastner to the Nuremberg Trails to defend genocidal Nazis (Adolf Eichmann's aides, chief among them were the infamous SS officers Kurt Becher, Hermann Krumey, Hans Juttner, and Dieter Wisliceny to recover the looted Jewish treasure, and suppressing Nazi-Zionists ties and splitting the treasure with Kurt Becher (who became one of the wealthiest men in West German soon after his release) had nothing to do with it! If you care, we have addressed this rarely talked about subject in another section. The subject of the infamous "Becker Deposit" is one of the most well-hidden taboo subjects in Zionist history. It took us months to fully uncover its details. Based on our research, Zionists' treason was (and still is to a large degree) an open secret in Jewish communities around the world. The amount of gaslight that Jews have been consuming since WWII ended must have been on an industrial scale. We wonder how long this shall last? This treason must have been covered in the Jewish press; we are investigating this incident as we speak; we are willing to pay for news clips; stay tuned!
Why do you think Zionist Organizations are actively promoting "I Love Hamas" Stickers? How many similar schemes were done, and are we ignorant about who was behind them? - Assume all prior arguments and facts are Palestinians' version of the Israeli Hasbarah, please contemplate this fact: How Ben-Gurion's infamous antisemitic hate speech (when he incited the murder of German Jewish children a month after the Kristallnacht pogrom of late 1938) wasn't much worse than Rumkowski's "give me your children" speech, which he made during WWII in Lodz's Ghetto? The only difference was the little luck that Rommel didn't make it to Palestine, a little timing, a place, four years, and how both died. It should be noted that what consumed Zionist leadership during the critical years of 1942 and 1943 wasn't confronting the threats from the Nazis or how to save Europe's Jews. On the contrary, what consumed them was how to garner political support for the creation of their "Jewish state" (especially in the US during the Biltmore and the American Jewish Conferences) after the end of the war (for more details, please read what Peter Grose wrote about this subject).
- What was tragically funny was that Zionists kicked out Ze'ev Jabotinsky from their World Zionist Organization because he played it safe with Symon Petliura (the Ukrainian antisemitic nationalist) during the infamous pogroms after WWI ended (which was the largest mass murder of Jews ever at the time), but gave free passes to those who did far worse three decades later! We highly recommend this Haaretz article if you are interested in the boring, embarrassing details.
- If King Chaim Rumkowski (pay attention to how the Times Of Israel has omitted that King Chaim was a Zionist activist, thanks to the Polish Jewry who exposed him) hadn't been killed in Auschwitz by the Jews whom he sent there just months earlier, and he made it to Israel like many other Kapos after the war ended,
Do you have any doubts that he would have walked free? Why not? Wasn't the Israeli government the one that sued for libel those who described Dr. Kastner as the Kapo in chief? Ben-Gurion & Co. would have done the same thing to those who exposed King Chaim in Israel!
Just imagine if King Chaim was killed (sorry, murdered) in Israel rather than in Auschwitz; those would-be killers would have been tried for murder in the Land of Kapos! In Kapo Land, Kapos stick together. That is the best way to save lives.
Does that explain why most kapos walked free?
Does this explain why Zionist Jews gave the antisemites who persecuted them in Europe a free pass three years after WWII ended?
Was there a quid pro quo in return for political and economic support after Nakba?
How doesn't that explain why Zionists use Palestinians as alibis to deflect away from their treason?
For those who are interested in more details, it seems that Karol Hochberg experienced a very similar fate, although he repented and he was fighting the Nazis before he was "murdered"; sorry, we meant to say before he was killed!
Palestinian Refugees fleeing Jaffa in April or May 1948The evidence is clear, and actions spoke loudly: Zionist leaders didn't care even at the height of the calamity, and that makes them as guilty as the Nazis for the Holocaust. On the contrary, they diverted rescue funds to save their necks in Palestine and to build their future state. Please don't take our word for it; examine their budget between Jan. 1943 and May 1945 to draw your conclusions. On top of that, Zionists fomented antisemitism and turned it into a weapon against Europe's Jews, hoping it would instigate a refugee crisis (as it was engineered by Herzl just a few decades earlier); Zionist leaders lobbied to close off all possible safe havens except for Palestine, which persisted even after WWII ended in the displaced persons camps. Why else did American Jews' investigation of Zionists' policies during the 1930s & 40s nix in early 1983? Hash Hash; don't even dare to bring it up! (NY Times, Jan. 4th, 1983)
Not to anyone's surprise, Zionist Jews shamelessly replicated a similar social control system to manage the occupied Palestinians, with a very similar structure, hierarchies, and even the same vocabulary have been recycled. Does that explain why Zionists never condemned Hitler's Nuremberg Laws? Why would they? Aren't birds of a feather often flock together?
Zionism: what a terrible disease of the mind.
More Resources
For completeness' sake, we found Lenni Brenner's, Raul Hilberg's work in The Destruction of the European Jews, Tony Greenstein, and Faris Yahya's research on this subject are second to none.
Since the work of Mr. Yahya on this subject is unique, we have decided to include the relevant chapter (V) from his book. We hope you will find it informative.















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