Freedland’s biography of Rudolf Vrba – without the inconvenient bits
JVL Introduction
As well as this summary from Jonathan Cook, we recommend reading Tony Greenstein’s full “excoriating review” of Jonathan Freedland’s book: a seriously distorted retelling of the story of Rudolf Vrba who, together with his Slovak compatriot Alfréd Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 in part to warn the Hungarian Jews about their likely fate. As we know from Vrba’s moving autobiography “I Escaped from Auschwitz”, his words were barely heeded and not enough to allow the Hungarian Jews any agency to try to fight back, to take the risks associated with trying to flee compared with the near certainty of death if they went East to the Camp.
Tony Greenstein has written in great detail about the relevant incidents and more generally about how, on occasions, Zionists, more concerned with their aim of establishing a Jewish State than rescuing Jews from the Nazis. Here Cook quotes from David Ben Gurion in late December 1938, “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
We are publishing this at the same time as Liberating the Holocaust – from Zionism by Graham Bash.
LL
This article was originally published by Substack on Sun 25 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
Jonathan Freedland rewrites history to hide an ugly truth about Israel
The Guardian columnist has to twist the story of the first Jew to escape Auschwitz because a true biography of Rudolf Vrba would expose the Zionist movement’s collusion with the Nazis
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A praiseworthy summary of Tony Greenstein’s Electronic Intifada article, accessible by clicking on the red-highlighted text. Tony’s article adds to the information in his excellent book – both must-reads.
I detect a similarity between the actions of today’s Israeli government and those of Putin’s army in Ukraine. I suppose the equivalent of the deal described by Vrba would be something like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, or perhaps Stalin’s willingness to allow millions of Russian POWs to be starved to death in German camps rather than allow the Red Cross access to them. History never exactly repeats itself, but it rhymes.
I read Jonathan Freedland’s book and remember two ways in which he rubbishes Vrba. One is related to his (unlikable, apparently) character, which Tony Greenstein has written about. The other is that he persuades the reader with quotes from psychological research that ‘prove’ there was no point telling the Hungarian Jews they were going to be killed at the other end of their journey because they would never have believed it anyway. He more or less justifies the selling of the million Jews for Kasztner’s 1500 odd who were secretly saved on this basis.