The nightmare that is a reality
JVL Introduction
Tom London reminds us of Arthur Koestler’s anger, frustration and rage as he tried unsuccessfully to draw the Nazi atrocities in Europe to the attention an uninterested public in January 1944.
He speaks for us all when he writes:
A crime is under way in Gaza of unspeakable evil.
The evidence for the crime is conclusive, yet denied by Western governments and most Western media.
The UK Government is supporting and enabling the genocide in Gaza.
I feel a responsibility as a British person, as a Jew and as a human being.
I am a screamer. I don’t know what else to do.
RK
Karski, Koestler, the Holocaust, Gaza and “we, the screamers”
Jan Karski was a hero. He was an exceptionally brave and resourceful Polish man who witnessed the operation of Nazi extermination camps in Poland and the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and somehow got himself to England in the middle of World War Two and brought evidence of the Holocaust.
In November 1942, Karski met Arthur Koestler, who at that time was working at the Ministry of Information in London. Koestler’s job – and his driving mission – was to communicate Karski’s account to politicians and the general public.
Koestler, who became an acclaimed writer, did everything he could to get people to accept Karski’s account, which was all too true. However, he became frustrated and angry at the reception he, and others, received.
On 9 January 1944, Koestler had an article published in The New York Times under this headline.
Here are some extracts from this article.
“HERE is a dream which keeps coming back to me at almost regular intervals; it is dark and I am being murdered in some kind of thicket or brushwood; there is a busy road at no more than ten yards distance; I scream for help but nobody hears me, the crowd walks past laughing and chatting.
“I know that a great many people share, with individual variations, the same type of dream.
…
“For, after all, you are the crowd who walk past laughing on the road; and stories of Nazi atrocities are true, and they cannot be dismissed like a bad dream; such crimes are a challenge to civilization.
“There are a few of us, who … go on screaming …, yelling at you…. Now and then we succeed in reaching your ear for a minute. I know it each time this happens by a certain dumb wonder on your faces, a faint glassy stare entering your eye; and I tell myself: Now you have got them, now hold them, hold them, so that they remain awake; but it only lasts a minute.
“You shake yourself like puppies who have got their fur wet; then the transparent screen descends again and you walk on protected by the dream-barrier which stifles all sound.
…
“At present we have the mania of trying to tell you about the killing, by hot steam, mass electrocution and live burial of the total Jewish population of Europe. So far three million have died. It is the greatest mass killing in recorded history; and it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch.
…
“Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly, we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a fantasy world. So, perhaps, it is the other way round: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotics who totter about in a screened fantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts.
...
“A dog run over by a car upsets our emotional balance and digestion; a million Jews killed in Poland cause but a moderate uneasiness.
…
“we walk about as prisoners, each in his private, portable cage. Meanwhile, the watch goes on ticking.
“What can the screamers do but go on screaming, until they get blue in the face?”
In 2025, the Gaza Genocide has many similarities with the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, people were killed because they were Jews. In Gaza, people are killed because they are Palestinians. Babies and children are targeted as they are prime targets in a genocide. Medical staff are targeted as lack of their services will increase the number of the dead. Journalists are targeted as they tell the story. Most Palestinian journalists have now been killed and foreign journalists are not allowed in Gaza.
Yesterday I saw a man die from starvation on camera in Gaza.
This is from Jan Karski’s account of the Warsaw Ghetto, where he went so he could bear witness. It could be Gaza in 2025.
“The odour. The children. Dirty. Lying. I saw a man standing with blank eyes. I asked the guide: what is he doing? The guide whispered: “He’s just dying”. I remember degradation, starvation and dead bodies lying on the street. The dirty streets. The stench. Everywhere.”
Here is a quote from Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.
“Then they announced distribution of bread. To all who volunteered for relocation – three kilos of bread and one of jam. Do you understand what having bread meant to those in the Ghetto? If you don’t, you will never understand how thousands came willingly and, holding their bread, were entrained for Treblinka. Yes we knew … that it was the same train that returned empty from Treblinka every day …”
The Nazis starved people in the Warsaw Ghetto and then used the bait of bread and jam to get them to take the train to the death camp. Israel is starving people in Gaza and using the bait of some food to massacre them in the queues.
A crime is under way in Gaza of unspeakable evil.
The evidence for the crime is conclusive, yet denied by Western governments and most Western media.
The UK Government is supporting and enabling the genocide in Gaza.
I feel a responsibility as a British person, as a Jew and as a human being.
I am a screamer. I don’t know what else to do.
You can join Tom London’s mailing list by emailing him here.
That is brilliant. We are often criticised for making comparisons with the Nazis’ actions, but this is perfect analogy, and drawing on Koestler, who is utterly ‘respectable’ as a literary figure and commentator today is genius. It’s especially right because people in Gaza often say ‘why is the world silent?’ when actually ‘the world isnt’. The demonstrations across Europe including Britain, for example, are huge, the inventiveness and commitment of so many people from so many backgrounds is incomparable. The problem is, as it was for Koestler, that too many governments, ministers, press, people with their hands on the levers of power and communication, didnt want to hear or see. We must make them.
Koestler’s first book published in English, ‘Arrow in the Blue’ also speaks to a very current horror today: that’s the ongoing nightmare of stateless refugees driven from one unwilling country to another. It’s a personal memoir but it brought the realities to an England which had not experienced invasion and occupation for centuries.
Koestler is seen now through the filer of his later life and especially the hatchet job by David Cesarani – who attacked Koestler first and foremost for the very thing which we would applaud. Namely, that Koestler started out as a militant Revisionist Zionist and follower of Jabotinsky, but later turned against Zionism and even explored the possibility that Ashkenazi Jews may have had no genetic or historical links to Palestine… That theory has now been disproved by DNA evidence (it turns out that some diaspora Jews from the most unlikely places such as indigenous Southern Africa do indeed have genetic markers, whereas some of the most seemingly echt such as Yemenite Jews are entirely converts). But Koestler was ahead of Benedict Anderson and Shlomo Sand among others, in showing how imagined communities can be misused and abused. Respect.
Why do you still call yourself ” Jewish Voice for Labour”?
Alan Story
Powerful, deeply emotional article that needs to be spread far and wide. Palestinians and Jews (not just Jewish Palestinians) have so many historical bonds. Including the way our respective genocides were ignored.
Very well said, Tom London. I am a screamer too, though I’m not yet screaming loudly enough. I will be haunted by the suffering in Gaza for the rest of my life.
And we are told not to draw a comparison between the Nazis and Israel. What else can we do while people die on our TVs every day?
The Daily Express covered it this morning. Took them long enough though!
A comment needs words and I am wordless, at least lacking words that can truly express how I feel witnessing this crime day after day as crowds pass by laughing and talking. The perpetrators, those complicit, those who support the imposition of this living hell on anyone, never mind the innocent, must pay for this, along with those who say nothing