Ben-Gurion's address of July 1944

From Edward Yamen
Milan

Here is a part of Ben-Gurion’s address, reported by the daily “Davar”, 13 July 1944 which can be selective in recognising facts better than a research or any study:

“It is our duty that we raise our voice in a loud and bitter scream: What have you done to us? Not they – cruel, bloodthirsty beasts that the Nazis are. With them we have no common language or rapport – they are outside the pale of humanity. But you, what have you done to us, you freedom-loving peoples, guardians of justice, defenders of high principles of democracy and of the brotherhood of man? What have you allowed to be perpetrated against a defenceless people while you stood aside and let them bleed to death, never lifting a finger to help, never offering succor, never calling on the fiends to stop, in the language of punishment which alone they would understand? Why do you profane our pain and wrath with empty expressions of sympathy which ring like mockery in the ears of millions, who are being daily burnt and buried alive in the Nazi hell centres of Europe? Why have you not even supplied arms to our ghetto rebels, as you have done for the partisans and underground fighters of other nations? Why did you not help us to establish contacts with our ghetto rebels, as you have done in the case of the partisans in Greece and Yugoslavia and the underground movements elsewhere?

As a matter of fact the War Cabinet on British rescue policy left policy unchanged: it was best defined by Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee on January 1943. When asked in Parliament “what action has been taken..........in regard to the massacre of Jews”, Attlee answered: “The only real remedy for the consistent Nazi policy of racial and religious persecution lies in an Allied victory; every resource must be bent towards this supreme object.” How very true; but in the race between VE-Day and Auschwitz, the latter prevailed. When victory had finally come, Europe’s Jewry had turned into ashes.