Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
I assume that the Palestine destination must have been somehow specified by the
Zionists involved in the formulation of the proposals). An important condition
was specified by “officials who were in charge in Romania of Jewish interests.” A
cost of 250 pounds (about $1200) per capita was specified. There were other difficulties.
The British policy at the time was not to antagonize the Arabs, especially
in view of the potentially catastrophic consequences of an Arab uprising in wartime,
and thus the British at first refused to consider the admission of so many
Jews to Palestine. The British took the position that, if such Jews were to be taken
out of Europe, the U.S. should provide camps in North Africa for them. In addition,
both the British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department took the position
that there would inevitably be spies in such a large group of people, that the
logistical problems involved in transporting and accommodating such numbers
were formidable, and that the money demanded might fall into the hands of the
enemy (who valued Allied currency for various purposes). The Treasury was eager
to get into the business of aiding Jewish refugees, and thus, it sought to overcome
such objections. By July 1943, there was said to be bribe money demanded
for the Romanian Jews, $170,000, and the Treasury and the World Jewish Congress
proposed that Romanian Jewish businessmen could produce the bribe
money, if they could be reimbursed after the war with money to be held in escrow
in Switzerland. However, the British objections to admitting Jews to Palestine
stood, and efforts to circumvent them by proposing other destinations for the Jews
ran into the opposition of various candidate countries and also into U.S. immigration
laws.
The State Department, especially J. Breckenridge Long and associates, considered
all the talk about “exterminations” to be just wartime propaganda in the same
spirit as the stories invented during World War I. They were, after all, continually
considering proposals to move these exterminated people out of Europe. As late
as January 1944, the Department was taking steps to encourage Jews to leave Poland
for Hungary. Long wrote that one danger in supporting the proposals of Wise
was that it “may lend color to the charges of Hitler that we are fighting this war on
account of and at the instigation and direction of our Jewish citizens.” State considered
the whole project pointless and, indeed, in conflict with the requirements
of an optimum war effort. Long wrote that:
“Wise always assumes such a sanctimonious air and pleads for the ‘intellectuals
and brave spirits, refugees from the tortures of the dictators’ or words
to that effect. Of course only an infinitesimal fraction of the immigrants are of
that category – and some are certainly German agents. […] I did not allude to
the Navemar – en route from Lisbon to Havana and New York – a freight boat,
passenger accommodations for 15 and 1200 poor Jews above and below decks
with no sanitary arrangements, no service, no kitchen facilities, at from $700
to $1500 apiece, 4 dead before reaching Bermuda, 6 hospitalized there, 1 of
which died, victims of the greed of their fellows – not of Germany or the
United States policy. The vessel is a menace to the health of any port where it
stops and a shame to the human greed which makes it possible. But I did not
allude to it in reply to Rabbi Wise. Each one of these men hates me. I am to
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