The differences between Churchill and Hitler with respect to Jews was as great as the difference between night and day.
Hitler hated all Jews, believed all Jews to be vicious and treacherous, while Churchill did not -- he differentiated between the Jews who were associated with Socialism and Communism, whom he called "International Jews," and those who were not.
Churchill cared deeply about the plight of persecuted Jews, while Hitler delighted in persecuting Jews.
Churchill wanted persecuted Jews to be able to establish a homeland in Palestine. Hitler wanted to destroy them all in the Final Solution.
I think you know this already. I suspect that if you actually come right out and say what you really think, you'll be booted from the thread. Just a hunch.
So, before you go, I'd like to post this link to a speech by one of Churchill's biographers, a Jew, at the opening of the Holocaust Museum, here in DC, about how Churchill really felt about Jews:
winstonchurchill.org
Here's an excerpt, to wipe the bad taste off of the thread:
>>When in November 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, and Churchill was in Munich doing some historical research about the First Duke of Marlborough, his ancestor, an intermediary tried to get him to meet Hitler, who was in Munich at the time and had high hopes of coming to power within months. Churchill agreed to meet Hitler, who was going to come to see him in his hotel in Munich, and said to the intermediary: "There are a few questions you might like to put to him, which can be the basis of our discussion when we meet." Among them was the following question: "What is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?"
This may seem a simple sentiment to us now, but how many people, distinguished people from Britain, the United States and other countries, who met or might have met Hitler, raised that question with him? So surprised, and possibly angered, was Hitler by this question that he declined to come to the hotel and see Churchill.
FROM the moment that Hitler came to power, Churchill in his public speeches, and in his Parliamentary speeches, made it clear that the racial aspect of Nazism was a central concern. He always insisted on raising this issue, and pointing out the relevance to his listeners of the Nazi racial policies, and this he did again and again.
I also found in an article which he wrote in April 1933, some two months after Hitler came to power, an extraordinary forecast or foresight, the recognition, which I haven’t seen elsewhere at the time: that it was not only the 500,000 Jews of Germany, but many other Jews, many millions of Jews elsewhere, who were now threatened. This is what he wrote:
"There is a danger of the odious conditions now ruling in Germany, being extended by conquest to Poland and another persecution and pogrom of Jews being begun in this new area."
Churchill saw the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis as affecting every element, not only of German life, but of the relationship between Germany and the other powers. He spoke of them at a time when Jewish reaction was being debated strongly by Jews themselves: Should the Jews boycott? Should the Jews lobby? As you know from the American experience, the Jewish community was divided as to how it should, or if it should, represent its particular, desperate needs, or submerge its concerns into national concerns.
Churchill set out what he called "a perfectly legitimate use of Jewish influence throughout the world: to bring pressure, economic and financial, to bear upon the governments which persecute them." It is interesting, too, that he saw a direct parallel between the growing plight of Jewish refugees and British policy to Palestine, remarking in April 1937, "of the need not to close the doors against them."
In Palestine, some 320,000 Jews had availed themselves of Churchill’s own legislation of 1922 to immigrate. Now, the British government was seeking means of going back on what was known as the Churchill White Paper for Palestine, and effectively giving veto power to the Arabs against any substantial further Jewish immigration. And so Churchill, in his discussions with Jewish leaders and with British leaders, stressed the need to maintain an open door in Palestine.
The British government, of which he was not a member, but whose Conservative-dominated Cabinet was made up very much of his colleagues, friends and contemporaries — people with whom he had worked very closely in the past — took a different view. I found it particularly compelling to see that, when one of the greatest British Conservative political figures of the time, Lord Halifax, wh~ was shortly to be made Foreign Secretary, went to see Hitler in December 1937, Churchill saw great danger in this. He saw it not only from the general policy of appeasement, which he opposed, but also specifically for the dangers that it would create for Jews and opponents of Nazism, who would find Hitler encouraged by this British visit and recognition. In the House of Commons — a very hostile House of Commons, which did not want to hear that Lord Halifax’s visit to Hitler had been in any way a bad thing, it was all avenues of hope and good Anglo-German relations — Churchill said:
I would like to speak about the persecution of Jews in Germany. It is a horrible thing that a race of people should be attempted to be blotted out of the society in which they had been born. If it were thought by this visit that we were making terms for ourselves at the expenses either of small nations or of large conceptions, which are dear not only to many nations but to millions of people in every land, a knell of despair would resound through many parts of Europe.
It is interesting to note, sad in a way, that Churchill’s constant "harping" on the Jewish issue — as his contemporaries sometimes described his concern — was more and more held against him in the general argument about his lack of reliability, balance, judgement and statesmanship. Foolish historians today exaggerate his drinking, but at the time, what was disliked was his championing of what we now call human rights, and specifically the rights of Jews.<< |
