The Madagascar fiction was abandoned over the next months, as the defeat of Great Britain was nowhere in sight.58
IV
Jewish emigration from the Reich and from occupied countries continued after the beginning of the war. On January 24, 1939, as mentioned, Göring had put Heydrich in charge of Jewish emigration. Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller became head of the Berlin “Central Emigration Agency,” under Heydrich’s command. The day-to-day operations were left in Eichmann’s hands: For all practical purposes he became the “chief of operations,” both for the deportations and for the emigration of Jews (in Nazi eyes both were identical at this stage). It is in line with the overall policy of expulsion—and with Hitler’s explicit agreement—that, mainly in the fall of 1939, Jews deported to the Lublin area were often driven by the SS over the Soviet demarcation line or were allowed to flee into Soviet-occupied territory, as mentioned in the previous chapter. By mid-October 1939, however, this possibility tapered off, mainly due to a change in Soviet asylum policy. There also was a semiclandestine route out of Poland over the border into Hungary; it allowed for the flight of several thousand Jews but, as we shall see, not to lasting safety.
During the first few months of the war, Jews from Poland or Polish areas annexed to the Reich could also leave by applying for visas as was the case in the Reich and the Protectorate. Thus, the Jewish Council of the town of Auschwitz, part of annexed eastern Upper Silesia, complained to the office of the Jewish relief organization the American Joint Distribution Committee in Amsterdam on January 4, 1940, for not sending the funds necessary for emigration: “As you might probably know,” the Ältestenrat’s letter stated, “a central emigration bureau has been established at Auschwitz for the whole district of Kattowitz based on the approval of the competent authorities. To this emigration office belongs also a department for emigration to overseas countries and a Palestine office…. In order to release people from various camps, emigration possibilities have to be provided…. A considerable number of unused Palestine certificates and several holders of affidavits for America have to be dealt with.” Money was needed, urgently.59
The Germans soon established their priorities. In April 1940, as departures and border crossings became increasingly difficult, Heydrich issued a first set of guidelines: intensification of Jewish emigration from the Reich, except for men of military age; limitation and control of emigration to Palestine; no emigration of Polish or ex-Polish Jews in concentration camps; no further deportation (“or free emigration”) of Jews into the General Government.60
On October 25, 1940, Jewish emigration from the General Government was forbidden, mainly to keep the emigration possibilities from the Reich as open as possible. Yet Heydrich added some comments that sound genuine—and true to type: “The migration of the Eastern Jews means a continuous spiritual regeneration of world Jewry, as these Eastern Jews, due to their orthodox religious attitudes, represent a large part of the rabbis, Talmudic teachers, etc., who are much in demand, particularly in Jewish organizations active in the United States. For these American-Jewish organizations, each orthodox Jew also represents an additional element in their constant effort to effect both a spiritual rejuvenation and further cohesion of American Jewry. American Jewry also aims, with the particular help of those Jews newly arrived from Eastern Europe, to create a new basis from which to pursue its struggle, especially against Germany, with ever greater energy.”61 In fact, for Jews trapped in former Poland, the chances of reaching the United States were slim at best, except for the lucky ones who had managed to flee to the Soviet-occupied zone and on.
With the beginning of the war, the number of American visas issued to refugees from Germany or German-occupied countries declined precipitously, well below the already limited possibilities offered by the U.S. quota system. A special committee, the Emergency Rescue Committee, or ERC, was set up on June 25, 1940, to facilitate the immigration (from southern France, where many had found a temporary refuge), of a select group of refugees deemed particularly valuable to the United States or in danger of being delivered to the Gestapo, according to article 19 of the Franco-German armistice agreement.62
At first ERC headquarters in New York, in complying with the regulations imposed by the Vichy authorities and in establishing new screening procedures to exclude all politically unwanted immigrants, created as many difficulties as it solved. In August 1940, however, the ERC decided to send a member of the Foreign Policy Association, Varian Fry, on a brief fact-finding mission to France. Instead of returning to the United States, Fry set up the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseilles and started helping the most endangered individuals to leave the country. In the face of the massive obstacles put in place by the French and also the Spaniards and the Portuguese, Fry took it upon himself to cut many a legal corner, in fact to initiate blatantly illegal steps (forged exit and transit visas and the like). Hundreds of refugees—Jews and non-Jews—owed him their move to safety. In August 1941 Fry was briefly arrested by the French and recalled.63
At times well-known individuals intervened on their own. Thus, on July 9, 1940, the world-renowned novelist Stefan Zweig wrote (from New York) to a Mr. Adolphe Held at the New York Amalgamated Bank to ask for his help in saving “Frederike Maria Zweig, my former wife and her two daughters; Mr. Hugo Simon, who has been active in a number of anti-Nazi efforts; Theodor Wolff, the former editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt and his family; and Mr. Alfred Polgar, the well-known Austrian writer.” All these people were stranded in Montauban, a small town in southwest France.64
In most cases, in the summer of 1940, immigration to the United States became a hopeless quest. It seems that the fear of enemy agents infiltrating the country as refugees had a significant influence on American decisions: The fact that among those attempting to flee many were Jews did not alleviate the suspicion.65 No clash of policies existed between the bureaucratic level (the State Department) and the political level (the president). Roosevelt’s advisers believed in the “fifth column” threat as intensely as did the majority of the population, swayed by a hysterical press campaign.66 In the course of one day in May 1940, 2,900 allegations of espionage were received at the FBI.67
One of the most active restrictionists was the head of the State Department’s “Special Problems Division,” Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. His attitude, openly expressed in his diary, derived from an unmistakable hostility to Jews. Long’s anti-Semitism was neither shrill nor rabid; yet there is little doubt that the assistant secretary of state spared no effort to limit Jewish immigration to the utmost while it was still possible, and to scuttle any rescue projects during the crucial 1942–43 period.68
The situation grew worse over time. The Bloom–Van Nuys Bill, signed by Roosevelt on June 20, 1941, authorized the refusal of any type of visa to an applicant whom a U.S. [consular] official would deem liable to “endanger public safety.”69 In real terms the possibility of Nazi agents entering the United States as Jewish refugees and becoming a “threat to public safety,” although existent, was minimal.70 On the eve of crucial elections, Roosevelt’s own considerations in this matter were probably political first and foremost. Some American Jewish leaders seemed aware of the president’s reasoning (which they described as that of his friends) and were willing to go along with it. Such in any case was the gist of a letter sent by Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, to Otto Nathan, one of Roosevelt’s Jewish economic advisers, in September 1940: “With regard to the political refugees, we are in the midst of the most difficult situation, an almost unmanageable quandary. On the one hand, the State Department makes all sorts of promises and takes all our lists and then we hear that the Consuls do nothing. A few people slip through, but we are afraid, this in strictest confidence, that the Consuls have private instructions from the Department to do nothing, which would be infamous beyond words. What I am afraid lies back of the whole thing is the fear of the Skipper’s [Roosevelt] friends in the Stat
e Department that any large admission of radicals to the United States might be used effectively against him in the campaign. Cruel as I may seem, as I have said to you before, his re-election is much more important for everything that is worthwhile and that counts than the admission of a few people, however imminent their peril.”71
The stringent restrictions on entry to the United States had ripple effects on the policies of other states in the hemisphere. Jews intent on fleeing Germany after the beginning of the war often tried to obtain visas for Latin American countries, such as Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba. The end result was usually a matter of bribes and sheer luck. But in 1940, Chile and Brazil closed their doors, in part as a result of internal political pressures; also, however, because the United States had warned both governments that German agents could enter in the guise of Jewish refugees. The desperate candidates for emigration now helplessly watched the Western Hemisphere turn increasingly off-limits, except for a happy few.72
A special chapter in the saga of Jewish refugees’ attempts to reach Latin America is that of the Brazilian visas for “Catholic non-aryans.” In the spring of 1939, after repeated requests from the Sankt Raphaelsverein (the German Catholic organization helping Catholic emigrants and particularly converted Jews), Pius XII obtained from Brazil the granting of three thousand visas for the converts. Soon, however, the Brazilian authorities did add new conditions and it does not seem that the Vatican made strenuous efforts to compel Getúlio Vargas’s government to keep its promises. Fewer than one thousand of these visas were finally used. The Holy See helped the refugees finance their passage to freedom—with money deposited for that purpose by American Jewish organizations. As we shall see, during the war the pope did not hesitate to mention the efforts he had made and the money he had spent to help Jewish emigrants. After the war the three thousand visas and the financing of the entire Brazilian operation were grandly attributed to the pope’s care and generosity.73
Three routes remained available: illegal immigration to Palestine, semilegal transit via Spain and Portugal or via Lithuania, the USSR, Japan or Manchukuo, and Shanghai (in very small numbers by then) to overseas destinations, with the United States or some other countries of the Western Hemisphere still remaining the ultimate goal.74
On January 23, 1941, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee headquarters in New York informed the “Committee for the Assistance of European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai” that five hundred Jewish refugees were en route from Lithuania to Japan without valid visas. The “Joint” assured the Shanghai committee that many of these refugees would ultimately receive U.S. visas, and asked it to do everything possible to get them temporary entry permits to Shanghai, in order to avoid serious difficulties with Japan. The committee’s reply, on February 7, casts a glaring light on the situation of the thousands of Jews trying to flee Europe in all possible directions. “We transmitted your message to our friends in Yokohama,” the Shanghai committee wrote, “and received telephonic information to the effect that there were already about 300 refugees from Poland and Lithuania in Japan with visas from Curaçao and South American Republican States…. There can be no doubt that this is placing our friends in Japan in a very serious predicament, as the South American Republics have since forbidden the entry of further Jewish emigrants.
“As you are no doubt aware, one vessel carrying about 500 emigrants for Haiti is still floating around somewhere trying to land its human freight…. Should this vessel not be able to land these unfortunate people, the Shipping Company will be compelled to bring them back to the port of embarkation in Japan…. With the further arrival of 500 or more refugees and the 300 that there are already, plus the 500 that were unable to land in South America, we shall be facing a very serious problem in Japan, more so as the Japanese visas are only valid for 14 days. As practically every port is closed to our refugees and in view of the restrictions now in force in Shanghai, we fail to see what can be done in regard to an ultimate destination for the unfortunate beings who are at present roaming the world without an atom of hope.”75
The unsavory but necessary cooperation between the leaders of the Yishuv [the Jewish community in Palestine], who wanted to draw Jewish emigration to Eretz Israel, and the Nazis, who wished to oust the Jews from the Reich, had started as early as 1933. It went through different phases but was reconfirmed by Hitler himself in 1938. This common venture took an unusual turn in early 1939, after Great Britain closed the doors of Palestine to mass Jewish emigration for fear of pushing the Arab world toward the Axis: Heydrich and emissaries from the Yishuv joined forces to organize the illegal departure of Jews from Europe to Eretz Israel. On the German side Eichmann was in charge of the practical aspects of the operation.
Immediately after the beginning of the war, grandiose plans were concocted on the assumption that the harbors of neutral Holland could be used as departure bases. The so-called Dutch plan failed.76 Italy was then considered as an alternative outlet, without success.77 There remained the possibility of reaching a Romanian harbor by sailing down the Danube; from Romania the voyage would lead across the Black Sea, through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean, and—after avoiding British surveillance—to the coast of Palestine. In most of these operations Eichmann used an Austrian Jew born in Bukovina, Berthold Storfer, as agent—and informer—in the negotiations with Jewish organizations: the Mossad L’Aliyah Beth (the agency for illegal immigration set up by the Jewish authorities in Palestine), the right-wing Revisionist Zionists, or the Joint Distribution Committee, which financed a major part of the rescue effort.78
For the Mossad activists and for the political leadership in Palestine, the outbreak of the war created an insoluble dilemma: How to help Jews to flee Europe to Eretz Israel in direct opposition to the British and help the British in their struggle against Germany and Italy. No clear priorities were set, and more often than not, the Mossad’s operations were ill prepared almost to the point of recklessness.79 The Kladovo episode was but one such case. In the summer of 1939, the Mossad envoy in Vienna, Ehud Ueberall (later Avriel) insisted on the rapid departure of a group of twelve hundred candidates for immigration (mainly belonging to Zionist youth movements) without previously acquiring a ship for the journey from Romania to Palestine. After being stalled in Bratislava, the group reached a location on the Yugoslav shore of the Danube but then could not proceed any farther. The Romanians would not allow entry if no ship was ready for the Black Sea and Mediterranean crossing. All attempts to acquire ships failed, and when the Mossad finally got hold of one, it planned for months to use it in a covert British operation in the Balkans. In the meantime the Kladovo group lived on unheated river barges on the frozen Danube, and as the thaw came, no solution had been found. A small group of around 110 children was transferred to Palestine; the remaining one thousand Jews were caught by the Germans after the conquest of Yugoslavia and, soon thereafter, murdered.80 All in all, after the beginning of the war, fewer than thirteen thousand Jews managed to leave the Reich and the Protectorate for Palestine, and only part reached their destination. In March 1941 the Germans put an end to the common venture.
From the outset the British authorities in Palestine, the Colonial Office, and the Foreign Office were determined to foil any such illegal immigration attempts, in view of potential Arab reactions. That a number of high officials, particularly in the Colonial Office, were far from being philo-Semitic added an element of harshness to British policy in the face of a rapidly worsening human tragedy. An April 1940 memorandum by the deputy Undersecretary at the Colonial Office, Sir John Schuckburgh, about the Jews of Palestine illustrated this convergence of anti-Semitism and straightforward national interest: “I am convinced that in their hearts they hate us and have always hated us; they hate all Gentiles…. So little do they care for Great Britain as compared with Zionism that they cannot even keep their hands off illegal immigration, which they must realize is a very serious embarrassment to us at a time when we are fighting for our very
existence.”81
Not everybody in the British administration—and even less so at Cabinet level—was as vehemently hostile to the Jews and their attempts to flee Nazi Europe as was the bureaucracy of the Colonial Office, some of whose members even outdid Schuckburgh and saw the Jews as plotting the destruction of the British Empire and as worse enemies than the Germans.82
Yet whatever sympathy for the Jewish plight still may have existed in London, measures aimed to deter refugee ships from running the navy’s blockade off the coast of Palestine became even more determined once Britain stood alone. In the fall of 1940, the Colonial Office decided that the illegal immigrants who succeeded in reaching Palestine would be deported to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and put in barrack camps surrounded by barbed wire.83
In response the Yishuv leadership hoped to arouse public opinion, mainly in the United States, by an act of defiance. In November 1940 explosives were afixed to the hull of the Patria (about to sail to Mauritius with its cargo of illegal immigrants) to disable it and prevent its departure. The ship sank, and 267 refugees drowned.84 The remaining passengers of the Patria were allowed to stay in Palestine, as the only exception to the deportation policy.
Finally there was the route over the Pyrenees. During the days just preceding or following the armistice it was the easiest way to leave France; the main crossing point was Hendaye. Alfred Fabre-Luce, a French journalist and author who in many ways echoed attitudes widespread among his countrymen, commented on “the Hendaye road”: “One discovers,” he noted, “that the Israelite world is much vaster than one would have thought. It doesn’t include only Jews but also all those whom they corrupted or seduced. This painter has a Jewish mistress, this financier would be ruined by racism, this international journalist does not dare to quarrel with the Jews of America. They all find good reasons to take the road of Hendaye. Don’t listen to their declarations; rather look at them: you will find somewhere in their body the stamp of Israel. In these days of panic, the most basic passions lead the world and none is stronger than the fear of a pogrom or the urge for it.”85
Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination Page 13