TRANSCRIPT
OF SEPT. 10, 1941 LETTER FROM CHAIM
WEIZMANN TO WINSTON CHURCHILL THAT ASSERTS
THAT "THE JEWS" HELPED TO PUT THE U.S.
INTO WORLD WAR I AGAINST GERMANY, AND
WOULD BE KEEN TO DO IT AGAIN |
[ORIGINAL
FACSIMILES] Dated: 10th September, 1941 Addressed to : The Right
Honorable Winston S. Churchill, P.C.,
M.P., 10 Downing Street, SW1 Greeting: Dear Mr. Prime
Minister, I wish to thank you for the very kind
message which you sent me through Mr.
Martin. I deeply appreciate it. Still, our
position has become so serious (nay,
critical), that I feel I must lay the
facts before you by letter if I cannot do
so personally. Two years have passed since, on the
outbreak of the war I offered to His
Majesty's government, on behalf of the
Jewish people, the fullest active support
of Jews in Palestine and throughout the
world. A whole year has elapsed since you
gave your personal approval to our offer
to recruit the greatest possible number of
Jews in Palestine for the fighting
services and to form "Jewish military
units abroad for service in the Middle
East or elsewhere. But during these two
years our readiness to serve has earned us
only rebuffs and humiliations. Even in
Palestine, where the need for ur service
was acknowledged, our most zealous
endeavours have not received a single word
of public acknowledgement. Ten thousand
Palestinian Jews have fought in Libya,
Abyssinia, Greece, Crete, and Syria. But
our people are never mentioned; our name
is shunned, all contact or co-operation
with us is kept dark as if it were
compromising. In March last, before I left for the
United States, I was given, in a letter
from the Colonial Secretary, the assurance
that the formation of the Jewish fighting
force was reluctantly postponed - but
surely postponed at the utmost for six
months. I know with what enthusiasm the
announcement that it is to be formed at
last would be received by our people in
Palestine and throughout the world. But
this is not to be, even now. Even in
Palestine, our people, for whom the
defence of their country and of the
British position in the Middle East may be
literally a matter of life and death, are
permitted to serve only under humiliating
limitations and conditions. Tortured by Hitler as no nation has
ever been in modern times, and advertised
by him as his foremost enemy, we are
refused by those who fight him the chance
of seeing our name and our flag arrayed
against him. I know that this exclusion is not in
your own intentions and spirit. It is the
work of people who were responsible for
the Munich policy in Europe and for the
White Paper in Palestine. We were
sacrificed to win over the Mufti of
Jerusalem and his friends who were serving
Hitler in the Middle East; whereas the
only thing which can secure the Arab is
British strength in the Middle East, as
has been clearly shown in Iraq. But are the Jews so utterly unimportant
as the treatment meted out to them
suggests? I have spent months in America,
traveling up and down the country, and
clearly searching the American scene.
Forces over there are finely balanced; the
position is uncertain. There is only one
big ethnic group which is willing to
stand, to a man, for Great Britain, and a
policy of "all-out-aid" for her: the five
million American Jews. From Secretary
Morgenthau, Governor Lehman, Justice
Frankfurter, down to the simplest Jewish
workman or trader, they are conscious of
all that this struggle against Hitler
implies. It has been repeatedly acknowledged by
British Statesmen that it was the Jews
who, in the last war, effectively helped
to tip the scales in America in favour of
Great Britain. They are keen to do it -
and may do it - again . But you are
dealing with human beings, with flesh and
blood, and the most elementary feeling of
self respect sets limits to service,
however willing, if the response is
nothing but rebuffs and humiliations.
American Jewry waits for a word - a call -
from His Majesty's Government. The
formation of a Jewish fighting force would
be that signal. Equipment cannot be the
determining factor; there will always be
some alternative use for whatever
equipment is available; and fresh recruits
are all the time being called up in the
British Commonwealth by their hundreds of
thousands, while we are being told to wait
for one single division because of lack of
equipment. If the spirit of American Jewry
is roused, the influence which this will
exercise on America's rather sluggish
production will return to you that
equipment with manifold gains. Let me feel, Mr. Prime Minister, that
our friendship is not spurned on the
British side, nor our name obliterated at
a time when Hitler is endeavouring to
obliterate our very existence. Yours very truly Initials: C W |
write to David
Irving