Speaks of 5 million instead of 6 million Jews murdered by nazism...
Ernest Germain
Jewish Question Since World War II
(July 1946)
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=46rom Fourth International, Vol.8 No.4, April 1947, pp.109-113.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O=92Callaghan for the Marxists=92
Internet Archive.
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The following article is the concluding chapter written by Comrade
Germain for the book The Materialist Conception of the Jewish
Question, by A. Leon. This book (published in French, but still
unpublished in English) was completed in December 1942. A. Leon, the
author, was the national secretary of the Belgian Trotskyist party.
The Gestapo arrested him in June 1944 and he died a martyr=92s death in
the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. =96 Ed.
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Years of incessant persecution and indescribable humiliation, the life
of hunted beasts as the =93normal=94 form of existence, de****tations,
=93death trains,=94 gas chambers, crematoriums, antitank ditches filled
with corpses; massacres in which not a family was spared and a balance
sheet frightful in its clarity: 5 million dead out of 6 million
European Jews =96 that is what the Second World War has meant for the
Jewish population of the old continent.
Human imagination, quick as it is in grasping the horrible, has
difficulty in picturing concretely the meaning of this balance sheet.
It is impossible to compress this unprecedented crucifixion of
millions of human beings into a few vivid images.
Separated from the overall picture of a world in agony, the fate of
the Jews not only appears cruel, it seems unbelievable. Reason refuses
to admit that material interests could have coldly dictated the
extermination of these countless defenseless beings. The fanaticism of
the SS, their blind submission to orders of their leaders are called
upon for aid in giving the semblance of an explanation for the tragedy
which Europe has just lived through. But the interpretations do not
even approach the horrible reality. They are based on the assumption
that the destruction of European Jewry constitutes a sudden and unique
catastrophe in the troubled history of this people. Lack of
understanding of the past is transformed into illusions about the
future, and all this while a new and terrible threat already hovers
over the surviving Jews in the entire world.
The Fate of the Jews Is a Symbol of the Fate of Humanity
Although the Jews have been stricken more sorely than any other
people, they have lived these most tragic hours of their history in a
period when all humanity is struggling through a frightful crisis
which threatens like a tidal wave to engulf everything that Twentieth
Century civilization has so slowly constructed. Alongside of five
million murdered Jews are sixty million victims of imperialist war.
The barbaric treatment of the Jews by Hitlerite imperialism is only an
extreme expression of the barbarism of the general methods of
imperialism in our period.
As against the Jewish de****tations we now find the de****tation of
millions of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. As against the
return to the yellow star we now find the branding of all Germans by
external markings in many countries in Central Europe. The death
trains have again begun moving but this time in the opposite direction
and with a different human freight. The burning of books has been
renewed by the Americans. All the atrocities of Nazism, from the
execution of hostages up to the burning of entire villages =93as
reprisals=94 have been faithfully reproduced by the emissaries of Anglo-
American imperialism, whether it be in Indonesia, the Philippines or
Korea.
Far from being a phenomenon isolated from the destiny of humanity, the
tragedy of the Jews is only the herald to other peoples of their
coming fate, if the decline of capitalism continues at its present
rate. Maddened by the blood of its millions of victims, world
imperialism has progressively brought entire social layers to a point
of barbarism where human life no longer has the slightest value and
where corpses are as common a sight as pedestrians crossing a street
in a great city. This rapid transformation of human reflexes has
nothing to do with the specific explanations generally made for it.
The calm of an SS officer playing chess while thousands of women and
children are being burnt a few hundred feet away in crematoriums is
identical with the calm of a British officer as he steps over cadavers
cluttering the road to his night club in Calcutta. The American
=93re****ter=94 filled with curiosity, rushes to the ruins of Hiro****ma in
search of sensational headlines for his paper, but isn=92t stirred for a
moment by the idea that he is walking over the pulverized remains of
100,000 human beings who disappeared into thin air in a few
seconds ... Humanity has gone a long way since the days when it was
outraged by the fate of the victims of the Crimean War.
Responsibility of All Governments for the Fate of the European Jews
It is not alone the methods of cruel oppression on the part of
American imperialism and the barbaric mentality resulting from it that
bring it closer and closer to those of Nazi imperialism. The very fate
of the Jews of Europe was determined as much by the calculations of
American imperialists as by the direct massacres of Hitler. For months
hundreds of thousands of Jews could have been saved: in Rumania,
Bulgaria, Hungary and the unoccupied French zone. These hunted
unfortunates had their eyes turned towards the only road for escape:
across the seas. To every voice which condemns the crimes of Hitler
must be added the voices of those who accuse London and Wa****ngton.
While these governments knew what was being prepared against the Jews
and exploited it for their propagandistic ends, they did not make the
slightest gesture to help those who could have been saved, but on the
contrary bluntly refused to grant them passage across the ocean.
Against the few thousands who were able to escape =96 the rich, those
who had =93connections=94 in the United States =96 there are hundreds of
thousands against whom the door was slammed shut, who were driven back
from Palestinian shores and were returned to the Nazi hell.
If Hitler constructed the trap for the Jews, it was the Anglo-
Americans who sprang it. The blood of the innocent falls on their
heads as well as upon the Nazis.
But the responsibility of the imperialist governments goes far beyond
this simple refusal of direct aid. An American diplomatic mission
remained in Germany up to the end of 1942. The Red Cross regularly
sent its trusted agents and inspectors into German prisoner-of-war
camps. Despite numerous cases of violation of =93international law,=94
there can be no question that in a general way the lot of war
prisoners of all nations, excepting Russia, was =93tolerable=94 in Germany
and was very close to that of German prisoners in the United States
and England. That is particularly true in regard to the lot of
officers. (The class nature of society is nowhere expressed so sharply
as in camps.) The imperialists observed the rules of the game insofar
as they themselves were involved. Why was this rule of reciprocity not
invoked for the Jews? Why didn=92t the British and American governments,
allies of the Polish government, make the German government understand
that reciprocity would also be invoked in the case of civil internees,
of whom the Germans in Allied countries numbered in the hundreds of
thousands? The truth is that in practice the Anglo-Saxon imperialists
completely washed their hands of the fate of the unfortunate Jews of
Europe, viewing them only as a propaganda subject at the op****tune
time. They did not even try to exert any one of the great many
pressure levers at their disposal in behalf of the Jews.
The epic revolt of the Warsaw ghetto is painted up by the whole
democratic press of the world. But in the last appeal that the Warsaw
fighters made to the world, they accused the British, Polish, and
Soviet governments, they accused the =93official=94 leaders of the Polish
national resistance movement of having deliberately refused them
weapons that they had been demanding for weeks for the continuation of
their struggle against the SS hangmen. Let their last pathetic words:
=93Brothers, all the governments are guilty,=94 be engraved in the heart
of each Jewish worker, of every class conscious worker in the world.
The responsibility for the massacre of the Jews is borne, equally with
Nazism, by all the governments of the earth, by all of imperialism, by
the entire regime of capitalism in its death agony as it plunges into
barbarism. [1]
The Tragic Lot of the Survivors in Europe
After the terrible ordeal it has just experienced, European Jewry is
reduced to less than a million beings. Of these 900,000 Jews, at least
half have lost everything in the tempest: jobs, property, means of
existence, families, homes. The vision of these people is clouded
forever. The war has brutally cut all the roots that nourished them in
their social environment. If they cannot develop new roots elsewhere,
these people are condemned to perish.
Those who have been lucky or courageous enough to return to their
homes or to come out of their individual hiding places feel themselves
surrounded by hidden hostility. It would be ridiculous to hold Nazi
propaganda responsible for this. Certainly the latter has left traces
in the primitive minds of many layers of peasants and backward
workers. But the basis of anti-Semitism, lucidly etched in its social
contours and traced back to its historical origins in this book of A.
Leon, continues to persist more than ever after this war which has
been so devastating for the position of the petty bourgeoisie. =93The
elimination of Hitler can change nothing essentially in the position
of the Jews. A tem****ary improvement in their lot will in no wise
affect the continuation of all the profound roots of Twentieth Century
anti-Semitism.=94 These prophetic words written by Leon in 1941 have
just had their confirmation in the uninterrupted series of pogroms
which have rocked Poland, Hungary and Slovakia since =93liberation,=94 in
which more than 20,000 people have already fallen victims.
After having momentarily =93softened=94 the terrible crisis in which
=93Aryan=94 artisans and small business men found themselves in Central
and Eastern Europe, by the closing of Jewish businesses, these strata
were in their turn hard hit by monopoly capitalism. =93Mobilization for
total war=94 led to the suppression of several hundred thousand small
businesses. De****tations of the entire labor force to Germany uprooted
millions of petty bourgeois. Restrictions, red tape, constant
contraction of the free market in raw materials and consumer goods,
the disastrous effects of inflation =96 all these contributed during the
last years of the war and the first post-war months to make the
position of the artisans and small businessmen of Central and Eastern
Europe more precarious than ever. But the more precarious their
position becomes, the more fiercely do they resist the return of their
former Jewish competitors. The newspapers recently re****ted that all
the small shops in Budapest were forced to close their doors because
they no longer could withstand the vertiginous inflationary spiral. Is
it astoni****ng that under such conditions their hatred against the
small Jewish businessmen is exacerbated when the latter, upon
returning from the concentration camps, attempt to reopen their shops
and thereby to compete with them for the already too meager share of
the national income? The general stagnation of economy since the war,
accompanied even by a slight de-industrialization, robs the surviving
Jews of the possibility of proletarianization or of passing into other
professions, at the same time that it prevents any resumption of their
former positions. There is no way out for them. If the high clergy,
the dispossessed provincial nobles and other reactionary elements are
successful in arousing great layers of the Polish, Slovak and
Hungarian population against the Jews as =93Communists=94 and =93Russian
agents=94 it is solely because the social base of anti-Semitism remains
intact.
1. At the final minute, prior to their total annihilation, the last
survivors of the Jewish people of Poland issued an appeal for aid to
the entire world. It has not been heard. =93We know that you, Jewish
workers of Palestine and elsewhere, are suffering cruelly for our
incredible martyrdom, unparalleled in the annals of history. But let
those who had the means of helping us and failed to do so know that we
are thinking of them. The blood of three million massacred Jews cries
for vengeance and they will be avenged. And the punishment will strike
not only the Nazi cannibals but also all the powers who did nothing to
save a people condemned to complete extermination by the Hitlerite
criminals. They limited themselves to a few hypocritical phrases. We
who are the last to die will never forget that and will never forgive
it. May this last voice out over the abyss reach the ears of all
humanity.=94 (The Extermination of the Jews of Warsaw, p.58, published
at Brussels by E. Botte.)
=93On the Planet Without a Visa=94
The surviving Jews in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, are desperately
seeking a way out of their misfortune far from the land which has
witnessed tragedy for their families. Even worse is the situation of
more than 100,000 Jewish fugitives in Germany who, one year after
their =93liberation,=94 continue to live under the infamous conditions of
concentration camps, and are subjected to a thousand and one frauds on
the part of the military authorities. This has created a scandal
reaching right into the bankers=92 circles in New York; and the
government of the United States has been compelled to send a
Commission for an on-the-spot investigation. The Commission has come
and gone, its re****t has been read and discussed, but the 100,000
expatriated Jews who do not want to return to Poland continue to
remain in the German camps suspended between a horrible past and an
unknown future. The problem of the surviving refugee Jews urgently
demands a solution: the imperialist governments haven=92t even broached
the problem.
When military aims were involved, 48 hours was more than enough in an
imperialist staff to decide upon the voluntary or forced displacement
of millions of human beings. But a year has not been enough for the
=93specialists=94 of capitalism to find some place on earth where several
hundred thousand victims of Nazi barbarism can reconstruct their
lives. For every government the cause of the surviving Jews is
becoming a shameful instrument of blackmail against a rival power.
England and America invite each other to show hospitality by opening
the doors of the countries which they control to refugees. But in the
calculations determining imperialist policy, the solution of human
problems does not occupy the thousandth place.
But this problem also has great economic and social im****tance. Under
present conditions it is excluded that the survivors will regain their
former professions. The question is posed of their professional re-
education. But it can be posed from the economic standpoint only in
countries which are industrially very advanced, in which the
integration of two or three hundred thousand men into the process of
production is a rather usual matter. If barbaric capitalism refuses to
=93take the risk=94 because of the threat of unemployment, it is for the
proletariat, for the workers=92 movement of these countries, to advance
this demand of elementary humanity: =93Open the doors of the United
States, of Canada, of Australia, of the five continents to the victims
of Nazi persecution!=94 The working class, struggling against the plague
of unemployment by demanding the reduction in working hours, will have
no difficulty in integrating several hundred thousands of Jews. On the
contrary, it will thereby make of them very valuable allies for the
general struggle against capitalism which is responsible for their
fate and for the blind alley in which all humanity finds itself.
The development of anti-Semitism, the result of definite social and
historic causes, is producing the spread of Zionist nationalism among
the despairing and declassed petty bourgeois Jewish m*****. The brutal
equalization of Jews of all strata in the extermination camps
sharpened nationalism even among Jewish workers, in the degree that
international solidarity remained too weak on the part of the workers
of other nations. It is up to those who find themselves in a favored
position as compared with the Jewish workers to take the leader****p
now and bring about freedom of immigration into their countries for
the survivors. This is the best way to win the Jewish workers from the
Zionist Utopia.
Palestinian Immigration Is No Solution
If thousands of Jews in Europe are now demanding the right to migrate
to Palestine, the primary reason for this is that the doors of the
rest of the world are closed to them. It is also the product of the
incredible persecutions of these past years and of the relative
passivity of the world proletariat.
The war caused a brief period of uneasy prosperity in Palestine, as it
did in the whole Middle East, as a result of the isolation of these
countries from the world market and their transformation into vast
military arsenals of the Eighth Army. Wartime =93prosperity=94 in the
United States gave birth to the illusory plans of Messrs. Wallace and
Company, who forecast at least =9360 million jobs=94 for Americans;
similarly, the ephemeral prosperity experienced by Palestine has been
the starting point for an ambitious plan aiming to install a system
similar to TVA and to make the country habitable for one and a-half to
three million new inhabitants. But no sooner has the war ended than
the forecasts of Leon on this subject have been verified point by
point. The problem lies not in the elaboration of plans for rendering
the deserts of the world habitable, but in carrying out these
projects, in bringing about such new and enormous development of
productive forces under the conditions of decaying capitalism, with a
world market already surfeited by permanent overproduction, with great
international monopolies ready to crush every new competitor no matter
where he raises his head. Within one year after the war, the
=93prosperous=94 industry of Egypt is already experiencing a relatively
greater degree of unemployment than in the most industrialized
countries in the world.
Every little step ahead that Palestinian economy would make while
conditions on the world market are not yet normal, would be
transformed into a supplementary source of economic crises. The
central concrete problem for Palestinian economy in the coming years
will not at all be that of =93making the country able to absorb 100,000
men per year,=94 it will be the problem of assuring a livelihood to
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who will be victims of the
economic crisis. We confidently predict that despite the artificial
influx of American capital, even this problem will prove insoluble.
If solution of the problem of the Jewish survivors of Europe by
immigration into Palestine is impossible from the economic point of
view, it is even more so from the socio-economic point of view. The
forces opposing this immigration have a cru****ng superiority over the
Palestinian Jews and over world Zionism. Consistent Zionist leaders
feel this strongly themselves and precisely for this reason have
entered upon the desperate road of terrorist guerrilla action.
We must re-read the prophetic paragraph hi which Leon analyzes these
obstacles to Zionist plans in order to understand how thoroughly
events of the past months confirm what he wrote. =93In Palestine, Jewish
nationalism collides with Arab nationalism; economic development of
the country produces the growth of the Arab population, its social
differentiation, the growth of a national capitalism.=94 Let us note
that whereas the different Arab feudal parties in Palestine succeeded
with great difficulty in putting their mutual differences in second
place in order to unite before the Jewish =93common enemy,=94 it is the
Arab bourgeoisie of Egypt, of Lebanon, of Syria, and even of Palestine
which is beginning to take increasing leader****p of the anti-Zionist
movement and giving it unity and cohesion. Every new economic
development in the Near East can only aid in the formation of an Arab
bourgeoisie firmly united by common interests and make the obstacles
to the creation of a Jewish state more insurmountable than ever.
The illusion of building a prosperous country in the midst of a world
in decline becomes the absurd illusion of building a =93Jewish state=94 in
the midst of an Arab nation twenty times as populous and in process of
reaching the same state of advancement.
In the past the Zionists counted, even during the war, upon the
sup****t of British imperialism. In reality, the latter =93merely uses
the Jews as a counterweight to the Arab threat, but does everything to
raise difficulties for Jewish immigration.=94 No one today can doubt the
exactness of this analysis. At the moment when the position of the
British empire in the Arab world =96 decisive link between India and the
Mediterranean =96 is threatened at one and the same time by American
imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy, it is a matter of life and
death for the City to have the Arab factor on its side. Inevitably
British concessions to the Jews will tend to diminish, not to
increase. Neither in the name of =93justice,=94 nor in that of =93past
promises,=94 nor because of terrorist threats, will the British risk
losing their control of the Suez Canal and of their last oil fields.
Disappointed by the English, the Zionist leaders are turning to the
Americans, and are prepared even to throw themselves tomorrow into the
arms of the Stalinist bureaucracy for a tem****ary sup****t. Vain
attempts. If American imperialism pretends to sup****t the Zionist
cause now, it is far less because of the electoral calculations of
Truman than as a factor of the systematic penetration carried on by
Americans in the Near East. Already strongly intrenched in Saudi
Arabia, the oil magnates have likewise turned avid eyes on Iraq, Trans-
Jordania, and the entire Arab world. They are ready and willing to
gain entry there on the back of the Zionist movement. They are ready
and willing to raise difficulties for the British on the Arab side by
forcing them to act contrary to the interests of the native
population. But their goal is not that of favoring the Zionist cause
but that of competing with the British for the =93friend****p,=94 that is
to say the right of exploitation, of the Arabs. In a general way, the
same thing may be said of the Soviet bureaucracy. The choice between
20 million Arabs and less than a million Jews is in no way doubtful.
For every great power, tem****ary =93help=94 to the Zionists is only a
wedge for gaining entry into Palestine only to obtain the sup****t of
the Arabs at the next stage. On the international chessboard, the
Zionist cause is lost in advance.
The Working Class Movement and the Palestine Question
So long as Arab society remained in a primitive state, the domination
of British imperialism appeared to be safe. Here the City had a
favorable arena for demonstrating its classic and clever art, the
product of centuries of experience, of exploiting the differences
between various royal dynasties, between various families of landed
proprietors, between various religious sects and various desert
tribes. Unity of the Arab world against imperialism was never
realizable in pre-capitalist society.
The rapid industrialization of the Middle East and the creation of an
Arab bourgeoisie have overturned the conditions of the problem.
Imperialism must withdraw to new positions. The demonstrative
departure of imperialist troops from Egypt and Lebanon are a clear
indication of what is in process of change in this part of the world.
But if the Arab bourgeoisie is able to achieve unity as against
Zionism, it is far from being able to do so as regards imperialism. It
finds itself in its turn suspended between British rule on one side
and the rise of the young proletariat on the other. The great strikes
in Egypt; the Jewish-Arab strike in Palestine, the general and
insurrectional strike in Iran have clearly demonstrated to the
bourgeoisie that the proletariat is threatening. Under continuously
deteriorating conditions from the economic standpoint, it is not only
incapable of improving the lot of the working m***** but finds itself
compelled to worsen them further. Rising from the miserable stu**** in
which he has been living for centuries, the fellah, transformed into a
proletarian, has become aware of his quality as a man, and is refusing
to return to the village. The terrible social crisis which is shaking
the Middle East can only end in an alliance of the Arab bourgeoisie,
the landed nobility and British imperialism against the threat of the
people. Only the Arab proletariat will be able to unite the popular
m***** of the six countries around itself in order to launch the
assault against the imperialist position. Only the Arab proletariat
can successfully conduct the struggle for complete and immediate
independence of the Arab world.
This consequently indicates the immediate duty of the Palestinian
workers=92 movement: to integrate itself in the overall workers=92
movement of the Middle East against British imperialism. An obstacle
on the road to unity of the Jewish and Arab proletariat, Zionism at
the same time bars the road to this integration, and prevents the
concentration of all Palestinian working class forces around the
slogans: Immediate and complete independence for Palestine! Immediate
withdrawal of all British troops! Election of a Constituent Assembly
by direct and secret vote! All intermediate formulae, such as the =93bi-
national state,=94 represent at bottom only the refusal to give up a
nationalist position in favor of the general interests of the
proletariat and will rebound directly against their authors.
Only a position by the vanguard of the Jewish workers calling for
Palestine independence will allow it in the next stage to pose the
question of Jewish immigration to the Arab workers in a sovereign
Palestinian Assembly. Only the Arab m*****, once they are freed from
the imperialist yoke, will have the right to decide whether or not
they are opposed to the immigration of Jewish workers. But the
division of the Palestinian working class movement along nationalist
lines can only act to stimulate opposition by the Arab m***** to this
immigration. The Jewish workers of Palestine must be forewarned! If
they do not integrate themselves into the workers=92 movement of the
Middle East in time, the unity of the Arab world against imperialism
may take place over their heads, with the complete destruction of
their position. Caught between the Arab hammer and the British anvil,
Palestinian Jewry heads for certain ruin if the Jewish proletariat
does not take its class road.
The Threat of the Future
Exterminated in Europe, mortally threatened in Palestine, the Jewry
survives in fact only in the United States and the USSR. But even in
these two remaining centers, a dark future looms. The massive
integration of Jewish petty artisans and businessmen in Russia since
the period of the First Five-Year Plan into the lower layers of the
bureaucracy exposes them particularly to the hatred of backward layers
of the proletariat and peasantry. The rising tide of anti-Semitism in
the USSR and the episodic utilization that Stalin made of it in his
fight against the Left Opposition have been sufficiently described so
as not to require repetition. They were tragically verified at the
time of the Nazi invasion into the Western Ukraine where veritable
massacres of the Jewish population took place even before the SS
=93resolved=94 the Jewish question in their own fa****on.
The conglomeration of well-to-do peasants and high bureaucratic layers
(which include only a tiny minority of Jews), constituting together
the nucleus of an eventual exploitive class in the USSR, will
unavoidably exploit to the hilt a renewal of anti-Semitic moods in a
civil war or an open struggle against the regime.
Like all the other reactionary forces which Stalin has recalled to
life, anti-Semitism will rebound violently against himself. Galvanized
by the hatred of the new candidates for exploitation, confronted by
the =93Jewish authors=94 of the October Revolution, stirred by a new
fanatical religious mysticism, this anti-Semitism may well sweep away
the whole Jewish population of Western Russia at the moment when the
regime begins to crumble under the combined blows of imperialism and
the internal enemy. One can predict with certainty that a breakdown of
the Soviet regime will take place over the corpses of Russian Jewry.
In American post-war society the gigantic forces =96 15 millions of
organized workers on the one side and the greatest capitalist power in
the world, Wall Street, on the other =96 are testing their strength in
constant skirmishes that are preludes to the class war which will
ultimately decide the fate of humanity. As soon as the working class
p***** over to organized political activity, the necessity of
mobilizing the backward and petty bourgeois strata of the country
against the politicalized proletariat will become a life-and-death
question for the American bourgeoisie. Heir to the =93liberal=94 and
=93humanitarian=94 spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, it will not, however,
hesitate for a moment to set up its shock troops by exploiting the
basest instincts, the mainsprings of the most debased racism and
obscurantism that still slumber in American society. The potential
presence of these forces is adequately shown by such movements as the
Ku Klux Klan, the organization of Father Coughlin and that of Gerald
L.K. Smith.
In =93society,=94 in the polite meaning of the word as well as within the
60 Families, the anti-Semitic spirit is already very powerful. It is
practically impossible for a Jew to get into certain =93stylish=94
universities, to belong to certain clubs or to get a job in certain
business and banking houses. Among the lower layers of the petty and
middle bourgeoisie, who will on the morrow furnish the most dangerous
contingents of American fascism, this sentiment is far less defined,
but it developed enormously in the Army as well as within the country
itself during the war. American Jews are established in certain well-
defined branches whether it be as artisans, businessmen, intellectuals
or workers. A violent social crisis, by sharpening competition and
increasing unemployment in these branches, would make the militant
anti-Semitism of these layers into a terrible potential force which
would require only a political party to transform it into a cru****ng
dynamic force.
Let it not be said that =93the Americans will never go as far as the
Nazis.=94 Even a timid semi-liberal like Sinclair Lewis understands
=93that it can happen here.=94 Ruling social cl***** pushed to the wall,
and cl***** as rich and cynical as the American bourgeoisie, will stop
at no infamy or cruelty in order to continue their rule, even if only
for a few years.
Let one read the hundreds of published re****ts on the =93systematic
education in cruelty=94 of American soldiers to the Japanese, which so
closely resembles the attitude of the German SS to the Jews; let one
study concretely the degeneracy and cruelty =96 reaching unsuspected
depths =96 of certain American occupation troops in Germany and Japan,
and he will conclude =93that not only is it possible but probable=94 that
an American fascist movement will excel in technical perfection in the
exploitation of anti-Semitism.
If the next decade does not witness the proletarian revolution in the
United States, it will prepare hecatombs for American Jewry which will
surpass Auschwitz and Maidanek in horror.
The Jewish Question Can Be Resolved Only as Part of the Solution of
the World Crisis
These perspectives may appear too somber, too frightening. They pose
as a possibility the complete extermination of the Jewish people in
the next decade or two. But what Auschwitz and Maidanek mean for the
Jews, the atomic bomb signifies for all humanity. The perspective of
the disappearance of the Jews from the earth is part of the
perspective of the destruction of the human species.
But if the Jewish tragedy is only the symbol and to a certain measure
the =93mirror of the future=94 for humanity, the only way out which still
remains open to humanity is at the same time the solution of the
Jewish question. The somber possibility outlined above is only one of
the alternatives posed before humanity. It presupposes a previous
defeat of the world proletariat and above all of its most powerful
army, the American working class. The class struggles in all the
countries of the world, which will decide the fate of humanity in the
next decade, will at the same time, decide to one degree or another
the fate of each people in particular.
The peculiarities of Jewish history have only determined a special
subordination of the future of this people to the outcome of the
unfolding social struggles. Fundamentally, however, they do not make
the destiny of the Jews any less [1*] dependent on a victory or defeat
of the proletariat than is the case with the people of Russia or of
China.
It is unnecessary for us to introduce any changes in the solution of
the Jewish question as A. Leon has outlined it in the conclusion of
his work. That socialism [2*] will first pass through a period during
which the Jews will go through a process of assimilation and of
=93national-cultural renaissance=94 =96 this perspective no longer
constitutes a subject for discussion save among incurable dreamers who
will continue to discuss such subjects as the *** of angels on the
very eve of their being reduced to atomic dust. The problems which are
posed before the Jewry, like those which are posed before humanity,
demand such radical solutions and are so urgent that no one dares any
longer to seek refuge behind a propaganda for tem****ary palliatives.
But all those who still continue to call revolutionists illusory
thinkers will find, if they have not already done so, that there is no
illusion worse than an expectation of viable solutions from a regime
which is no longer able to introduce improvements in anything except
machines for death.
The ordeals through which humanity has just passed have stultified
many minds and paralyzed many wills. The petty bourgeoisie and
especially the intellectuals have been the most affected. Those who
were in the habit of thinking of the world as =93rational=94 are
themselves losing their reason in face of such irrational decay. But
it is not these sceptics who will determine the fate of humanity. The
will to struggle of the working m***** of the entire world has already
affirmed itself more mightily than ever during the year which has
followed the end of hostilities. It is upon this will to struggle of
the proletariat that the vanguard must fix its hopes and growth.
As the most sorely wounded, the Jews have especially allowed
themselves to be carried away by the psychosis of despair and
demoralization, which has been further sharpened by the specific
social structure of this people. But in a few years, the immediate
effects of the nightmare will disappear. The collapse of Palestinian
hopes will become obvious. Whereas for the moment there exist only
negative poles which repel each other, by that time the positive pole,
that of the international revolutionary proletariat, will have already
confirmed its attractive force with striking victories. Since we have
no reason to doubt the fate of humanity, let us also not doubt that
the Jewish working m*****, after passing through a series of
disappointing experiences, will recognize that their future is
indissolubly linked with that of the proletariat and the revolutionary
movement, and that they will again, as in the past, take an im****tant
place in this movement, and will owe their final emancipation to a
devoted struggle for the cause of socialism.
July 1, 1946
Note by ETOL
1*. In the original printed version the word =93more=94 was printed in
error instead of =93less=94.
2*. In the original printed version the word =93capitalism=94 was printed
in error instead of =93socialism=94.
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Last updated on 28.12.2005
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