In Despair over BBC & Official British Disregarding of Holocaust, Zigelboym Commits Suicide -- Part Three

It is believed that Shmuel Mordecai Zigelboym committed suicide on the night between May 11 and May 12, 1942, in London. He was in despair over the reluctance of the Allied governments, of which the leading ones were Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, to do anything concrete to stop the mass murder proceedings being conducted by the German Nazis. Allied reluctance to help the Jews was confirmed several times later in the war. For instance, Hayyim Weizmann made appeals to Churchill, and Weizmann was known to be very sympathetic to the British, especially compared with Ze'ev Jabotinsky, or even David Ben-Gurion. The American policy of not helping was sketched in books by Arthur Morse, David Wyman [see the Wyman Institute link at right], Monty Penkower, Hillel Zeidman and other researchers.

Here is the last, the farewell letter of Shmul Zigelboym to the world:

I permit myself to address to you my last words, and through you to the Polish government and the Polish people, to the governments and peoples of all Allied countries and to the conscience of the world.

The latest reports from Poland make clear that the Germans are now killing with their horrible cruelty, the few Jews remaining in Poland. The last act of a tragedy which has no equal in history is now taking place behind the walls of the Ghetto.

The responsibility for the crime of murdering the whole Jewish population in Poland falls in the first place on the murderers themselves, but indirectly the responsibility also burdens all mankind. It burdens the peoples and governments of the Allied states, which have till now not made any efforts towards concrete action for stopping the crime. By passively watching the murder of defenseless millions of tormented children, women, and men, these countries have become partners of the criminals.

I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people of Poland, whose representative I am, are being destroyed. My friends in the Warsaw Ghetto died with weapons in their hands in the recent heroic struggle [= the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]. I was not fated to die as they did, together with them. But I belong to them and to their mass graves.

By my death I want to express the strongest protest possible against the passivity with which the world looks on and allows the extermination of the Jewish people.

I know how little a human life is worth in our times, but because I have been able to do nothing during my life, I may help by my death in breaking the indifference of those who have the capability of saving, now, perhaps at the last moment, the still-remaining Polish Jews.

My life belongs to the Jewish people in Poland, and therefore I give it away to them. My wish is that the few who will remain of the couple of millon Polish Jews will survive to see, together with the Polish population, the deliverance which can be realized in Poland in a world of freedom and in the justice of socialism. I believe that such a Poland will arise and that such a world will come.

I am sure that the President and Prime Minister [of Poland] will deliver my words to all those to whom they are addressed and that the Polish government will soon begin the appropriate promised actions in the diplomatic area for those who are still alive. I say my "Be Well" to everyone, to all who are dear to me and whom I loved.

[Zigelboym- Bukh, ed. Y.S. Hertz, in Yiddish; p 364-5]

To the last Zigelboym believed in socialism in Poland and --in this letter-- disregarded Zionism.