More on the BBC and the Holocaust

We have already considered the BBC's reluctance to report the ongoing Holocaust in 1942 in the same period of time as the BBC's masters at the British Foreign Office were very concerned to have the Arab states work for Arab unity. That is, it was Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who pushed the Arabs to set up the Arab League. The Iraqi Nuri al-Sa`id who presented his plan for the Arab League to the British was known as a British loyalist among the Arab politicians.

In the same general period, the BBC was reluctant to report the Holocaust, and only did so very sparingly, see here, here, here, and here. Nor did the British --or other major Allied powers-- help the Jews subject to the Nazi extermination program in any practical or concrete way.

Zigelboym wrote in his letter of 17 December 1942 to his Bund colleague in New York:

The British expert on Poland showed me his expert opinion which he had submitted to Eden [Anthony Eden], in which he explained the killing of all Warsaw Jews as officially proven, the extermination of [the Jews in] all other cities [in Poland] -- as apparently true, but not officially proven. The issue of a declaration by the governments [in exile in London] had budged from its place.

A week after the negative directive to the British radio [BBC], an opposite directive came. And it was not a secret one, as my friend gave it to me to read. Its content was about like this: Up till today Hitler has successfully used antisemitism for his purposes. Now, the day has come when we can use his antisemitism against him. Therefore, we must widely spread news of the anti-Jewish massacres in Poland. [Zigelboym Bukh, p 359]

Then, the director of the BBC invited me to a new conference. He spoke with me about which passages in our report (from the underground Bund in Poland), as well as in the Polish government reports, that we should give maximal attention to on the radio. He proposed to me that I give an English speech of six minutes --as the direct representative of those being slaughtered. This was on the 11th of December. I gave the talk on the 13th of December (Sunday) at 10 in the morning. It made, as my English acquaintances told me, a strong impression. Excerpts from it were repeated throughout the day on all broadcasts. [pp 359-360]

Speaking to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Zigelboym said, rejecting proposals for a day of fasting and a week of mourning:

It is your duty to do something that should really shake the world, the English government, and force it to undertake real measures to save the Jews, something that the Warsaw Jews would do if the situation were reversed [i.e., persecution of Jews in the UK]. 50,000 London Jews should make a demonstration, they should block Downing Street; they should shout to Heaven in such a way that it will shake the world and the tranquillity of the politicians, who potentially can do something. It is the last minute. The Jewish people is being slaughtered. [p 360]

I accepted the invitation of the Propaganda Department of the Labour Party to a number of mass meetings of the English working class throughout the country on the theme of the massacres of Jews. I have already made many appearances before English trade unions and local organizations giving lectures. In the first days of January there are two such meetings --one in a London suburb, the second -- in the coal region before coal-miners. At the same time, I have been informed that the Polish Pen Club is making an effort for a special meeting of the English and other Pen Clubs, which are here, at which I am to appear. [Zigelboym Bukh, Letter to the New York Bund delegate of 17 December 1942; pp360-361]

Despite all this activity, all these appearances, Zigelboym wrote on January 1, 1943:

Our actions and protests have no practical value. I shudder when it becomes clear to me that in July, when I here and you there [in New York] made a great noise around the first report of slaughters in eastern Poland, which had taken place in the Spring, and we thought that we were doing our duty and our best to save the Jews from further massacres. . . [yet] at the same time the great massacres in Warsaw. . . [were going on as we protested the previous massacres]. . . We are not capable, I am not capable of doing anything to save even one person, one Jewish child, from a horrendous death. . . [Zigelboym Bukh, Letter to Bund delegate in New York of 1 January 1943; pp361-362]

Later that year, as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was proceeding without Allied help, except from a few Poles like Henryk Iwanski, Zigelboym wrote:

On May 1, I spoke on the radio [BBC] for home [for Poland]. . . [Letter of 3 May 1943; p 363]

That is, the BBC allowed him to speak on a broadcast to Poland in Polish [as far as I know, the BBC did not have Yiddish-language broadcasts, nor did it want them], not to a British audience, whereas only British public opinion could have changed British policy.

Neither the British government nor any other major Allied power did anything concrete to oppose, impede, stop, hinder, or hamper the Holocaust in Poland. Zigelboym was allowed to make appearances on the BBC starting in December 1942, but it appears that all his appearances were only granted to him by the BBC for the sake of appearances. That is, so that the BBC would be seen to be doing its duty to humanity, although nothing concrete or meaningful was being done by the British government, of which the BBC was --and is-- an agency. In 1942-1943, the British government must have felt that Zigelboym had to be placated too, since he was a person of some standing and consequence, as an official of the Polish Government-in-exile and a trade union leader with ties to British trade unions as well. So they made a few gestures towards him, but nothing concrete was done.

Today, Arab collaboration in the Holocaust --most strikingly throughHaj Amin el-Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem-- is forgotten. Meanwhile, the UK government fawns over the self-avowed genocidist Ahmadinejad, an Iranian Islamic supremacist. He declares his desire to destroy Israel, the Jews who survived the Holocaust. The UK is not alone today. Most European Union states are eager to fawn and grovel over the IslamoNazis. As an example, the UK and the rest of the EU know that mass murder is being perpetrated by Arabs/Muslims in Sudan, yet nothing is done to stop it. Nor would any serious person expect the UN to do anything. Mass murder perpetrated by the Islamic/Arab nationalist regimes in the Sudan has been going on since Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956. Nothing concrete was ever done to stop it. Mass murder has been and is the order of the day. And the university teachers' union in Britain calls for a boycott of Israel [announced 9 May]. So the Nazis run the academy. Just as Hitler had his professors, so too Abu Mazen and Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad and Bin Laden have their professors, eager to grovel and foam at the mouth on cue like Pavlov's dog, dogs who can be siccked onto the nation of Israel, giving vent to their ignorant hatred [What else would one expect from professors?]. Further pro-Nazi influence in the British universities is provided by one Chris Patten, formerly an EU foreign policy official, now one of the top guns at Cambridge or Oxford, the jewels in the crown of British scholarship. But no action is taken by the British academics on behalf of the those suffering in Sudan. Not even a call for a boycott.

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Coming soon: massacre of Assyrians in Iraq, pogrom against Jews in Bagdad [with British collaboration], etc.