Review by Karl Pfeifer
Why will some Jews do everything in their power to slander the Jewish and democratic State of Israel?
It’s certainly not a new phenomenon. In 1952, Rudolf Slansky– former leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist party– and 13 comrades were convicted in a show trial on charges of participating in a Trotskyite-Titoite-Zionist conspiracy. Eleven of the 14, including Slansky, were Jews; Slansky was among the 11 who were executed. When the Soviet Union started an anti-Semitic campaign shortly before the death of Stalin, I can bear witness that there were Jewish communists in Vienna who participated in this disgraceful hate campaign.
I had to think of this when I saw a documentary on Molotov recently. The Soviet statesman had a Jewish wife who was accused in 1949 of spying for Israel and condemned to five years prison. After the death of Stalin she was released– and returned to her husband as if nothing had happened. She remained an ardent Stalinist to her death– an example of total identification with one’s worst enemy.
I have just finished reading a book by the former Israeli diplomat Josef Govrin: “The Jewish Factor in the Relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union 1933-1941”. Its 143 pages are densely packed with surprising information.
The Nazis’ fight against “Jewish Bolshevism” temporarily ended in 1939, when they concluded a Non-Aggression Pact in Moscow which enabled the attack against Poland and the Western democracies. The Soviet Union stopped its anti-Fascism and underlined its common traits with Nazism. They extradited a large number of foreign Communists to the Gestapo, among them many Jews.
Govrin compares the importance of the Jewish factor in Nazi policy towards the Soviet Union with its role in Soviet policy towards Nazi Germany and shows conclusively that it occupied a central place in Hitler’s mind. Stalin used the Jewish factor in a tactical way, as an element that he could exploit in the Soviet foreign policy towards the Third Reich.
Soviet policies during the period of the Pact– the silence concerning Nazi atrocities, the absence of anti-Nazi propaganda, the representation of Germany as a faithful ally of the Soviet Union– left the Jewish populations in the territories conquered by the Nazis unaware or unprepared for the terrible fate that lay ahead of them. Had it not been for this policy of silence, the Nazi extermination of Jews in the conquered territories might not have occurred on so vast a scale.
Govrin’s book is a model of meticulous inquiry and articulate writing. The photos document the close relations between Nazis and Soviet Communists during their honeymoon from August 1939 until June 1941.
British political cartoonist David Low famously documented the Hitler-Stalin relationship at the time:
