Is there any evidence that the Rich/Wealthy Jews were able to get out of Germany and

[tradeunionsupporter]

Is there any evidence that the Rich/Wealthy Jews and the Rich/Wealthy Zionist Jews were able to get out of Germany and Europe during the Holocaust while the Poor and the Working Class Jews were killed and and enslaved by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and the Fascists and the Anti Semites ?



"German Jews financed Hitler right here in America...International bankers financed Hitler and poor Jews died while big Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust...Little Jews died while big Jews made money. Little Jews [were] being turned into soap while big Jews washed themselves with it. Jews [were] playing violin, Jews [were] playing music, while other Jews [were] marching into the gas chambers..."
Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 3/19/95



http://www.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_own_words2/on_holocaust.asp


The Jews in Nazi Germany (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi%20Germany.htm) suffered appallingly after January 1933.Some rich Jews could afford to leave Nazi Germany (or were forced to) but many could not. Thugs in the SA (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi_police_state.htm) and SS (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi_police_state.htm) were given a free hand in their treatment of the Jews. The Jews were frequently referred to in "Mein Kampf (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Adolf_Hiter_Mein_Kampf.htm)" and Hitler (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Adolf_Hitler.htm) had made plain his hated for them. References to the "filthy Jew" litter the book. In one section, Hitler wrote about how the Jews planned to "contaminate" the blood of pure Germans:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Jews_Nazi_Germany.htm

The Other Cultures and Religions
There were some Jewish families that had the opportunity to leave. They had foresighted what was coming and they took their money (they were Jews that were semi rich). They set up for departure in the earlier days of the Nazi regime. Others stayed thinking that "Hitler won't last" and they use to tell this to each other comfortably. Others thought that it would just be a passing faze that wouldn't last. They also thought that the old German history and that sanity would return after a short while.

http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112264/others.html

[La Comédie Noire]

Yes a lot of Jews who were poor couldn't escape and therefore were sent to the concentration camps just as a large proportion of the fatalities during hurricane Katrina were poor blacks who didn't own cars or other means of transportation and therefore could not leave New Orleans.

What is your point?

[ComradeMan]

Err...

1) What would you have done if you had had the possibility to escape?

2) I'm not sure I like where the first quote is going.

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't like much were this is going either.

Some people with the means to do so were able to escape. Some didn't...they suffered the same faith as the rest. Though in some places they were able to bribe the commissions or Nazi's to put off transportation as long as possible...but eventually they would be send on transport too.

Extortion and blackmail were common practice by the Nazi's to gain more and more possessions from Jewish families...especially jewelry and precious stones, metals and cash. The entire goal was to get as much out of the Jews before they were send to the concentration camps. The whole system of persecution thrived on creating hope.

In some places heads of the Ghetto's actually made a living extorting people for material wealth or sexual favors with promisses to keep them of the lists they were supposed to compose. Some jewish people managed to enrich themselves over the backs of others and capitalise on missery. The most notorious cases are pretty well documented...by several historians including Yad Vashem.

And yes there are some cases in which wealthy families tried to negotiate with Nazi leadership to get their family members to safety...and some cases in which Jewish organisations and groups sought to buy Jews from the Nazi's in order to safe them. Heinrich Himmler was involved in this at some point.

I personally have never actually heard anything like the assertion made Mosque Maryam. But seeing as this is an Islamic Center with leaders with a track record of overt and covert anti-semitism...I highly doubt that we should take this statement as credible without some very well documented sources and evidence.

[khad]

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/arendt.htm


Eichmann himself had talked about Kastner a lot already when his interview Life magazine was first published on the 28th November and 5th December 1960:

I resolved to show how well a job could be done when the commander stands 100% behind it. By shipping the Jews off in a lightning operation, I wanted to set an example for future campaigns elsewhere . . .

In obedience to Himmler's directive I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest . . . Among them Dr. Rudolph Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist Movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation - and even keep order in the collection camps - if I could close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price . . . was not too high for me . . . We trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarettes as though he was in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigarette after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself. Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel . . .

As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the S.S. and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders . . . I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal . . . 'You can have the others', he would say, 'but let me have this group here'. And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of a thousand or so Jews . . . That was the 'gentleman's agreement' I had with Kastner

[PhoenixAsh]

Yes...Kastner. There is Kastner. That is a horribly complicated case though.


His group consisted for the largest part not of rich jews. In fact a small minority was rich or well known/"important" ...the rest were working class and not well off petit burgeoisie, sick and orphans....whose tickets were paid for by auctioning off 150 seats to the wealthy and prominent as part of the agreement.

Now...Kastner was indeed convicted of collaboration, a government fell over it and he was later assissinated by members of the Lehi group. Then the conviction was overturned with a 4-1 majority in 1958 with the descending judge admitting that the assertion of the earlier conviction that Kastner was responsible for the lives of the Hungarian Jews and their eventual dimise was not true.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864174,00.html?promoid=googlep

Now...I am not defending Kastner or his actions...that is an entirely different debate. And imo there is ample reason to say he is guilty of collaboration.

But his case is neither support for the allegation that rich jews bought free other rich jews...since that has been amply debunked by the passenger manifesto's by Yad Vashem. Nor of Jews supporting Hitler.

[Bud Struggle]

Is there any evidence that the Rich/Wealthy Jews and the Rich/Wealthy Zionist Jews were able to get out of Germany and Europe during the Holocaust

Only the gold from the fillings in their teeth escaped.

[Rafiq]

The Jews who were members of the Bourgeoisie had a better chance of avoiding the situation, but not all of them did...

May I ask, though, what's the point of this thread?

[jake williams]

May I ask, though, what's the point of this thread?
It's probably to ask a fairly honest question that would be difficult to ask anywhere else. Other than ordinary internet skepticism there's no reason to assume TUS isn't being sincere.

These sorts of questions (and associated theories) can certainly come from anti-semites - anti-semites seeking to minimize the Holocaust, anti-semites promoting racist stereotypes about evil rich Jews, including by trying to place them passively or even actively in support of the Holocaust.

But, there is a history, and we need to be able to talk about it honestly. Refusing to honestly answer questions about the history does nothing to respect the memory of its victims, and it does nothing to prevent any such future atrocities.

Of course, where they could and where they thought they had to, Jews who could afford to escape did. To suggest otherwise would be absurd - absolutely anyone would in those circumstances. To the extent that this is denied I do think it is part of a mythology of dehistoricizing the Holocaust, that it wasn't a real event that real people are guilty of and whose victims were real people, but was somehow this abstract holy war where all of the Christians or all of the Germans or all of the Fascists killed all of the Jews. Of course it wasn't like that. It is a lie (and usually one with anti-semitic motivations) to suggest that in any systematic way wealthy Jews were actively collaborating with the Nazis, or complicit in the Holocaust. It's a lie not "in principle" - it could be true - but it's simply not the case and the evidence doesn't bear it out, and so the people continuing to push that theory are, generally speaking, doing it with unpleasant motivations.

[RGacky3]

I bet wealthy communists escaped, so did wealthy gypsies, and so on.

[DarkPast]

Having the right "connections" certainly helped, too. The doctor who treated Hitler's mother was allowed to leave peacefully, for example.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

A good example of what August Bebel meant when he said that "antisemitism is the socialism of fools." The Masjid's statement has a veneer of socialist analysis, (viz. the perfectly reasonable assumption that class conflicts are found within the Jewish community) hiding a blatantly racist meme: "Jews will do anything for money."

BTW - until 1940 the Nazis were very active organizing in American ethnic communities (black and Native American, among others): you still hear echoes in crap like the above. "Jews will do anything for money" is a very common line of attack among European antisemites, even before WWI.

[ComradeMan]

BTW - until 1940 the Nazis were very active organizing in American ethnic communities (black and Native American, among others): you still hear echoes in crap like the above. "Jews will do anything for money" is a very common line of attack among European antisemites, even before WWI.

In Italian the word "rabbino", i.e. a rabbi is used in common language as a pejorative for a stingy or mean-with-money sort of person much in the sense of a Shylock. :( Of course this ignores the fact that historically rabbis were not allowed to accept money in their role as rabbi and had to support themselves autonomously.

[Kiev Communard]

Only the gold from the fillings in their teeth escaped.

Sometimes the Nazis were quite ready to 'let free' the Zionist activists, whom they found useful:

http://www.rense.com/general77/eich.htm

And the commercial elite of the Jewish community in Budapest was certainly allowed to escape after they surrendered their gold deposits and art collections to Eichmann.

This once again shows that class counted even during the Holocaust.

[Apoi_Viitor]

I bet wealthy communists escaped, so did wealthy gypsies, and so on.

"Wealthy communists"?

[RGacky3]

They exist, meaning profressionals and the such, Engels for example.

[Sasha]

for a good portrayal of how certain "good" germans where corrupted into collaboration you could do worse than reading the book mephisto or watching the movie that was made based on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_%28novel%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_%281981_film%29

[ComradeMan]

I still don't see the point of this. Okay, there were bad Jews- no doubt, Jewish people can be bad just like any other people. There were some Jews who did what they could to get out- this happened in Italy too- the nazis-fascists taking "money" from them to guarantee their safety etc- but woudln't you have done the same?

There may well have been Jews who were Zionists that sought to profit politically from the situation too. There were also British, French, Dutch, Belgian collaborators too.... there were American Nazi sympathisers and so on..

But....

....this does not change the fact that the Nazi regime was viciously anti-semitic and six million Jews died because of it.

[W1N5T0N]

:cursing:omfg this is going so wrong. some of this shit u can post on stormfront. why dont we stop talking about "the jews" and start treating the matter as it is: when people are being persecuted starved and treated like animals it usually doesn't bring out the best in anyone. they were people like you and me, and i think once you live in a ghetto no matter who u are, ur gonna do anything to stay alive. there was no "good" or "bad" jews, just people. same for gulags prisons and all the rest.

[Islamosocialist]

I've never understood the association of Jews and money, especially as it relates to Europe.

Most Jews were Eastern Europeans and the vast majority of them were of average wealth.

I have one, single Jewish real life friend--and her family, of course. They're comfortable now but they were completely normal at the time of the Holocaust.

And the old Jewish relics in cities, like Sarajevo, for example... they're not golden palaces. There's an Old Synagogue downtown, as nice as the surrounding mosques and churches but no better. There is the old Jewish cemetery, there is the new synagogue, which is no nicer than buildings from that era. There are historic Jewish houses spread throughout the old part of the city, some nice, some awful.

They were just normal people. They had stereotypical skills (for example, in Sarajevo, fixing clocks)--but so did everyone else. Goldsmiths were Muslim, the best winemakers were Christian, etc.

We can't separate them from us when we remember the Holocaust. We have to remember that, among those 6 million, there were people EXACTLY like us--just Jewish. That was the only difference. Some had the same background, same status, same political views.

[Publius]

The Wittgenstein family is an interesting case study.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article on Ludwig Wittgenstein:


A few days before the invasion of Poland, Hitler granted Mischling status to the Wittgenstein siblings. In 1939 there were 2,100 applications for this, and Hitler granted only 12.[109] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#cite_note-108) Anthony Gottlieb writes that the pretext was that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince, which allowed the Reichsbank to claim the gold, foreign currency, and stocks held in Switzerland by a Wittgenstein trust. Gretl, an American citizen by marriage, was the one who started the negotiations over the racial status of their grandfather, and the family's foreign currency was used as a bargaining tool. Paul had escaped to Switzerland and then the United States in July 1938, and disagreed with the negotiations, leading to a permanent split between the siblings. After the war, when Paul was performing in Vienna, he did not visit Hermine who was dying there, and he had no further contact with Ludwig or Gretl.[24] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#cite_note-Gottlieb-23)