Part 2. „Cruel mockery” – tell someone in Your country about the truth who saved Jews!
(Distinguishing image: Pre-war Jewish Warsaw. Photo Dziennik.pl)
„Lack of people willing to buy lilies in Bermuda”
Autor: Paweł Jędrzejewski
/ ooo /At the same time, in occupied, terrorized Poland, there was already – first, from September 27, 1942 – the Temporary Committee to Aid Jews Konrad Żegota, founded by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, and – from December 4, 1942 – the Council to Aid Jews at the Delegation of the Government of the Republic of Poland in the country /
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The British delegation to the Bermuda conference was to be headed by a rather important politician, the son of the former prime minister – Richard Law. However, Americans had a hard time finding anyone willing to take on such a fictional, supposedly deceptive role. Someone who would be an effective figurehead. Myron Taylor – industrialist and diplomat – refused. He did not want to put his name on such a suspicious case. Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts pleaded not to Roosevelt assign him to this mission.
Apparently, Roosevelt replied jokingly, „I totally understand, but I’m really sorry that you don’t want to visit Bermuda, especially now, when Easter lilies are in bloom there.” In turn, Yale University president Charles Seymour agreed, but a wiser University Council objected.
Finally, the naive was found: it was the respected Professor Harold Dodds, (see photo in part one) president of the illustrious Princeton University, who agreed to head the American delegation. The State Department obliged him firmly, that during the conference he should commit to absolutely NOTHING. Anyway, the American concern that the British side would want to establish something specific, decide something, was completely unnecessary.
If Hitler says „yes” … (!?)
Already at the beginning of the Bermuda Conference, the chairman of the British delegation, Richard Law, revealed his greatest fears: what will happen if Hitler replies „yes” to the proposal to free the Jews and agrees to free the Jews ? Here are the words of Richard Law: „If Hitler accepted the offer to release perhaps millions of unwanted people, we could find ourselves in a very difficult position … he could say,” okay, take a million or two million. „Then we’d look extremely stupid because of the transportation problem. „
Osbert Peake, MP on immigration issues, agreed with Law: „That would be a release from Hitler’s responsibility to look after these useless people. If Hitler agrees to release a significant number of old people and children, we will be in an idiotic position because we can only accept 500 to 1,000 a month.
The idea of asking the Germans to free the Jews and allow them to go, for example, to neutral countries, is therefore – reasonably – rejected. The US quota has not been raised; Britain rejected any idea of allowing Jews into Palestine; the idea that American ships returning from Europe empty would take away Jews who were still hiding in Europe from Germany as unrealistic.
Let me remind you: it is already April 1943. The Bermuda Conference begins on April 19. Conference participants live in a hotel overlooking the aquamarine Caribbean sea. The palms rustle, and those Easter lilies that Roosevelt talked about are blooming.
In Warsaw, for several hours (time difference), the uprising in the ghetto, which broke out on April 19, has been going on. People from the ghetto, who were not gassed in Treblinka and burned in the crematoria, are now burning alive.
The delegation of several people also includes a long-time member of the US Congress, Sol Bloom, (see photo in part one) from a Jewish family from Poland. Jewish organizations had assessed its presence earlier as a bad sign, as it was known to be susceptible to manipulation. They were not wrong. After the conference, Sol Bloom announced: „As a Jew, I am completely satisfied with the results of the Bermuda Conference.” After agreeing to reject plans to save any Jews from death, the delegates breathed a sigh of relief and dealt with a lesser issue: how to help those Jews who… had already fled the countries occupied by the Reich. It was about 5,000 Jews who got to neutral Spain. Here, too, it went quite smoothly: out of these five thousand, 630 (!) Were transported from Spain to North Africa.
And with this the Bermuda Conference ended…!
Years later (1965), Richard Law, then already in the House of Lords with the title of Baron Coleraine, recalled the Bermuda conference as follows: “It was a conflict of self-justification. Idle Masking „. The conference in Bermuda lasted until April 29 (as long as the conference participants not only talked about how not to help murdered people, but also played golf). The ghetto uprising lasted more than two weeks.
On the right: „Mass extermination of Jews , a brochure of the Polish Government-in-Exile from December 1942.
On May 12, Szmul Zygielbojm, whose information about the Holocaust of Jews, published in The Daily Telegraph, contributed to the idea of convening a Bermuda conference, committed suicide. In a letter sent before his death to the President of the Republic of Poland Władysław Raczkiewicz and Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski, he wrote:
“Within the walls of the ghetto, the last act of the tragedy, unknown to history, is currently taking place. Responsibility for the crime of murdering the entire Jewish population in Poland falls primarily on the murderers themselves, but indirectly it also lies on the whole of humanity, nations and governments of allied states, which have not yet attempted to carry out a specific action to stop this crime. Observing the passive murder of millions of helpless martyred children, women and men, these countries became partners of criminals.„
A week after the end of the Bermuda Conference, the American Zionist Committee bought an advertisement in The New York Times, condemning the lack of results and the breach of promises made earlier. The conference was called „cruel mockery”!!!
THAT’S IT
Paweł Jędrzejewski
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