But all this and a hundred other puzzles of like nature were of the second order of difficulty when one was confronted with the affairs of Zion. For herein was not only an intolerably complicated political content involving the interest of every major nation but also a military content affecting primarily my own country. For the time being I was, on a temporary loan basis, the servant of forty-eight more or less United Nations, but my permanent status, so to speak, was that of a British General Officer of the Active List. There was every indication that U.N.R.R.A. was being used, more or less willingly, as a convenient agency for the promotion and sustenance of armed aggression by the forces of Zionism against the British garrison stationed in Palestine in fulfilment of the terms of the United Nations Mandate.
It was fair enough to say that the British members of the higher offices in the Administration cared for none of these things. Their main preoccupation was, understandably, in the matter of supply wherein lay their past experience and aptitudes. To procure the goods and move them was their business. "No politics" enable them, with no qualm of conscience, to devote, some said, up to 90 per cent of their effort to areas beyond the Iron Curtain. D.P.s and Refugees were to them a side issue that must not be allowed to become a nuisance.
But this was far from being the case in the quarters other than the British. In both the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. there were interested parties quick to perceive that U.N.R.R.A. by the very nature of its constitution, its hasty composition, its lack of organization or discipline offered a hell-sent opportunity for all kinds of mischief to their own advantages, which differed widely from the proclaimed objectives of those pure-minded, high-souled philanthropists whose brain waves had brought it into being.
I was, I suppose I should say, unlucky, in that I had as it were grown up over the past few years in the general international situation that now in 1945, existed throughout Europe. I was, moreover, by virtue of my cloth and calling, in touch with the elaborate information-gathering network that had been built up through the war so recently ended, with the security organization, such of it that survived the disruptive forces of demobilization. Which enabled me to build up in my mind's eye a picture of events taking place around me that had little appeal.
All who had experienced it know the loneliness of high command even when, as in the orthodox case, one is surrounded by a trusting and trusty staff of all grades working in one's immediate support. Here and now there was nothing of the sort, hardly an individual whom one could trust with information of which one could trust with information of which one could not disclose to them, being uninitiated, the sources, or who could, if indeed they would, understand what was at stake. On the contrary, there were many in my immediate entourage who could not fail to be actively implicated in what was nothing short of a skilful campaign of anti-British aggression on the part of Zion aided and abetted by Russia.
My information told me that organised from U.N.R.R.A. offices in Warsaw there were two collecting centres in Poland for Jewish refugees from East Europe, at Lodz and Katowice. The refugees were transported to Berlin by rail or road and thence by similar means to Western Germany. The bulk of the traffic was by lorry convoy which arrived during darkness, the passengers mainly vanishing into the night. The convoys were said to be of American trucks driven by men in what looked to be American uniform. In the case of rail movement in many instances the passengers would dismount at wayside halts and disappear into the countryside. There were several U.N.R.R.A. camps exclusively for Jewish D.P.s and refugees of which it was never possible to get any accurate census. Their populations fluctuated by no perceptible system. These Jewish camps were, with one notable exception, in the U.S. Zone of occupation, one near Frankfurt, the rest near Munich. The one camp in the British Zone was near the site of the notorious Nazi horror camp at Belsen. This latter had been bulldozed out of existence as soon as its rescued survivors had been removed. The accommodation given to D.P.s and refugees consisted of first-class German army barracks as good as any in Europe but, of course, the name Belsen had tremendous propaganda value. When bogus complaint making play with the name became too insistent, offer was made by General Sir Gerald Templer, on behalf of the British C.-in-C., of any alternative housing the inmates of "Belsen" might care to select in all the British Zone. The offer was at once refused, was, moreover, distorted into an attempt to inflict further hardship on these unlucky people. So Belsen remained for years as a staging post on the Zionist migration route for years as a staging post on migration route and, further, was built up as the most efficient centre of every other form of illegal traffic with ramifications throughout Europe and many other parts of the world.
The camp at Zeilsheim, near Frankfurt, was skilfully used to reinforce points of Zionist propaganda of which the general object seemed to be to indicate to the world that those Jews who had survived the Nazi terror were being treated little, if any, better by western conquerors who were now doing their utmost best for all, including Jews. If the propaganda of the moment alleged that Jewish D.P.s were being overcrowded in their camps then inspection of Zeilsheim would be invited, when it would be found full to the roof-tops. If the cry was one of starvation, the cook-house of Zeilsheim would be found empty. If clothing were said to be short then the Zeilsheim population would be found shivering in rags. And so forth, with consummate skill.
Not only did one admire the skill of the Zionist propaganda campaign, but even more so the whole organization of the ceaseless movement of great numbers of these poor people across war-torn Germany, wherein legitimate movement was a highly problematical business, down into Austria into Italy and Yugoslavia for shipment, often in circumstances of terrifying danger, to Palestine.
The whole business was represented as being the spontaneous surge of a tortured and persecuted people towards their long-lost homeland. I fancy that, in reality, there were few among the travellers who, of their own free will, would have gone elsewhere then to the U.S.A. One could well appreciate the urgent desire of most of them to get out of Europe, those who did not command the resources to exploit the confusion in which that continent now lay, wide open to the "entrepreneur". But from my post of observation I was able to perceive, as I fancy few others were, something of the immense driving force at the back of this whole migration. At my own Headquarters, among the staffs of the "Voluntary Agencies" was that of the American Joint Distribution Committee, so called, in effect an important element of the Zionist general Staff for Europe. The personnel of this staff were of an outstanding competence that would have been remarkable even against a much less turgid background than that afforded by U.N.R.R.A.'s own employees. In the Jewish Camps there was an iron discipline exercised by men who have, I am certain, since made names for themselves on the Levantine battlefields where Israel has emerged as a military power out of all proportion to the number of its inhabitants. We of the West have tended to forget that Israel has a military history as remarkable as any. I met in the camps those who might well be lineal descendants of the Maccabees of old.
All of which put me in a position of inextricable difficulty. My task and that of U.N.R.R.A., as I saw it, was to care for D.P.s and Refugees temporarily in the camps in Germany pending repatriation. At the outset there was no question of the U.N.R.R.A. organizing any form of resettlement elsewhere than their homelands of those who for any good reason refused repatriation. It was logical therefore that the camps should be set up on a racial basis, Poles here, Balts there, Ukrainians elsewhere and so on. Was one therefore to conclude that Jews were to be regarded as a separate racial group? In my innocence I asked my chiefs the question that was continually being put to me, "What is U.N.R.R.A.'s attitude or policy in relation to Jewish problems?" There was none such. No politics. I was left therefore to sort out as best I could the enigma presented by the evolution of a system of welfare that should appeal equally to Jewish Americans, British Jews, Palestinians, Israelis as suitable to those who, up till now, had been Russians, Poles, Balts or citizens of other European countries. There was not, there never could be, there were those intended that there should not be, any solution.
Needless to say this whole confused picture did not disclose itself at once. It was built up as a result of my first weeks of experience in Germany during which, at every turn, new vistas of depressing confusion, incapacity and skulduggery came into sight.
"The very skilful questioning concerned itself with the Zionist problem and I found myself giving the result of my several weeks of investigation of the business, summing it all up by saying that in my view we were witnessing an admirably organized "Second Exodus", this time from Europe. As I afterwards discovered this phrase had been used earlier in American papers by various of their correspondents. It was later used again as a result of official enquires by the British Foreign Office and others.
The Georgians concern themselves little with commerce; they are unacquainted with figures and arithmetic, few of the being able to count an hundred. The principal species of their traffic is that from which uncorrupted human nature recoila; they consider their children as transferable property, in common with the beasts of the field; these they inhumanly expose to sale, and are ready to sacrifice the lust of the highest bidder, or to gratify the avarice or flatler the ambition of the unfeeling authors of their existence.
The beauty of the Georgian and Circassian females, renders them desirable objects for the purchase of those who are employed to supply the harems of the great either at Constantinople or other large towns of the Turkish empire. Their usual agents on such occasions are Jews, who traverse whole provinces, culling the fairest flowers they can find, at almost any price that is demanded for them. Nor is the sale of the human species confined to the female part of it only; the male youths who are educated in the seragilo of the Grand Signor, and fitted-for public offices, are mostly puchased in this country; and Christian parents, for the sake of gain, part with their infant sons to be instructed in the religion of Mahomet, and to be brought up in every species of immorality."
Babel tells me that at the time of Alliluyeva's (Stalin's second wife) funeral, thousands of Chekists were posted along the streets leading from the Kremlin to the cemetery of the Monastery of the Virgins, and on the roofs of all the houses, and that all the windows were ordered shut. (I no longer know who told me that Stalin left the funeral procession en route and returned home.) Babel describes Stalin after his domestic drama as more solitary, gloomy, and closed-off than ever , and he adds—]BABEL: A woman had to be got for him. It wasn't easy. Finally, they found Rosa Kaganovich for him...B.S.: Why not so easy?BABEL: (Hesitating, as if reaching for and weighing his words): Ah, well ... because ... you see ... well, in a word, it-was-a-mat-ter-of-sleeping-with-him![He assumed an appalled air, and his eyes widened with horror at the idea of Rosa Kaganovich being handed over to the Minotaur of the Kremlin. The grisly vision made an impression on me, too, and for a moment we were silent, then both broke into long, nervous laughter that made us feel better....]
