There is considerable difference of opinion among the Jewish people as to the
policies which should be pursued in rescuing and assisting these unfortunate
people, and no one course of action would be agreeable to all persons
interested in this problem. (American Secretary of State Hull in Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1125)
The Rudolph Vrba Accusation. The reports above of American Jews and world Jews doing little to
save their coreligionists under Nazi occupation, or of even obstructing efforts to save them, or
reports of the Antonescu Offer, or of the Eichmann offer - these do not exhaust the accounts
leading to the conclusion that the Jewish role in saving Jewish lives during World War II fell
short of heroic, and perhaps was typically complicitous or collaborative, and sometimes even
becoming criminally so. Rather, other such accounts can be found, among them the one offered by
Dr. Rudolph Vrba in the Oshawa Times account below. Vrba's accusation standing by itself falls
short of totally convincing, and would need to be bolstered by substantive detail before it was
given full credit. Nevertheless, Vrba's accusation is reproduced below to demonstrate that the
accusations of Jewish non-assistance focus on many events in many parts of the world, and
because it heightens the probability that further investigation would credit some of these
accusations:
Jewish Council Blamed For Deaths of 400,000
FRANKFURT (AP) - A Canadian professor contends that 400,000 jews killed by
the Nazis at the Auschwitz extermination camp could have been saved had the
Budapest Jewish Council warned them in time instead of co-operating with the
Nazis.
Dr. Rudolph Vrba, 43, associate professor of pharmacology at the University
of British Columbia, in an interview gave an account of his escape from
Auschwitz and his efforts to warn the world of the fate threatening more than
1,000,000 Hungarian Jews.
Vrba testified last Friday at the trial here of two former SS (Elite Corps)
colonels charged with the mass murder of Hungarian jews during the war.
Vrba, a native of Czechoslovakia and a Jew by birth, said he was deported
to Maidanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in June, 1942, and two
weeks later transferred to Auschwitz.
In the spring of 1944, he heard that 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews were to die
at the notorious camp and decided to flee and tell the world about the crime
that was going to be committed.
Together with another prisoner, he hid in early April, 1944, underneath a
pile of construction wood within the outer security zone of the camp which
usually was not closely guarded.
After spending three days in their hideout with hardly any food the two
family [sic] made their getaway and eventually crossed the Slovak border.
In Cadca, Slovakia, he informed the Jewish Council which in turn passed on
the information to the Bratislava and Budapest Jewish councils, Vrba said.
But, he said "The Budapest Jewish Council were co-operating with the Nazi
authorities who promised them that they would allow some 2,000 select Jews to
travel to Switzerland if they hid from the Jewish community the truth about
what was in store for them at Auschwitz."
Thus, he added, Hungarian Jews did not put up any resistance when they were
taken to the Auschwitz death camp, believing that they were merely being
"resettled."
Vrba continued that only after Swiss newspapers June 22, 1944, published