EUROPE SEIZED BY ANTI-SEMITISM

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5290, 31 December 1946, Page 7

EUROPE SEIZED BY ANTI-SEMITISM

ACCENIUATED BV WAE _J GOEBBEL'iS LEGACY OF HATE HAS BITTEN DEEP No one visiting Central Europe today can ignore the persistence of anti-Semitism. The war has not diminished it. It is deep-rooteid in unreason and ancient prejudice. The westward tide of European Jewry from Poland, the Sovietised Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, Austria and Rumania has assumed siueh proportions as to have become an international political and economic problem. This Eastern and Central European exodus is evident to every visitor and Allied offioial in Europe. The survivors in Central Europe are divided into three main groups: Those, chiefly the formerly prosperous middle-aged, who thought to return and talce up the threads of their lives where they left off in 1938; those thousands sickened with fearful memory who wish to kick the dust of Europe off their gaping shoes; and those young, fit men, many of whoin fought in the Red Army and Partisan banids, who Communist-rainded, if not Soviet inspired, are determined to reach' Palestine which, ?o them,s is not only the Promised Land but' their only hope of Jewish nationhood. Where are they now ? The first group has re-entered Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, Austria and Bungary. They have found. that their property in funds, in jewellery, and in bricks and mortar has vanished in war's destruction or the distribution of Jewish property undertaken first by the Nazi and Quisling governments and secondly — that this is mdst important — by b^nk cojnfiscations aird' property nationalisation plans of t'.ie liberated extreme Left regimes. Return to Prague Ta'ke the case of Abraham Holtz, lawyer, of Prague. Aiter 'Munich he fled to England. He left his Prague property, a charming hoiuse, furniture and legal practice in the hands of an executor. He helieved that if his business goodwill and house survived the war, he couM reclaim it in law from whatever government emerged after the armistice. He returned joyfully to claim his own and on similar errands went hundreds of others in similar circumstances to Prague, Warsaw, 'Vienna, Boxdapest and German dties. What happened? His reception was chill. The way of life in those cities had chang'ed, he legacy of Goeb'bels and the old racial hates had bitten deep. He found that his property, if not destroyed, had passed to others. Often the present occupier was the third or •fourth in tenancy, gu*anted not by his executors but 'first by the 'Nazis; and then by the new Governments. They resented his. return. They declined to give up their tenancies. They had legal backing for their oecupation. They accused him of "ratting on a sinking ship," and when he threatened legal action they either laughed, knowing the law had changed sinee his time, or they grew angry and branded him as "reactionary fascist" guilty of trying to turn back the political cloek. Such cases repeated a hundredfold were a strong contrihutory cause to the new flood of anti-Semitism in Central Europe. The dispossessed returning to their possessions found them divided and sub-divided among those who were not petsonally guilty of their origirial dispersal and who were determined j not to give lup that which they had beien given in good and had faith. Camp Survivors The second group of Jews, weary survivors of the Dachaus and Belsens are less hopeful, more despairing, lnaybe wiser because they now understand the reality that change of political government does not necessarily, least of all in Central Europe, mean elimination of old unreasoning hates and p'rejiudices nnder lying traditional anti-Semitism. Hundreds of these trelcked home from the liberated concentration camps. They found war's irnin and rabble had merely overlayed the anti-Semitism that had existed before Hitler added his foul fuel to the flames. Especially was this so in Poland, where pjogroms were common long before Hitler made them political capital. Anid so, they too tumed westward, seeking refuge, seeking escape from old associations, turning to Tel Aviv, London, New York, or any other temporal zxon.

The third groop, the young Zionists are less in numhers but more in political power, for, nursed in gi'im reality, they are without illusions, thrive on bitterness, and are convinced rightly or wrongly that only in a Jewish National State will antiSemitism vanish and •Jewry he free from persecution. These come not only from the concentration camps, 'but from the Ukraine, where Jewish peijsecution is presumed to 'be absent. It is difficjlt: for , the ohserver to dissociate their political from their religious motives, but they have a secular strength to reinforce the ancient spiritual faith of their forefathers. The second apd third groups now throng the dispfaced persons camps of . Germany and Austria, waiting, waiting, waiting for the next move.