Holocaust Memorial Day official censors Jim Allen’s play Perdition
email #1 - Scottish PSC to Nick Joseph of Holocaust Memorial Day, morning of 22 January 2007
(followed an extensive phone conversation)
"The Jewish leaders in Hungary, though knowing the truth, the detailed facts about Auschwitz, did nothing...Had they spoken, they might have changed the history books which record mournfully that 400,000 Jews were transported to Auschwitz and died without resistance. As an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau...I cannot emphasise sufficiently strongly that secrecy was the main key to its successful operation."
Jewish Auschwitz escapee, Rudolph Vrba
From: Napier, Michael [mailto:chair@scottishpsc.org.uk]
Sent: 22 January 2007 09:49
To: nick.joseph@hmd.org.uk
Subject: The HMD trust should reconsider its decision to remove our events from your list of events
Dear Nick
During our extended phone conversation last Friday afternoon, you told me you had received 'three or four complaints' from across the UK and had then asked two distinguished academics to assess Perdition on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
You declined at the time to name the two 'distinguished academics' who have apparently decided that Perdition is 'anti-Semitic'. Can I confirm that the two academics you approached were in fact Martin Gilbert and David Cesarani, the same two committed Zionists who led the slanderous attacks on Perdition when it first appeared in 1987?
It is ludicrous to label Perdition, a play which dramatises a real 1954 Israeli libel trial, as racist. Perdition lionises some of its Jewish characters, and indicts others. Jim Allen's reference to the collaboration with the Nazis of the Zionist leaders of Hungary's Jews is, in fact, precisely the charge made against these same leaders by Jewish Auschwitz escapee, Rudolph Vrba:
"The Jewish leaders in Hungary, though knowing the truth, the detailed facts about Auschwitz, did nothing...Had they spoken, they might have changed the history books which record mournfully that 400,000 Jews were transported to Auschwitz and died without resistance. As an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau...I cannot emphasise sufficiently strongly that secrecy was the main key to its successful operation."
The 1954 trial's Israeli presiding judge, Ha'levi, found the Hungarian Zionist leader, Kastner, guilty of a betrayal of the Jewish masses through his collaboration with the Nazis. Judge Ha'levi went on to say that when Kastner accepted the Nazi offer of safe passage to Palestine for 600 Jews, whom he could nominate, 'Kastner had sold his soul to the devil.'
The Scottish Palestine Solidairity Campaign organised the events, supported by Jews against Zionism and Scotland against Criminalising Communities, to
1. remind people of the scale, scope and insane dynamic of the Nazis mass killings of WWII
2. discuss the flight of many Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe after WWII to British-occupied Palestine
3. show the links between the bitter tragedy of European Jews and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine from 1948 to today
I trust the HMD trust will reconsider its indefensible decision to remove our events from your list of events, reinstate them, and encourage all concerned to participate in open debate on contentious issues rather than resort, yet again in the case of Perdition, to behind-the-scenes obstruction to prevent the play reaching the audience it deserves.
Best wishes
Mick Napier
Chair, Scottish PSC
c/o Peace & Justice Centre
2 Princes Street
Edinburgh EH2 4BJ
0795 800 2591
email #2 - Nick Joseph of Holocaust Memorial Day, late afternoon of of 22 January 2007
From: Nick Joseph [mailto:nick.joseph@hmd.org.uk]
Sent: 22 January 2007 16:57
To: Nick Joseph
Subject: Perdition
Dear all,
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has received a number of complaints about Perdition, particularly, that it is an anti-Semitic play. We have taken advice from, amongst others, historical and legal experts and, as a consequence, have withdrawn the event listing from our website.
In our opinion, the play is anti-Semitic because it purports to reveal a vast conspiracy in which Zionists in Nazi Europe, London and Washington conspired with the Nazis to bring about the deaths of millions of Jews in order to achieve the creation of the State of Israel. A common theme of anti-Semitism is the existence of a world conspiracy in which Jews control London and Washington, in effect, blaming them for millions of deaths. The play, therefore, labels Jews and the whole Zionist movement as complicit in the Holocaust. This is a distortion of the facts, and has no place in Holocaust Memorial Day. The play will go ahead, however, it will not be promoted by the Trust through its website.
At the heart of Holocaust Memorial Day is learning from the lessons of the Holocaust, and other genocides, to tackle discrimination and prejudice today. We want all communities and groups to be involved with Holocaust Memorial Day on a basis of mutual respect and understanding. For this reason, the national commemoration will bring together Jews, Christians, Muslims, survivors from the Holocaust, Bosnia and Rwanda, and others, and reflect on these lessons and the atrocities in Darfur.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Joseph
Acting Chief Executive
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
PO Box 49743
London
WC1H 9WU
nick.joseph@hmd.org.uk
www.hmd.org.uk
0845 838 1883
07810 055730
email #3 - Scottish PSC, evening of 22 January 2007
From: Napier, Michael [mailto:chair@scottishpsc.org.uk]
Sent: 22 January 2007 20:49
To: secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk
Subject: A very nasty, demented response from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
Nick Joseph, on behalf of British Government-financed HMD Trust, declares Jim Allen’s play Perdition to be ‘anti-Semitic’. HMD Trust claims Perdition portrays “a vast conspiracy in which Zionists in Nazi Europe, London and Washington conspired with the Nazis to bring about the deaths of millions of Jews in order to achieve the creation of the State of Israel.” Perdition, they say, “labels Jews and the whole Zionist movement as complicit in the Holocaust.”
Nowhere does Jim Allen make any such accusation; his play describes the collaborationof some Zionist leaders with the Nazis in Hungary. Many peoples in occupied Europe saw collaboration by certain parties with the Nazi occupiers; in Hungary it was the Zionist leaders who collaborated. Allen at no time says they tried to bring about the deaths of millions, only that they did not exert themselves to stop it, and focussed on negotiating for a tiny minority of 'notables' to go to Palestine.
I have a copy of Jim Allen’s play in front of me. Allen dedicated the book “To the Jews of Hungary who were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz” and wrote of the betrayal of those Hungarian Jewish men, women and children by their Zionist leaders
The basic facts of the collaboration of some Zionists with the Nazis are well known. Noam Chomsky wrote about the earlier successful Zionist campaign to suppress Perdition: ”There are masses of material in Hebrew on the unsavoury record of the Zionist movement with regard to the Nazis and the Holocaust victims…both during and after the war…The purpose of the hysterical response to Allen’s play is, surely, to guarantee that all of this will be kept under cover.”
And so it becomes clear that, deploying the basest calumny, the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust works to cover up the dark record of collaboration of some (very important) Zionists with the Nazis.