Rare issue of the British weekly Zionist Review from September 4, 1942 (12 Elul 5702), titled: “A Satanic Plan”, with a reference at the top of the front page to the main article on page 3 of the issue: “Hitler’s plans to destroy European Jewry” – the issue documents the Holocaust of European Jewry in real time, warns of the final annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany, and calls on the world to wake up before it is too late. Rare.
The main front-page article of the issue reports on the Nazi extermination plan against European Jewry. It is stated that there is a trend of denial, indifference, or failure to grasp the scale of the catastrophe among the British public, which prefers to ignore the monstrous dimensions of the mass extermination. The writer reports on the deportation of 4,000 Jewish children who were rounded up in Nazi-occupied France and transferred to three concentration camps, as well as on the mass suicide of 300 French Jews upon learning they were to be deported to Germany. He also describes the persecution of Jews in Poland – reporting on hundreds of Polish Jews murdered in mobile gas chambers (gas vans), and trains packed with Jews who were killed and buried in mass graves. Among other accounts, the writer cites a letter from Bella Razenskaya – a Jewish soldier in the Red Army – who writes: “Our nation is being annihilated in the most horrific way. What did the Nazis do in Smolensk? One winter evening, the monsters gathered ten young Jewish girls, stripped them naked, and when the order was given, began to beat them. All the elderly men and women were locked inside a house in the Jewish cemetery, where they slowly died of hunger…”. She goes on to describe further horrific atrocities suffered by the Jews.
The writer warns that Hitler is planning to deport the Jews of Western Europe to Eastern Europe and carry out their mass extermination, and that if the free nations do not respond quickly to the annihilation of the Jews, it may soon be too late. He further reports that, according to Swiss newspapers, approximately 100,000 Jews were murdered in Poland in recent months, and that SS stormtroopers are raiding the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, randomly arresting Jews for “deportation” – a “new Nazi term for execution, ” as the writer calls it. He continues: “Jews who protest their arrest are shot on the spot. In Warsaw and throughout Poland, the despair among Jews is unprecedented since the Nazis first invaded the country. Reports of entire families committing suicide are frequent. Their persecutors are not only SS soldiers brought in from Germany, but also Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian fascists who have been given this special task of dealing with ‘anti-fascists.’”According to the Nazi version, as reported in the Swedish press, the “deportation” of Jews to unknown destinations began on a large scale in Warsaw, Łódź, and other cities that Germany decided to annex to the Third Reich. He also adds that, according to a report published in Stockholm on March 26, 145 German Jews were placed on a sealed freight train bound for Pinsk. Several Nazi officials reported that a horrific stench was coming from the train. Days later, German technicians opened the locked train and found all 145 deported Jews dead and in advanced stages of decomposition. All the bodies were buried in a single mass cremation pit…”. He also provides detailed reports of mass killings and deportations of Jews in occupied France.
At the heart of the article, the editor warns of Hitler’s intentions and cautions that the worst is yet to come: “Hitler is waging a war, but his aim is focused on postwar Europe. In the ‘New Order’ there is no place for Jews, and so everything that can be done at this stage to eliminate them must be done. In countries where Hitler holds absolute power, such as Poland, he adopts the simplest method – mass murder. The recent measures in France belong to his more complex methods. Four thousand children were seized in occupied France, gathered into three concentration camps, where all documents and proofs of identity were taken from them, and then they were sent to Germany. The Jews are victims of a new exile. Families are torn apart and children scattered across Europe with no hope of reuniting with their parents…”. “As part of this policy, the names of all Jews – whether French citizens or otherwise – who have been arrested, imprisoned, or deported, will be erased from all French records. At the end of the war… across all of Europe, there will be men, women, and children without rights, without any way to contact their families, without hope…”, and more.
The Zionist Review was a weekly newspaper that served as the official organ of the Zionist Federation in Britain. The paper covered political, cultural, and humanitarian issues concerning the Jewish people during and after World War II, with a focus on promoting Zionist objectives and raising awareness of the fate of European Jewry. It functioned as an important tool for influencing British public opinion, combining on-the-ground reporting, political analysis, and moral calls to action directed at the international community.
[12] pages. Complete issue. Minor tears with no damage to text. Good condition.
