Why Israel Must Survive . . . No Matter How or at What Cost

1939's "Voyage of the Damned" Confirmed Hitler's Conviction that No One Cared About the Jews

On November 9-10, 1938, Nazi troops and supporters stormed the streets of Germany, destroying hundreds of synagogues, as well as 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses and homes. During that two-day rampage, they murdered 91 German Jews and arrested 30,000 others. Most were sent to concentration camps, where many hundreds of them perished. Kristallnacht [the night of broken glass] signaled the real beginning of the Holocaust. Germany's Jews now realized that all hope for their future was lost.

During the first five years of Nazi rule, from 1933 to 1938, half of Germany's 600,000 Jews remained in the country, because they believed that anti-Semitism would soon diminish. They felt, quite correctly, that Germany was a culturally advanced nation, that they were doctors, attorneys and leaders of society and that they were safe from the rhetoric of Adolph Hitler and his followers. After Kristallnacht, they understood that they had to emigrate. Tens of thousands flooded the foreign consulates throughout Germany for visas. The problem was that few countries were willing to accept them. Chiam Weizmann, later to become the first President of Israel, wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts - those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."

Immigration quotas were widespread. Even Palestine was not an option. The British government, which controlled Palestine under the Mandate, had just issued a White Paper, shutting off any possibility that Jews could seek refuge in what was to become the Jewish homeland in less than a decade.