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Rabbi Sidney Ballon, Tree of Life Congregation, Columbia SC, circa 1939
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The
following is among the first sermons Rabbi Sidney Ballon
delivered at his first full-time pulpit, Tree of Life Congregation[i]
in Columbia, South Carolina, where he served as spiritual leader from 1939 to
1948.
In this sermon Ballon reveals his desire to remain optimistic about
the fate of European Jewish refugees even as he expresses certain fears. He
also expresses his admiration for President Roosevelt’s humanitarian stance,
although many historians would argue that Roosevelt’s actions ultimately belie that
conclusion. Remarkably Ballon makes about as strong a case for a new Jewish
homeland in Alaska as he does for Palestine. Perhaps the most chilling aspect
of this sermon is the mere fact that in 1939, without the hindsight that
history provides us today, Ballon was left to contemplate how refugees would be
handled regardless of which side would be victorious in the war.
...and even if Hitler is victorious, there
still will have to be some settlement of the problem....
Chilling
indeed, to be living with the prospect of a Hitler victory!
====================================================
This week in
Washington, President Roosevelt has furnished us with additional evidence, if
such be necessary, of his broad humanitarian spirit. For at the call of the
President there is now in session at the nation’s capitol the meeting of the
intergovernmental committee on refugees. This meeting had been planned for some
time and is indeed the outgrowth of another such gathering[ii],
also initiated by the president, at Evian, France about fifteen months ago. But
due to the war conditions now prevailing, it was considered possible that the
great powers in their preoccupation with the tasks of war, would abandon their
attempts to deal with the problems of the refugee and concentrate their
energies solely on fighting the enemy, but Roosevelt persisted in his original
purpose of holding such a meeting, and as a result, the committee, which is
representative of thirty-two nations now in session and is searching for new
homes for Europe’s afflicted wanderers.
The thought of such a gathering fills us at the same time both with hope and with despair. When we think of thirty-two nations consulting together at the call of the President of the United States, we feel that as last the conscience of the world is at work and something will be done. Out of such deliberations surely some plan will be evolved which will bring relief. But, on the one hand, when we think of the problem itself, when we think of how much more acute the situation becomes day by day, how little the last conference accomplished, we begin to fear that the task is an impossible one. It is no longer a problem of caring for a few political refugees who must be transported from one place of danger to another of safety; it is rather the problem of a whole world in upheaval, and can no longer be dealt with as if it were an isolated matter.
Just a few months ago the task was the comparatively simple one of resettling from two to three hundred thousand unfortunate people, who were for the most part young and healthy, who could go out to a new land and work, reestablish themselves and make a contribution to the welfare of the country which adopted them. But since the outbreak of the war, the number of the afflicted has been increased to millions, and the question of emigration has become a secondary aspect of the refugee problem and the situation is further complicated by the necessity of providing hundreds of thousands—old and young, strong and weak—with their daily bread. Ironically enough, in a certain sense the cruelties of the war have lessened rather than increased the immediate difficulties of the refugee committee.
The thought of such a gathering fills us at the same time both with hope and with despair. When we think of thirty-two nations consulting together at the call of the President of the United States, we feel that as last the conscience of the world is at work and something will be done. Out of such deliberations surely some plan will be evolved which will bring relief. But, on the one hand, when we think of the problem itself, when we think of how much more acute the situation becomes day by day, how little the last conference accomplished, we begin to fear that the task is an impossible one. It is no longer a problem of caring for a few political refugees who must be transported from one place of danger to another of safety; it is rather the problem of a whole world in upheaval, and can no longer be dealt with as if it were an isolated matter.
Just a few months ago the task was the comparatively simple one of resettling from two to three hundred thousand unfortunate people, who were for the most part young and healthy, who could go out to a new land and work, reestablish themselves and make a contribution to the welfare of the country which adopted them. But since the outbreak of the war, the number of the afflicted has been increased to millions, and the question of emigration has become a secondary aspect of the refugee problem and the situation is further complicated by the necessity of providing hundreds of thousands—old and young, strong and weak—with their daily bread. Ironically enough, in a certain sense the cruelties of the war have lessened rather than increased the immediate difficulties of the refugee committee.
Previously
the major problem was emigration from German territories, how to evacuate
as quickly as possible the thousands who found life under Nazi domination
intolerable. As German aggression advanced the problem naturally became ever
greater and the number to be helped increased. But now for the present at least
the committee will find it impossible even to try to help most of those who are
suffering under German rule as well as those Jews who are now in any other part
of what was formerly Polish territory. For Hitler, now that the war is on, is
unwilling to let Jews leave, while, of course Stalin never has permitted
anyone, Jew or non-Jew to leave Russian soil. Hitler must conserve his manpower
for the struggle which is coming, and Jewish labor, formerly despised, is now a
welcome addition to his ranks, and so in Germany today, in the manner of
Pharaoh of old Jews are enslaved by the government. The able bodied, condemned
to work in the war industries plants, while the remainder given all manner of
other shameful tasks to perform. Stalin will, of course, now subject his new
people to the process of communist enlightenment, and God help those who fail
to enlighten quickly enough in accordance with communist principle. And so that
much of the committee’s problem is solved. There is no need at present for new
homes for Polish and German Jews who are still in their native lands because it
is now impossible for them to leave their old ones.
But in spite of these hundreds of thousands who are hopelessly trapped for the time being, and for whom nothing can be done, there are nevertheless many thousands who have escaped to Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic regions. There are still many thousands who are wandering about in Western countries both those in war countries and in neutral ones, who have only temporary visas and who have not yet found a permanent home. These people are in need of immediate relief and for them the governments of the world must act quickly.
But what can they do and to what lands can they look for help? Throughout the civilized world, in spite of expressions of sympathy, governments have, because of their own internal problems, raised their restrictions on immigration higher and higher, and as the problem grows greater, the world seems to grow smaller, and the prospects for immigration diminish. It is for this reason that so many wild and undeveloped lands have been suggested as cities of refuge, and we have been hearing of Ceylon, and Tanganyika, and Rhodesia, and Madagascar and other such places suggested as the solution to the problem, but before any large scale immigration to these places could be hoped for, millions of dollars would have to be spend and years of labor put in, until these wastelands were sufficiently developed. Unfortunately, most of those who need these places cannot wait so long. By the time all the necessary experiments were made and surveys conducted, the problem would solve itself in quite another way. There would not be many left to immigrate.
The situation, however, is not altogether hopeless, and there are at least two places to which the committee should give maximum attention. The first of these and most important of these is Palestine. During the last conference at Evian it was agreed beforehand that Palestine was by no means to be considered and was not in any way to enter into the discussion. A conference on refugees, however, that refuses to take Palestine into consideration is a vain conference, because at the present time the only land which seems to be ready and willing to absorb refugees in any great number is Palestine. The population of that land today is slightly over a million, but the possibility of Palestine supporting several millions of people has long ago been shown by experts.[iii] The only bar to immigration in Palestine has been the perfidious policy of the British and the supposedly insuperable difficulties with the Arabs. Today however, the war, unfortunate in so many respects, at least has the silver lining that the British need manpower in Palestine and are now in a mood to make concessions with regard to immigration. Only a short time ago the British White Paper[iv] limited drastically all further Jewish immigration and then because of the great amount of illegal immigration which resulted, it stopped immigration altogether for a period of six months from the first of this month to next March. But although the British attitude officially remains unchanged, unofficially, illegal immigration now is being ignored, boats are allowed to land their passengers in spite of their illegal status and the British consul in Trieste is reported even to have granted visas to over three thousand people. If the intergovernmental committee can persuade Great Britain to change its policy openly and officially so that full advantage may be taken of the possibilities which Palestine offers, it will have rendered a great service to the cause. As for the trouble between the Arabs and the Jews that, too, seems now to have completely disappeared. The past month has been one of almost complete peace...[illegible]...Arabs willing to sell land.... It would seem that with Great Britain distracted by the war, the Arabs could seize the opportunity to stir up a lot of trouble and win many concessions from Great Britain to keep them quiet. But strangely enough, they have not done so and the reason may well be that all German diplomats have had to leave English territory and all other German citizens have been interned and so that there has no longer been any one around to spread German propaganda inciting the Arabs. And similarly the Italians due to their uncertain position in the war have had to temper their propaganda activities. The present peaceful attitude may be due to these facts, and if so, they point to the possibility of lasting Arab/Jewish peace to follow. A peace of which advantage must be taken.
The second great opportunity for the committee to be of service is in Alaska. This country is not immediately prepared to do as much as Palestine, but its development could be carried on much more quickly and is a much more certain project than any of the other distant places which have been mentioned. Secretary of the Interior, Ickes, has already mentioned the possibilities of Alaska as a refuge for the oppressed[v] but as yet no action has been taken on to open its doors. The territory is equal to about one fifth of the United States in area and yet its total population is only sixty thousand. The popular impression of Alaska is that it is a land of ice and snow and that especially in the wintertime its climate is rigorous and unfavorable for large-scale settlement, but according to reports this conception of the country does it a grave injustice. The southern parts of the land we are told are actually warmer than New York and Chicago, and only three percent of the country in the extreme north is perpetually covered with ice. It’s mineral resources and agricultural and industrial possibilities have been estimated to be sufficient to maintain not a population of thousands such as is found there now but rather a total of five million[vi], if the country were to be properly developed and all its resources put to good use. The only difficulty in colonizing the country thus far has been its lack of transportation facilities. Insufficient number of railroads and highways has kept prices high and made shipment of goods difficult, but while such a handicap would be too difficult for individual settlers to surmount, if the government would launch a huge settlement project, properly financed, this small handicap would be quickly overcome, and America would not only lived up to its good name as a home for the oppressed, but would have provided itself with a new outpost for defense and a market for its goods.
President Roosevelt in his welcoming message to the committee at a White House luncheon made the statement that because some of the nations are at war they can be asked to do little more than lend their sympathy at the present time in dealing with this problem. “Upon the neutral nations,” he said, “there lies and obligation to humanity to carry on the work.” It is to be hoped that Congress will take these words to heart[vii], and at its first opportunity will as a neutral power fulfill this obligation to humanity by making the vast areas of the north available. If such a project were contemplated American Jewry would be certain to cooperate, and the necessary funds would not be lacking.
There is one more great service that the intergovernmental committee can render, and this not with the immediate present in mind but looking forward to the future, to the time which must come when the war will be ended and the problem of the refugee will have to be taken up in earnest. President Roosevelt warned the committee that when the war is over there may be, to use his own words, “not one million, but ten million or twenty million men, women, and children belonging to many races and many religions living in many countries and possibly on several continents who will enter into the wide picture of the problem of the human refugee.”[viii] And this conference can now pave the way for that future. It must prepare itself to deal with whichever side is victorious and to insist that the problem of the refugee not be pushed aside in the eagerness to conclude a peace. If the allies win, and it seems likely at least, the committee can exert a great influence and play a great role, if it is prepared with the proper suggestions, and even if Hitler is victorious, there still will have to be some settlement of the problem and the committee must be prepared to intervene and mitigate the severity of his actions.
Thus the refugee situation is a dark one but there is much good that the committee can do. For one hope is that it will act and not merely talk. To quote the president once more, “it is not enough to indulge in horrified humanitarianism, empty resolution, golden rhetoric and pious words. We must face it actively if the democratic principle based on respect and human dignity is to survive--if world order which rests on the security of the individual is to be restored.” May god grant these men the wisdom and the will to act in accord with these words spoken to them by the President that they may truly bring a measure of comfort to a bereaved humanity.
But in spite of these hundreds of thousands who are hopelessly trapped for the time being, and for whom nothing can be done, there are nevertheless many thousands who have escaped to Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic regions. There are still many thousands who are wandering about in Western countries both those in war countries and in neutral ones, who have only temporary visas and who have not yet found a permanent home. These people are in need of immediate relief and for them the governments of the world must act quickly.
But what can they do and to what lands can they look for help? Throughout the civilized world, in spite of expressions of sympathy, governments have, because of their own internal problems, raised their restrictions on immigration higher and higher, and as the problem grows greater, the world seems to grow smaller, and the prospects for immigration diminish. It is for this reason that so many wild and undeveloped lands have been suggested as cities of refuge, and we have been hearing of Ceylon, and Tanganyika, and Rhodesia, and Madagascar and other such places suggested as the solution to the problem, but before any large scale immigration to these places could be hoped for, millions of dollars would have to be spend and years of labor put in, until these wastelands were sufficiently developed. Unfortunately, most of those who need these places cannot wait so long. By the time all the necessary experiments were made and surveys conducted, the problem would solve itself in quite another way. There would not be many left to immigrate.
The situation, however, is not altogether hopeless, and there are at least two places to which the committee should give maximum attention. The first of these and most important of these is Palestine. During the last conference at Evian it was agreed beforehand that Palestine was by no means to be considered and was not in any way to enter into the discussion. A conference on refugees, however, that refuses to take Palestine into consideration is a vain conference, because at the present time the only land which seems to be ready and willing to absorb refugees in any great number is Palestine. The population of that land today is slightly over a million, but the possibility of Palestine supporting several millions of people has long ago been shown by experts.[iii] The only bar to immigration in Palestine has been the perfidious policy of the British and the supposedly insuperable difficulties with the Arabs. Today however, the war, unfortunate in so many respects, at least has the silver lining that the British need manpower in Palestine and are now in a mood to make concessions with regard to immigration. Only a short time ago the British White Paper[iv] limited drastically all further Jewish immigration and then because of the great amount of illegal immigration which resulted, it stopped immigration altogether for a period of six months from the first of this month to next March. But although the British attitude officially remains unchanged, unofficially, illegal immigration now is being ignored, boats are allowed to land their passengers in spite of their illegal status and the British consul in Trieste is reported even to have granted visas to over three thousand people. If the intergovernmental committee can persuade Great Britain to change its policy openly and officially so that full advantage may be taken of the possibilities which Palestine offers, it will have rendered a great service to the cause. As for the trouble between the Arabs and the Jews that, too, seems now to have completely disappeared. The past month has been one of almost complete peace...[illegible]...Arabs willing to sell land.... It would seem that with Great Britain distracted by the war, the Arabs could seize the opportunity to stir up a lot of trouble and win many concessions from Great Britain to keep them quiet. But strangely enough, they have not done so and the reason may well be that all German diplomats have had to leave English territory and all other German citizens have been interned and so that there has no longer been any one around to spread German propaganda inciting the Arabs. And similarly the Italians due to their uncertain position in the war have had to temper their propaganda activities. The present peaceful attitude may be due to these facts, and if so, they point to the possibility of lasting Arab/Jewish peace to follow. A peace of which advantage must be taken.
The second great opportunity for the committee to be of service is in Alaska. This country is not immediately prepared to do as much as Palestine, but its development could be carried on much more quickly and is a much more certain project than any of the other distant places which have been mentioned. Secretary of the Interior, Ickes, has already mentioned the possibilities of Alaska as a refuge for the oppressed[v] but as yet no action has been taken on to open its doors. The territory is equal to about one fifth of the United States in area and yet its total population is only sixty thousand. The popular impression of Alaska is that it is a land of ice and snow and that especially in the wintertime its climate is rigorous and unfavorable for large-scale settlement, but according to reports this conception of the country does it a grave injustice. The southern parts of the land we are told are actually warmer than New York and Chicago, and only three percent of the country in the extreme north is perpetually covered with ice. It’s mineral resources and agricultural and industrial possibilities have been estimated to be sufficient to maintain not a population of thousands such as is found there now but rather a total of five million[vi], if the country were to be properly developed and all its resources put to good use. The only difficulty in colonizing the country thus far has been its lack of transportation facilities. Insufficient number of railroads and highways has kept prices high and made shipment of goods difficult, but while such a handicap would be too difficult for individual settlers to surmount, if the government would launch a huge settlement project, properly financed, this small handicap would be quickly overcome, and America would not only lived up to its good name as a home for the oppressed, but would have provided itself with a new outpost for defense and a market for its goods.
President Roosevelt in his welcoming message to the committee at a White House luncheon made the statement that because some of the nations are at war they can be asked to do little more than lend their sympathy at the present time in dealing with this problem. “Upon the neutral nations,” he said, “there lies and obligation to humanity to carry on the work.” It is to be hoped that Congress will take these words to heart[vii], and at its first opportunity will as a neutral power fulfill this obligation to humanity by making the vast areas of the north available. If such a project were contemplated American Jewry would be certain to cooperate, and the necessary funds would not be lacking.
There is one more great service that the intergovernmental committee can render, and this not with the immediate present in mind but looking forward to the future, to the time which must come when the war will be ended and the problem of the refugee will have to be taken up in earnest. President Roosevelt warned the committee that when the war is over there may be, to use his own words, “not one million, but ten million or twenty million men, women, and children belonging to many races and many religions living in many countries and possibly on several continents who will enter into the wide picture of the problem of the human refugee.”[viii] And this conference can now pave the way for that future. It must prepare itself to deal with whichever side is victorious and to insist that the problem of the refugee not be pushed aside in the eagerness to conclude a peace. If the allies win, and it seems likely at least, the committee can exert a great influence and play a great role, if it is prepared with the proper suggestions, and even if Hitler is victorious, there still will have to be some settlement of the problem and the committee must be prepared to intervene and mitigate the severity of his actions.
Thus the refugee situation is a dark one but there is much good that the committee can do. For one hope is that it will act and not merely talk. To quote the president once more, “it is not enough to indulge in horrified humanitarianism, empty resolution, golden rhetoric and pious words. We must face it actively if the democratic principle based on respect and human dignity is to survive--if world order which rests on the security of the individual is to be restored.” May god grant these men the wisdom and the will to act in accord with these words spoken to them by the President that they may truly bring a measure of comfort to a bereaved humanity.
Amen.
[i] Photo from In Pursuit of the
Tree of Life: A history of the early Jews of Columbia, South Carolina, and the
Tree of Life Congregation, Belinda and Richard Gergel, 1996. Current
information on the congregation may be found at http://www.tolsc.org/
[ii] The Évian Conference was convened at
the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss
the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.
Representatives from 31 countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France. With both the
United States and Britain refusing to take in substantial numbers of Jews, the
conference was ultimately seen as a failure by Jews and their sympathizers,
with the result being that the Jews had no escape and were ultimately subject
to Hitler's genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference
[iii] Various sources provide differing
data on the population of Israel in 1939. According to
http://www.populstat.info/Asia/israelc.htm the population of Palestine in 1939
was 1.46 million. Regardless, history has borne out the hypothesis that the
land could support multiple millions of people, inasmuch as the 2010 census has
the population of Israel greater than 7.5 million according to the Israeli
Central Bureau of Statistics http://www1.cbs.gov.il
[iv] The White Paper of 1939 was a policy
paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain which proposed
creating an independent Palestine governed by Palestinian Arabs and Jews in
proportion to their numbers in the population by 1939. A limit of 75,000 Jewish
immigrants was set for the five-year period 1940-1944, consisting of a regular
yearly quota of 10,000, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over
the same period, to cover refugee emergencies. After this cut-off date, further
immigration would depend on the permission of the Arab majority. Restrictions
were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939
[v] In November 1938, two weeks after
Kristallnacht, US Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes proposed the use of
Alaska as a "haven for Jewish refugees from Germany and other areas in
Europe where the Jews are subjected to oppressive restrictions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report
[vi] The population of Alaska was 710,231
according to the 2010 census http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/02000.html
[vii] Although thousands of Jews had been
admitted into the United States under the combined German-Austrian quota from
1938-1941, the U.S. did not pursue an organized and specific rescue policy for
Jewish victims of Nazi Germany until early 1944. Once the United States entered
World War II, the State Department practiced stricter immigration policies out
of fear that refugees could be blackmailed into working as agents for Germany.
It was not until January 1944 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under
pressure from officials in his own government and an American Jewish community
then fully aware of the extent of mass murder, took action to rescue European
Jews. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094
[viii] The United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration was set up in 1943, to provide humanitarian
relief to the huge numbers of potential and existing refugees in areas facing
Allied liberation. UNRRA provided billions of US dollars of rehabilitation aid,
and helped about 8 million refugees. This followed years of expulsions, and
exterminations affecting millions more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_expulsion
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