Within weeks of hearing Moutet’s comments, the Polish government initiated negotiations with the French to explore the possibility of sending Polish Jews to Madagascar. The French responded positively to the Poles and on the 5th of May 1937 a joint Polish-French Commission under the direction of Mieczyslaw B. Lepecki left Marseilles for Madagascar. During the weeks that the Lepecki Commission was in Madagascar, it studied several regions on the island to determine how many people could viably live there. The commission then returned to Europe and in October 1937 Lepecki published a 250 page report detailing his findings. Lepecki’s report concluded that the Madagascar solution was not feasible. Not only would the cost of transporting Jewish families be exorbitant (some 30,000 francs per family) Lepecki concluded that the island could only support between 40,000 and 60,000 Polish-Jewish refugees. Polish Jewry alone comprised over three million people. Sending 60,000 Jews to Madagascar, therefore, would not solve the Jewish problem in Poland and it would bankrupt the state treasury.[46]
The Madagascar Plan wasn’t implemented. After the Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Germany didn’t consider the Plan and adopted the final solution to solve the Jewish problem and “liquidated most of European Jewry in death camps they located in occupied Poland.”[47]
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is possible to claim that official anti-Semitism lawfully adopted as national and governmental policy in Hungary and Poland represents one of the most infamous aspects of our recent contemporary history. It is very clear that the leaders of those countries (in particular Horthy) can be regarded and absolutely considered as forerunners of the German Nazis.
Because of this fact, the role of Hungary and Poland, in spite of their small sizes, were very important in the history of the international affairs of the twentieth century. It is possible to state, without a doubt, that the racist policy adopted by Hungarian and Polish governments created a new era of instability and prejudice against minorities (not only Jews) that can be considered a marked tendency of the European continent during the inter-war period and the following decades.
Bibliography
Books
Braham, Randolph, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary (2 Vols.) New York, Columbia University Press, 1981.
Checinski, Michael, Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, New York, Karz-Cohl Publishers, 1982.
Davies, Norman, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War Against the Jews, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.
Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York, London, Holmes & Meier, 1985.
Lendvai, Paul, Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, London, Macdonald and Co., 1972.
Lindemann, Albert S., Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust, Harlow, Longman, 2000.
Lukacs, John, Budapest 1900: a Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
McCagg, William O., A history of Habsburg Jews, 1670-1918, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1989.
Melzer, Emanuel, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939, Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Press, 1965.
Modras, Ronald E., The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism: Poland, 1933-1939. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994.
Poliakov, Lèon, A History of Anti-Semitism, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Sachar, Howard M., The Course of Modern Jewish History, London, Weidenfeld, 1990.
Slezkine, Yuri, The Jewish Century, Princeton, N.J.,Woodstock, Princeton University Press, 2006.
Vital, David, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Articles
Gazeta Polska, 16 January 1937.
Documents
http://www.holocaust-history.org/
Websites
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/
http://www.math.psu.edu/
Notes
[1] http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies
[2] Modras Ronald E., The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism: Poland, 1933-1939, Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994, p.7.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/moreshet/faith/node14.html
[5] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0009_0_09319.html
[6] Braham Randolph, The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary (2 Vols.) New York, Columbia University Press, 198, p.18.
[7] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0009_0_09319.html
[8] Ibidem.
[9] Ibidem.
[10] Ibidem.
[11] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0009_0_09319.html
[12] http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/moreshet/faith/node14.html
[13] Ibidem.
[14] Ibidem.
[15] Braham, Randolph, cit., pp.162-163.
[16] http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/moreshet/faith/node14.html
[17] Ibidem.
[18] When Hitler was the leader of an anonymous political movement.
[19] http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/moreshet/faith/node14.html
[20] Ibidem.
[21] Ibidem.
[22] Ibidem.
[23] Ibidem.
[24] Ibidem.
[25] Vital, David, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.777-778.
[26] Also known as the Minorities Treaty.
[27] http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/Polish%20Antisemitism.htm
[28] Vital, David, cit., p.769.
[29] Ibidem.
[30] Ibidem.
[31] Ibidem.
[32] Melzer, Emanuel, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935-1939, Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College Press, 1965, p. 90.
[33] Ibidem.
[34] Ibidem.
[35] Editorialized Gazeta Polska on 16 January 1937.
[36] Melzer, Emanuel, cit., p.90.
[37] Ibidem.
[38] Ibidem.
[39] Ibidem.
[40] Ibidem.
[41] Ivi, p.91.
[42] http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/Polish%20Antisemitism.htm
[43] The idea of creating a Jewish colony in Madagascar had its roots in the writings of the racist and anti-Semitic thinker Paul de Lagarde. He had written in 1885 that Europe’s Jews should be resettled on Madagascar because it was an island and as an anti-Semite, Lagarde believed that the only way to curb Jewish influence in the world was to isolate Jews geographically. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/Polish%20Antisemitism.htm
[44] http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Total/Polish%20Antisemitism.htm
[45] Ibidem.
[46] Ibidem.
[47] Ibidem.
How is allowing more jews than any other country in Europe “a very sorry record in terms of its treatment of its own Jewish minority.”
Seems to me that if Jews had it so bad in Poland or Hungary for that matter than they would not be living there in such large numbers.
Poland ended up with the biggest Jewish population in Europe due to the policies of the Russian Empire, where the Jews were required to live in today’s Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. The Polish state actively sought to expel its Jews and, together with Nazi Germany, urged other countries to do it too. The reason not many Jews left is because Western Europe and America could not absorb so many Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.
One-sidedly article. Only Jews have monopoly for true. Only Jews suffer. Only Jews die in the Holocaust.. I wonder what is an autor conviction. His nationality. I’ll bet He is a Jew.
The article doesn’t say or imply any of that.
you should have thought twice before running the essay, Hammond.
If you understood your readership. you would have realized that you were going to attract anti-Semitic comments.
there are no shortage of people from Central Europe who still cling to the ugly idea that the widespread anti-Semitism pervasive to the area wasn’t such a bad idea.
pieces of dirt such as Bernard are not unique.
That there are bigoted idiots in this world, dubinsky, who make anti-Semitic comments is not a reason for me not to publish an article.
perhaps you’re right, but can you explain why you publish those anti-Semitic comments?
Bernard, baby…perhaps you would be happier if you and your family suffered and died in a concentration camp.
try it and let us know if it made you feel better.
This author says how Jew suffer in Hungary and Poland. He forget to mention how Kosher Nostra mafia build apartheid state Israel on Palestinian blood and tears. How They converted Gaza Strip into Auchswitz concetration camp. Far right wing goverment of Israel led by Mileikowski vel Netanyahu and (bouncer from Moldowa Republic) Avigor Lvovich Liberman what They doing to Palestinian. On a top of this Mileikowski want new war base on His lies war with Iran. Israel is sitting on 200-300 nuclear wareheads. In 1967 Israel wipeout all neighbourhood in 6 days. Now can wipeout all neighbourhood and Iran in 6 minutes. Author didn’t imply any of that.
Israel and Palestine are not the topic of this article, nor do they have any bearing on the thesis.
A little difference – antisemites in Poland (the nationalistic party) were persecuted, antisemites in Hungary ruled the country.
Another little difference – Hungary was a German ally, Poland was a victim since 1939. Hungary transported its Jews to Auschwitz and about 80 000 Poles also died in Auschwitz, no non-Jewish Hungarians did. Marco Soddu knows everything.
Poland was fascist in everything but in name, they were too cowardly to admit it. It was the first country to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler, aped his Nuremberg laws, withdrew from the Minorities Treaty and imposed even harsher polonization on Ukrainians and Belarusians than before, told France it would oppose USSR’s attempt to save Czechoslovakia from Hitler, then grabbed a piece of Czechoslovakia, was one of the first countries to recognize the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and Japanese invasion of Manchukuo and awarded general Yamawaki Masataka with the order of Polonia Restituta, wanted 10% of former German colonies in Africa, was very happy about getting a common border with fascist Hungary in March 1939, and threatened Lithuania with war over Vilnius.
Germany’s and Poland’s relationship only soured in November 1938, when Hitler revived his claim on Danzig. In January 1939, Beck told Ribbentrop that “for the first time he was pessimistic about the relationship with Germany”. And even that didn’t stop them from having Himmler inspecting their troops in Warsaw as late as Janurary 1939.
In his memoirs beck wrote: “We aped great colonial plans and the violent forms of anti-Semitic movements”.