SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

372 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
Soon after the end of the war, the legend of the disappearance of the
European Jewry in annihilation camps was declared an official truth.
The alleged extermination of the Jews was one of the central pillars of
the Nuremberg trial. It is obvious that this legend was extremely useful
for the victors: the worse the atrocities that could be laid at the feet of
the Third Reich, the more convincing the claim of the Allies of having
saved Europe from the claws of Satan.
The governments of the USA and Great-Britain, faced with accusations
by right-wingers of having given up half of Europe to Soviet totalitarianism,
could easily counter this with the argument that communism
certainly was the lesser of two evils by invoking the death camps,
the gas chambers, and six million Jewish victims. Furthermore and by
so doing, they were easily able to hide their own crimes, especially the
carpet bombing of German cities and the massive ethnic cleansing
going on in Eastern Europe at that time, behind the smoke-screen of the
far more horrible deeds allegedly committed by the vanquished.
What is even more significant in this regard is the fact that the “Holocaust”
provided the ideological backing for the justification of the
foundation of Israel. In 1948 the United Nations pronounced themselves
with 33 votes (against 13) in favor of the partition of Palestine. In line
with the USA, the USSR also voted for partition and for the foundation
of a Jewish state, cherishing no doubt the (unfounded) hope that such a
state would become a bridgehead for the Soviets in the Near East, in
view of the sympathies of many Jews for the communist idea. 1104
The partition of Palestine infringed in an unbelievably brutal way on
the rights of the local population. This could be justified by invoking
the “Nazi genocide of the Jews” and its “six million victims”: a people
that had undergone such indescribable suffering needed a state of its
own, even if the rights of another people had to be trampled upon in the
process.
If the tale of the gassing of the Jews in “extermination camps” was
to be believed world-wide, the deported German, French, Belgian,
Greek, and other Jews could not be allowed to return home in droves
and tell others about their lives as forced laborers or ghetto inmates in
the East. Our hypothesis hence reads as follows:
1104 This point of view is confirmed by historian Geoffrey Robert who writes: “After the war
a de facto alliance developed between the Soviet Union and the nascent Israeli state. […]
The Soviets did not trust Arab nationalism […] and they saw Zionism as a useful counter
to Western influence in the Middle East.” G. Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to
Cold War, Yale University Press, New Haven/London 2006, p. 339.