Churchill and the Jews Quotes

“Churchill later recalled, of his near meeting with Hitler: ‘In the course of conversation with Hanfstaengl, I happened to say “Why is your chief so violent about the Jews? I can quite understand being angry with Jews who have done wrong or are against the country, and I understand resisting them if they try to monopolise power in any walk of life; but what is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?” He must have repeated this to Hitler, because about noon the next day he came round with rather a serious air and said that the appointment he had made with me to meet Hitler could not take place as the Fuehrer would not be coming to the hotel that afternoon. This was the last I saw of “Putzi” – for such was his pet name – although we stayed several more days at the hotel.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“On 3 September 1937, as the Jewish leaders debated for and against Partition, Churchill wrote an article in the Jewish Chronicle that came down firmly against. He began, however, with a sympathetic account of Weizmann’s desire to accept, reluctantly, the truncated Jewish State. He could ‘readily understand’, he wrote, Dr Weizmann, and others with him who have borne the burden and heat of the day, and without whose personal effort Zionism would perhaps no longer be a reality, being attracted by the idea of a sovereign Jewish State in Palestine, however small, which would set up for the first time, after ages of dispersion and oppression, a coherent Jewish community and rallying point for Jews in every part of the world.’ Instead of constant bickering with British Mandate officials, and annual disputes about the quota of immigrants, there would be ‘a responsible Government and independent autonomous State, a member of the League of Nations, to play its part not only in the Holy Land but in world affairs.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“For Churchill, the only way to halt the onward march of Nazism was for all the threatened nations to arm, and to join together under the collective security clauses of the Covenant of the League of Nations. ‘Arms and the Covenant’ was Churchill’s call.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“It was through Leonard Montefiore, a member of the Central British Fund set up to help German Jews after 1933, that Churchill received the reply to a query he had made of the Baroness. On 9 December 1935, Montefiore wrote to Churchill: ‘I had a message from the Baroness von Goldschmidt Rothschild that you would like to see a translation of the recent Nuremberg laws affecting the Jews in Germany. I therefore enclose a translation of the laws which appeared in the Manchester Guardian together with a commentary and also one from The Times. I also enclose a translation of the administrative regulations. I also venture to send a small pamphlet of my own, which attempts to give a description of the situation as it was just before the laws were passed.’17 The Manchester Guardian cutting, dated 16 September 1935, set out the text of the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade, among other things, ‘Marriage between Jews and citizens of the nation of German or kindred blood.’ The newspaper noted that ‘Another section of this law forbids Jews to employ female citizens of German or kindred blood in their households. Jews are also forbidden to hoist the Reich or national flag or to display the Reich colours. On the other hand they are permitted to display the Jewish colours. The execution of this right is under State protection.’ The Manchester Guardian noted that ‘The principal burden of the Law was to deprive German Jews (many of whose ancestors had come to Germany more than a thousand years before, and many of whom had fought in the German Army in the First World War) of German citizenship.’18 Churchill absorbed these harsh facts, and recognised yet more clearly how central and how implacable were Nazi anti-Jewish policies, both on paper and in practice.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“The twentieth century, Churchill wrote, had witnessed ‘with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace.’ The Jews were the chief victims of these doctrines. ‘No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“On 24 October he spoke publicly of the dangers to Britain and Europe of German rearmament and of the German population being ‘trained from childhood for war.’13 On the following day the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, sent the Foreign Office an article by the London correspondent of the official Nazi Völkischer Beobachter, stating ‘that as soon as Mr Churchill opens his mouth, it is safe to bet that an attack on Germany will emerge. He is one of the most unscrupulous political intriguers in England. His friendship with the American Jewish millionaire Baruch leads him to expend all his remaining force and authority in directing England’s action against Germany. This is the man whom the government are apparently thinking of including in the Cabinet.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“Among Churchill’s visitors in the spring of 1933 was German-born Albert Einstein, who had been in the United States when Hitler came to power. Being Jewish, neither his fame nor his Nobel Prize could help him. In Nazi eyes, as a Jew he was an outcast. Einstein, who was five years younger than Churchill, visited him at Chartwell, where he asked Churchill’s help in bringing Jewish scientists from Germany. Churchill responded at once, encouraging his friend Professor Frederick Lindemann – who was at Chartwell during Einstein’s visit – to travel to Germany and seek out Jewish scientists who could be found places at British universities.8 Lindemann did so. As part of a nationwide British university effort, he was able to offer university places to German Jewish scientists who, as a result of these invitations, were able to leave Germany.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“With extraordinary prescience, Churchill then made another point, full of foreboding. ‘There is a danger,’ he warned, ‘of the odious conditions now ruling in Germany being extended by conquest to Poland, and another persecution and pogrom of Jews being begun in this new area.’6 There were six hundred thousand Jews in Germany in 1933, and more than three million in Poland. At a time when most British politicians doubted Germany’s aggressive intentions, Churchill’s forecast seemed far-fetched. Within ten years it had come to pass. The Nazis, who were assiduously courting Western opinion, were angered by Churchill’s speech, especially his censure of their anti-Jewish measures. On 19 April a correspondent of the Birmingham Post reported from Berlin: ‘Today newspapers are full with “sharp warnings” for England.’ One headline referred to ‘Mr Winston Churchill’s “impudence”’.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“Hanfstaengel told Churchill that, as Hitler came each afternoon to that same hotel, ‘nothing would be easier’ than for the two men to meet. Hanfstaengel hoped that Hitler would join Churchill after dinner. ‘I turned up at the appointed hour,’ Hanfstaengel recalled. ‘Mr Churchill taxed me about Hitler’s anti-Semitic views. I tried to give as mild an account of the subject as I could, saying that the real problem was the influx of eastern European Jews and the excessive representation of their co-religionaries in the professions, to which Churchill listened very carefully, commenting, “Tell your boss from me that anti-Semitism may be a good starter, but it is a bad sticker.”’ On the following day Hanfstaengel made one further effort to persuade Hitler to meet Churchill, but in vain. Two days later the Churchills left Munich. Hitler, Hanfstaengel noted, ‘kept away until they had gone.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“Churchill’s work took him to the scenes of Marlborough’s battles, including Blenheim, in Bavaria. It was a Jew, Solomon de Medina, the first practising Jew in England to receive a knighthood, who was Marlborough’s chief army contractor during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) supplying Marlborough with money, provisions and military intelligence.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“Churchill had long been fascinated by Jewish history, by the Jewish involvement with the events of the time, and above all by the Jews’ monotheism and ethics. These seemed to him a central factor in the evolution and maintenance of modern civilisation. He published his thoughts about this on 8 November 1931, in an article in the Sunday Chronicle about Moses. Noting that the Biblical story had often been portrayed as myth, Churchill declared: ‘We reject, however, with scorn all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rationalistic conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally, and in identifying one of the greatest of human beings with the most decisive leap-forward ever discernible in the human story.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“Churchill’s article ended with a reference to his undiminished fear of Jewish Bolshevism, but on a positive, enthusiastic note: ‘So long as the Zionist leaders keep their ranks vigilantly purged of the vicious type of Russian subversive they will have it in their power to revive the life and fame of their native land. They are entitled to a full and fair chance. All the great victorious Powers are committed in their behalf and Great Britain, which has accepted a common responsibility in a direct and definite form, must not, and will not, weary of its lawful discharge.’10 The British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, was not pleased, writing testily to the Foreign Office: ‘The effect of this article can only be to induce Jews in America who might wish to take a moderate view, to refrain from doing so. They will expect a purely Zionist policy from the Conservatives when they come into office again and will hamper any move towards settlement till then, and then the chickens will come home to roost with Mr Winston Churchill.’11 While still in San Francisco, Churchill telegraphed the text of his article to London, where it was published in the Sunday Times on 22 September 1929. Thus his views on Palestine were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship

“During his speech, Lord Sydenham warned that the Mandate as being presented by Churchill to the League of Nations, ‘will undoubtedly, in time, transfer the control of the Holy Land to New York, Berlin, London, Frankfurt and other places. The strings will not be pulled from Palestine; they will be pulled from foreign capitals; and for everything that happens during this transference of power, we shall be responsible.’22 When the vote was taken, the views of the anti-Zionist Lords prevailed, with sixty voting against the Balfour Declaration, and only twenty-nine for it. On the following day, Major Hubert Young, a senior official in the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office, who in 1918 had participated in the Arab Revolt against the Turks, warned Churchill that the anti-Zionist vote ‘will have encouraged the Arab Delegation to persist in their obstinate attitude.’ Unless the vote in the Lords could be ‘signally overruled’ by the Commons, Britain’s pledges to the Jews would not be able to be fulfilled.”
― Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship