SIR,—Mr. Erskine Childers is quite right. Reviewers should not be
obliged `to create literary dynasties'; but they should have sufficient background know- ledge not to accuse an author of suppression when he published in 1956 a detailed account of the subject which he is accused of suppressing in 1960. Mr. Childers, I note with interest, has nothing more to say about the 'Kimberley Plan' to settle Jewish refugees in Australia which, he had claimed, the Zionists had 'sabotaged' May I take it, then, that his silence betokens acceptance of my evidence that there never was a realistic plan and that, therefore, there could have been no sabotage?
And now let us look a little more closely at that other legendary scheme on which Mr. Childers— and also Mr. Gilmour in his long article on Zionism —base so much of their argument.
Mr. Childers says in his letter last week: As to his flat statement that Roosevelt never had a plan for DP absorption in Western countries (and therefore that the Zionists could not sabotage it), we must assume that Mr. Kimche is accusing Morris Ernst, FDR's close friend and a noted American lawyer, of straight lying. Ernst describes discussing the scheme with FDR, the London reaction to it, and being told by FDR that it was all off because of Zionist pressure.
I wonder whether Mr. Childers has read Ernst's own account. I doubt it, for he would not commit himself, had he done so, to the mixed-up gibberish of Ernst's story. But even Ernst does not claim, as does Childers, that he had been 'told by FOR that it was all off because of Zionist pressure.' Ernst says (on page 175): 'But it did not work out. I do not intend to quote FDR or even to suggest that my appraisal of the defeat would agree in every detail with his.'
In fact the record of those days (1943) shows quite clearly that Ernst's account is so confused and imprecise that it is quite valueless as evidence. He says he was sent to England 'during the war' to deal with the 'half-million' DPs who wanted to leave Europe and that he had come 'after talks with the British' with a plan to settle 150,000 DPs in Britain, the same number in the US and the rest in the Commonwealth,. Latin America and Palestine. Ernst does not say when he was in Britain, whom he talked to, or who agreed to the 150,000 DPs.
But in 1943, when all this was supposed to take place, there were no DPs who could be given -a choice; there were merely nine million Jews under German and Axis rule. In April that year the Anglo- American Refugee Conference met in Bermuda. It
decided to do all it could to help refugees without interfering in the conduct of the war. It also decided not to discuss immigration quotas into the US or
Palestine. It was Jewish criticism of the inadequacy of these measures (and among the most vocal were the Zionists) which led Roosevelt to set up the US War Refugees Board in January, 1944. It did magnificent work, and it was financed by much the same 'Zionist sources' which Ernst and ChilderS abuse. Jewish organisations put up $16 million out of the $21 million budget for the refugee plans.
The fact is that the so-called Roosevelt plan, which Childers and Gilmour describe, based on Ernst's evidence—and 'which the Zionists sabotaged,' never existed, and never could exist, because Ernst got the war-time Jewish problem muddled with the post-war DP problem and speaks of Roosevelt deal- ing with the latter. But Roosevelt was dead when the post-war DP problem emerged which Ernst describes, It is quite impossible to make sense of Ernst's account or to place any reliance on it. Mr. Childers would be well advised to look for more reliable sources for his views.—Yours faithfully,
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