June 23, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 49

Books, Arts & Curiosities – A Fine Double Helping of Churchillian Judaica

By Ronald I. Cohen

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Mr. Cohen’s three-volume Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill was published last year by Continuum.

Churchill and the Jews, by Martin Gilbert. Henry Holt, 384 pp., hardbound, $30. Member price $24.

Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft, by Michael Makovsky. Yale University Press, 368 pp., hardbound, $35. Member price $28.

It is perhaps a reflection of the logic and importance of the subject that two, not one, works on Sir Winston Churchill’s relationship with the Jews have been published in a year that represents no particular anniversary in Churchill’s relationship with that community. Indeed, Sir Martin Gilbert acknowledges that he began his work on the subject nearly forty years before. For Michael Makovsky, this was the culmination of his Harvard doctoral dissertation of 2000.

Gilbert’s motivation reflected in an ironic way Churchill’s commitment to the Jews. On 12 September 1969 (coincidentally 61st anniversary of Churchill’s marriage to Clementine) Sir Winston’s old friend, General Sir Edward Louis Spears, advised Gilbert of a Churchillian fault that, in his new role, he must not ignore: Winston “was too fond of Jews.”

Gilbert traces Churchill’s relationship with the Jews, both individually and from a community perspective, with major attention to WSC’s commitment to Zionism. Makovsky, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the Zionist issue, while ensuring the essential backdrop of Churchill’s relationships with individual Jews.

The historical thread begins with Churchill’s representation of areas of Manchester in Parliament from 1900 to 1908. Although he had known several Jewish figures earlier, it was there that he made the acquaintance of Manchester constituents such as Nathan Laski, Chaim Weizmann and Joseph Dulberg. There too his first community-related political involvement with the Jews arose when he was called upon to respond to the Aliens Bill proposed by the Tory Government.

As Home Secretary, Churchill responded to the vandalizing of Jewish homes and shops in South Wales. While Minister of Munitions, he was a part of the Government that assumed responsibility for the November 1917 letter regarding a Jewish National Home that achieved fame as the Balfour Declaration. As Colonial Secretary, he visited Palestine in March 1921, and, after a brilliant speech in the House on 4 July 1922, he was responsible for the White Paper which solidified Britain’s support for a Jewish National Home in Palestine.

The 1937 Peel Commission followed. Then the rise of Nazism, with the persecution and expulsion of Europe’s Jews, and a new White Paper (which some Jews called the Black Paper) was issued by the Colonial Secretary in May 1939. The Holocaust and the postwar devolution of the British Mandate finally led to the creation of Israel on 14 May 1948. Although complicated by the Suez crisis in 1956, the Churchill-supported Zionist cause had become a reality.

Both books are excellent contributions to the subject; however, Churchill’s biographer has delivered extraordinary “grub” that reflects his research and documentation of his subject for more than forty years. Critically, when Gilbert began his research, many of the people who are the backbone of the Zionist story were still alive for him to talk to and correspond with. They include Randolph Churchill (and the entire Churchill family), Emery Reves, Dorothy de Rothschild, Oscar Nemon, President Yitzhak Navon, even David Ben-Gurion, among many others. We benefit from that richness.

What other historian would be in a position to quote a private Churchill family anecdote amply illustrating Lord Randolph Churchill’s uncompromising support for his Jewish friends? And how could we better understand Churchill’s relationship with Sir Ernest Cassel than as the result of comments by granddaughter Edwina Ashley (later Lady Mountbatten) on her grandfather’s death, underscoring Cassel’s support for Churchill in good times and in bad?

Gilbert recounts the reaction of a Palestinian Jew, Ben Gale, who had attended a speech in Tel Aviv on 10 May 1940 when the speaker was interrupted by the announcement that Churchill had become Prime Minister. “Everyone in the large hall stood up and cheered wildly,” Gale said. “With Churchill at the helm there was now hope for the Jews of Palestine!” On another occasion, Gilbert refers to a conversation he had with Simon Hass, a Polish Jew who survived the war in a Soviet labour camp; he poignantly recalled a fellow prisoner’s comment as the war raged and they struggled to survive: “We have no bread, but we have Churchill.”

And Gilbert has fished the archival waters. Not only the obvious primary sources: Churchill College, the (British) National Archives, and the State Department archives—but also the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Israel Defence Force, Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, and the private papers of Einstein, T.E. Lawrence, Sir Edward Grey, Sir Samuel Hoare, Sir Herbert Samuel, and Neville Chamberlain, among others. There are myriad examples of Gilbert’s original research: the excerpt from Churchill’s essay revealing his attitude at age 13 to the Jews; H.A.L. Fisher’s diary reaction to Churchill’s July 1922 speech; Weizmann’s telegram of 23 May 1939 congratulating Churchill on his speech; Churchill’s telegram to Weizmann from Washington on the 25th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, to name a very few.

In customary style, Churchill’s biographer has delivered a brilliantly researched, elegantly balanced, dramatically woven, captivatingly written history of his subject’s commitment to a cause that a great many of his political colleagues did not espouse.

Michael Makovsky’s focus, being on statecraft, fits the Churchillian pieces into the larger backdrop of British and world politics (although some events, like the Welsh pogrom of 1911, are unmentioned). Makovsky offers readers a cogently argued but different perspective of Churchill as a less constant supporter of the Jews and Zionism, “not always offer [ing] clear-cut unwavering public support for Jews and their causes,” sometimes “us[ing] language with anti-Semitic overtones.” Although he is clear that Churchill was “not indifferent to the Jews” and “retained underlying sympathy for the Zionist cause,” Makovsky argues that Churchill’s support was from time to time politically driven. As he concludes, Churchill was a complex being, who “appeared on the surface a bundle of contradictions,” one as a “Zionist who often abandoned Zionism.” Well-researched, albeit primarily in secondary source materials, Makovsky provides a denser, but thoughtful, engagingly written and informative volume on Churchill and Zionism.