I was doing some research today and I stumbled across a particularly apposite quote from the wife of the famous American politician: William C. Bullitt. I thought I would share it with the world as it seems to have typically been largely ignored:
‘The only things left of Brest Litovsk are three churches and a new rock-garden, flowers and “verboten” sign complete, built amid the ruins by the Germans. Warsaw is much the same as ever. Whoever spread the rumour that all children under seven years of age were dead in Poland, probably went through Warsaw in the night. The Jews to whom Billy [William C. Bullitt – KR] spoke said they hated Germans, Poles, and Russians equally, but at least no one shied bricks at them under German rule.’ (1)
This is quite interesting in that it gives us very blunt testimony that the jews in the pale of settlement - i.e., a good part of the territory given to Germany by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk - really didn’t want anybody but jews to rule them, which adds yet another nail in the coffin of the philo-Semitic myth that the jews were and are ‘just another religious minority’.
How can a religious minority use nationality to determine who it wants to rule it? After all, surely if it were just a normal religious minority - say like Buddhists - then they would simply wish for a Buddhist to rule them not for a separate country for themselves because they were a nationality (which is the sub-text to Bullitt’s remarks).
References
(1) Ernesta Drinker Bullitt, 1917, ‘An Uncensored Diary from the Central Empires’, 1st Edition, Doubleday: New York, pp. 162-163