The Dilemma of the "Lesser Evil"
During the long years of World War II, those who wanted to help their own people, who wanted to defend the vital interests of their own nations, were faced with an agonizing choice -- which side to join. These patriots and their followers were caught in a tragic dilemma between the two opposing sides, and most often their end was an unhappy one.
For example, in Yugoslavia the Serb patriots, the Chetniks, who had formed the resistance group Ravnogorski Narodni Pokret under the leadership of Drain Mihajlovic, were forced to fight simultaneously against the German and Italian invaders, against their collaborators the Croatian Ustashi, and against the antifascist, communist partisans of Josip Broz (Tito). In the end the Western Allies turned away from their faithful friend Mihajlovic and extradited him to Tito's agents, who executed him. His soldiers, who had trusted British promises of asylum, met the same fate.
The Polish Armija Krajowa met a similar tragic end. These courageous partisans fought against the German invaders and organized the uprising in Warsaw. They were oriented to the West and recognized only the legal Polish government in London. The Soviet army, liberating their homeland from the Germans, also destroyed this army. Some of the AK men fought against the Bolsheviks as guerrillas in the forests to the last bullet, some ended up in the jails of the Polish pro-Soviet puppet government.
Particularly complicated was the situation of the Ukrainian Insurgents' Army, Ukrainska Povstanca Armija, UPA. They fought on three fronts -- against the Soviet army and Red partisans, against the German SD, and against the Polish AK. Most of these Ukrainian guerrillas perished.
The Jews in Palestine also had a radical nationalist group, which gravely erred and ended up in an unenviable position while looking for the "lesser evil." This was the "Stern gang" or LEHI, the acronym of Lohamej Herat Israel, Israel's Freedom Fighters. The group's leader was Avraham Stern-Yair, an ardent Jewish nationalist. Stern-Yair felt that his people's greatest enemy was England, for the British government, holding the Mandate for Palestine, in 1939 practically stopped Jewish immigration into Eretz Israel and did everything possible to prevent the proclamation of an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land.
In the spring of 1941, when the true, terrible scope and meaning of Hitler's "final solution" was still not known, Avraham Stern-Yair decided to establish contact with the Nazis, to save Europe's Jews and drive the British from Palestine. His co-worker and biographer, the late Nathan Yalin-Mor, wrote that Avraham Stern never believed the Axis powers would win (Israel, Israel, in French, Paris 1978, p. 90). On the other hand Eitan Livni, of Menachem Begin's rival organization ETZEL (the Irgun), asserts that "they [LEHI leaders] believed the Italians and Germans would win" (newspaper Yediot Aharonot, Tel Aviv, March 9, 1979).
Be that as it may, the fact remains that in the spring of 1941 Avraham Stern-Yair offered Germany, and Italy, a deal through his emissary Naftali Lubentchik: the Axis powers would recognize the "Hebrew Nation's right" to found its sovereign national (and authoritarian-nationalistic) state and help LEHI move all of Europe's Jews to Palestine as soon as possible; LEHI would undertake to do everything possible to harm British interests and to drive the British from Palestine.
That was Utopian. The German diplomat Otto Werner von Hentig, who after the war was West Germany' s ambassador in Indonesia, replied to Lubentchik in essence the following: there was a movement in Germany that supported the idea of forming a Hebrew state in Palestine, that would be a practical solution to the "Jewish problem"; however, this movement had become too weak to influence the decisions of the government in Berlin, and in any case it was already too late to consider any such action. The Wehrmacht's generals had already decided to rely on the Arabs --whose numbers had to be counted in millions -- in the fight against Great Britain in the Near and Middle East, whereas there was only a handful of Jews.
One of his friends, Arye Kotzer, relates that Stern-Yair said in a moment of insight: "I have no doubt that the Allies will win, and then I and the few men who think like me will be executed and branded as public enemies. But by then, Palestine will have a massive Jewish population." In February 1942, British intelligence agents discovered Avraham Stern-Yak's clandestine flat in Tel Aviv and shot him on the spot.
Another interesting episode from the LEHI saga: At the end of December 1946, a Russian woman living in Paris, Iranda-Betty, married to the Jewish poet David Knut and a veteran of the French Resistance against the Nazis, approached the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov. After the war she had become a journalist, and wanted to help the LEHI fighters. She made use of the fact that her mother was the daughter of the famous Russian composer Skriabin, who himself was Molotov's uncle on the paternal side. Molotov was very surprised when she introduced herself not only as a relative, but also as the "diplomatic representative" of the underground Jewish Palestinian organization LEHI. She detailed LEHI's doctrine, stressing its anti-imperialism, and asked his help in getting the support of the Soviet Union (see Natan Yalin-Mor, op. cit., p. 294).
These two episodes show that before condemning any political group for collaborating with a totalitarian regime, one should first determine these persons' motivation. Perhaps they only erred, wishing only the best for their people.
Crimes Against Humanity The Holocaust Contents