And so Joseph believes that all he need do is quote people who casually dismiss the advice of the leaders of the Hareidi community not to emigrate and it all goes away? Especially when, given unique opportunity, some of those leaders did escape–and left their flocks to the gas chambers?
Shall I really name names here?
Shall we name Hareidi leaders who–after being rescued by efforts of all streams of American Jewry–made no efforts to lend their names to further rescue efforts–especially if they were not Hareidi?
For decades, Zionists leaders had been encouraging Aliyah. This, after all is what Zionism is all about. A great many (by no means all) of the Rabbinical leaders of the time opposed leaving Europe. Joseph indeed has cited decisions that “better a physical death in Europe than a possible spiritual death elsewhere”. Joseph has also implied that those decisions were correct. In that case, it is difficult to blame the Zionists.
Perhaps the definition of those with Joseph’s viewpoint is that, aft4er ignoring the advice of the Zionist movement, they then blame the Zionists for not doing enough to rescue them. We certainly can observe that in the case of one famous anti-Zionist Rebbe–he was not rescued by any Hareidi organization, but rather by the same people that he spent a goodly portion of his life besmirching. Need we name names?
While nobody accuses the Rabbanim of cooperation with the Nazis, bad judgment on their part was rampant. Furthermore, because of the way that Hareidi society is built, discussion of such topics is basically suppressed. However, this does not hold true for the society outside of Hareidi purview–which describes most of Jewry–and even most of religious Jewry. Plenty of research on the topic is available. Plenty of eyewitness accounts are available–having been transcribed by organizations such as Yad Vashem. Including eyewitness accounts of people who heard these psakim directly from Rabbanim.
In any event, perhaps Joseph can continue to use the issue to deligitimize Zionism and Modern Orthodoxy. Maybe he can even convince a few people who will not accept any source besides the ones that he brings.