Pictured: The Zionist in question. Yimach shmo!

Quoting Faris Yahya’s Zionist relations with Nazi Germany, pages 39–42:

Historians generally agree that Vilno (also known as Wilno or Vilna) was the city where the Jews first became aware of [Axis] extermination plans, after large numbers had been executed at the nearby site of Ponary, and also where the first attempt to organise a Jewish resistance movement began.

In its first appeal, this movement declared: “Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter! It is true that we are weak and we have nobody to help us. But our only dignified answer to the enemy must be resistance.”⁵⁰ Vilno Jews carried out sabotage actions against the [Axis], but their hopes for a mass uprising did not materialise.

A major factor in this failure was the rôle of Jacob Gens, a leading Zionist collaborator with the [Axis], who eventually made him chief of a Jewish police force in Vilno.

“He stands all by himself because no other ghetto leader went so far in serving the [Axis] as Gens; no other ghetto leader used his police force to carry out the actual killing of Jews. Nor did any other ghetto leader play such an effective part in sabotaging Jewish participation in the partisan movement… He combined Lithuanian nationalism with the fascist brand of Zionism represented by Jabotinsky’s followers by being a member of the Revisionist Brith Hakhayil (Military Organisation)…

“As soon as the surviving Vilno Jews were crammed into two ghettoes on 6 and 7 September 1941, Gens became the deputy commander of the ghetto police whose commander, Muszkat, was a lawyer from Warsaw and also a Revisionist. His programme and philosophy were no different from those of Barasz, Rumkowski, Merin or other collaborationist ghetto leaders: he too argued that a remnant of Jews might survive if they made themselves economically useful to the [Axis] war machine. However, it was not his success in building workshops in the ghetto that endeared him to the Gestapo, but his ruthless[ne]ss in delivering Jewish victims and his usefulness in preventing the flight of young Jews into the forests to join the partisans…

“Having embraced both as a Jew and as a Lithuanian ideologies that extolled the virtues of leadership, he found it possible to believe that he had a mission to fulfill and that he knew what was good for his Jewish subjects. Since work alone was not enough to ensure the survival of his Jews, he was ready to assume the responsibility for selecting the victims who had to feed the [Fascist] Moloch. And he did this so efficiently that by the autumn of 1942 the Gestapo made him the dictator not only of the Vilno ghetto, but also of all the surviving rural ghettoes in the Vilno region.”

In October 1942, the [Fascists] told Gens they wanted 1,500 Jews killed in Oshmyany ghetto. Later they “agreed to reduce the number of victims to 400 provided they were selected and killed by Gens’s policemen.” Gens agreed and sent his Chief of Police Salek Desler (also a Revisionist) with 30 policemen. They selected over 410 sick and old people whom they killed themselves. Gens defended his action by claiming “it is our duty to save the strong and the young and not to let ourselves be overcome by sentiments.”⁵¹

“On April 5, 1943, an announcement appeared on the walls of the ghetto, urging Jews who had relatives in Kovno to join the transports from the neighbouring villages, principally from Snipiszok, allegedly bound for Kovno. The announcement was couched in alluring language, depicting better living conditions and easier housing accommodations than were available in the crowded Wilno ghetto. Gens put himself out for the Kovno scheme, and many unsuspecting victims volunteered to join the Kovno caravan. All in all, some 5,000 Jews mounted the trains… It soon became evident that instead of proceeding to Kovno the trains were unloaded at Ponary and the victims mowed down with machine gun fire.”⁵²

Some of the victims, however, were able to escape and tell their tale.

Gens played a particularly treacherous rôle in betraying the leader of the Vilno ghetto resistance, Itzik Witenberg, who was a Communist and thus a particular target for the hatred of the rightwing Revisionists.

“One night Witenberg was arrested by a ruse of the Jewish police, but was rescued by his alerted comrades and returned to the headquarters unharmed… Unfortunately, the volatile Gens and his ruthless police commissioner, Sala Desler, outwitted everybody, including themselves. They promptly sent out their police hounds, aided by the scum of the ghetto, to round up the crowd for an urgent meeting. The people thronged obediently. Before a vast assembly Gens displayed his uncanny sense of appealing to the fear instinct of a trembling multitude. He harangued the crowd with warnings not to let one man’s personal safety jeopardise the safety of all, and he relayed the alleged plans of the Gestapo to wipe out the ghetto at one blow with bombs, tanks, artillery and all the fires of hell, unless the ultimatum of surrendering Witenberg was met. Under this blackmail, at the appointed hour Witenberg surrendered to the the bloody Desler, who handed him over to the Gestapo… The backbone of the movement was broken. A pall of terror hung over everything. It was no use denying that the Gestapo had won a decisive victory without a fight.”⁵³

“Kovner, the representative of the ‘Hashomer Hatzair’, succeeded in appointing himself as commander of the underground fighting forces in Vilno,* which hoarded ammunition and recruited strong, trained individuals, prepared for battle. But it never used its resources against the [Axis] in the ghetto and, consequently, Kovner arrived at an agreement with the head of the ghetto (Gens) and the leader of the Jewish police (Desler), according to which they were obligated, in exchange for the holding back of action by the underground, not to harm any of its members — and also to promise them exit from the ghetto on the verge of its final destruction. These three — Gens, Desler and Kovner — held a common view, which was also the approach of Dr. Weizmann and Nathan Schwalb, Jewish Agency representative in Switzerland: to sacrifice the aged and the multitude, and to save the ‘élite’ group of youth — ‘our friends’…

(Emphasis added).