ON COLLABORATION

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Considering how painfully little is written about the Holocaust or its survivors, your article "A Survivor of the Holocaust" (May 2) would seem like a welcome contribution. Unfortunately, it is so filled with allusions, distorted generalizations and unsubstantiated evidence that it is a gross injustice. To label it a "Scrutiny" is an offense to the word.

A few questions and comments are in order:

1. Rosenberg/Vrba may be "content to feel that he himself is not taken in by what he believes to be the myths surrounding the holocaust" but others might be interested in knowing who these alleged Zionist conspirators were. Why did this not come out in the Eichmann trial? The Nuremberg trials? Where did Rosenberg/Vrba find these Zionist leaders roaming about at a time when most of the Jews of that area were already in concentration camps, in contained areas or hidden?

2. So far as I know, deportations of Jews in Hungary and Slovakia did not stop by dint of "important Allied officials" or articles in Swiss newspapers. They stopped either when there were no more Jews to deport, it became unfeasible to continue deportation or when the war ended. The plight of the Jews was not exactly an important concern of the Allies.

3. The tale of the Rabbi that refused to listen to Rosenberg/Vrba's report is not the tale of a Zionist suppressing a warning of doom. A Rabbi is not to be confused with a Zionist. Many people were disbelieved in a similar fashion, regarded as madmen for their ravings of such barbarity. It is not difficult to understand, even now, why this might be so. By the time the Jews began to realize the seriousness of the situation, it was too late. They were all neatly rounded up in ghettoes from which escape was not exactly an easy feat.

4. There were Jewish leaders who did have contact with the Nazis for the Germans established indigenous Jewish chiefs of ghettoes. These people were not necessarily Zionist and to call them collaborators in the destruction of European Jewry is an outrageous bending of what is a complex story laboriously documented in Isaiah Trunk's recent book, Judenrat.

5. Rosenberg/Vrba's charge is the exact replica of what became the official Communist party stance on the nature of the Holocaust--albeit with even greater elaboration. I am not disinclined to believe the charge because of its origins, yet without the presentation of any evidence the characterization of this allegation as "one of the few cases of clear-cut collaboration between the Nazis and the Jews..." is irresponsible and offensive. Just because the author of the article wanted to pursue this particular issue is no excuse for pulling together contradictory phrases and ignoring recorded history. Alternative views of the Holocaust are not "taboo" areas and knowledge is needed not only as a contribution to history but the help us with the present. To present Rosenberg/Vrba's story as THE alternative view of this period only speaks to the ignorance of the author hungering for this view. Bella Rosenberg