Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was one of the most prolific of all Hollywood screenwriters, even though he professed disdain for the motion picture industry, and a human rights and Zionism activist.

Jewish and anti-Holocaust activism

Ben Hecht was a great supporter of Zeev Jabotinsky and the right-wing Revisionist Zionism movement of Menachem Begin. He subsequently wrote and published the book Perfidy, dramatizing the failure to rescue Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, and the roles of the Zionist leader Rudolf Kastner and others in high leadership positions in that affair, which was the subject of a famous libel trial when Kastner sued Grunwald, who had accused him of complicity with the Nazis. In that trial, although the court initially held that these accusations were correct, on appeal it was unanimously held that they were largely untrue or unfair and the verdict was reversed. The case remains highly controversial (see for example http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x12/xr1230.html; ; http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/MTS63features.htm; and http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch25.htm) and it is not universally accepted that Hecht's account can be accepted as fair.

Related Topics:
Zeev Jabotinsky - Revisionist Zionism - Menachem Begin - Perfidy - Hungarian - The Holocaust - Rudolf Kastner - Libel

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Hecht also opposed the social-democratic policies of Israel's first two prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett, and of the Jewish Agency for what he regarded as their complicit silence and co-operation with the British during World War II in not doing more to rescue Jews and open the doors of Palestine to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and occupied Europe. He spoke out against the lack of interest in saving the Jews trapped in Europe during the Holocaust. He purchased newspaper advertising in New York's newspapers to publicize the fate of Hitler's victims. In one such "advertisement" with the headline: "FOR SALE: 70,000 JEWS AT $50 APIECE GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS" explaining that three and a half million dollars would rescue the then trapped Romanian Jews (quoted in his work Perfidy, pp. 191-192).

Related Topics:
Social-democratic - David Ben-Gurion - Moshe Sharett - Jewish Agency - World War II - Jewish refugees - Nazi - Germany - Jew - Europe - The Holocaust - Hitler - Headline - Romania

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