“The Wall” and “Ascending as a Wall”: Neturei Karta, Zionism, and the Holocaust

Abstract

This article examines how the Holocaust and related issues were discussed by Neturei Karta, the ultra-Orthodox faction most harshly opposed to Zionism. Based on an extensive analysis of hundreds of articles and opinion pieces published in the faction’s journal, it argues that writing about the Holocaust was central to Neturei Karta’s efforts to delegitimize Zionism on the eve of the State of Israel’s founding and in its first decades of existence. Zionists were blamed for directly and indirectly bringing about the physical destruction of European Jewry, as well as for exacting “a spiritual Holocaust” against Jewish believers. These perspectives echo to this day.