The ‘fires of destruction,’ Warsaw, August 1938? On the posthumous invention of Jabotinsky’s well-known annihilation prophecy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ze'ev Jabotinsky is one of the most fascinating figures among the leaders of the Zionist movement and founder of the right-wing political movement in Zionism. Many of his disciples and followers have attributed to him, and still do, a realistic assessment and even prophetic prediction of the Holocaust of European Jews during World War II. At the core of the pervasive cultivation of the myth lies a speech whereby the Zionist leader - it is claimed - in the summer of 1938, in Warsaw, on the traditional Jewish mourning day of Tisha B'Av, forewarned the Jews of Poland against the imminent catastrophe, which he termed the 'Fires of Destruction.' This speech is prevalent in public discourse, widespread in social networks and is frequently quoted by Israeli leaders. In this article, we submit that this apocryphal speech was never delivered by Jabotinsky. Moreover, we point out that Jabotinsky gave a completely different speech on this occasion and assess the time when these citations first appeared - twenty years after the event. We shall trace the process of the later invention of the text, the agents who strove to disseminate it and the mode of its reception evidence of Jabotinsky's status as prophet of the Holocaust.