German-Jewish Refugees Research Articles

Diasporic (Dis)Connections and In-betweennesses: German-Jewish Refugees and Indians in Kenya

Diasporic (Dis)Connections and In-betweennesses: German-Jewish Refugees and Indians in Kenya

Visualizing Farewell: A Jewish Soldier’s Return to Postwar Germany through Private Photography

ABSTRACT This article explores the experience of German-Jewish refugees who joined the U.S. Army and returned to Germany wearing uniforms through an examination of their private photographs. Focusing on two case studies of images taken by soldiers in 1945–6, the study uncovers their complex dynamics of identity and belonging as they confronted their traumatic past. These photographs reveal a profound detachment from sites of Jewish trauma, enabling the soldiers to bid farewell to their old Heimat on their own terms. By shedding light on their struggles, the analysis provides insights into the process of identity formation and memory negotiation.

‘I think he will be able to adjust’. Letters of Recommendation Accompanying Jewish Refugees in Transit during National Socialism

Abstract Letters of recommendation are a specific subgenre of professional writing that both have their own history and shape the histories of the people they recommend. In the context of National Socialist persecution, recommendations typically accompanied well-educated German-Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany. Such letters can be seen as relics of an established support system, trying to enable and/or ease the period of internal transit into new and mostly unknown territories. Many Jews experienced a phase of internal transit as they adjusted to new demands and new social structures. This phase was usually a difficult one, as they not only had to adjust to a new country but also to process the events leading up to their forced migration, as well as navigating the psychological and often financial difficulties of organizing refuge. This article aims to show what kinds of information such letters of recommendation contained about transit. Focusing on the United States and on Palestine, the article challenges the understanding of these countries purely as ‘destination countries’, and shows how immigrants had to live through processes of internal transit. It also asks what content was the most useful to include in letters of recommendation—what kind of armour of good words was needed in transit—and how that content may have differed between the United States and Palestine.

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Beyond politics? German Jewish refugees and racism in South Africa

ABSTRACT Between 1933 and the outbreak of the Second World War, around 6,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany landed on South Africa’s shores, becoming the largest group of Jewish refugees on the African continent. This article by Shirli Gilbert, which is part of a larger project, explores how German Jewish refugees’ historical experiences of antisemitism informed their engagement with South African racism before and during the early years of apartheid. While a limited body of research has documented the refugees’ contributions to South African social and cultural life, as well as the close-knit communities they established upon arrival, we know very little about how the Nazi past informed their engagement with the post-war world’s quintessential racial state. Their responses to the racist policies of their country of settlement are not easily generalizable, but do reveal some distinctive patterns. Of the minority who concerned themselves with racism, few chose the route of radical political activism. Instead, they challenged the racist underpinnings of apartheid in the social and cultural spheres, as journalists, educators, social workers and intellectuals, or via legal political routes, through parliamentary opposition. Multiple factors shaped these responses, including most obviously the traumatic circumstances of the refugees’ migration, as well as gender, class and generational belonging.

Holocaust refugees’ experiences in, out of and nowhere in Africa

ABSTRACT Eppelsheimer’s article examines Holocaust refugees’ experiences in colonial Kenya. It draws attention to the autobiographical novels of German Jewish author Stefanie Zweig, as well as testimonies and memoirs of former Holocaust refugees who had fled to Kenya, and asks if and how refugees’ own experiences of racial persecution informed their responses to colonial racism. This article illustrates how Zweig responded in aesthetic terms to her experience in colonial spaces. It does so by examining autobiographical aspects of Zweig’s writings, highlighting the author’s upbringing in multiple cultures, literary traditions and languages, and discussing Zweig’s novels in the contexts of white British settler writing about Kenya, as well as the German ‘Africa-novel’­—both of which have shaped the images and perspectives of Kenya among millions of readers. It examines such European colonialist perspectives and discourses in literary texts as well as testimonies. In so doing, it questions whether a text like Nowhere in Africa, which is about the experiences of a German Jewish refugee family in Kenya, contributes to the silencing of African voices and the obscuring of African history by colonial historiography and literature.

Anne C. Schenderlein, Germany on Their Minds. German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. (Studies in German History, Vol. 25.) New York, Berghahn 2020

Anne C. Schenderlein, Germany on Their Minds. German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. (Studies in German History, Vol. 25.) New York, Berghahn 2020

Jewish German Immigrant Booksellers in Twentieth-Century Ecuador

When German Jews looked for a country to receive them in the late 1930s Ecuador had its doors open for immigration. This paper traces the story of four German Jewish refugees who landed in Ecuador and established bookstores and libraries in a country that knew little of either. Rescuing their lives from oblivion is a way to highlight their cultural contribution to their host country.

Jewish Women, English Dress: From Kindertransport to Women in Uniform in Wartime England

The study of dress in relation to Jewish identity in England is critically understudied. Historic anxieties concerning the presence of Jews in England impacted the lives of many, refugees seeking asylum from fascist Europe in particular. Images from the snapshot collection of Lorraine Sulzbacher, a German Jewish refugee, are correlated with oral history testimonies from other Kindertransport refugees to explore the identity formation and integration of female Kindertransport refugees in England from 1939 to 1945. This article investigates how dress was used as a visual signifier of integration, and how both dress and photographic practices simultaneously created space for identity formation. It discusses the impact dress had on the formation of identity during the transition from girlhood to adulthood for female Kindertransport refugees. Additionally, this article examines how uniformed war work provided these young women opportunities to develop their identities as displaced European Jewish persons in Britain. This analysis of dress and photography posits that these refugees were a diaspora in formation.

A Cache of Family Letters and the Historiography of the Holocaust: Interpretive Reflections

ABSTRACT Scholars of the Holocaust have long recognized that ordinary people’s accounts, by definition subjective and individual, can deepen our understanding of the experience and impact of the genocide. The distinctive value of personal letters, however, particularly collections of sustained correspondence among multiple writers, has not yet been fully appreciated or explored in Holocaust historiography. Over the past decade or so, more and more collections of personal correspondence relating to the Holocaust have been unearthed. Their distinctive form and burgeoning numbers stimulate questions about their potential historical significance and how, in both practical and analytical terms, they might most fruitfully be approached. Building on my longstanding work with the family letters of Rudolf Schwab, a German-Jewish refugee who eventually ended up in South Africa, I reflect in this essay on a series of methodological questions surrounding the use of such private collections in Holocaust historiography. How might they differ, as sources, from the many testimonies, diaries, and other ego-documents with which Holocaust historians already work? Are they simply another addition to this already vast archive? To what extent might they enrich, complicate, or even disrupt our prevailing understandings? What new perspectives might they offer scholars about the Holocaust, the experiences of refugees, and beyond?

Jewish Child Integration in Britain: A Comparative Examination of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish Refugees

By adopting a comparative approach to the lives of Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish refugee children in Britain, this article explores the extent to which Jewish refugee children were able to successfully integrate into British society. After stating the difference between the integration and assimilation of the Jewish refugees, this article examines how the education, religion and familial relations of the refugee children all acted as indicators of their desire to integrate. As a result of utilising the oral testimonies of both refugee groups, a personal insight is gained in relation to how each individual refugee child navigated the themes of belonging and identity from adolescence to adulthood. These oral testimonies, combined with the use of newspaper articles and autobiographical accounts, illustrate how the refugee children were both voluntarily and involuntarily involved in the integration process. Whilst assimilation did occur, particularly in the case of the German-Jewish refugee children who were placed in non-Jewish foster homes during the Second World War, it did not characterise the experiences of all Jewish refugee children. Instead, across both refugee groups, the children actively adapted their Jewish identity to serve their own individual aspirations. Thus, when evaluating the success of Jewish child integration in Britain, the lives of the Russian-Jewish and German-Jewish refugee children were characterised by their heterogeneity rather than their homogeneity.

Anne C. Schenderlein. Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 254 pp.

Anne C. Schenderlein. Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988. New York: Berghahn, 2020. 254 pp.

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

Germany on Their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

Fredy Hirsch: Changing Perspectives on his Memory

Abstract At the Theresienstadt family camp in Auschwitz thousands of Jews were kept alive in “favorable” living conditions, only to be gassed after six months. Few scholars have examined one of the most influential figures there, Fredy Hirsch, a gay German-Jewish refugee to Czechoslovakia who initiated and managed the “children’s block.” Hundreds under his care received better food and were spared the brutality prevailing elsewhere in Auschwitz, brightening their final months. How he sacrificed his life for the children offers a particular window into the annihilation of Czech Jewry. The following analyzes changing images of Hirsch in literature and commemoration, the uncertainty surrounding his death, and the meaning survivors ascribed to Hirsch’s homosexuality.

The World of Aufbau: Hitler’s Refugees in America by Peter Schrag

Reviewed by: The World of Aufbau: Hitler's Refugees in America by Peter Schrag Judith M. Gerson The World of Aufbau: Hitler's Refugees in America. By Peter Schrag. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. 272 pages. $39.95 (cloth). Aufbau, the émigré newspaper of German-speaking Jewish refugees, had its start in 1934 in New York City as the occasional newsletter of the German-Jewish Club, which was renamed the New World Club in 1940 (116). Within a few short years it grew to become a monthly paper, then semi-monthly, and shortly thereafter expanded again and became a weekly tabloid, regularly reaching 30,000 subscribers in its postwar years and an additional 11,000 in its heyday between 1946 and 1947 (4). During its 70 year lifespan, its readership was concentrated in New York City, particularly in its earliest years, as that is where most of the refugees fleeing Nazi rule had settled before the war. Limited numbers of Jews settled there during the war and many more would restart their lives again in New York in its aftermath. There was also a sizeable readership on the West Coast, in Chicago, and other large cities, as well as in smaller communities throughout the United States and in German Jewish émigré homes scattered throughout the world. From the start, its readership was multinational—a reflection of their diasporic histories and interests. In addition to its American subscribers, recently arrived refugees in England read Aufbau, and before the Nazi occupation still others read the paper in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France. Those fortunate to reach Lisbon in the early 1940s read Aufbau as they waited to sail from the last open European seaport. And during the war, many exiled and stateless people read the paper in Shanghai, Palestine, Bolivia, and elsewhere. No matter where they were located, readers' interests and needs routinely cut across national borders—something that Aufbau's editors and writers appreciated and believed was their responsibility to cover. Indeed, the paper's international focus was the hallmark of many of its editorials, articles, and columns, making it comparable in this respect to other foreign language émigré newspapers. Readers relied heavily on Aufbau's extensive coverage of the [End Page 415] expansion of Nazi rule, the growing atrocities, the war and genocide, and the period of liberation and attempts at restorative justice that followed. Until flight became impossible, readers combed the newspaper for crucial information about remaining routes to safety, requirements for immigration, and updates on the conditions in occupied and unoccupied territories. During the war, Aufbau was an important source of news about the conflict, the deportations, internments, and mass killings, covering events in Europe, North Africa, the Far East and Middle East. After the war, the paper served as a hub for those searching for loved ones, it helped to organize aid for displaced persons, and recruit witnesses to testify at war crime trials. Peter Schrag has two equally important intertwined goals in writing The World of Aufbau: Hitler's Refugees in America—an immensely thoughtful chronicle and perceptive analysis of the newspaper and the refugee community it served. In Schrag's expert hands, Aufbau becomes the essential lens through which he interprets the everyday lives of "Hitler's refugees," a term that includes the German-speaking Jews who fled before the war, survived in the camps, in hiding, or in forced labor, and who were displaced in its aftermath. Schrag's seamless account of the newspaper and its readers living in the United States offers compelling evidence to support his perspective that Aufbau was the hometown newspaper of the German Jewish community in exile (11ff.). Although numerous researchers have cited Aufbau's pages in their scholarship, Schrag's volume is the first book-length treatment of the newspaper and thus fills an important void. This rigorously researched book makes a second significant set of contributions building an encyclopedic portrait of the everyday lives of German Jewish refugees in the US from the 1930s through the present day. Schrag explains that they were far from a uniform community. While some immigrants were economically and socially privileged, and some were or would become famous artists and...

ASSIMILATION AND IDENTITY CRISIS IN ANITA DESAI'S BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY AND THE COLLECTION OF NOVELLAS THE ARTIST OF DISAPPEARANCE

Baumgartner's Bombay (1988) by Anita Desai is based on letters written from concentration camp in Nazi Germany by a mother to her son. It presents the struggles of a German Jewish war time refugee in establishing himself in India. The letters present an obvious repetitive message of well-being in a bid to shroud the actual message of suffering due to the censorship of letters (Judie Newman). All of the collection of novellas, 'The Museum of Final Journeys', 'Translator, Translated', 'The Artist of Disappearance' (2011), by Anita Desai present a front- ambitiousness, as an obvious reason for her characters' unhappiness. In all the novellas the protagonists demonstrate a great desire to succeed in their specific situation in life. In all four of the stories the obvious front present is often taken up as a subconscious reason for the characters' identity crisis. Yet, the literature review is absent when it comes to specific underlying issues of assimilation which runs constant in the selected stories of Anita Desai. Hence, this paper aims to analyse Anita Desai's selected texts associating the issues of assimilation to the identity crisis her characters suffer. Postcolonial power struggle and the struggle to assimilate not just in the new social order, but also into contrasting values, the researcher argues is instrumental to the identity crisis portrayed by Anita Desai. Therefore, this paper depends on various psychoanalytic theories to link the concept of assimilation to individual search for identity. The characters' decision to deviate from certain established norms dictates their particular alienation.

Germany on their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

Germany on their Minds: German Jewish Refugees in the United States and their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988 by Anne C. Schenderlein

Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion by Bill Niven

Reviewed by: Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion by Bill Niven Jan-Christopher Horak (bio) Hitler and Film: The Führer's Hidden Passion By Bill Niven. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018. 295 pp. Given the large number of books published on the Nazi film industry in general and on Adolf Hitler in particular, I was skeptical initially that Bill Niven's book, Hitler and Film, would offer anything more than a rehash of information available elsewhere, even if scattered. However, Niven's book does present new research, making it worthwhile reading for specialists, even if some chapters are only of interest to general readers with no prior knowledge of the subject. Niven begins by discussing Hitler's film-viewing habits at his mountain retreat at the Berghof and also in Berlin's Reich Chancellery. It is well known in academic circles that Hitler, like Stalin, was an incurable movie buff, but just what he saw has been less clear, as was the fact that Hitler apparently watched movies obsessively every night from the mid-1930s to the start of the war. He had a preference for films with rich visuals and a bias against dialogue-heavy films, privileging the newest German productions, but also was a big fan of Laurel and Hardy. Indeed, Hitler viewed many foreign films that were banned in the German Reich, including American films, such as Shirley Temple's Captain January (1936) and Greta Garbo's Camille (1936), the latter despite its Jewish director, George Cukor. Hitler was apparently also sometimes involved in the banning of a film or in lifting a ban. Thus, Hitler initially banned a couple of anti-Communist propaganda films, White Slaves (1937) and Strong Hearts (1937), until the filmmakers had made changes, making the works even more stringently anti-Communist. When Paramount asked Hitler to lift a ban on The Jungle Princess (1936), the Film Censorship Office released the film in [End Page 205] March 1938, despite its director, Wilhelm Thiele, being a German-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (37). At other times, Hitler advocated for the production of specific propaganda films, even though he personally preferred mindless entertainment. Thus, Hitler got involved in the production of a documentary short about euthanasia, Victims of the Past (1937), arguing that its repellent images would convince Germans of the need for such a policy. He was also directly involved in the production of a Karl Ritter film about the Spanish Civil War, In Battle Versus the World Enemy: German Volunteers in Spain (1939), but it was of course his sponsoring of Leni Riefenstahl and her Nazi Party Rally films that demonstrate most clearly Hitler's propagandistic agenda to produce films of high artistic quality and still convey ideology, as Niven notes: "Politics, then, must find expression in culture, and culture must be imbued with politics; the two were intertwined, for Hitler, in a reciprocal relationship" (59). As Niven's fifth chapter indicates, Adolf Hitler was ubiquitous in the German newsreels, at times attending premieres of German films he wished to support, including Dawn (1933), a film about World War I U-boats, and Hitler Youth Quex (1933), about a Hitler Youth who becomes a martyr for the cause. But Hitler's appearance in the newsreels was specifically designed to create the cult of personality that was Hitler. An Ufa short, Our Führer (1934), was released specifically for the German "elections" in August 1934, which formally ratified the unification of chancellor and president in Adolf Hitler. The weekly newsreels thereafter took pains to portray Hitler as a man of the people, always in attendance at major holidays and events, and a man of peace who was reluctantly forced to wage war against enemy aggressors, even as he planned invasions behind the scenes. The high point of Hitler's visibility was the period of Nazi victories from September 1940 to the defeat of France in 1940. Thereafter Hitler's image became ever scarcer, as the war took its toll on his physical appearance. As Niven notes, "Because many Germans had abandoned themselves to Hitler, when he abandoned them by not showing himself, some of them, at least...

Letters from England: A Contribution to the Intellectual Biography of Alexander Altmann

Letters from England:A Contribution to the Intellectual Biography of Alexander Altmann Ira Robinson (bio) introduction Jewish studies in the English language has been immeasurably enriched by the forced emigration from Nazi Germany of scholars like Alexander Altmann (1906–87)1 and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72)2 to England and the United States. Scholars who have engaged with Altmann's biography have thus far largely concentrated their attention on his career in Germany, cut short by his 1938 emigration to Manchester, England, and, to a lesser extent, on his American career at Brandeis University, starting in 1959. The period he spent as "Communal Rabbi of Manchester and District" from 1938 to 1959 has not yet received its scholarly due, though clearly it is in these decades that Altmann became one of the most influential Jewish studies scholars in the world. In the course of research in the Abraham Joshua Heschel Papers at Duke University, I found a file containing eight letters Altmann sent Heschel from England dated from 1940 to 1952.3 Copies of the letters [End Page 321] Heschel sent Altmann are not extant in the Heschel papers.4 The excerpts of the letters selected for this brief essay witness Altmann's English sojourn from two perspectives. The first is the human side: we see Altmann as he confronted German air raids on Manchester, supported the British home front, and faced the agony of knowing that his family was in mortal danger in German-occupied Holland. We also see his growing scholarly engagements with the British academic community, his tensions with the British rabbinical establishment, his efforts to create Jewish educational initiatives that would culminate in the Institute of Jewish Studies, and his relationships with Israeli scholars and the Hebrew University. The letters underline both Altmann's determination to grow as a scholar and his strong conviction that his intellectual endeavors, along with those of his fellow German Jewish refugees, were of great significance. the letters: altmann to heschel5 2nd Dec[ember], 1940 My dear friend, It is a long time that I have not written to you. But I had you in mind constantly, and it was especially in the days of Rosh Hashono that my good wishes went out to you—though silently—I hope they will be fulfilled … I hope your students will appreciate the ways of your thoughts and the methods of your teaching. I hope you will find happiness in your work and in your surroundings. How far have you advanced in your work on "Tefillah"? I feel that your thoughts must often wander across the Atlantic to your many friends especially in this country which is now so heroically fighting not only her own but even your battle. Alas, many of those who were so anxious to work in the spiritual field and who were your closest collaborators in the "Institute for Jewish Learning" are now [End Page 322] interned.6 All their work has consequently come to a standstill. My own scheme which I had initiated with great enthusiasm had also to be abandoned, at least "for the duration." My experience was very disappointing and, as I wrote to you, I believe, caused me even trouble and unpleasantness. The orthodox section of the London Rabbinate was very much annoyed about my activities. They felt that "spiritual revitalization" and "Science of Judaism" were dangerous issues, particularly in conjunction with people who are themselves non-orthodox. It is indeed surprising that I have to face here an orthodoxy which has no desire whatsoever to come to an understanding with the modern mentality.7 Nonetheless, I personally pursue my spiritual aims and interests, and spend many an hour in the [John] Rylands Library (which you ought to have visited when you were in Manchester). My wife and family are [b"h, thank God] well. It was a terribly difficult and grim year which is drawing to its close now. I must not look back, and sometimes its horror seizes me again. But , [ḥasde ha-shem azkir, I will recall God's mercy].8 God has bestowed his mercy upon us. The illness has gone like a bad dream, and my wife...

Fifty-Plus Years of Watching Asia: An American Perspective

Fifty-Plus Years of Watching Asia: An American Perspective Sheldon W. Simon (bio) As a prelude to this personal rumination on the issues in Asian international politics that have occupied my professional life, I wish to express appreciation to See Seng Tan for asking so many well-qualified colleagues to contribute their own assessments to this compendium. My fascination with Asian politics began as an undergraduate in the 1950s at the University of Minnesota, where on a cold, snowy morning in January, Professor Werner Levi—a German-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who held three doctorates, including one in politics—stated that the world’s future would lie in Asia. A combination of ancient civilizations, historical grandeur, and a strong work ethic among its populations, he argued, would transform Asia in due course into the world’s most dynamic region. He went on to say that those of us who planned for a career in public affairs should consider becoming students of Asia. I was convinced. Upon completing my PhD in political science, I took a position with the U.S. government for three years analyzing Soviet and Chinese commentary on Asia. During this time, I honed the research interests that characterized my subsequent academic life—the interface between the great powers and Asian states as well as the dynamics of the developing Asian actors in dealing with great-power pressures and blandishments. Of course, the Asia-Pacific was home to three of those great powers—the United States in the aftermath of World War II, China under the aegis of its Communist Party, and the Soviet Union. This essay addresses these dynamics in two sections—one on the security arrangements in North and Southeast Asia and one on recent U.S. relations with states in both subregions—before concluding with some final thoughts. Northeast and Southeast Asian Security Arrangements From an American perspective, it is useful to divide the analysis of East Asia into its northern and southern components. The United States’ Cold War and post–Cold War attention to the region may be assessed through its security arrangements. For Northeast Asia, this would be the ongoing presence of U.S. forces in the aftermath of World War II. Japan and the [End Page 74] Republic of Korea (ROK) became junior partners in Washington’s East Asia strategy opposing the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and North Korea. Thus, the U.S. hub-and-spoke security arrangement came into existence. Unlike NATO, a multilateral European military alliance requiring each member to come to the others’ defense in the event of an attack, Washington was unable to effect a similar arrangement between Japan, the ROK, and the United States. Korean bitterness over Japan’s colonial legacy meant that Seoul was unwilling to engage in any security agreement with Tokyo. The alternative was separate U.S. bilateral defense treaties between the United States and each country. The United States was the “hub” and its bilateral partners were the separate “spokes.” These spokes for the most part did not interact militarily with each other. For example, until recently, the Japanese and ROK navies only directly interacted with each other through U.S. intersession in multilateral maritime exercises such as the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC). By contrast, the Southeast Asian states assayed a number of times to create multilateral institutions beginning in the 1950s—for example, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Association of Southeast Asia, and Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia (MAPHILINDO). None were successful, but all demonstrated a realization among non-Communist elites in the region that some form of political collaboration was necessary to deal with both extraregional and intraregional challenges from China, the Soviet Union, and North Vietnam. Southeast Asian leaders were also concerned that Western states might leave the region as the Indochina wars of the 1950s and 1960s ended with Communist victories. Southeast Asian leaders conceived a new regional organization in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), composed of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. In the mid-1960s, Indonesia’s president and founding father Sukarno had attempted to destroy Malaysia, which he saw as a neocolonialist country...