Meeting in Basle, Switzerland, the first congress after the end of WWII is held. The implications of the the Holocaust’s enormity dominate every discussion. Approval is given to the political agenda set out by David Ben-Gurion in his 1942 Biltmore Hotel speech, to establish a Jewish state. It resolves that in “Palestine will be established a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the democratic world.” Rebuking delegates who supported a Jewish state, but did little in actuality, Weizmann states, “moral and political support is very little when you send other people to the barricades to face tanks and guns…I warn you against bogus palliatives, against short cuts, against false prophets, against distortion of historic facts.” It is Weizmann’s last address to a Zionist Congress. No president of the WZO is elected, leaving Ben-Gurion as chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, and as sole leader of the WZO.
December 9, 1946
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