Quoting Tom Segev’s The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, pages 99–101:

The files of the Rescue Committee contain a five-page memorandum titled “Comments on Aid and Rescue.” It was apparently written at the beginning of 1943 by Apolinari Hartglass, a Zionist activist from Poland who coordinated the committee’s work and here reflected its opinions. The basic assumption was that there really was not much that could be done for the Jews of Europe—their fate was sealed; there was no chance of saving many. “My feeling was that we had been appointed to witness death,” said Yitzhak Gruenbaum, chairman of the committee.¹²

Hartglass examined the question of whether the yishuv could, nevertheless, get anything useful out of the Holocaust, including in the area of public relations. The memorandum was meant for Zionist eyes only, he wrote at its head. Excerpts follow:

In the parts of Europe through which the war has passed—in Germany, the occupied countries, and the Axis countries—we may expect the extermination of more than 7 million Jews. […] It is clear to us today that we cannot dream of saving more than twelve thousand or some tens of thousands of Jews. […] What this committee can do is only a drop in the sea; it is self-delusion or conscience-salving and not real action. We must hope that despite all the atrocities, a large part of European Jewry, many more than the committee is able to save, will be saved by the force of the will to live.

[…]

If the efforts of the committee are likely, therefore, to lead to only the most minimal of results, we must at least achieve some political gain from them. From a Zionist point of view we will achieve this political gain under the following conditions:

a) if the whole world knows that the only country that wants to receive the rescued Jews is Palestine and that the only community that wants to absorb them is the yishuv;
b) if the whole world knows that the initiative to save the Jews of Europe comes from Zionist circles;
c) if the Jews that are saved from extermination know during the course of the war or after its end that the Zionist movement and the yishuv tried to save them.

If this recognition exists also in political circles, in non-Jewish public opinion, and within the Jewish public in all the free countries, it will reinforce the image of Zionist Palestine internationally […] as the country to which all the masses of Jews expelled from Europe should be sent. This will increase the assistance of the Jewish world in building the land and will direct the exodus of Jews that survived the worldwide massacre to Palestine.

[…]

Whom to save: […] Should we help everyone in need, without regard to the quality of the people? Should we not give this activity a Zionist-national character and try foremost to save those who can be of use to the Land of Israel and to Jewry?

I understand that it seems cruel to put the question in this form, but unfortunately we must state that if we are able to save only 10,000 people from among 50,000 who can contribute to building the country and to the national revival of the people, as against saving a million Jews who will be a burden, or at best an apathetic element, we must restrain ourselves and save the 10,000 that can be saved from among the 50,000—despite the accusations and pleas of the million.

I take comfort from the fact that it will be impossible to apply this harsh principle 100 percent and that the million will get something also. But let us see that it does not get too much.

Going on from this assumption, we must save children first, because they are the best material for the yishuv. The pioneer youth must be saved, but specifically those who have received training and are spiritually able to perform Zionist labor. Zionist leaders must be saved, since they deserve something from the Zionist movement in return for their work.

[…]

Purely philanthropic rescue, such as the rescue of German Jewry, […] can only cause damage from a Zionist perspective, particularly if the possibilities are so limited and the disaster so large. We were able to use this method for the German Jews, since they had one advantage—they brought property with them. The current refugees lack this advantage, since they arrive without anything.

They there­fore do not give anything to the yishuv and we can only expect more of what we’ve already seen from a large portion of German Jewry: complete alienation and sometimes hostility to the Land of Israel, a disrespectful attitude toward everything that is Jewish and Hebrew.

[…]

The immigrants who have come via Tehran also demonstrate what distressing results arise from immigration without proper selection. Along with the pioneers and Zionist leaders come masses of people who have no connection with Zionism, people who are completely demoralized in the national sense.

[…]

They want to educate their children in Polish and English schools. This is not true of the Zionist activists who live under the same conditions—they are happy with their lot, have patience with the many difficulties, and give thanks for all the help given them.

Had we the means to save them all there can be no doubt that we would have to accept these things. But, sadly, we do not have sufficient means to save even the good elements, so we have no choice but to give up on saving the bad elements.¹³

(Emphasis added.)