On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
>Please reply in writing to:
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
FroFrom [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:04:14 EDT 1998
Article: 273438 of soc.culture.british
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia
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Subject: WARNING!!!Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia,soc.culture.new-zealand,soc.culture.baltics,soc.culture.ukrainian
Subject: WARNING!!! – Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
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On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:04 EDT 1998
Article: 4996 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.krakow
Subject: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:46:39 GMT
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On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
>http://www.dejanews.com/ (page does not exist) Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:04 EDT 1998
Article: 4998 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.lublin,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:58:41 GMT
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On 16 Aug 1998 22:52:23 GMT, [email protected] (Kaszubik) wrote:
>><HTML><PRE>Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
>>From: [email protected]
>>Date: Thu, Aug 13, 1998 12:25 EDT
>>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>>
>>A group of Swiss banks have finally agreed to pay the sum of $1,25
>>Billion after extortion from the Jews.
>>
>>The group includes UBS AG, Credit Suisse and Swiss national bank,
>>among others.
>>
>>This followed posturing from several US congressmen who owed favours
>>to their pet Jews.
>>
>>If even the honest Swiss, after giving sanctuary to the Jews in WWII
>>get swindled like this, no wonder less solvent nations have knuckled
>>under to the cursed Christkillers.
>>
>>No wonder Jews are hated, and despised, worldwide!!!
No doubt Poland will be the next country to be asked to make
“reparations” payments???
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:05 EDT 1998
Article: 4999 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 16:09:55 GMT
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On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
>a subscriber to the printed edition and obtain even more news and
>information. Polonia Today is the up-to-date authoritative publication
>of record in Polonia.
>
><http://www.poloniatoday.com>
>
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:05 EDT 1998
Article: 5045 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:43:35 GMT
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Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:07 EDT 1998
Article: 5157 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 14:33:11 GMT
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Glad to see that you feel concerned enough to at least express your
views.
I feel that perhaps you are misguided in your perceptions regarding
the Rev. Stehelin.
Stehelin expresses the view acceptable to most Polish people,
especially the Catholics.
He, like most good Polish people, wants Polish soil used for and by
Polish people.
He wants no interference from another country, or from organisations
involved with those who murdered Christians – whether they are the
Christkillers, or the KGB at Katyn!!!
On Tue, 01 Sep 1998 09:59:31 GMT, Piotr Szmitkowski
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 31 Aug 1998 [email protected] wrote:
>> Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
>> honest Polish people.
>> He and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
>> Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
>> World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
>> Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
>> Soviet KGB (Jew led).
>You would like to talk about action which is a provocation before local
>elections in Poland and have no connection with any religion or national
>feeling about Katyn, Oswiecim or jews.
Polish land, used for and by POLISH people, is definitely of concern
to thinking people in Poland.
Interference by non-Polish people is an interference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign nation!!!
>This is NOT led in memory of Poles shot at the old mine, this action in my
>belief and in belief of most of the Poles, polish right wing goverment,
>and polish church is a provocation before upcoming local govmnt elections
>and before talks with European Union about Polish access to Union even
>begun.
Since when is religion involved in Polish union into EU??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:48 EDT 1998
Article: 63 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.krakow
Subject: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:46:39 GMT
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On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
>http://www.dejanews.com/ (page does not exist)Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:49 EDT 1998
Article: 64 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.lublin,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:58:41 GMT
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On 16 Aug 1998 22:52:23 GMT, [email protected] (Kaszubik) wrote:
>><HTML><PRE>Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
>>From: [email protected]
>>Date: Thu, Aug 13, 1998 12:25 EDT
>>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>>
>>A group of Swiss banks have finally agreed to pay the sum of $1,25
>>Billion after extortion from the Jews.
>>
>>The group includes UBS AG, Credit Suisse and Swiss national bank,
>>among others.
>>
>>This followed posturing from several US congressmen who owed favours
>>to their pet Jews.
>>
>>If even the honest Swiss, after giving sanctuary to the Jews in WWII
>>get swindled like this, no wonder less solvent nations have knuckled
>>under to the cursed Christkillers.
>>
>>No wonder Jews are hated, and despised, worldwide!!!
No doubt Poland will be the next country to be asked to make
“reparations” payments???
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:49 EDT 1998
Article: 65 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 16:09:55 GMT
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On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
>a subscriber to the printed edition and obtain even more news and
>information. Polonia Today is the up-to-date authoritative publication
>of record in Polonia.
>
><http://www.poloniatoday.com>
>
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:50 EDT 1998
Article: 79 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:43:35 GMT
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Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:05:53 EDT 1998
Article: 170 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 14:33:11 GMT
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Glad to see that you feel concerned enough to at least express your
views.
I feel that perhaps you are misguided in your perceptions regarding
the Rev. Stehelin.
Stehelin expresses the view acceptable to most Polish people,
especially the Catholics.
He, like most good Polish people, wants Polish soil used for and by
Polish people.
He wants no interference from another country, or from organisations
involved with those who murdered Christians – whether they are the
Christkillers, or the KGB at Katyn!!!
On Tue, 01 Sep 1998 09:59:31 GMT, Piotr Szmitkowski
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 31 Aug 1998 [email protected] wrote:
>> Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
>> honest Polish people.
>> He and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
>> Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
>> World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
>> Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
>> Soviet KGB (Jew led).
>You would like to talk about action which is a provocation before local
>elections in Poland and have no connection with any religion or national
>feeling about Katyn, Oswiecim or jews.
Polish land, used for and by POLISH people, is definitely of concern
to thinking people in Poland.
Interference by non-Polish people is an interference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign nation!!!
>This is NOT led in memory of Poles shot at the old mine, this action in my
>belief and in belief of most of the Poles, polish right wing goverment,
>and polish church is a provocation before upcoming local govmnt elections
>and before talks with European Union about Polish access to Union even
>begun.
Since when is religion involved in Polish union into EU??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:06:51 EDT 1998
Article: 8122 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.krakow
Subject: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:46:39 GMT
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On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:06:52 EDT 1998
Article: 8123 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.lublin,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:58:41 GMT
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On 16 Aug 1998 22:52:23 GMT, [email protected] (Kaszubik) wrote:
>><HTML><PRE>Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
>>From: [email protected]
>>Date: Thu, Aug 13, 1998 12:25 EDT
>>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>>
>>A group of Swiss banks have finally agreed to pay the sum of $1,25
>>Billion after extortion from the Jews.
>>
>>The group includes UBS AG, Credit Suisse and Swiss national bank,
>>among others.
>>
>>This followed posturing from several US congressmen who owed favours
>>to their pet Jews.
>>
>>If even the honest Swiss, after giving sanctuary to the Jews in WWII
>>get swindled like this, no wonder less solvent nations have knuckled
>>under to the cursed Christkillers.
>>
>>No wonder Jews are hated, and despised, worldwide!!!
No doubt Poland will be the next country to be asked to make
“reparations” payments???
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:06:54 EDT 1998
Article: 8125 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 16:09:55 GMT
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On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
>a subscriber to the printed edition and obtain even more news and
>information. Polonia Today is the up-to-date authoritative publication
>of record in Polonia.
>
><http://www.poloniatoday.com>
>
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:06:55 EDT 1998
Article: 8188 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:43:35 GMT
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Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:06:56 EDT 1998
Article: 8329 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 14:33:11 GMT
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Glad to see that you feel concerned enough to at least express your
views.
I feel that perhaps you are misguided in your perceptions regarding
the Rev. Stehelin.
Stehelin expresses the view acceptable to most Polish people,
especially the Catholics.
He, like most good Polish people, wants Polish soil used for and by
Polish people.
He wants no interference from another country, or from organisations
involved with those who murdered Christians – whether they are the
Christkillers, or the KGB at Katyn!!!
On Tue, 01 Sep 1998 09:59:31 GMT, Piotr Szmitkowski
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 31 Aug 1998 [email protected] wrote:
>> Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
>> honest Polish people.
>> He and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
>> Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
>> World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
>> Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
>> Soviet KGB (Jew led).
>You would like to talk about action which is a provocation before local
>elections in Poland and have no connection with any religion or national
>feeling about Katyn, Oswiecim or jews.
Polish land, used for and by POLISH people, is definitely of concern
to thinking people in Poland.
Interference by non-Polish people is an interference in the internal
affairs of a sovereign nation!!!
>This is NOT led in memory of Poles shot at the old mine, this action in my
>belief and in belief of most of the Poles, polish right wing goverment,
>and polish church is a provocation before upcoming local govmnt elections
>and before talks with European Union about Polish access to Union even
>begun.
Since when is religion involved in Polish union into EU??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:07:48 EDT 1998
Article: 761 of pl.regionalne.lublin
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.lublin,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:58:41 GMT
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On 16 Aug 1998 22:52:23 GMT, [email protected] (Kaszubik) wrote:
>><HTML><PRE>Subject: JEWS EXTORT 1.25 BILLION FROM SWISS BANKS
>>From: [email protected]
>>Date: Thu, Aug 13, 1998 12:25 EDT
>>Message-id: <[email protected]>
>>
>>A group of Swiss banks have finally agreed to pay the sum of $1,25
>>Billion after extortion from the Jews.
>>
>>The group includes UBS AG, Credit Suisse and Swiss national bank,
>>among others.
>>
>>This followed posturing from several US congressmen who owed favours
>>to their pet Jews.
>>
>>If even the honest Swiss, after giving sanctuary to the Jews in WWII
>>get swindled like this, no wonder less solvent nations have knuckled
>>under to the cursed Christkillers.
>>
>>No wonder Jews are hated, and despised, worldwide!!!
No doubt Poland will be the next country to be asked to make
“reparations” payments???
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:12:15 EDT 1998
Article: 14814 of soc.culture.baltics
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia,soc.culture.new-zealand,soc.culture.baltics,soc.culture.ukrainian
Subject: WARNING!!!Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:22:21 GMT
Lines: 22
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On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
>Please reply in writing to:
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 17:12:15 EDT 1998
Article: 14815 of soc.culture.baltics
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia,soc.culture.new-zealand,soc.culture.baltics,soc.culture.ukrainian
Subject: WARNING!!! – Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:18:55 GMT
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
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On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:23 EDT 1998
Article: 5189 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Re: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:16:56 GMT
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References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:30:39 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
>a subscriber to the printed edition and obtain even more news and
>information. Polonia Today is the up-to-date authoritative publication
>of record in Polonia.
>
><http://www.poloniatoday.com>
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:23 EDT 1998
Article: 5190 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People/Grosvenor the Nazi
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:18:26 GMT
Lines: 11
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References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:31:53 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:24 EDT 1998
Article: 5191 of pl.regionalne.krakow
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From: [email protected]
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Subject: Re: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:15:43 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:27:16 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
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From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:34 EDT 1998
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Re: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:16:56 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:30:39 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
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From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:34 EDT 1998
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People/Grosvenor the Nazi
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:18:26 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:31:53 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:35 EDT 1998
Article: 224 of pl.regionalne.lodz
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.krakow
Subject: Re: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:15:43 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:27:16 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
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From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:46 EDT 1998
Article: 8401 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa
Subject: Re: Moskal Replies to Critics of Auschwitz Cross
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:16:56 GMT
Lines: 17
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:30:39 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:38:57 GMT, [email protected] (Tron) wrote:
>Polonia Today Online at <www.poloniatoday.com> has been updated to
>include the following special stories:
>
>Edward Moskal, President of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) and
>Polish American Congress (PAC), has issued a strong reply to critics
>of the cross near the Auschwitz death camp.
>
>Plus … much more. You are invited to visit our website today. Become
>a subscriber to the printed edition and obtain even more news and
>information. Polonia Today is the up-to-date authoritative publication
>of record in Polonia.
>
><http://www.poloniatoday.com>
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:47 EDT 1998
Article: 8402 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.krakow,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.lodz
Subject: Re: Oswiecim – Priest Supports Polish People/Grosvenor the Nazi
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:18:26 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:31:53 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
Rev. Karl Stehelin of the Society of St.Pius X is to be thanked by all
honest Polish people.
he and his supporters have planted 2 more Christian crosses at
Oswiecim, to commemorate all the Polish Christian martyrs murdered in
World War II. Especially the 152 Polish citizens killed in 1941.
Remember those POLISH officers murdered at KATYN by the
Soviet KGB (Jew led).
From [email protected] Wed Sep 2 19:46:47 EDT 1998
Article: 8403 of pl.regionalne.warszawa
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: pl.regionalne.lodz,pl.regionalne.warszawa,pl.regionalne.krakow
Subject: Re: Zionism and the Third Reich
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:15:43 GMT
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On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:27:16 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:40:38 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
Zionism and the Third Reich
Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German
port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name,
“Tel Aviv,” while a
swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was
Zionist-owned, its captain was a National Socialist Party member. Many
years later a traveler
aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a “metaphysical
absurdity.”1 Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a
little-known chapter of history: The
wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler’s Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the “Jewish question”: that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During
the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared
similar views on how to deal with this perplexing issue. They agreed
that Jews and Germans were
distinctly different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in
Germany.
Jews living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as “Germans
of the Jewish faith,” but rather as members of a separate national
community. Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by
Zionist Jews to resettle in Palestine, the
“Jewish homeland.” They could hardly regard themselves as sincere
Zionists and simultaneously claim equal rights in Germany or any other
“foreign” country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own.
“The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers,”
he wrote in his most influential work, The Jewish State. “Where it
does not exist, it is brought
in by arriving Jews. . . . I believe I understand anti-Semitism, which
is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a Jew,
without hate or fear.” The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. “It is a national
question. To solve it we must, above all, make it an international
political issue. . . .”
Regardless of their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not
merely a religious community, but a nationality, a people, a Volk.
Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered
the world a welcome “final solution of the Jewish question.”
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the
new government that reviewed German-Jewish relations and formally
offered Zionist support in “solving” the vexing “Jewish question.” The
first step, it suggested,
had to be a frank recognition of fundamental national differences: 4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition,
which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in
the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own
tradition. Zionism
recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend,
symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear . . .
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its
Christian and national
character, must also come about in the Jewish national group. For the
Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common destiny and a
sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in the shaping
of its existence. This means that the egotistical individualism of the
liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a sense of community
and collective responsibility . . .
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples . . .
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities.
Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining
the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the
cultural domain, we – having been brought up in the German language
and German culture – can show an
interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration
and internal sympathy . . .
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem
whose solution interests all peoples and at the present moment
especially the German people . . .
Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build . . .
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation’s paper, the Jüdische Rundschau (“Jewish Review”),
proclaimed the same message: “Zionism recognizes the existence of a
Jewish problem and
desires a far-reaching and constructive solution. For this purpose
Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of all peoples, whether pro-
or anti-Jewish, because, in its
view, we are dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental
problem, the solution of which all peoples are interested.”5 A young
Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz,
who later settled in the United States and became head of the American
Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (“We Jews”), that
the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant “Jewry for the
Jews.” He explained: “No
subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new
concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race.” 6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own
national interest. As a result, the Hitler government vigorously
supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until
1940-1941, when the Second
World War prevented extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new
life in far-away Palestine. Nevertheless, more and more German Jews
turned to Zionism
during this period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished
in Germany under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation’s
bi-weekly Judische Rundschau grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books
were published. “Zionist
work was in full swing” in Germany during those years, the
Encyclopaedia Judaica
notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected “in its
composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists.”7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the
government and the Party as the best way to encourage emigration of
Germany’s Jews to Palestine. This would require increased Jewish
self-awareness. Jewish
schools, Jewish sports leagues, Jewish cultural organizations – in
short, everything that would encourage this new consciousness and
self-awareness – should be
promoted, the paper recommended.8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess
Zionist development there. Based
on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein wrote a series of
twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin daily Der Angriff
that appeared in late 1934 under
the heading “A Nazi Travels to Palestine.” The series expressed great
admiration for the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish
settlers. Zionist self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had
produced a new kind of Jew. He
praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and the
entire world.
A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his concluding article,
“pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on the body of the
world: the Jewish
question.” Der Angriff issued a special medal, with a Swastika on one
side and a Star of David on the other, to commemorate the joint
SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the articles appeared, von
Mildenstein was promoted to head the
Jewish affairs department of the SS security service in order to
support Zionist migration and development more effectively. 9
The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its support
for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: “The time may not be
too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons who
have been lost to it for
more than a thousand years. Our good wishes, together with official
goodwill, go with them.”10
Four months later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: 11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called
Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry around the
world and its rejection of all assimilationist notions. On this basis,
Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role
in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
>from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing “strictly
kosher food on its ships,
under the supervision of the Hamburg rabbinate.” 12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to “reeducate”
Germany’s Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his
1985 survey, The Third Reich
and the Palestine Question: “Zionists were encouraged to take their
message to the Jewish community, to collect money, to show films on
Palestine and generally to
educate German Jews about Palestine. There was considerable pressure
to teach Jews in Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans
and to awaken a new Jewish national identity in them.” 13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
“The Gestapo did everything in
those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often
received their help when we required anything from other authorities
regarding preparations for emigration.” 14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the Reichstag
adopted the so-called “Nuremberg laws” that prohibited marriages and
sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect, proclaimed
the Jews an alien minority
nationality. A few days later the Zionist Judische Rundschau
editorially welcomed the new measures: 15
Germany . . . is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress
when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national
minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is
again possible to
establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The
new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life,
its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own
schools, its own theatre, and its
own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all
aspects of national life . . .
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority:
Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and
a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable
relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the “Revisionist” Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community,
declared in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Angriff at the end
of 1935: 16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of the cultural
affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a pre-condition for
living together without conflict. . . . I have long supported such a
separation, provided it is founded on respect for the alien
nationality. The Nuremberg Laws
. . . seem to me, apart from their legal provisions, to conform
entirely with this desire for a separate life based on mutual respect.
. . . This interruption
of the process of dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had
been promoted through mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish
point of view, entirely welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New
York rally in June 1938: “I am not an American citizen of the Jewish
faith, I am a Jew. . . . Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the
Jewish people a race and we are a race.” 17
The Interior Ministry’s Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
L_sener,
expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the
official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: 18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the majority of them
were settled, then the Jewish question could be regarded as completely
resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The least amount of
opposition to
the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws have been shown by the
Zionists, because they realize at once that these laws represent the
only correct solution for the Jewish people as well. For each nation
must have its own state as the outward expression of its particular
nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout
Germany where
prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in Palestine.
Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the German
flag, Jews were specifically
guaranteed the right to display the blue and white Jewish national
banner. The flag that would one day be adopted by Israel was flown at
the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler’s Germany. 19
Himmler’s security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel
Polkes for information about the situation in Palestine and for help
in directing Jewish emigration to that country. Meanwhile, the Haganah
was kept well informed
about German plans by a spy it managed to plant in the Berlin
headquarters of the SS.20 Haganah-SS collaboration even included
secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 “Kristallnacht” outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist
organization to get back on its feet
and continue its work in Germany, although now under more restricted
supervision. 22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the
United States, Britain and other countries to mobilize “their”
governments and
fellow citizens against Germany. As long as world Jewry remained
implacably hostile
towards National Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority
of Jews around the world showed little eagerness to resettle in the
Zionist “promised land,” a
sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really “solve” the
international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned, it
would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore
limited to support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine under British
control, not a sovereign Jewish state. 23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany’s interest because it would not
be able to absorb all
Jews around the world, but would only serve as an additional power
base for international Jewry, in much the same way as Moscow served as
a base for international Communism.24
Reflecting something of a shift in official policy,
the German press expressed much greater sympathy in 1937 for
Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist ambitions, at a time when
tension and conflict between
Jews and Arabs in Palestine was sharply increasing. 25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that in
spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, “it would
nevertheless be a mistake to
assume that Germany supports the formation of a state structure in
Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In view of the
anti-German agitation of international
Jewry, Germany cannot agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish
state would help the peaceful development of the nations of the
world.”26 ”
The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine,” warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, “would
create for Germany a new
enemy, one that would have a deep influence on developments in the
Near East.”
Another SS agency predicted that a Jewish state “would work to bring
special minority protection to Jews in every country, therefore giving
legal protection to the exploitation activity of world Jewry.”27 In
January 1939,
Hitler’s new Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned
in another circular bulletin that “Germany must regard the formation
of a Jewish state as dangerous” because it
“would bring an international increase in power to world Jewry.” 28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might
contribute to the formation of a Jewish state, decided to support
Jewish migration to Palestine even more vigorously. The prospect of
ridding Germany of its Jews,
he concluded, outweighed the possible dangers. 29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS
security service concluded a secret alliance with the clandestine
Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews illegally into
Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration, several
convoys of ships succeeded in reaching
Palestine past British gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and
illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939.
Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but the
outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish
emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. 30
Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist
“kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants continued to operate
in Hitler’s Germany. 31
The Transfer Agreement
The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was theTransfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate
to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement, also known as the
Ha’avara (Hebrew for “transfer”), was concluded in August 1933
following talks between German
officials and Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish
Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization. 32
Through this unusual arrangement, each Jew bound for Palestine
deposited money in a special account in Germany. The money was used to
purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps,
fertilizer, and so
forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the
Jewish-owned Ha’avara
company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish
emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to
his deposit in Germany.
German goods poured into Palestine through the Ha’avara, which was
supplemented a short time later with a barter agreement by which
Palestine oranges were
exchanged for German timber, automobiles, agricultural machinery, and
other goods. The Agreement thus served the Zionist aim of bringing
Jewish settlers and
development capital to Palestine, while simultaneously serving the
German goal of freeing the country of an unwanted alien group.
Delegates at the 1933 Zionist Congress in Prague vigorously debated
the merits of the Agreement. Some feared that the pact would undermine
the international
Jewish economic boycott against Germany. But Zionist officials
reassured the Congress. Sam Cohen, a key figure behind the Ha’avara
arrangement, stressed that
the Agreement was not economically advantageous to Germany. Arthur
Ruppin, a Zionist Organization emigration specialist who had helped
negotiate the pact,
pointed out that “the Transfer Agreement in no way interfered with the
boycott movement, since no new currency will flow into Germany as a
result of the agreement. . . .” 33 The 1935 Zionist Congress, meeting
in Switzerland,
overwhelmingly endorsed the pact. In 1936, the Jewish Agency (the
Zionist “shadow
government” in Palestine) took over direct control of the Ha’avara,
which remained in effect until the Second World War forced its
abandonment.
Some German officials opposed the arrangement. Germany’s Consul
General in Jerusalem, Hans D_hle, for example, sharply criticized the
Agreement on several
occasions during 1937. He pointed out that it cost Germany the foreign
exchange that the products exported to Palestine through the pact
would bring if sold elsewhere. The Ha’avara monopoly sale of German
goods to Palestine through a
Jewish agency naturally angered German businessmen and Arabs there.
Official German support for Zionism could lead to a loss of German
markets throughout the Arab world. The British government also
resented the arrangement.34
A June 1937 German Foreign Office internal bulletin referred to the
“foreign exchange sacrifices” that resulted from the Ha’avara. 35
A December 1937 internal memorandum by the German Interior Ministry
reviewed the impact of the Transfer Agreement: “There is no doubt that
the Ha’avara arrangement has contributed most significantly to the
very rapid development of Palestine since 1933. The Agreement provided
not only the largest source of money
(from Germany!), but also the most intelligent group of immigrants,
and finally it brought to the country the machines and industrial
products essential for
development.” The main advantage of the pact, the memo reported, was
the emigration of large numbers of Jews to Palestine, the most
desirable target country as
far as Germany was concerned. But the paper also noted the important
drawbacks pointed out by Consul D_hle and others. The Interior
Minister, it went on, had
concluded that the disadvantages of the agreement now outweighed the
advantages and that, therefore, it should be terminated. 36
Only one man could resolve the controversy. Hitler personally reviewed
the policy in July and September 1937, and again in January 1938, and
each time decided
to maintain the Ha’avara arrangement. The goal of removing Jews from
Germany, he concluded, justified the drawbacks. 37
The Reich Economics Ministry helped to organize another transfer
company, the International Trade and Investment Agency, or Intria,
through which Jews in
foreign countries could help German Jews emigrate to Palestine. Almost
$900,000 was eventually channeled through the Intria to German Jews in
Palestine.38
Other European countries eager to encourage Jewish emigration
concluded agreements with the Zionists modeled after the Ha’avara. In
1937 Poland authorized the
Halifin (Hebrew for “exchange”) transfer company. By late summer 1939,
Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Italy had signed similar
arrangements.
The outbreak of war in September 1939, however, prevented large-scale
implementation of these agreements. 39
Achievements of Ha’avara
Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. (These German Jews
made up about 15 percent
of Palestine’s 1939 Jewish population.) Some Ha’avara emigrants
transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to Palestine. As
Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these people,
especially in the late 1930s, were
allowed to transfer actual replicas of their homes and factories –
indeed rough replicas of their very existence.”40
The total amount transferred from Germany to Palestine through the
Ha’avara between August 1933 and the end of 1939 was 8.1 million
pounds or 139.57 million
German marks (then equivalent to more than $40 million). This amount
included 33.9 million German marks ($13.8 million) provided by the
Reichsbank in connection with the Agreement.41
Historian Black has estimated that an additional $70 million may have
flowed into Palestine through corollary German commercial agreements
and special international banking transactions. The German funds had a
major impact on a
country as underdeveloped as Palestine was in the 1930s, he pointed
out.
Several major industrial enterprises were built with the capital from
Germany, including the Mekoroth waterworks and the Lodzia textile
firm. The influx of Ha’avara goods
and capital, concluded Black, “produced an economic explosion in
Jewish Palestine” and was “an indispensable factor in the creation of
the State of Israel.”42
The Ha’avara agreement greatly contributed to Jewish development in
Palestine and thus, indirectly, to the foundation of the Israeli
state. A January 1939 German
Foreign Office circular bulletin reported, with some misgiving, that
“the transfer of Jewish property out of Germany [through the Ha’avara
agreement] contributed to
no small extent to the building of a Jewish state in Palestine.”43
Former officials of the Ha’avara company in Palestine confirmed this
view in a detailed study of the Transfer Agreement published in 1972:
“The economic activity
made possible by the influx German capital and the Haavara transfers
to the private and public sectors were of greatest importance for the
country’s development.
Many new industries and commercial enterprises were established in
Jewish Palestine, and numerous companies that are enormously important
even today in the
economy of the State of Israel owe their existence to the Haavara.”44
Dr.Ludwig Pinner, a Ha’avara company official in Tel Aviv during the
1930s, later commented that the exceptionally competent Ha’avara
immigrants “decisively
contributed” to the economic, social, cultural and educational
development of Palestine’s Jewish community.45
The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third
Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support
Jewish development in Palestine.
Zionists Offer a Military Alliance With Hitler
In early January 1941 a small but important Zionist organization
submitted a formal proposal to German diplomats in Beirut for a
military-political alliance with wartime Germany. The offer was made
by the radical underground “Fighters for
the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Lehi or Stern Gang. Its
leader, Avraham Stern, had recently broken with the radical
nationalist “National Military Organization” (Irgun Zvai Leumi) over
the group’s attitude toward Britain, which
had effectively banned further Jewish settlement of Palestine. Stern
regarded Britain as the main enemy of Zionism.
This remarkable Zionist proposal “for the solution of the Jewish
question in Europe and the active participation of the NMO [Lehi] in
the war on the side of
Germany” is worth quoting at some length:46
In their speeches and statements, the leading statesmen of National
Socialist Germany have often emphasized that a New Order in Europe
requires as a prerequisite a radical solution of the Jewish question
by evacuation.(“Jew-free Europe”)
The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for
solving the Jewish question. However, the only way this can be totally
achieved is through settlement of these masses in the homeland of the
Jewish people, Palestine, and by the establishment of a Jewish state
in its historical boundaries.
The goal of the political activity and the years of struggle by the
Israel Freedom Movement, the National Military Organization in
Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi), is to solve the Jewish problem in this
way and thus completely liberate the Jewish people forever.
The NMO, which is very familiar with the good will of the German Reich
government and its officials towards Zionist activities within Germany
and the Zionist emigration program, takes that view that:
>—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—–
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
From [email protected] Thu Sep 3 12:24:23 EDT 1998
Article: 41060 of soc.culture.ukrainian
Path: trends.ca!hub.org!hub.org!newsfeed.direct.ca!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news.agtac.net!news.nucleus.com!pm1-edm-6.nucleus.com
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia,soc.culture.new-zealand,soc.culture.baltics,soc.culture.ukrainian
Subject: WARNING!!!Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:22:21 GMT
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.45.65.8
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On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
>Please reply in writing to:
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
From [email protected] Thu Sep 3 12:24:23 EDT 1998
Article: 41061 of soc.culture.ukrainian
Path: trends.ca!hub.org!hub.org!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.abs.net!nntp.cadvision.com!news.agtac.net!news.nucleus.com!pm1-edm-6.nucleus.com
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.uk,soc.culture.british,soc.culture.australia,soc.culture.new-zealand,soc.culture.baltics,soc.culture.ukrainian
Subject: WARNING!!! – Canadian Immigration Business Opportunity
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 18:18:55 GMT
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
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Xref: trends.ca soc.culture.british:273439 soc.culture.australia:11330 soc.culture.new-zealand:60401 soc.culture.baltics:14815 soc.culture.ukrainian:41061
On Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:52:04 -0700, “Guy P. Major, Attorney at Law”
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Established Canadian Law Firm seeks reputable business/professional
>partner for the processing of Canadian immigration applications.
This smells like another swindle by criminals trying to get more
criminals and other undesirables into Canada!!!
Legitimate, qualified individuals do not need to pay scammers to apply
to emigrate to canada.
Only those unsuited, and unqualified, need pay for the service, which
is available FREE at all Canada immigration offices!!!!
By the way, since when is the appellation “attorney at law” legal in
Canada??
