The Adoption of the Nazi Agenda

March 1933: After a meeting with Goering, the Zionist leadership aligns itself with the Hitler regime and pledges to foil any boycott of Germany. In exchange, the Nazis grant the Zionists freedom of action and movement while cracking down on the Jewish community.

Chapter 1

To The Rescue

Shared Agenda

The speed with which the Zionist leadership adopted the Nazi agenda was astounding. On March 31, 12 days after the Goering meeting, the Jewish Agency Executive sent a telegram to Hitler that pledged to neutralize any Jewish boycott. The telegram by Martin Rosenbluth, Blumenfeld’s

envoy, did not set any conditions for cooperation. “Official Palestinian Jewry has not proclaimed boycott [of] German goods. [Agency officials] Are sure boycott so far spontaneous action by individuals and may be stopped if German authorities will not continue actions against Jews.” 8

On the following day, the Nazis replied with a nationwide boycott of the Jews and their enterprises. Again, Jews were beaten and arrested, their stores vandalized. Zionist institutions, however, were left alone.

Hitler’s crackdown only fueled the Zionist determination to help expel the Jews. A Zionist delegation began negotiating with the Reich and proposed that deported Jews would be

unable to transfer their money abroad with the exception of Palestine. Sam Cohen, a successful businessman and Zionist philanthropist, was selected to discuss the terms of expulsion He envisioned a partnership with Nazi Germany. Cohen bought an interest in the Revisionist newspaper Doar

Hayom, or the Daily Post, in an effort to turn it into a pro-German organ. The proposal under discussion was to force Jews to forfeit all of their wealth in exchange for 15,000 Reichsmarks, or about 1,000 British pounds, sufficient to obtain an entry certificate to Palestine.

In June, the German Zionist Federation , known by its German acronym ZVfD, urged Hitler to make the Zionists the only legitimate Jewish voice in Germany. Working closely with the leadership in Jerusalem and London, Blumenfeld and Robert Weltsch also called for Jewish autonomy. Like

Blumenfeld, Weltsch was a leading Zionist and friendly with Weizmann. Hitler apparently did not agree. But he would ensure that the Zionists would become the only Jewish political movement allowed to operate throughout Germany. During World War II, the Nazi press would exploit the

proposal by Blumenfeld and Weltsch. Assigned to assuage the new ghettos of Poland, the newspapers would lie that the Jews of Germany had been granted autonomy. They were

even said to have been given their own currency. 9

Palestine would soon supersede the Zionist organization in London and within weeks assume the leading role in the fate of German Jewry. Jewish Agency Political Department chief Haim Arlosoroff became the main interlocutor with the Reich. The 34-year-old Arlosoroff, born in Ukraine and educated in Germany, was as ambitious as Ben-Gurion. At 24, Arlosoroff

was elected by the 1923 Zionist Congress to the powerful Action Committee. Three years later, he would represent the Jewish community of Palestine at the League of Nations in Geneva. 10

Arlosoroff combined intellectual pretense with raw political power. By 1931, he concluded the merger of his Hapoel Hatzair, or the Young Laborer, with Ben-Gurion’s Ahdut HaAvoda. The new movement would be called the Mapai Party, the Hebrew acronym for The Labor Party in Eretz Yisrael, the political umbrella that would set the agenda for Palestine, Israel and the Diaspora for the next 80 years. He was appointed political secretary of the Jewish Agency. A year later, Arlosoroff joined Ben-Gurion in the agency Executive. His vision, which he shared with the British, was of an “armed” Jewish Agency dictatorship under London’s auspices. The regime would last a decade and eventually transform into a state.

By 1933, Arlosoroff, clashing with Ben-Gurion as well as Weizmann, warned that Britain was turning against the Zionists. The junior member of the Executive said the British were cracking down on Jewish immigration, even stopping Jewish tourism and pilgrimage, on the pretext that some of the visitors had chosen to remain illegally in Palestine. 11

He argued that the new Nazi regime in Berlin would grant the Zionist movement a diplomatic and economic tool to challenge Britain’s appeasement of the Arabs. It would also end the movement’s dependency on the steadily-reduced funding from the Diaspora. Arlosoroff, and later Ben-Gurion,

envisioned the flow of untold millions of marks from Germany to Palestine as reinforcing Mapai and its institutions.

What Arlosoroff sought was a rapid and secret deal with Germany that could be presented to the Jewish Agency Executive as a fait accompli. He first recruited the deposed Weizmann to foil Jewish opposition to Zionist negotiations with Berlin. Then, Arlosoroff, unhappy with the pittance in

foreign currency granted to the Jewish emigrants, worked with Mapai colleagues to establish a holding company that offered stock to those prepared to flee Hitler. Through Weizmann, Arlosoroff launched a campaign that would garner funds worldwide to pay for German Jewish resettlement in Palestine. The idea was to reach out to rich Jews everywhere.

Arlosoroff also worked with the German consul in Palestine, Heinrich Wolff, who quickly introduced him to the German Foreign Ministry as an important Zionist official. Soon, Wolff

became committed to relations between the Jewish Agency and the Reich. Such relations were vital to the agency, which feared that rich German Jews would be allowed to resettle in America or other parts of Europe, leaving the poor to Palestine. Arlosoroff had another concern: the German Jewish

immigrants would be limited to white collar professionals unwilling to work the land and remain outside the control of Mapai and the Histadrut. In his words, “there is no place [in Palestine] for doctors and lawyers.” 12

In May 1933, Arlosoroff vowed that any agreement with the Reich would mean the evacuation of the German Jewish community to Palestine. He assured everybody that all German Jews would be welcomed. The young would be cared for, the working men and women would be retrained, and

homes would be found in rural settlements. 13

The empty promises were familiar to the Nazis. They saw the Zionists as they saw themselves — cold-blooded, greedy and lustful of power. The masses were no more than a tool of the leadership. The needs of constituents were acknowledged only when the survival of the regime was at stake. Not long after World War II, Goering, now awaiting execution at Nuremberg, mused over how Hitler and his colleagues had manipulated an entire nation to genocide and eventually self-destruction.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they

are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” 14

Below: Arlosoroff, center sitting, with Weizmann to his left and Arab dignitaries to his right. Jerusalem, 1933