The Transfer Agreement (18 page)

April First was therefore Day One. The Nazis had launched their war against the Jews, mobilizing all of Germany. The Jews would launch their war against the Nazis, mobilizing all the world. Anti-Hitler boycotts, protest marches, and meetings were now in store. Germany was to be isolated politically, economically, even culturally until she cast off her Nazi leadership. Germany was to be taught another bitter lesson.

T
HE
WORLD
awoke to German Jewish refugees. They appeared imme
diately following April First. But it wasn't the boycott alone. Jews were being purged from every commercial and professional field. Thousands became victims of random street violence. Tens of thousands more were jailed on specious charges. Worse, the Third Reich was drafting legislation to legitimize the illegitimate course of Jewish destruction, even as workers rushed to construct a mysterious political concentration camp at a pastoral village named Dachau.

There was no time for elaborate arrangements. Getting out was important, out to anywhere. An extra hour standing still might mean death for any German Jew prominent in creative, political, or commercial endeavors. By ship, by train, on bicycle and foot, they rushed to the borders, clutching a few parcels of luggage or small bundles of precious items: sometimes just a brown paper bag, cash, some food, pictures of loved ones; often a book, frequently a diary.

At first they were counted by the dozens, then by the thousands. On April First, every train entering Denmark was crowded with German Jewish refugees. That same day, hundreds more entered the Netherlands. Dutch border towns provided temporary shelter and opened their public kitchens to the fleeing families.
¹

In Paris, hundreds of German Jewish refugees strained charitable organizations to the limit.
It
was the same in Czechoslovakia and Poland, which counted at least
3,000
fleeing Jews, and Switzerland, where at least
6,000
had entered, and Belgium, where thousands of Jews fled over the hills to freedom, many chased by the rifle fire of Reich border guards—and all this in just the first three or four days following the Nazi anti-Jewish boycott. Non-bordering European states such as Spain and Portugal, and even England, also felt the drama of escape as each new ship yielded more desperate German Jewish citizens.
²

Within two ,weeks of April First, more than
I0,000
German Jews had escaped and were now in need of food, clothing, organization, jobs—a basis for existence.
³
No Nazi claim of "domestic affairs" could any longer stand. The crisis was indeed internationaL Germany's persecution of its Jews was openly at the doorstep of the world. Newspaper and radio reports from Germany were now bettered by new evidence: men, women, and children, homeless, hungry, and clutching the remnants of their lives in small bags.

As in previous Jewish emergencies, the world Jewish community reacted with political agitation against the oppressive force. But this fight would be different. It would not be waged so much by those with access to high office as by ordinary men and women whose great weapon lay jingling in their coin purses. The front lines would be in dimestores and cinemas, in the camera shops and in the haberdasheries, where every person wielded a mighty power: the simple power to reject. The boycott was the long gun whose shell could reach from London or Detroit to Hamburg or Munich. Therefore, local Jewish committees and national associations would not suffice. People would need to be unified in a far-flung, all-encompassing economic war against the Third Reich. An international Jewish body would be needed. And in
I933
there existed only one that maintained a worldwide organization and enjoyed the popular following and political access the anti-Nazi boycott movement demanded.

That body was the Zionist Organization.

Yet in the eyes of Zionists, the outrages of Hitler were nothing unexpected. Zionist ideology predicted periodic Jewish oppression in even the most enlightened lands of the Diaspora, that is, the communities of Jewish dispersion. Such waves of anti-Semitism had been a regular character of Jewish life in Europe since
emancipation
in the mid-nineteenth century, when Jews were allowed to emerge from the ghettos and participate on a less unequal footing with other Europeans. In the twentieth century, Jewish blood was easily spilled, not only by the czar until his overthrow, but also along the Polish-Russian border, where from
I9I9
to
I92I
about
IOO,OOO
Jewish civilians were massacred by the Soviet and Ukranian armies during the Polish-Russian War; and in Rumania, where during the mid-twenties nationwide anti-Jewish rioting openly sponsored by the minister of the interior destroyed synagogues and killed innocent civilians.
⁴

The rise of Hitler was therefore seen by Zionists simply as the latest anti-Semitic episode. But this time things were different. In a macabre sense, things were ideal. The German Jews were not impoverished Russian peasants or lower-class Polish merchants with few valuables. These German Jews were solidly middle class. They possessed land, homes, furnishings, shares of stock. They were lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, artists, civil servants. They owned not storefronts, but department store chains. They owned not pawnshops, but major commercial banks. These men and women who had no place in the German Reich would find an indispensable place in the Jewish nation. From their dispossession would come repossession. Behold: Israel was waiting within the borders of the Third Reich.

Here then was a turning point for Zionism. The task facing the Zionist movement was to maneuver to the forefront of the international Jewish response and interpose Zionism and Palestine as the central solution to the German Jewish problem.

Just what was Zionism, and why did it hold such a confusing position in Jewish life at the time? Zionism is one ofthe most misunderstood movements in modern history, both by its adherents and by its critics. Its political patchwork of parties, factions, philosophical feuds, rivalries, improbable alliances, and tenuous coalitions perpetuates the confusion and defies efforts to define the movement in simple, clear-cut terms. But a rudimentary explanation of Zionism is essential to understanding why the movement saw the rise of Hitler as its decisive moment.

In the
I890S,
after the pogroms in "uncivilized" Russia, and the Dreyfus prosecution in "civilized" France, Theodor Herzl emerged as the leader of an international group of Jewish thinkers who saw a return to the Holy Land as the solution to Jewish persecution in Europe. Herzl in
I895
had written a pamphlet entitled "The Jewish State—An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. "The Jewish State," originally written in German under the title
"Der ludenstaat,"
was an extraordinary work. Mixing equal portions of genius and nonsense, human compassion and ruthless pragmatism, a keen sense of history and an impressive utopian notion of the future,
"Der ludenstaat"
became the bible of the Zionist movement.
⁵

In his treatise, Herzl readily admits there is a Jewish problem "wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers." Herzl declares that the Jews themselves "introduced" anti-Semitism by their very presence: "Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country." Thus, Herzl declares that Jewish persecution is not an aberrant facet of bigoted society, but a natural reaction to the appearance of a foreign group—the Jews.
⁶

Herzl identifies "modern anti-Semitism" as distinct from religious intolerance or bigotry; instead, anti-Semitism is a political and economic movement itself created by the emancipation of Jews from the ghettos and their strained acceptance into Christian society. Herzl's words: "In the principal countries where anti-Semitism prevails, it does so as a result ofthe emancipation of the Jews." Herzl asserts that assimilation of Jews into the mainstream of nations was a historical error that naturally produced Christian backlash.
⁷

It is the natural Christian backlash, in Herzl's view, not the Jewish religion, that makes the Jewish people a true and distinct nation. That nation, he declares, must procure itself a territory, establish sovereignty, and transfer its people. Herzl specifies Palestine as the ideal home for the Jewish nation if acquired under formal international guarantees. Herzl denigrates gradual colonizing as mere "infiltration" sure once again to stimulate anti-Semitism. International supervision was prerequisite to any population transfer.
⁸

Transfer itself was to take place over several decades following acquisition of the land. First would come the "desperate," fleeing oppression and pogroms. Retrained for labor in the Jewish homeland, they would cultivate the soil and build the physical infrastructure of the state. Second would come "the poor," who would create vast labor pools and commercial demand. Then would come "the prosperous" to capitalize on the Jewish State's trade. And finally "the wealthy" would arrive, to join the now well-established Jewish State.
⁹

Throughout Herzl states his anticipation that the multitudes of comfortable Jews throughout the world who are not victims of persecution will vigorously oppose Zionism. "Old prisoners do not willingly leave their cells," he writes. Although Herzl specifies that emigration to the Jewish State would be totally voluntary, he threatens that those who do not join would be left behind, cut off from the Jewish people, and ultimately assimilated by the Christian nations. "Hence, if all or any of the French Jews protest against this scheme on account of their own 'assimilation,' my answer is simple: The whole thing does not concern them at all. They are Jewish Frenchmen, well and good! That is a private affair for the Jews alone."
¹⁰

While stressing the element of choice—"He who will not come with us may remain behind"—Herzl assures that once the choice is made, the methods
of achieving Zionist objectives will be accomplished without "any voting on it," even if it requires fighting the aspirations of so-called assimilated Jews. Herzl's words: "Perhaps we shall have to fight first of all against many an evil-disposed, narrow-hearted, short-sighted member of our own race."
In an even more forceful passage, he declares, "Whoever can, will, and must perish, let him perish. But the distinctive nationality of the Jews neither can, will, nor must be destroyed .... Whole branches of Judaism may wither and fall, but the trunk remains."
¹¹

Herzl's concepts were very much reflective of his times. During the late I800s, many European groups developed fervent nationalistic movements. These were generally drawn along ethnic lines that saw linguistic, geographic, religious, and/or historic roots as a basis for sovereignty that superseded the ecclesiastic and/or dynastic state. As nationalistic movements drew their ethnic lines, Jews found themselves systematically excluded, or included only conditionally at the tenuous pleasure of the majority. Herzl's thinking made perfect sense in a Europe that persecuted Jews even when they abandoned their religious practices or converted to Christianity. Herzl was correct. Anti-Semitism, not religion, created the Jewish nation.

Herzl's pamphlet,
"Der Judenstaat,"
included a detailed blueprint for building the Jewish State. Two instruments were necessary: first, a "Society of the Jews," to negotiate and manage the affairs of the emerging Jewish nation; second, "The Jewish Company," a strictly commercial entity to liquidate the financial position of Jews in Europe and transfer their wealth to Palestine. According to plan, the Jewish Company would take charge of the assets of each emigrating Jew and provide a compensating value in land, machinery, and homes in the new Jewish State. The Jewish Company would manage the European Jewish businesses and/or Jewish financial matters until they could be sold off to "honest anti-Semites" who would step into the Jews' former economic positions. Herzl promises Christian governments that this Jewish Company would sell off Jewish holdings at a substantial discount. He further entices Christian governments to cooperate in the Zionist program, with a promise of great prosperity to their Christian citizens once Jews totally withdraw from Europe. Until self-sufficient, the new Jewish State would also represent a loyal and lucrative market for the exports of cooperating Christian countries.
¹²