The Transfer Agreement (25 page)

Introduction in hand, Arlosoroff made ready to leave Palestine. However, just before he left, the members of the Jewish Agency Executive Committee insisted on a last-minute confrontation. On April 25, they demanded once and for all to know exactly why Arlosoroff was going to Germany. Arlosoroff at first denied that his trip was really very special. But when Neumann absolutely insisted the trip be canceled and that the authorizing vote be rescinded, Arlosoroff finally blurted out, "I don't wish to be a football . . . to be condemned for my bad behavior." In a moment more he admitted his true mission.
³⁶

German assets must be liquidated and transferred to Palestine. A structured institution—say, an emigration bank—would be necessary. Arlosoroff would organize it, probably through future negotiations with the German government. Arlosoroff claimed that the negotiations were not actually possible at this tense moment. Instead he might just lay the groundwork with the German Zionists in Berlin for government negotiations to come.
³⁷

Senator, the man who started the currency exemption negotiations six weeks earlier, saw his plan disintegrating. Arlosoroff's authority was now clearly in dispute. Senator declared he would also travel to Germany. This Arlosoroff opposed, believing that as a German, Senator's negotiations would be doomed. Ukrainian-born Arlosoroff insisted that he would go, Senator would not, and that was that.
³⁸

What now for Senator and his German Zionist colleagues, so eager to convert their currency exemption into a viable program? How could they lift this opportunity out of the miasma of Zionist factionalism and save the transfer? They doubted that the man they had taken into their confidence, Chaim Arlosoroff, visionary and dynamic as he was, was capable of accomplishing the feat. What Zionist official could, given the Jewish Agency's political strife?

Mr. Sam Cohen was still in Palestine and paid a visit to Consul Heinrich Wolff that same day, April 25.
³⁹
Sam Cohen had a plan.

Cohen was connected to a company named Hanotaiah Ltd., which in Hebrew meant "the planters." Hanotaiah (Ha-noh-tay-ah) essentially existed as a profit-making subsidiary of a settlement organization called the Young Farmers Association. Hanotaiah's main business was buying and selling land, especially for orange orchards, and providing equipment needed for citrus cultivation.
⁴⁰

Cohen explained his idea. The consul approved and provided Cohen with what amounted to a rival letter of introduction, describing Hanotaiah as an important land-investment firm—citing several million dollars in business over the past four years. Partially explaining what Hanotaiah had to offer,
Wolff wrote, "Up to now, Hanotaiah has bought pumps, pipes, and so forth in Czechoslovakia, since they are cheaper than in Germany." Wolff knew that pipes were one of Germany's most important exports. The letter explained that Yugoslav and Italian firms were soliciting Hanotaiah's pipe orders as well. But Hanotaiah would purchase all future pipes and other agricultural equipment from Germany if the merchandise could be paid for with the frozen assets of German Jews.
⁴¹

It was very complicated. But, wrote Wolff, all would be explained by Hanotaiah's representative, who would travel to Germany to negotiate the deal.
⁴²

Arlosoroff left Palestine for Berlin on April
26, 1933
.
Mr. Sam Cohen left for Berlin shortly thereafter.
⁴³

Z
IONIST
LEADERS,
during April
1933
,
sought to cooperate with the Nazi Reich to arrange the orderly exit of Jewish people and wealth from
Germany. But during the very same weeks, Jewish groups throughout the world were struggling to resist and topple the Reich to keep Jews in Germany as citizens. Boycott and protest were everywhere.

April I:
Paris,
the International League Against Anti-Semitism made good on its threat to declare a boycott, effective
10:00 A.M.
until the downfall
of Adolf Hitler or the resumption of full rights for German Jews.
Istanbul,
Jews distributed circulars urging a boycott of all German products.
¹

April 2:
Toronto,
a mass protest meeting cosponsored by Jewish and Christian clergy adopted the boycott.
Paris,
Cardinal Verdier publicly assured the chief rabbi of Paris that Catholics would actively support the anti-Hitler movement.
²

April 3:
Salonika,
70,000
Greek Jews gathered in a mass protest against Hitler.
Panama,
fifteen leading Jewish firms announced the cancellation of all orders of German merchandise.
³

April 4:
Bombay,
Jewish protest meetings condemned the Hitler regime.
⁴

April 5:
New York,
15,000
leftists protested both Nazism and those Jewish and governmental leader's going slowly in the fight against Hitler.
⁵

In Poland, the national boycott against Germany was enforced by mob violence. On April 6, Reich Ambassador Hans Moltke officially demanded an
end to the violent boycott and its semiofficial encouragement. The Polish Undersecretary of State angrily told Moltke to his face that the Polish government did not desire to interfere with the boycott. Anti-German boycott violence was so extensive in Upper Silesia that the German Foreign Ministry declared "the situation altogether unbearable" and threatened to complain to the League of Nations.
⁶

In England, on April 9, the fear of Polish-style boycott violence prompted police in London and Manchester to insist all storeowners, under pain of prosecution, remove "Boycott German Goods" window posters. The next afternoon, boycott suppression was excitedly debated in Parliament. Home Secretary Sir John Gilmour denied that the police were acting on express government orders. Just to make sure, Winston Churchill called for an official end to the suppression, to which the home secretary answered, "Certainly."
⁷
Meanwhile, Britain's Labour-dominated boycott movement continued to expand. By April 15,
The Daily Herald,
quoting industry sources, estimated the fur boycott alone would cost Germany $100 million annually.
⁸

Similar scares faced the Reich from all over Europe.

April
I3:
Bucharest,
German trade was already suffering from a semi-official boycott because the Rumanian National Bank refused to allocate foreign currency for German imports (in retaliation for Reich barriers to Rumanian goods), Now Rumanian Jews formally joined the popular purchasing embargo, thus eliminating many barter deals as well. In Ploesti, Jewish merchants refused three carloads of German porcelain despite frantic price reductions by the shippers. Other German industries in Rumania were similarly afflicted.
⁹

April I7:
Antwerp,
the fur boycott was extended to Belgium following a binding resolution by Jewish fur traders.
¹⁰

April
I9:
Belgrade,
the anti-German boycott in Yugoslavia was so damaging that local Nazi surrogates began an intense but futile counterboycott to pressure Jews to abandon the fight.
¹¹

The spirit of the anti-Nazi boycott was fueled not only by persistent organizers, but by encouraging press reports. For example, the sudden termination of Germany's April First action was explained by the world press as Hitler's retreat from economic retaliation.
¹²
This convinced many that the best defense was a better offense.

Encouragement continued. Berlin newspapers began to report Germany's foreign trade for the first quarter in a dangerous decline.
¹³
On April 9, Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's newly appointed head of the Reichsbank, surprised a conference of international bankers in Basel by reducing Germany's foreign debt with a $70-million dollar check. Although the payment severely drained reserves, Schacht hoped to inject some believability into Germany's credit. But the financial press reported the "show of strength" as a mere desperate maneuver.
¹⁴
Financial writers pessimistically pointed to the extraordinary
German economic dislocation directly caused by Hitler's anti-Jewish policy. The press emphasized that the economic problems included both external backlash and massive internal disruption resulting from the sudden subtraction of the Jewish middle class from the commercial mainstream.
¹⁵

On April
I0
,
Germany announced that Jewish veterans would be exempted from sweeping anti-Jewish occupational expulsions—at Hindenburg's request, in the name of fairness.
The New York Times
attributed the "softening" not to sentimentality, but to the world protest and resulting economic chaos within the Reich. A week later, the
Times
carried another story repeating the theme, adding that a quiet but cohesive lobby within German economic circles opposed continued anti-Semitic activity.
¹⁶

In a radical move on April
22
that would have been impossible in later years, a group of German industrial associations unanimously rejected official government reports citing a recent 9 percent
gain
in manufactured exports, especially machinery, textiles, and steel. In their daring announcement, the industrialists admitted they had actually suffered a heavy
decline.
¹⁷

Pessimistic newspaper and radio reports were vital to keeping the anti-Nazi boycott movement alive, because every boycott thrives on the appearance of success.
It
matters little whether a business decline is actually due to a boycott or to seasonal fluctuations, strikes, material shortages, or the phases of the moon. People want to see evidence of damage. When they do, the devoted redouble their devotion and the uncommitted see real value in the protest and jump on the bandwagon. In April
1933,
such evidence was abundant for those opposed to Adolf Hitler.

On April
26
,
British Embassy Commercial Counsellor
F.
Thelwell in Berlin ended a twenty-two-page economic forecast with the words
"If
as time goes on the effects of bad foreign trade make themselves felt in industrial employment in Germany and money is not forthcoming for schemes of work and settlement, the pressure of economic distress may yet prove strong enough to break the political stranglehold which Hitler has put upon the country."
¹⁸
Germany could not afford a boycott.

What's more, the American Jewish Committee in New York, the State Department in Washington, the Foreign Office in London, and the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem were all becoming aware that protest and boycott were the only effective restraints on Nazi policy.

For example, on April 5, Berl Locker of the Zionist Organization Executive Committee in London readily acknowledged the power of the protest in a letter to a colleague: "It is clear that these [British protest] actions, added to the general anti-Nazi attitude of the press . . . have surely caused the [April First] anti-Jewish boycott to be limited to a single day." Despite this awareness, Locker admitted in the same letter, "My friends and I have attempted to energetically counter the so-called
Greuelpropaganda
[atrocity stories]. . . . We also made efforts to counteract the proclamation of an [anti-Nazi] boycott [in Britain] and we were successful, at least with the official organizations. Of course, we cannot directly influence the individual merchant. . . ."
¹⁹
In the first week of April, Locker also advised the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem that for tactical reasons, Zionists in all countries should avoid participating in the struggle against Hitler. Locker feared that open criticism of Hitler would precipitate crackdowns on German Zionism and jeopardize contacts with the regime.
²⁰

Both the American State Department and the British Foreign Office were equally aware that pressure and only pressure was restraining the Reich. British and American legations around the world reported the distress the anti-Nazi protest and boycott movement was causing the German government. But while aware of press reports attributing the so-called softening of Hitler's campaign to sudden economic distress, the British and American diplomatic communities continued to preach noninterference, political reassurance to the Reich, and economic cooperation as the wisest method of reducing anti-Semitism in Germany.

In the case of Zionism, the State Department, and the Foreign Office, their hands-off policy was in pursuit of ideals. Zionists, of course, were seeking détente with an enemy to achieve Jewish nationalism. American and British diplomats were seeking an illusory peace by an ineffective strategy later to be labeled
appeasement.
But the American Jewish Committee's antagonism to anti-Nazi activity defied even their own definition of Jewish defense.

In early April, Committee president Cyrus Adler received an anguished letter from a friend writing from Paris. The man was ruined, living from moment to moment as a refugee. Adler's frightened friend sought to debunk the Committee's belief that German atrocities were in the least bit exaggerated. Over several neatly typed pages, the refugee listed typical disappearances, beatings, and murders: Herr Kindermann disappeared for several days until his frantic family received a letter from a Nazi commander to pick up his body. Herr Krell disappeared until one of the Nazi torture houses called with the news that he had thrown himself out a fourth-floor window. Herr Naumann, seized by Brownshirts, dragged through the streets, beaten over his entire body, and then forced to suffer as pepper was sprinkled on his wounds, died shortly thereafter of a skull fracture and blood poisoning from the pepper.
²¹